Time Machine hourly backup to Time Capsule takes 1 hr for 5MB

Lately our iMac (Snolw Leopard 10.6.8) seems to be constanly backing up.
I watched it carefully in the Time Macine preference window.
When starting and it says Preparing xx,xxx items with the number going above 100,000.
Then it says backng up Zero MB of 5.1 MB.
Then it takes 35 minutes to copy the first 100 KB or so. Finally it gets happy and then finishes.
Nex hour it goes through the whole sequence again.
I got frustrated and deleted the backup from the time capsule and started from scratch.
The full backup took 4 1/2 hours for 165GB. One hour later it starts the whole 1 hour to back up 5 MB process again.

That should have said next hour it starts the whole 40 minutes to back up 5 MB process again.

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Time Machine hourly backup seems a tad large

Hi all
Occasionally, my hourly Time Machine incremental backups to my Time Capsule seem a tad large. One hour the backup is a sensible size, then an hour later, when I've been doing very little on my machine, the backup is massive (as in, several gigabytes).
Not only that, but the backup seems to grow in size as its happening. the pictures below should help illustrate.
The backup is listed as being 719MB, only an hour after a more modest backup. Time Machine seems to be claiming that is has transferred all of the required backup:
!http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4988/picture2gih.png!
But then, only two minutes later, see how the situation has changed:
!http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3739/picture3m.png!
And the situation continues:
!http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9339/picture5.png!
Any ideas? This issue happens intermittently (although it is happening now... that last image was taken a few minutes ago and the backup was still going - up to 3.1GB - before I told it to stop).
I'm not certain if Time Machine is actually transferring this amount of data to the Time Capsule or not.
Cheers.

Hi,
I had the same problem today as well. The last backup was done this morning at 2 a.m. When I turned my PowerBook G4 on again this afternoon, the backup size continually grew, just like on your machine, Rob. I aborted the backup a couple of times, deleted the inProgress file, but it always got bigger and bigger. After downloading Time Machine Buddy and Time Tracker, I just let Time Machnine "do it's thing". Luckily, I had enough free space on my WD MyBook 500 GB I use for the backups, because it stopped only at 24.8 GBs, after initially displaying 61,3 MB in the menu bar, and requesting 1.05 GB according to Time Machine Buddy.
Time Machine Buddy protocol:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.05 GB requested (including padding), 32.74 GB available
Copied 139261 files (24.8 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.16 GB requested (including padding), 7.36 GB available
Copied 7042 files (2.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-202501: 7.36 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-192342: 7.37 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-123736: 7.37 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-113526: 7.38 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 4 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
So I took a look at Time Tracker to see what was backed up. I was suprised to see, that the biggest chunk was my Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support folder. This folder is 23,9 GB in size, mainly because it contains Final Cut Studio media and templates. Time Machine backed it up completey. This seems weired, because none of the files I looked at in this folder were changed during the last couple of months, if not the last year, since I installed them. I don't know why Time Machine would backup all of those unchanged files.
For the sake of completeness, the external drives contains other, non-backup, files as well.
I hope this gives you some more information to work with Pondini.
Greetings,
Claas

HT4522 Time Machine's backup to Time Capsule has stopped working

TM reports "an error". The Time Capsule is visible in the "shared" tab of the Finder window, but is listed as "Not connected". It is visible and connected to another Mac on the net. Is there a solution short of using the Airport Utility to erase the drive?

Hi there Cinclus,
You may find the troubleshooting steps in the article below helpful.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
-Griff W.

Time machine ethernet backup to time capsule works, wifi does not

Hi all.
I recently updated my old time capsule to one of the new tall ones ME182X/A with a 3GB drive. I transferred over the backup file of my Macbook Pro according to the Apple instructions (Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive) and whilst connected via an ethernet cable, time machine works fine with the new time capsule.
However, when I disconnect the ethernet cable and connect to the time capsule over wifi, time machine hangs on "preparing backup". I do not get to "xxMB of xxMB" or any error messages. I've tried the following:
reconnecting via ethernet after restarting my Macbook Pro (running 10.9.5) allows time machine to start and complete the backup.
I've tried deleting the ".inprogress" file, as per some websites, but this doesn't solve the problem
turning off spotlight, doesn't help
I have no anti-virus software running
restarting the computer, resetting SMC, restarting the time capsule - no help.
The wifi side of the TC is working perfectly otherwise. I can "see" it with Airport Utility, and mount the drive and explore it without any problems.
Any suggestions?
Thanks again,
John

Here are the steps I would use.. do not connect by ethernet at all whilst you do them.
Factory reset the TC.
The Factory Reset universal
Unplug your TC/AE. Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. The time is not important.. it is the front LED rapid flashing that indicates you are in factory mode.
Release reset.
If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have released reset at some point and try again.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
Redo the setup with different names. Short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. eg TCgen5 as base station name. TCwifi for wireless name.
Make sure the password for disk and wireless etc.. are 8-20 characters pure alphanumeric mix of case and numbers.
Reset TM then to the new drive location.
See A4 pondini for a full reset.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Strongly recommend you also verify the backup and install the Widget.. A5 and A1. The log you get from the widget is a big help to see what is going wrong.
Ensure the ipv6 is set to link-local only in wireless.
I would do the whole lot but you can test at each step if you want.. I just had it happen to me.. first time in 12months and regular posting in this area. Doing the above got me going again.. although it takes a bit of patience to work through the lot.

Time machine hourly backups

I would appreciate any help on this and to also let me know if this can be changed. It states that a hourly backup is performed each hour. Well, the hourly backups are always shown that they start 42 to 44 minutes after the last one completes.
Why doesn't it schedule it in 1 hour after the backup completes? Can the hourly backup time be corrected and set to 1 hour?

Thanks. I didn't know a program like that existed. I set it to backup every 2 hours. It looks like it's actually works. It added an extra hour to the 42-44 minute intervals that it was doing. I do a lot of work, and this is a great safety net.

Change Time Machine "hourly" backup to "daily"?

hourly backups are major overkill. daily or even 3x weekly would be great.
any way to change the frequency? or simply turn it off until you want to let it run?

Also keep in mind that at the end of the day, the 24 hourly backups are consolidated into a single daily backup. Similarly, after a week the daily backups are replaced with a single end of the week backup. After a month, the weekly backups are replaced with a single end of the month backup. So at any given time, you will have a series of monthly backups, perhaps some weekly ones, some daily ones, and some hourly ones. You don't end up with a zillion hourly ones in the end.

Can I use time machine to backup on my server HD?

I've mac Leapard with Time Machine but never made use of it because:
- I don't have and don't want to have an external HD.
- Don't have Time Capsule, and cannot afford it.
Yet I was wondering if it was somehow possible to use Time Machine, to backup directly to my server (online) for example.

-(.)^(.)- wrote:
Time Machine backups are NOT supported for NAS devices except Time Capsule or a USB HDD connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station. All other options are hacks.
I would add that even if a network drive were available, unless it was formatted HFS+ with either GUID or APM depending, it would not be acceptable anyway for TM.

Time machine error - backup fails due to sparsebundle already in use

Since upgrading, Time machine reports backup error:
TIme Machine Error
The backup disk image ...sparsebundle is already in use.
Any thoughts?

Thanks russ. After the initial upgrade to Mt Lion, no backups have been made. Every attempt reports the sparsebundle error. I recently updated to 10.8.1 and a whole new set of problems have shown up which is having me question the wisdom of continuing to invest in Apple product.
I have decided to pack it in with regard to the timecapsule product, as it is just too unreliable, and certainly not worth the continued time and effort it has been taking to try and get it to work. I have instead gone with an online backup service, Crashplan. I have the backup service I am seeing and I am no longer frittering away valuable time on something that ought to just work.
Problem solved.

Time Machine doesn't list Time Capsule as backup option

I'm trying to restart Time Machine, but Time Machine doesn't show Time Capsule as a backup option even though I'm connected to it wirelessly on our network. I was successfully backing up to my Time Capsule until I changed its name. Any ideas on how to fix this.
Thanks

Sounds like the drive is dead.
Take it to your local Apple Store or Authorized Repair location.

Time Machine issues (16030) sparsebundle" is already in use for Time Capsule backup

Time Machine issues (16030) sparsebundle” is already in use for Time Capsule backup process. Just started happeing been using it for over two years.

First, restart the computer and the Time Capsule. In most of the cases, this solve the problem.
If it doesn't work, see > http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html

HT201250 Is there a way to change the intervals at which Time Machine performs backups (e.g., weekly instead of hourly or daily) past 24 hours, daily for the past month, and weekly for everything older...

Is there a way to change the intervals at which Time Machine performs backups (e.g., weekly instead of hourly or daily) past 24 hours, daily for the past month, and weekly for everything older...

You can edit the interval in Console or install a Pref Pane
called TimeMachineScheduler (Leopard or higher) free from:
http://www.klieme.com/TimeMachineScheduler.html
Good luck, Tom

Just bought a 3TB Time Capsule for a small office. Will have 4 users with MacBooks. What would ne the best setup for time machine individual backups and internet sharing in a secure way?

Just bought a 3TB Time Capsule for a small office. Will have 4 users with MacBooks. What would ne the best setup for time machine individual backups and internet sharing in a secure way?

Set up each Mac for Time Machine backups in the normal way. Time Machine will keep each backup separate on the Time Capsule, so users will only be able to see the backups of their own Mac.
Yes....there are convoluted workarounds that might allow one user to see the backups of another.....IF...they know the administrator password of the "other" Mac.
As far as Internet sharing, all users will have access to the Internet if they have a wired or wireless connection. If a Mac connects using wireless, it is possible to limit the time that they are allowed to connect to the network.
For example, you might limit the ability to connect to the wireless from say each Weekday from 8 AM to 6 PM.
With a wired Ethernet connection, you cannot limit access times to the Internet.

Time Machine nuking backups, starting from scratch!

ok, i just received this warning:
and now i't doing a backup that is slated to take more than "several hours."
is this common? how often can i expect this?

Hello,
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-bac kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076

RE: Where are Time Machine sparsebundle files on Time Capsule?

I recently bought a Time Capsule. After some odd issues trying to get it to work in place of my Airport Extreme, it looked like it was finally working correctly.
When I first turned it on (before the problems getting it to work wirelessly), I did a full backup with Time Machine on the Capsule via Ethernet. When I clicked on the Time Capsule, I could see the sparsebundle files with a number and a date.
Somewhere down the line, I knocked all of our computers offline while trying to get Time Capsule to replace the Airport Extreme station after I ran the first backup on it.
I finally had to call Apple Support to have them walk me through setting up Time Capsule correctly and get us back online. After several attempts, we finally got it all working, but in the process the original backup files disappeared from Time Capsule, so I ran Time Machine again. It said it completed the full backup (again), and it was doing incremental backups.
My problem is, I cannot see any files on the Time Capsule when I click on it. Is that the way Time Machine/Time Capsule are supposed to work? No folder called Backup, no files. When I enter Time Machine, I see that it's backing up, but it kind of worries me that I can't SEE the sparsebundle files anywhere.
Any idea of where those files are hiding? I guess I'm used to using Backup, where I could actually see a list of files.

Any idea of where those files are hiding? I guess I'm used to using Backup, where I could actually see a list of files.
Time Machine stores backups over the network in the form of a sparse bundle "file". This file should show up in Finder as "ComputerName_MACaddress.sparsebundle". However, the sparse bundle is not actually a file, but a container/folder with a number of files, called bands within it.
You can access the backup files within the sparse bundle, by using Finder, as follows:
o From within Finder, click on the Time Capsule (TC) that appears under the Shared category
o Double-click on the TC's disk name
o Double-click on the sparse bundle
It may take a while but eventually the disk image will open and you will see a folder named "Backups.backupd." This folder contains the Time machine backups.

Time Machine same backup size every time

Anyone have any idea why Time Machine would backup the same amount every time? Every hour mine backs up 1.8 GB, unless I've added more than that to my hd.
I only back up the internal drive on my macbook to a 500 GB Time Capsule via wifi (802.11n only, 5GHz). Not that I figured it would make a difference, but it still does it if backed up via ethernet.
I've also noticed that as soon as it completes the backup, it will backup all over again - and not because an hour has passed. I'm not sure if it does this every time (but I think i does), or if it does it more than twice when it happens.
Thanks in advance!

See if the following might give you some ideas as to why...
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if this resolved your issue.
Cheers!

Time Machine hourly backup to Time Capsule takes 1 hr for 5MB

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