Time Machine backup fails on new Mac

I used Migration Assistant to transfer data from my old Mac Pro G5 to my new Intel Mac Pro. I erased the backup disk (500 GB My Book) then attempted to use Time Macine to backup the new Mac Pro. It won't start on it's daily schedule. When I select "Back up now", the icon in the tool bar indicates it starts to backup but then quickly stops. When I open Time Machine, it says: Backup - Failed. There is no error message so I don't know what else to do. Have any of you had this problem? If so, what did you do to solve it?
Thanks for any help.

in DU, select the whole drive (model, not name) and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to 1 and click on "options". set the partition scheme to GUID there. set the format to mac os extended journaled and click "apply".
once the disk is reformatted go to TM system preferences and set up TM.

Similar Messages

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

Does every backup require lots of indexing? If so, the index may be damaged.
Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't help, see the pink box in #D2 of the same link.

HT201250 existing Time Machine backups to a new Mac

how do i migrate existing time machine backups to a new mac from my time capsule?

It took a little more research, but that link in the end solved my problem. After mounting the Time Capsule and the previous backup sparsebundle, I ran these commands to inherit the old backup (with <capsule> and <machine> representing the names of the Time Capsule and machine/hard drive respectively:
          sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/<capsule>/<machine>.sparsebundle
          sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/<machine>/2012-12-09-114511/<machine>
          sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/<capsule>/
"2012-12-09-114511" was the latest snapshot that was there. According to the documentation, you can pick any snapshot, since the "-a" in that command will update all of the associated snapshots.

Can I still use my "old" Mac after restoring Time Machine backup to a new Mac?

Hi guys.
Will I still be able to use my old Macbook Pro 2008 (Leopard) after restoring his latest Time Machine backup on a new Macbook Pro 2012 (Lion)?
Using Setup Assistant and transfering data using Time Machine creats the same Account on the new machine that was on the old one. I just don't know how the old machine will react towards his clone. I don't want to make a mess...
Please let me know.
Thanks

It should work if the drive is connected directly to your Mac. That is not the same as saying that it will work.
Since Mountain Lion was just released, it might make sense to hold on a few weeks and watch the forums for new and unforeseen issues before you dive in.

Linking previous Time Machine Backup to a new Mac OS X Reinstall

Hi guys,
Several recurring problems prompted me to reinstall Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. Beforehand, I had made a copy/clone of my entire Macintosh HD onto an external hard drive. After the reinstallation, I selectively copied specific folders back to my fresh installation.
On my previous installation, I have had Time Machine running for several months. Trouble is, when I connect the external hard drive which holds the Time Machine backups, the Mac does not recognize it.
I wish to have my new reinstalled Mac back up to this same Time Machine backup. I have copied all of my documents and applications back onto my new installation. I wish to browse previous backups of the files I had made.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe if I choose my old Time Machine hard drive as my Time Machine backup disk in my new installation, Time Machine simply starts an entirely new backup and ignores the old Time Machine backups made from my previous installation.
I would appreciate any help you guys could provide.
Many thanks.

I had that problem and a more challenging one as well - don't feel bad, mine was caused by the Apple geniuses at my local Apple store doing the same backup and reinstall OS thing.
One thing to be sure of - go to the "SHARING" pane in System Preferences, and be sure that there is a name for your computer in the appropriate box - AND that the name is the same one you were using before your re-install. Mine had been changed, and when I fixed that, TM recognized the TimeCapsule drive. However - another more difficult problem persists. Here's a message I posted on another thread dealing with the "other" problem: TM won't show the backups made prior to my reinstall (except under special circumstances, noted in the message).
have an almost identical problem. yesterday I picked up my MacBookPro from the Geniuses at my local Apple retail store. In order to fix a problem with QuickTime, they ported all my files to a backup disk, reformatted my HD, installed a clean copy of OS X 10.5, upgraded it to the current version, then copied my files back to my computer's HD. They messed up my password; somehow made many of my applications vanish (I've mostly fixed those problems now) AND I can no longer access the backup files saved prior to their "help".
One wrinkle - I can see all of the backups in the TimeMachine window if I am at the level of my hard drive, OR clicked on the applications folder. If I select any other subfolders, the pre-"help" backup files gray out and cannot be used. If I move to a pre-"help" backup file while at the HD level, all but the applications folder are grayed out and non-responsive to clicks
I ran DiskUtility - repair permissions - and while it found a huge number of things to fix, this did nothing for my Time Machine problem.

Cannot use Migration Assistant to migrate from a Time Machine backup to a new Mac.

I have a supposedly valid Time Machine backup for both of the MacBook Pro's we have (had). My wifes is Pro is working but mine died. I am replacing it with a MacBook Air. Following the steps, I tried to Migrate all my Pro files and apps from a TM backup using the Migration Assistant but it stops at 'Looking for source' and never gets past this.
I have confirmed the wife's back up is valid using 'Enter Time Machine'. However, on that same Mac Pro, if I use the Migration Assistant, it does not find the hard drive, once again , getting stuck at 'Looking for source just like on the Mac Air.
I went back to BestBuy where I bought the Air and worked with the Apple Rep. He tried it himself on a Mac Pro they had in the store and got the same results.
We called this into MyApple and after elevating this to the next level, they still cannot explain it.
I have used this feature in the past prior to upgrading to Mavericks so I am wondering if the fault is there?
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Dave

I may have solved this (partly). A search reveal A LOT of peoplel having the same issue. One solution put forward was that the Time Machine backups were not complete. I noticed in mine, non of the backups for a quite a while have no Applications or System files backup. The solution was to do a TM reset. I did that and ran a new backup of the one MacBook Pro that is still working. After it was complete, the backup had the Applications and System data in it. I was able to open the Migration ssistant and it found the drive.
Now I just have to hope that the repair shop can salvage my malfuncitoning MB Pro so I can solve the main issue either by Migrating fromht MB Pro or make a new back up of the MB Pro after TM reset and use that for the migration. Won't till tomorrow (hopefully).
Dave

Using Time machine backup drive on new mac

Hi
I have an external hard drive that has a time machine backup on it. I want to use it on a re-installed mac, the re-installed mac has quite a few new files on it.
Can you just plug it in and copy all the files across to the newly installed Mac and carry on - or is there a danger of anything going missing?
Thanks for your advice.

Turn off TM or set the backup drive to null. Rename your computer in Sharing preferences to the same computer name of your old computer. Turn TM back on and reselect the backup drive. TM will behave as you expect. Of course if the file dates on the new machine are all changed since the migration, then TM will correctly assume that they require backing up. You will then find that there will not be sufficient space on the drive for the new backups. If this occurs then you should simply erase the backup drive and start your TM backup anew.

Time Machine Backup Failed - on three Macs. Used to work fine.

"*+Time Machine Error*+
+Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.+"
Last week all three machines were running fine. The Time Machine disk is hooked up to an Airport Extreme running 7.3.2 firmware. I updated it today to 7.4.1 in hopes of fixing the problem. All Macs are on 10.5.6 and have been for a month or more.
When "Backup now" is selected all machines stick on Preparing backup" for a few minutes and then fail.
I'm bummed that this is happening now. I used to use SilverKeeper (free from LaCie). It's faster and more comprehensive, but somehow I got sucked in by Apple's futuristic (historic?) interface. Now, in order to use SilverKeeper I need to erase the Time Machine drive - all 1.2TB.
I don't feel TM is ready for storage of important data. A commercial product would never make it to market if it continually had issues like this. Nearly 10,000 topics in this forum, and a good portion have just plain bad things to say.
I'm sure a lot of people have run into this on their own setups. Has anyone solved the issue? Please help.

Yes, perhaps we're missing something. But I'd rather stick with what works. Here's a software review that pretty much echo's my feelings:
*+I've tried to love Time Machine. I really have. It was one of the reasons I was in an all-fire hurry to upgrade to 10.5. I spent the cash, installed the OS, and immediately set up TM. Or at least I tried to. My new Airport Extreme wasn't allowed to access the USB disk for this purpose.+*
*+But I found a hack and things were good. For about a day. "To **** with it" I thought and went back to Carbon Copy Cloner. An excellent and free app that got me thru years of work with no loss of data. But wait! Now that I upgraded to 10.5 CCC no longer works.+*
*+So I played with it for a few weeks and eventually, I got it to work.... Until Apple released the official software upgrade that allowed Airport Extreme disks to work with TM and it broke again. Another 4 days of playing and reinstalling, and reformatting, and shuffling data. Still nothing.+*
*+****, you should have seen the look on their eyes when I showed up to the Apple store toting my G5 PowerMac Dual, AirPort Extreme, MacBook Pro, wife's MacBook, and two USB drives. AND my Apple ProCare card.+*
*+I took up half the Genius Bar for about 2 hours and still left with a backup scheme that would only partially work. Then, upon arriving home, the IP addresses had changed so I had to repeat half of the steps I barely remembered (and the Genius made up on the fly).+*
*+Finally all was good in the world. Until last week. My wife asked me to send her a picture I took of her with our new puppy at our new house about 6 months ago. I pulled up iPhoto and couldn't locate the picture. "No problem, I've got Time Machine" I thought.+*
*+The story is getting long and you can see where it's going. Not only was the picture missing, but 4 months of pictures were missing. 4 months starting when I stopped using CCC and, even though TM was running, it deleted the oldest files without any warning, any notification, or any reason. In fact the TM drive still had over 400GB free.+*
*+Yes, I had to replace a drive in that 4 month window and yes, I made sure I pulled the data off of Time Machine. HUGE pain in the @ss - it took nearly 4 days to copy the data from TM to the new drive, and apparently a big chunk was lost.+*
*+Finally, the end of my little story. I'm back using CCC. v3 is out and it works with 10.5 and reportedly, 10.6. Four years of using CCC and I've never lost so much as an email (much to the chagrin of my old landlord that emailed me that dogs were perfectly fine, only to try to sue me later).+*
*+For all of those who trust Time Machine, go ahead and try to find a file from a few months ago. It's not as easy as the interface makes it look, and it may not be there at all.+*
*+Time Machine - go sparse yourself. And thanks Bombich software for a superior product in Carbon Copy Cloner.+*

How can I migrate data from old macs second harddrive in time machine backup to my new mac?

Hi,
I have a little problem migrating all my data from my old Macbook to my new Macbook. I had two harddisk installed in my Macbook and did make a backup to a USB Disk. It seems that both harddisk are included in the backup. I can see them in Time Machine.
Now I want to restore my data to the new Macbook Retina. Unfortunately the Migration Assistant only shows the system disk, but not the data disk.
How can I access the data disk in the backup to restore the data to some directory on the new Macbook? The data is mostly the iTunes Library of my old Macbook.
Regards

If the migration assistant doesn't work and you have no backup then you will have to take another path that involves a little more manual work. Anyway in your situation a fresh start seems like a good idea. So set up your new Mac with the same username and afterwards copy your user folder from the old to the new either using your ethernet connection or an external USB drive. This will also bring your user's Library folder along and retain most of your settings at least as far as they are applicable in Mavericks.
HTH
Martin

Migration of Time Machine backup files to new Mac

I am the proud owner of a new iMac which is replacing an old 2006 model. I have 2 external hard drives which I have now connected to the new computer, I used to back these up using TM on my old mac. Can I migrate those backup files to the new mac so that if needed I can go back to restore files from months back ? The TM backup is held on a 3rd external drive.
Looking across the web it looks like if I switch on TM it will start with new backup files and wont read the old ones. Any ideas please ? Thanks

TM will make a completely new backup of your new computer, so you may wish to use a freshly formatted drive large enough to handle TM backups (roughly double the size of the drive you are backing up.) You can use TM or Migration Assistant to transfer from an old backup. MA is only useful if you want to transfer the entire Home folder, all third-party applications and support folders, system support folders, and system preferences. But if you want to move selected files and/or folders then you would need to use the TM application.
See User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Getting Photos from Time Machine Backup disc to new mac

Hi! I have everything saved from my macbook on an external hard drive via time machine. When I go into time machine and the back up from my mac book, I click on users and then photos and then iphoto library and have no problem seeing my library...
BUT
Now I am trying to download all of the photos from the backup onto my husband's macbook. When I go to import on iphoto and then go to the backup disc... I cannot select iphoto library. It is a faded color and won't let me select it. It makes me worried that I can not access my pictures from another computer and cannot download them onto my husband's computer.
What is the problem and how do I resolve this?
Thanks!

I think it's because you're trying to restore to a computer with a different Owner. I would post that on the Time Machine forum.
Regards
TD

Time Machine Backup Restore to New Mac

Hi!
I have just got a new Macbook Pro with a 500gb HD. However, my old mac had a 750gb HD and I only had 100gb left.
Will this have any issue when I try to import my things back to the new mac?

If you can recover the old machine (may not be worth the cost), then you could deactivate directly. A lot depends on what crashed, the HD, mother board, or other. On a PC, the hard drive can sometimes be recovered with SpinRite as long as the crash was not fatal. There are other tricks too, but all of them depend on the crash conditions and what the problem is. If the hard drive is actually good, maybe you could just put it in another machine and run the deactivation. Of course, not everyone has a bunch of machines on hand to play with. For PCs, I often head to the department surplus pile and see if I can find something to work with (not my stock). If I find a working machine there, then I just swap it out. Of course, that is for work machines. For a home machine, I might do it for testing or repair and then put things back after the repair.

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

Copy Time machine backup using a different Mac

A friend has a Time Machine backup from an iMac that he sold some time ago. He's concerned that the drive might fail so wants to make a copy of the backup, but doesn't have a Mac at the moment. So he'd like to use my MacBook to copy his backup drive. The backup is about 400GB, my HD is 256GB and he'd like to copy it to a new 1TB drive.
All the answers that I can find to similar questions assume that the Time Machine backup belongs to the Mac making the copy, in this case it doesn't. So is there a way to copy a Time Machine backup using a Mac that wasn't used to create the backup?

Hi ozRob,
If you would like to copy an existing Time Machine backup from one drive to another, you may find the following article helpful:
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5096
Regards,
- Brenden

How does one SUCCESSFULLY transfer Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk drive using OSX 10.5.8

I have read a number of articles about how to transfer a complete Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk-drive. Some of these articles are specifically for OSX10.6 users, which are not applicable to me since I am operating with OSX 10.5.8.
However, I have tried several times to use the Disk Utility 'Restore' function, dragging my old time-machine volume into the 'Source:' box and my new volume into the 'Destination:' box. This works, of sorts, BUT the newly created volume on the new larger hard disk-drive remains the same size as the original volume on the old Time-Machine HDD, with no apparent way of increasing the new volume's size. So I am not really any better off:
E.g. the total capacity of my new HDD is stated by 'Disk Utility' to be 465.8 GB, of which I'm told 228.2 GB is used for the Backups.backdb folder, but only 4.6 GB of free space is actually available. Yet under the 'Partition' tab of 'Disk Utility' it tells me that there is still 236.4 GB of available space.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue without upgrading to OSX 10.6?

First, how did you prepare your new drive? See:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
If you plan to partition this new drive then be sure you create a larger partition for TM than your old volume.
Next, clone your old TM volume:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Time Machine backup fails on new Mac

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