Time Machine Error with weird math

Not sure what's the cause of this, but suddenly TM is not backing up. I get this error:
"Time Machine Error
This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 442.3 MB but only 23.6 GB are available."
How can this be? Only 442 mb needed for the backup, yet I have 50 times that much space available on the TM volume? The only new things on my computer are iTunes 8 and its Front Row update from a couple of days ago. This TM error started sometime last night.
TIA.

Tony,
This is what I have been able to discover about this particular error message.
Sometimes, this error is legitimate. The user may not realize that they need to exclude additional hard disks that TM may be seeing. This is done in the “Options…” window of the Time Machine Preferences.
Nevertheless, many times this error just doesn’t make sense, stating that not enough free space exists for a backup that is clearly smaller. (“The backup requires 45.9 GB but only 182.6 GB are available”)
The answer and fix may have been discovered by a poster in the macosxhints forums: (http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-84284.html)
Essentially, while Time Machine DOES delete old backups from the sparsebundle, it DOES NOT free up the space occupied by those old backups. Eventually, "all previous backups were deleted and no space was gained. . . . What appears to be going on here is that the sparsebundle isn't self-shrinking - unused bands aren't being automagically discarded."
The solution is to compact the TM backup sparsebundle in Terminal using:
hdiutil compact yoursparsebundlefilename.
He concludes, "I gained 30+gb of space on the backup volume by compacting that sparsebundle. And now TM runs just fine, since it has plenty of space."
Obviously, this is a bug in TM. It does not appear to effect everyone, and only seems to appear under certain curcumstances.
Let us know if this works for you.

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    johnolore wrote:
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    Yeah, sorry about the broken link.  I noticed that link wasn't working after I replied, then I edited my earlier reply.  Also, yes, copying the files was just meant as a test; I created new clean sparsebundles for other tries.
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    1/2/13 9:26:40.171 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/TM Backups (FSVolumeRefNum: -153; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)
    1/2/13 9:26:40.171 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: Giving up after 3 retries.
    1/2/13 9:26:50.177 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: Backup failed with error: 21
    1/2/13 9:26:50.178 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: [SnapshotUtilities mountPointForVolumeRef] FSGetVolumeInfo returned: -35
    1/2/13 9:26:50.178 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: Failed to eject volume (null) (FSVolumeRefNum: 0; status: -35; dissenting pid: -1)
    1/2/13 9:26:50.178 PM com.apple.backupd[9623]: Failed to eject Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/TM Backups/iMac.sparsebundle
    So... looking through this, it does some mounting, which all works fine, then it does a create sparsebundle, which appears to work fine, but then it tries to "hide extension", but it can't because it can't find the sparsebundle that it supposedly created.  Then it tries three times to eject the NAS share ('TM Backups'), and fails, and gives up.  At this time I get the "error -1" pop up on my monitor, and check the NAS share (using the disk utility on the NAS managment page), and sure enough there is the sparsebundle "iMac.sparsebundle".  So why does it create it, but then not be able to use it? 
    Skiing tomorrow, must sleep now.  :-)

  • Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while ...

    Hi,
    I've looked all around the forums for the answer to this one and I'm still unable to get it. So I'm getting this error "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume". This started happening after I turned off and on FileVault. I was having a problem with it and turning it on an off got rid of that problem, but created this one. I've noticed that when I shut down the computer and filevault accesses the TM hard drive, it can back up.....but then when I'm logged on, or I want it to back up I get the error. I've tried fixing the drive, removing the in progress file and resetting the PRAM (i think that's what it was called). I'm starting to run out of options and have no other drive to back all this info on to reformat it.
    I really don't want to loose all my stuff.
    Please help!
    Daria

    nautical_stars wrote:
    Hi,
    I've looked all around the forums for the answer to this one and I'm still unable to get it. So I'm getting this error "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume". This started happening after I turned off and on FileVault.
    Usually this message happens when you replace an external disk that was being backed-up by Time Machine with another one of the same name.
    Since File Vault works by making a sparse image of your home folder, and it's treated as a volume just as a HD is, that's probably what's happening here: the new sparse image has the same name as the old one, but isn't the old one.
    First, consider whether you really need File Vault. It doesn't work well with Time Machine: you can't see or restore individual items in your home folder, and it only gets backed-up when you log out.
    If you have a lot of other things, say photos, videos, and/or music that don't need to be encrypted, perhaps there's an easier way to secure our sensitive data. You can create an encrypted disk image via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder), then copy the sensitive documents into it. Then the rest of your home folder is backed-up normally, and individual items can be viewed and restored in the usual fashion.
    But if you do continue using FileVault, you may have to use TM to delete all backups of it, via the instructions in item #12 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum. That should then allow the new version of your encrypted home folder to be backed-up by TM.

  • Time Machine Error "Unable to complete backup"

    I have not backed up my hard drive for about 30 days. When I plug my external hard drive in, Time Machine "prepares backup" for a while, then gives me the following message:
    *Time Machine Error*
    Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
    I tried unplugging and re-plugging, rebooting my computer, trashing the ".inprogress" backup file and restarting. It did not help. While it time machine is preparing the backup, my computer runs crazy slow, with the rainbow pinwheel spinning for about 5-10 seconds just about every time I click the mouse, in any program.
    Per someone's suggestion, I put "sudo grep backupd /var/log/system.log" into terminal, and this is what came up:
    "No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.98 GB requested (including padding), 70.16 GB available
    Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
    Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
    Indexing a file failed. Returned -12 for: /Applications/iChat.app, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb/My Computer (2)/2011-01-13-113417.inProgress/CB0D491E-EF04-48A0-9AE9-32AE43E9209C/Macintosh HD/Applications/iChat.app
    Aborting backup because indexing a file failed.
    Stopping backup."
    This time, it was apparently iChat, but in each of the three times I've tried to backup and gotten this error message, a different file has been the culprit for the indexing error.
    Any suggestions?

    orchestr wrote:
    Indexing a file failed. Returned -12
    see [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/C3.html] user tip by Pondini.
    JGG

  • "Time machine error, The disk image cannot be mounted" What can I do??

    I ran the time machine. Then, "preparing backup" showed up for a long time. After that, a window pop out: "Time machine error, The disk image cannot be mounted" What is disk image? What can I do (I can't back up anything)
    P.S. I use time capsule for backup. there were no problem on connection

    I'm having the same issue. I do not have TC as my base station. It says right in the book that if you choose, you do not have to have it run as your router, just as a part of your existing wireless network. All software is up to date and I have already shortened the name of both my TC and TC disc to 6 characters and no spaces! I've already spoken with someone today about this. He really didn't know. Have tried backing up both wirelessly and directly connecting with an Ethernet cord. I had to finally call because when I attempted to register the product to get online support, apple.com didn't recognize the serial number!!! The gentleman on the phone got it registered for me. I bought the TC from an official apple store and for whatever reason when he put in the serial number his computer said that this TC was so "old" I guess that there was technically "no support." That basically means that even though my parents just purchased this for me a week before Christmas, that it was made a year ago and the warranty is not good?? I need to do more research on that. Right now I am very unhappy about this. I am a firm apple user and have been for years, but this is frustrating.
    I had read somewhere else (not sure I've been searching apple for what seems like forever now) to make sure that the TC was showing up in "devices" of the Finder. Mine doesn't show up there, but rather in the "Network" window. Is this an issue? If it is, can anyone tell me how to fix that. I have Time Machine backing up to my TC, so I do not see why it would be.
    UPDATE: I just opened up my TC on the "Shared" section of the Finder window and deleted the old "sparsebundle" (I had no clue that anything had backed up way back at 3:30pm on Dec 29) and now I get a slightly new message: Time Machine Error: The backup disc image could not be created." So now the word "mounted" is replaced with "created." This error showed up a lot sooner than the original one. Ok, no clue. I am going to try to Change the Disc again, and try again. I will post another update.
    Message was edited by: kryzma

  • Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copy

    I purchased my iMac 24" in February.
    After I had set up the machine I configured an IceCube Firewire 300 GB (Seagate) Hard Drive as a backup volume and flicked the switch in Time Machine. All went as expected. I even restored my whole hard drive from the Time Machine volume about a month ago after I repartitioned the boot volume to set up Boot Camp. No problems.
    About a week ago I purchased a 500GB WD HDD and set it up inside the IceCube enclosure (I remembered to make it the "Master" disk too!!). I partitioned it with Disk Utility with a GUID Mac OS X (Journaled) partition for my Leopard boot partition, and as MS-DOS FAT32 for my Boot Camp external partition. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all the Windows files across from Boot Camp to the new FAT32 partition and set up Time Machine to make a backup of the Leopard boot partition.
    After several hours Time Machine stopped with the error message above. ("Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup").
    I have spent days formatting the new WD drive, repairing permissions on the boot drive, excluding large files and cache files from the backup in Time Machine to no avail. Every time I get the same message. I even set up another 200GB firewire drive to see if it was anything to do with the enclosure of WD HDD. Same result!!
    I have searched these forums for any ideas, and have done wide searches with Google but nothing has worked.
    I can not understand why my Mac worked perfectly with Time Machine before I installed the new Western Digital Hard Drive.
    What have I missed?

    I keep getting the Time Machine backup error too, like many others. Was fine until just the other day, now, nothing. Although my husband's backs up just fine. I assume it's the 10.5.3 bug everyone else has. I've tried reselecting the drive, running the disk utility, shutting everything on and off... help!
    Here's the console log- anyone know what this means?
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Starting standard backup
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Network mountpoint /Volumes/Library not owned by backupd... remounting
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Network volume mounted at: /Volumes/Library-1
    Jun 10 08:37:43 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Disk image /Volumes/Library-1/Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)_001b63baf698.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)
    Jun 10 08:37:43 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)/Backups.backupdb
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Failed to create progress log file at path:/Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)/Backups.backupdb/Tiffany Danko's computer (2)/2008-06-09-065427.inProgress/.Backup.234797868.792920.log.
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Error: (-36) Creating directory 77B4FA27-3E65-4B81-897C-610DEE7BB187
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Failed to make snapshot.
    Jun 10 08:37:53 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Backup failed with error: 2
    Jun 10 08:37:58 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
    Jun 10 08:37:59 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

  • Question on Time Machine error log

    I have a program (Time Machine Error Log) that keeps track of the message log entries that occurr after you do a Time Machine backup.
    I am getting two messages each time Time Machine completes a backup.
    Here are the two message from the last log:
    Jan 13 17:39:29 xxxxxx-iMac.local com.apple.backupd[36854]: Error: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-36 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -36.)" (ioErr: I/O error (bummers)) deleting backup: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Back
    Last Successful Backup Message:
    Jan 13 17:39:37 xxxxxx-iMac.local com.apple.backupd[36854]: Backup completed successfully.
    How can there be an error reported stating "deleting backup", then a message stating "Backup completed successfully"?
    If I didn't check the log, I wouldn't know that there was a problem, because the Time Machine preferences pane tells me the last backup time, and the next backup time, indicating all went well.
    I just need some verification that my backups are completing successfully.
    Thank
    Len

    There is a lot of rubbish messages that TM produces.. if the final message is that all is good, then I would say all is good.. it is pretty quick to decide when something isn't good.
    But I would say.. there is only one way to know a backup is good. Restore it.
    You don't need to test restore over current drive.. plug in an external drive and restore.
    You can do a verify.. hold the option key whilst clicking the TM icon in the top menu area.. and the option verify will appear.. click that. It really doesn't test more than files are readable though, AFAIK.
    Do a disk image occasionally.. Disk Utility can create an image.. but superduper even free download version can do a full disk image. Makes me feel safer knowing that I have a backup TM doesn't actually have anything to do with.

  • Is there a solution for Time Machine error?

    I got an error in Time Machine saying backup had failed, a couple of days ago. Spent the next day or two trawling the web and found thousands of postings from people with the same error, but no solution.
    (At least, some people had a solution - they were using PC-formatted hard drives.)
    I've been using Time Machine for a few weeks, and it has only now taken a dislike to my external hard drive, which is connected by FireWire.
    Is there a solution to this problem, or should I revert to using SuperDuper, which I was using successfully before?
    I haven't put in lots of information about the apps I'm running, because this is a general query rather than a specific one. If there's a solution, I'll use it; otherwise I'll wipe the drive and go back to using SuperDuper.

    OisinOg wrote:
    Pondini - Thank you for your slightly hostile reply.
    On the contrary. The statement was: +"found thousands of postings from people with the same error, but no solution."+ I don't know where you found thousands of posts -- there are many here, but certainly not thousands. If you're talking about, say, a Google search, if you actually look at them, many are duplicates, unrelated to your problem, or unrelated to Macs at all -- and there are a number of solutions that seem to have fixed many of the real ones.
    The error message was the standard one: "Time Machine Error - Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory."
    There's most likely another, better message in your logs. Thus the suggestion about Time Machine Buddy. You can also use the Console app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Click on Show Log List, then navigate in the sidebar to your system.log (or system.log.0.bz2, etc. for previous ones). You can filter for backupd to get the same TM messages as the widget, but I prefer to view the full log at the date/time in question, as messages from other concurrent processes may have a clue.
    I've gone through the suggestions in some of the helpful replies to those thousands of postings, by wiping my drive, erasing it and reformatting it, first in two partitions using the GUID method in Disk Utility, then in a single partition. But Time Machine still doesn't want to back up to it.
    Sounds a bit like a problem communicating with the drive. The logs may clarify that.
    The hard drive of my computer is 250GB; the external drive is 300GB. Both are SATA drives; the external is connected by FireWire.
    How full are they?
    Thanks for your suggestion of downloading the Time Machine Buddy widget; I'll give it a last try tonight.
    What is the difference between a SuperDuper clone and a Time Machine backup?
    The initial backup of both copies almost everything on your HD, excluding only some caches, temp files, etc., although you can exclude other things. This takes quite a while, of course. Thereafter, only the items that changed are backed-up.
    SuperDuper (and CarbonCopyCloner, which I use, and other, similar apps) are most often used to make bootable "clones" identical copies of your HD -- if your HD fails, you can boot and run from them immediately. With TM, once your HD is repaired/replaced, you restore your system to it from your TM backup.
    Score one for the clones, but TM has it's advantages, too (which is why many of us run both).
    First is, CCC and SD look at every file and folder on your HD to see what changed. This is quite time-consuming and CPU-intensive, so most of us run it once a day (or less often), usually automatically at, say, 3 am. TM, however, runs hourly, but uses an internal File System Event Log of changes, so it is far quicker and less intrusive. There are exceptions, but most users rarely even notice the backups unless they see the icon revolving. On my small system, for example, TM rarely runs over 30 seconds; CCC is at least 15 minutes.
    Second, not only does TM keep previous versions of changed files, but it manages the space and backups for you. It keeps those hourly backups for 24 hours; except the first of the day becomes a daily backup which is kept for a month; one per week becomes a weekly backup that is kept for as long as there's space (it will fill the drive/partition). But it's smart enough, as it deletes the old weeklies, that it won't delete it's copy of anything that still exists on your HD.
    There isn't room to have two 250GB sections on a 300GB drive. I suppose I could get another 250GB drive - I have an IDE enclosure somewhere - but I don't fancy the expense right now.
    Your CCC or SD partition only needs to be as large as your HD, although in a pinch it only needs to be somewhat larger than what's actually used on your HD. If you don't have room for both on the one drive, an even better solution might be to get a pair of smaller portable HDs for CCC/SD. Use one daily for, say, a week, then take it to your safe deposit box, workplace, relative's house, etc. and start with the other. Now you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, direct lightning strike on your power lines, etc.

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