Backup bug?

Legacy 2nd gen Apple TV
1

I don’t know whether this is a documented bug but I thought I would write about it in case someone has a workaround.

On August 24 at about 11 am, I did a full backup from the menu. I had just started downloading some metadata in some folders, so I thought I would try out the backup feature.

It is now August 24, late in the afternoon. Having downloaded some more metadata I thought I would backup my data again. [By the way, we have to do this manually, yes? There is no way to schedule backups is there?]

Anyway, I started the backup and some time later noticed that the ATV was back on the main screen. I went to Manage backups>Restore from backups but all I could see was the 11 am backup, all 6 Kb of it. This is a bit small isn’t it?

Obviously, the new backup did not work. I have tried another three times and every time the ATV reverts back to the main screen. When I go to restore from backup, the new backup is not there. All I get as a choice is the 11 am backup.

I have rebooted the ATV but it hasn’t helped. Any ideas?

Also, where in the cloud is the data stored? In my iCloud account or on Firecore’s server somewhere?

Thank you.

2

Metadata will actually be saved for both normal and full backups. In addition to what normal backups save, full backups will add all the cached artwork Media has downloaded, which in some cases can result in a very, very large backup file.

In your case it sounds like your backup file is quite large, and just too much for the Apple TV’s 256MB of RAM to compress and upload. Your best option will be to switch to normal backups, which will save all the key info (settings, metadata, watched history, etc…). If you need to restore to one of these backups in the future Media will automatically re-download any artwork as needed.

Lastly, details on where on how backups are saved can be found in our FAQs. I’ve included the relavent bit below.

Cloud data backups are stored securely using the Amazon S3 cloud service which is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability over a given year. Saved backups will be stored for a minimum of 120 days, after which time they may be purged to free up resources for other users.

3

Thanks for the information James.