Time Machine backup failed following upgrade to OS X Mavericks

I upgraded from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) to Mavericks yesterday, and since that time have consistently received an errror message that my Time Machine backup is failing. The message is: 'Backup Failed' 'The backup on "xxxxxx Time Capsule" is already in use.'
My backups to the Time Capsule worked flawlessly prior to the upgrade.
Additional troubleshooting:
- When I go to open the Time Capsule in Finder, I can see the folder for my iMac, but cannot open. "xxxxxx iMac.sparsebundle" Resource temporarily unavailable"
The backup disk image “/Volumes/Time Capsule-1/Michael Dollinger’s iMac.sparsebundle” is already in use.
Is this a permissions issue? If so, how do I resolve?
Any additional suggestions

Note, I MAY have resolved the issue. I updated the firmware on my Time Capsule (which was not previously even showing in Finder), and now the backup seems to be running. It took a long time (20+ minutes) to prep, but now it is running. I'll let you all know if this completes successfully.

Similar Messages

Time machine backup fails now that I have installed Mavericks

Time machine "backup now" used to work flawlessly. Now it doesn't work at all after installing Mavericks. I just get an interminable "preparing backup" message.
It worked flawlessly before Mavericks installation - any thoughts?

I too have had a few failed Time Machine backups since updating to Maverick. I backup to a NAS/server and didn't used to have this problem before.

Time Machine backups failing under ML 10.8.2

I have a user who has not been able get a complete Time Machine backup since he upgraded to Mountain Lion. He is backing up to an external USB hard drive. We even replaced the external drive with a new one and reformatted it (Mac OS Extended Journaled). What happens is that when starting the first backup, it shows as "preparing for backup" under the TM status windows and "cleaning" on a popup status. After about 20-30 minuutes, the backup starts. The system slows down to a crawl. There is about 271 GB to backup. It will run for a few hours then fail. The error is attached. I've been on the phone with Apple Care and they suggested what we already did - try a different drive, format as Mac OS Journaled, etc. Is there a log file that I can look at to see why it is failing? Any other suggestions?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Time machine backup fails; error creating folder. Western Digital drive requires password which is perhaps/likely the issue. I can't eliminate the password/encryption.

Time Machine backup fails on new WD external drive (My Passport Studio); error creating folder (after several hours of Time Machine apparently working).
Background: I purchased a Western Digital drive from an Apple Store to use for Time Machine backup. I followed the Western Digital instructions that came with the drive for Mac. I didn't get the Time Machine prompt which the instructions indicated I would receive--namely to select whether I want to encrypt my Time Macine backups. (I already have a Time Machine backup I use at another location, which is perhaps why I didn't receive a prompt.)
I decided to install the Western Digital utilities and security software that comes on the disk--with a view to potentially encrypting the disk (since I still wanted to have an encrypted backup since I was mobile). I forgot that (from experience 2-years previous) that I shouldn't install Western Digital software because it just makes life really complicated.
I tried several times to do a Time Machine backup with failures each time (error creating the backup folder). I tried to get help from WD but I don't think the technicians were following what my issue was. Potentially I was not helpful in explaining it. I deleted the WD applications from my system after the first contact with WD. However the problem persisted--I still had an encrypted hard drive. After three phone sessions with three different WD techs I still could not get a solution. (By the second call I was not at all interested in having an encrypted drive--I just wanted to format and restore the drive to an unencrypted state so that I could have SOME kind of Time Machine backup.)
I still don't have a solution--either to get Time Machine working with the WD encryption/password on the drive, or to remove the encryption so I can backup. Right now my options are to return the drive to the Apple Store -- or get a return authorization from WD. Seems crazy since the drive is fine and I have the working password.

Never install "helpful software" provided by WD and Seagate (or any HD mfg.)
All such stuff is fluff and nonsense that interferes with normal HD operation.
Always when you buy a new HD, format it for Mac and then use it to TM backup or clone a HD, or archive data.
Less is more on HD new out of box. A "blank brick", no fluff and cotton candy software

Time Machine backup fails in extended network

Dear all,
I've recently setup an extended network using 2 additional AirPort Express units connected to the main Airport Extreme modem (all working well). I'm using the Extreme for Time Machine Backups, which used to work just fine as well.
However, when connected to the Expresses, the Time Machine Backups fail with the message that the backup file is already in use. I'm guessing the Express modem tries to connect to the backup file, while the Extreme is keeping the file stand-by or something.
Does anybody know a fix to this problem?
Kind regards,
Dennis

It took a Snow Leopard a while but after 2 days it started working again. I've checked whether the connection was directly to the Extreme, but the connection actually went through one of the bridged Expresses.
I guys one just has to hope for the best ;-)
I've upgraded to Lion last week and backup works fine with the new operating system as well.

Time Machine Backup Failed even though I still have 1.9TB of a 2TB Time Capsule. I am using Yosemite.

Time Machine Backup Failed even though I still have 1.9TB of a 2TB Time Capsule. I am using Yosemite 10.10.3 on an iMac (mid 2010)

The recent update in Yosemite (10.10.3) is causing some issues for some users.
Try a complete network power cycle as follows:
Power off each and every device on your network......modem, Time Capsule, computers, printers, etc......in any order that you want
Wait a minute
Power up the modem and let it run 2-3 minutes
Then, power up the next device that is connected to the modem an let it run a full minute
Then, continue to power up devices one at a time about a minute apart until everything is back up
Check the network
Wait for a backup to occur and report on your results

Time Machine backup fails because "volume could not be found".

I just had my logic board replaced in my Macbook Pro and went to do a backup (yeah, I didn't do this right before it crashed) and now Time Machine backup fails with the message "volume could not be found" Under Time Machine/Choose Disk, it appears that the drive is the one selected. The computer "sees" the drive and I can read files on it. The only other thing that has happened in the meantime is that a friend helped pull a file off the hard drive that I needed for a project. No apparent issues there. Any suggestions?

You might try going to /Library/Preferences, then drag the file com.apple.TimeMachine.plist to the Desktop. Reboot your Mac, then try declaring the backup disk for Time Machine. It might help if you mount the backup disk first.
Are you using Time Machine to write its backups to the disk of a Time Capsule? If not, since this discussion section is for Apple's Time Capsule AirPort base station, a discussion involving Time Machine should be held on the discussion section for whatever version of OSX that you're using.

Time machine backup fails in my seagate 3tb external drive

Time machine backup fails in my seagate 3tb external drive

Without any specifics it's impossible to assist you, however the best tool for debugging TM failures is using Pondini's Time Machine Troubleshooting guide.
Good luck.

Time Machine Backup Fails With Error 36 on Music Folder?

Hi. I've been having backup errors since a clean install of Leopard (and immediate upgrade to 10.5.2). I keep getting a pop up that says time machine has failed. I started isolating my user folders (Pictures, Downloads, Music), and turns out its my iTunes Music folder that has files that are causing Time Machine to fail. If I exclude Music, the backup works perfectly. If I include it, it recognizes that it has 19 GB more to backup, but then I get the following errors (this is just a subsection):
Feb 24 01:38:50 jordan-martons-imac /usr/sbin/ocspd[592]: starting
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]:
Feb 24 01:40:22: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[204]: Error: (-36) copying /Users/jordanmarton/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Maroon 5/Songs About Jane/12 Sweetest Goodbye.mp3 to (null)
Feb 24 01:40:42 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Feb 24 01:40:42 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]:
Feb 24 01:40:54: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Feb 24 01:40:44 jordan-martons-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[204]: Error: (-36) copying /Users/jordanmarton/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Martin Page/In the House of Stone & Light/01 In the House of Stone and Light.mp3 to (null)
Any idea what is going on?

Hi. I've been having backup errors since a clean install of Leopard (and immediate upgrade to 10.5.2). I keep getting a pop up that says time machine has failed. I started isolating my user folders (Pictures, Downloads, Music), and turns out its my iTunes Music folder that has files that are causing Time Machine to fail. If I exclude Music, the backup works perfectly. If I include it, it recognizes that it has 19 GB more to backup, but then I get the following errors (this is just a subsection):
Feb 24 01:38:50 jordan-martons-imac /usr/sbin/ocspd[592]: starting
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]:
Feb 24 01:40:22: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Feb 24 01:40:22 jordan-martons-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[204]: Error: (-36) copying /Users/jordanmarton/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Maroon 5/Songs About Jane/12 Sweetest Goodbye.mp3 to (null)
Feb 24 01:40:42 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Feb 24 01:40:42 jordan-martons-imac kernel[0]:
Feb 24 01:40:54: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Feb 24 01:40:44 jordan-martons-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[204]: Error: (-36) copying /Users/jordanmarton/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Martin Page/In the House of Stone & Light/01 In the House of Stone and Light.mp3 to (null)
Any idea what is going on?

Time machine backup failed to restore

HHaving had major issues with Mail I decided to restore from a Time Machine backup. With hindsight I wish I hadn't! Having foolishly agreed to the 'this will erase everything' warning I waited 8 hours (twice) to get the message that my backup failed to restore. No more detail than that. Does anyone have any ideas / suggestions? I have a MBA with latest upgrade of Yosemite (last upgrade probably caused my Mail issue). Everything is backed up using Time Machine to a Netgear NAS. When going through the restore process I have no is

TThanks Eric. At present I can't connect the NAS directly. I dont seem to have a usb to usb cable. It is connecting via a network cable. My MBA can see the NAS and I've successfully entered my login details and chosen the backup I want to restore.
On C's recommendation I tried reinstalling OSX and planned to then try importing all my files on,y to find that there was not enough disk space. I've now erased everything as it occurred to me that starting with most of my 250G drive free might help. I'm having one more go at restoring directly from the TM backup as this would be my preferred solution (indeed what I had assumed Time Machine was meant for). On,y another 7 hours 26 minutes to wait. If that fails I will have another go at a fresh OS X install and reimport from TM (on the assumption that an empty hard disk will allow that this time).
ANd do all this because MaIl stopped working with my old POP account and I screwed up the switch to IMAP (by dragging my old Pop account contents across to the new IMAP account is created - will need to do that more carefully if I ever get back to where I started!).

Time Machine Backup fails after Restore

Had my 500GB HD on my iMac fail. After being replaced by Apple, I performed a restore from 1TB time machine backup. After this was done, I set time machine back up to back up to this 1TB drive. I want it to append to the previous backups. However, the backup fails due to "backup is too large for the backup volume". It doesn't seem to want to append to previous backups but thinks this is an entirely new backup, which I guess is mostly true. I suspect this has to do with UUIDs of the new and old drives, but I'm not sure how to correct it (I'd prefer not to just wipe the backup disk and start over). I migrated backups before from one extenal HD to another but can't remember what I did... If anyone has steps to fix this, let me know em. Thanks.
Here's the time machine log:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/MyBook-Mac/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|
Starting pre-backup thinning: 506.55 GB requested (including padding), 502.31 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed.
Backup Failed: unable to free 506.55 GB needed space
Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.
Message was edited by: Delmonte3161

Delmonte3161 wrote:
Had my 500GB HD on my iMac fail. After being replaced by Apple, I performed a restore from 1TB time machine backup. After this was done, I set time machine back up to back up to this 1TB drive. I want it to append to the previous backups. However, the backup fails due to "backup is too large for the backup volume". It doesn't seem to want to append to previous backups but thinks this is an entirely new backup, which I guess is mostly true. I suspect this has to do with UUIDs of the new and old drives,
yes, that's correct. TM will make a full backup after a full system restore on a new hard drive because the UUIDs of the new drive is different from the old one.
you may try the following hack to get around it
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789
But I make no promises about how well it works.
but I'm not sure how to correct it (I'd prefer not to just wipe the backup disk and start over). I migrated backups before from one extenal HD to another but can't remember what I did... If anyone has steps to fix this, let me know em. Thanks.
Here's the time machine log:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/MyBook-Mac/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|
Starting pre-backup thinning: 506.55 GB requested (including padding), 502.31 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed.
Backup Failed: unable to free 506.55 GB needed space
Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.
Message was edited by: Delmonte3161

Time Machine Backup fails

After working fine for several years, my Time Machine backup suddenly started consistently failing about a week ago. It spends a very long time "preparing backup", then gives the error something like "Backup could not be completed. There was an error copying files. Try again later. If the problem persists, use the Disk Utility to repair the disk". I've repaired the disk (several times) as well as all the other disks in my system, but the problem keeps occuring. Restarting the system also did not help. I can still access backups on the disk and in in fact went in a deleted a bunch of old stuff to insure there was plenty of disk space.
I have a 2011 iMac backing up to a 2 TByte Hitachi drive. I backup files from both the local hard disk and an external Seagate drive.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks. In the end it turned out that it was failing to copy the directory of my newly installed X11 libraries, and that caused the entire backup to terminate (which strikes me as kind of crazy).
Following the advice on your link, I excluded that directory, did a backup, then reincluded it and it backed up fine. It must be a very subtle bug in the Time Machine code.
I find it profoundly annoying that Time Machine didn't simply tell me what the error was, rather than make me search through the system logs to find it. That would have saved a great deal of time.
Thanks for your help.

Restore Lion 10.7.3 from Time Machine Backup Fails

Follwoing a hard disk failure and installing a new disk, I connected to my Time Capsule to restore my Mackbook Pro running Lion.
Choosing the latest backup resulted in it restoring about 36% of the drive and failing with a subsequesnt reboot from which the system was unable to root to the hard disk.
After repeating the restoration process, I kept choosing backups from Time Capsule, going back choosing an older one each time following a restoration failure as described above.
Once I chose the latest 10.7.2 backup, restoration completed.
I have since attempted to choose and restore several of the 10.7.3 and 10.7.2 backups in the sequence on the Time Capsule, and ONLY the 10.7.2 backups are fully recoverable.
I believe there is a bug in 10.7.3 which prevents backups from restoring off of a Time Machine Backup that is not in 10.7.2.
Can anyone else confirm this?

No. It will not fix my issue, per say...
I have essentially had to restore from backup of a 10.7.2 dated version, and update everything back to where it was before it failed with 10.7.3, and then put all the latest updates on to include the TM update... Now hopefully I can rely on my backups... again... not that I knew I couldn't...
I really do not feel good about this... So, ALL data & settings are going into Dropbox and onto External RAID media, as well as I am presently making an image of my disk... which by the way is SSD now.
Fortunatley the 10.7.2 backup worked and it only required a few hours to get the system updated back to where it was b4 the crash, but had that not happened, I would have been looking at a couple of days...

Time Machine backup fails - any suggestions?

My Time Machine 1TB drive for my iMac (late 2009, 20.5") had started making noises. I did a disk repair and there were no errors, but it was obviously noisy, and probably at the end of its life.
So I got a brand new 1TB drive yesterday, formatted it and made it a new-from-scratch Time Machine drive and started my first backup, which succeeded.
But when I woke up this morning, there was a dialog, "Time Machine could not complete the backup. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
I looked at the drive contents. It seems to contain a full backup:
Backups.backupdb
          Doug-iMac215
                    2012-05-01-015856
                              Macintosh HD
                                        Applications
                                        Developer
                                        Developer-old
                                        Installer Log File
                                        Library
                                        ... etc
including all the user folder files.
If I open up Time Machine I can "go back in time" to that one backup. So it looks like one initial backup was successful.
But when I tried to "Back up now" I get the same error dialog.
It was properly formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and Disk Verify reports "The volume appears to be ok."
It's a Toshiba Canvio, HDTC610JS3A1 USB3.0/2.0 Portable Hard Disk.
I then turned off Time Machine and tried to eject it via Disk Utility but got this message:
          "The disk“TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 Media” could not be unmounted. Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk."
Via the Finder there was a "force eject" option. I tried that and re-mounted, turned Time Machine back on and selected "back up now" again. It successfully finished the 2nd backup and now I have two Time Machine backups on that drive.
So I thought all was well.
But... the automatic backup the following hour failed with the same message.
What could the cause be?
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
doug

Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID
Usually that error indicates a drive malfunction; specifically, the drive is spinning down and not responding to bus signals. Some "Eco" or "green" drives are known for this behavior. The following steps may help:
Select  ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.
If the drive is connected to a hub, connect it to a built-in port on the computer.
If a firmware update is available for the drive, apply it.
Contact the drive manufacturer to see whether there's a firmware setting you can change.
If you installed vendor software for the drive, uninstall it.
If none of the above steps resolves the issue, try another drive.

Time Machine backups fail after initial drive connection, cannot eject drive

I have a Macbook Pro 13" Retina Display, 8GB running OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 and have set Time Machine backups to a 1TB WD My Passport. When I first connect the drive the backup will run fine, but subsequent backups always fail. In addition I typically cannot eject the drive. I've scoured online forums and have completely reformatted the drive, and have even deleted some backup settings files from the hard drive, none of these has resolved my issue.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time Machine backup failed following upgrade to OS X Mavericks

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for