My time machine will not back up. It says backup failed each time i try to back up. I tried switching it off but still nothing. It says "already in use" Please help!

My time machine will not back up. It says backup failed each time i try to back up. I tried switching it off but still nothing. It says "already in use" Please help!

The late James Pond left us these wonderful illustrated guides, including this one:
Time Machine - Troubleshooting
C12. "The Backup disk image ... sparsebundle ... is already in use."

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    Time Machine will not let me restore from backups after June, 2013.  I can see the files on the external hard drive but Time Machine skips all of them and goes back to June, 2013. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

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  • Time Machine will not back up external photo drive

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  • My time machine will not back up and i get this message: /Volumes/Data/Kathy P's MacBook.sparsebundle" is already in use

    my time machine will not back up and i get this message: /Volumes/Data/Kathy P’s MacBook.sparsebundle” is already in use....i have tried multiple fixes but still unable to back up

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    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
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  • Time machine will not back up to time capsule

    Time machine will not back up to my Time Capsule on my MacPro running SnowLeopard. Error message says it cannot access the backup file. I have reset the TC, and erased the drive and I get the same error on initial backup. I can see the volume and drag files to it, so the disk appears OK. What's going on here?

    Depending on exactly what message you get, you might need #C17 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting
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  • I upgraded to Maverick and now Time Machine will not connect to the external hard drive to back up files.  The external hard drive is a Western Digital "My Book Live" 2 TB.  How do I solve problem?

    I upgraded to Maverick and now Time Machine will not connect to the external hard drive to back up files.  The external hard drive is a Western Digital "My Book Live" 2 TB.  How do I solve problem?

    I also had problem accessing my WD MyBookLive after upgrading to Maverick.
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  • My time machine will not complete the back up.  It say that my sparsebundle is already in use.  What do I do and how do I fix it?

    My time machine will not complete the back up.  It tells me that my sparsebundle is alreay in use.  I currently have imac ungraded my sofeware to the latest.  What do I do to correct this?

    Try here...
    The Backup disk image ... sparsebundle ... is already in use.
    From Pondini’s excellent Information Here...
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.htm

  • Time Machine will not backup Time Capsule drive

    I was filling up my time capsule so I bought a new 2GB drive for my backups. It is attached as an air disk on the Time Capsule as I also use it to backup other computers in the house.
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    Sorry, but Time Machine will not backup a network drive (i.e. TC's HDD or any USB HDD attached to the TC). It can backup TO a NAS such as TC or a USB HDD attached to the TC. You can transfer your music to another external HDD that is connected directly to a Leopard-loaded Mac and TM can backup that up to TC/HDD attached to a TC.

  • Time machine will not backup but does restore

    My Time machine will not backup, but will restore from prior backups - the last made three months ago (end of January).  Can anyone help?  When trying to run a backup the screen shows:
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    I am running OSX Mountain LIon Version 10.8.3

    Mickmannock wrote:
    I followed the proceedure described to delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist.  However I note that there are very many versions of this file in other locations.
    There shouldn't be.  Delete any others. 
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    I am running Parallels 8 and windows 7 in a Virtual machine, but these do not appear to have created problems in the past - over two years now.
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  • Time Machine will not delete the oldest backup when external hard drive is full

    I may not understand this timemachine thing, but....
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    I agree with Linc's response but you also have to realize that it will keep the oldest backup and start removing snapshots if it can.
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  • Time machine will not complete backup.

    Time Machine will not complete back-up - 3TB back-up is full and time machine will not automatically delete oldest back-up.

    This happens from time to time. You will need to step in and decide what to do.. Delete manually.. a very slow and fraught process.. or you have to take more severe action.. eg archive off the old backups and start again. You will need a 3TB USB drive to do it.. but IMHO is well worth it. Assuming you need all that history. You can then simply do a quick erase from Airport Utility which takes a minute or two and do a fresh backup.
    Try to eliminate files that are not necessary to backup.. eg the worst is any virtual disk for parallels or bootcamp.. where the slightest change to the smallest file will result in a full backup of the whole virtual disk. You must backup windows etc from inside the OS and not from TM in Mac OS.
    Have you upgraded the computer btw?? I get the feeling that when you upgrade a computer.. say Snow Leopard to Lion to Mountain Lion.. TM has real issues handling the old backups. It is much better to start over.
    Read up from our most productive expert.. Pondini..
    http://pondini.org/TM/C4.html

  • Time Machine will NOT work with Airport Disks!

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    It also specifically says: "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices."
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    Here's how you can potentially use your AirDisk with TimeMachine (beware that YMMV), but it should work as it works with every other "unsupported" device.
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    This should also work on NFS shares, SMB shares, AFP shares, basically anything. It has worked up until the last developer seed, so unless they yanked this at the last minute, it should still work.
    Now, the reason why Apple removed this feature may be due to the unreliability of the AirDisk, so be cautious.

  • Time machine will not see USB attached drive

    I am having some difficulty getting Time Machine to see a USB attached Lacie drive. I can get it to mount through the finder, but Time Machine will not see it. It also works fine through a direct firewire connection. I have all of the current updates. Any help is appreciated.

    Well after much trial and error I figured it out. I had to enable file sharing with a disk password. Before I had it set up for accounts and it was not mounting properly.

  • Time Machine will not see USB drive attaced to AEBS

    I am having some difficulty getting Time Machine to see a USB attached Lacie drive. I can get it to mount through the finder, but Time Machine will not see it. It also works fine through a direct firewire connection. I have all of the current updates. Any help is appreciated.

    have you tried formatting the drive, by selecting the disk or volume and using extended (journal). If the drive use to be a PC drive, you need to also give it a new index table. To give it a new table, you got to go to the partition section and use the option button. There will be 3 types, the GUID table is for intel macs, the 2nd selection is for PPC macs, and the third is for Window/Dos. You want to use to GUID table. After the table is set, format the disk using extended (journal).

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