Time Machine is it or isn't it working

Hi
I have a 1TB drive partitioned 350/650 - I have set TimeMachine to backup the the local volume and the 350 partition.
I have installed the widget.
The 350 partition is the home of my itunes and iphoto library and some other bits and bobs.
widget message:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/TimeMachineBackUp/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 363.37 GB requested (including padding), 523.40 GB available
It's still sitting there spinning at 150mb of 350gb's
It started 22 September at noon and this message has not changed.
It seems to back up the local volume ok but the partition it is having problems with.
I have tried repairing the volumes but no problems.
I have tried deleting the backup and starting again.
I have not log out or launched iphoto as suggested.

First, it's not a good idea to back up that "other" partition to the same physical HD. It's better than no backup at all, of course, but not much. When that drive fails (and they all do, sooner or later), you risk losing both copies. Long term, your best bet is to back up both to a different HD.
Short term, it sounds like something may be corrupted on that partition. Try Repairing it, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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HT203177 My new Time capsule 802.11n (4th generation) remains saving after a long time (3 weeks) but there is no backups files in time machine. It seems that it is working without results. What should I do?

My new Time capsule 802.11n (4th generation) remains saving after a long time (3 weeks) but there is no backups files in time machine. It seems that it is working without results. What should I do?

Hello, no experience with TC, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

Time Machine - hard drive failed, isn't recognized by Finder

Hi,
Yesterday I went to plug in my Time Machine external hard drive to my Macbook Pro (Mid 2010, running Mountain Lion 10.8.2). The hard drive is a 320 GB Toshiba hard drive that I salvaged from an old laptop. The EHD is in a Kingston enclosure and connects to my Mac through USB (1 cord for everything). I have been using this setup for probably about a year at least.
Anyways, when I plugged it in yesterday, it did not show up in Finder. The blue light on the outside of the enclosure was still lit, and I could hear the hard drive spinning normally. I tried a couple other USB cables, but to no avail. The USB ports work with other things (e.g. my flash drive). I turned off Time Machine, and restarted my computer several times. Nothing worked.
I went into Disk Utility, and noticed that the hard drive itself appears, but the Time Machine partition is greyed out right underneath it. DU says on the bottom that the Time Machine is Not Mounted, and gives the format (Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)) and the capacity (320 gb).
When I try to eject through DU, it gives me this message:
The disk “Time Machine” could not be unmounted.
Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk.
BUT, it isn't even mounted!
I figured that I would just try to erase the hard drive, since it's only a time machine backup. Nope! It hanged right at the very beginning trying to unmount the disk that isn't even mounted.
I've looked on Google and on these boards and haven't found anything that could help me...so...
Help?
Thanks!

No luck.
I clicked on the hard drive itself (Kingston 320 GB) and clicked "Erase". I waited about an hour with the only activity being a striped bar at the bottom of DU saying "Unmounting".
So I tried just erasing the Time Machine partition. I immediately got this message (or something along the lines of it): "Disk Utility cannot erase the disk. Cannot open disk."
I tried mounting and unmounting the time machine partition, but would get messages saying that the disk cannot be unmounted, and that the disk cannot be mounted. Rather contradictory!
I tried ejecting the hard drive through DU by clicking the "Eject" button, but it said it could not eject the disk because it was in use, or something along the lines of that.
Any other advice?

Are Time Machine, Mountain Lion and Retina able to work together?

I have been using for a while Time Machines with various Mac's and OS X systems with no problem.
But Time Machine (backing up on a 2TB Time Capsule) + Mountain Lion (10.8.2) + a Retina Mac Book Pro have been not able to appropriately work together for the last 2 months:
- TM displays 'none' for 'Oldest Backup'
- the corresponding-sparse bundle reaches 578 GB
- whereas the present tinner storage of the Mac is only 200 GB
- TM seems to restart in a given way the full backup every time (2 millions itesm..)
- but it does not take too much time
- and 'entering' in TM displays daily bakcups for the last week, but not beyond (compared to 2 months), and several (hourly-like) backups for the last day
Unfortunately, the recipes given by http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html seem to be inefficient.
Thank you for sharing your experience(s) with this kind of problem and solution(s) is you have !
Regards,

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. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
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. 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 (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
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 this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time Machine restore system disk, get back to work such a thing ?

Someone please tell me if it is possible to ask time machine to restore the system disk that has been fully backed up that includes all apps and documents. I want to make a brand new startup hard drive that is exactly what I was just working with due to a failure that I am trying to resolve. It seems like a myth that this can take place. Please tell me how to do this. I want to believe that Time Machine will allow for me to choose a date and time and the entire system 10.5.8 disk drive that I have been backing up, and walla poof my computer is fresh and running like nothing ever happened and booting from a brand new drive and all my programs are running and remember all the passwords and serials that were entered to authorize them. Isn't this why we all use Time Machine ? HOW DO I DO THIS ??? Thank you

Well, mostly I use Tri-Backup to have everything, but keep a clone or 2 of good solid Installs so I can continue with my work in a minute or two.
Truthfully, I haven't even bothered with TM for some time, & I know it's improved, but not once did I ever get a useful/good restore even though supposedly the "backup" went well.
With TB I've had flawless clones/backups/restores/evolutive backups/Incremental backups/Syncronizatinon of Disks or Folders, & restores from these since at least OS9, maybe OS 8.6
Also it's error reporting & recovery is supperior & it continues backups & such without failing at every error, yet reporting the errors when done so you cn deal with those files.
Also, Tri-edre's Back-in-time blows away TM's restore incomprehensibleness to this uneducated soul.

Time Machine on Snow Leopard just doesn't work.

So I've had huge nightmares over the past few days over Time Machine.
So I've always been a big proponent of Time Machine. I always tell everyone that you NEED a backup solution, and while Time Machine may not be the be all and end all, it's a great starter solution for those that don't want any fuss.
But perhaps not anymore.
It just works, right? Well apparently not.
So a little while ago I performed a Time Machine-assisted hard drive swap for a MacBook (not mine). That is, I install a new drive, boot from SL DVD, perform a HD wipe, then restore from Time Machine. It seemed to go well.
Fast forward to more recently, I went on a trip overseas (Taiwan). While there, I obviously took a lot of photos, and it became that time again - purchase a new hard drive with more capacity for my MacBook Pro! HD were a little cheaper where I visited, so I not only bought a new drive for my MBP, but also a new drive for my wife's MB, as well as new external drives to upgrade our Time Machine drives.
While I was there, I decided to update my own Time Machine first - following the instructions from Apple's own knowledge base on the matter:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
I transferred my existing backups to the new drive to continue my Time Machine. I didn't notice any problem at the time.
Then I returned to my home country (New Zealand). First thing I did when I got back was to perform the Time Machine-assisted HD swap after making sure the OS were up-to-date as were their respective backups, on both my own MBP and my wife's MacBook.
That's when the troubles started.
First off, I noticed that a few images from my Aperture Library were missing. The album data and everything were there, but the actual files were not. They also did not exist anywhere on the Time Machine drive and as such never made it over to the new HD. Weird, I thought. They were there, clear as day on my original drive. They simply weren't backed up.
Now I'm aware of a few TM niggles, such as the false backups after verifying a disk, but I hadn't done that.
The second issue was much more major. My Wife's MB would be endlessly stuck on the white boot screen with the grey Apple logo. As it turns out, it's exactly this issue here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2738620?threadID=2738620&tstart=74
In short, the fresh Time Machine backups I made before transferring to the new HD showed no sign of updating the /System/Library/Framework/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security package, which is REQUIRED for the Mac to boot into 10.6.7 (it had an old one from before).
Great, I thought, but maybe I can fix that by installing a fresh 10.6.7 combo update on the MB via target disk mode.
No dice. On trying, it goes all the way to the end, and then fails installation. I had to resort to copying over the correct, more recent security package just to get it to boot.
After booting, what to do? Who knows what other files Time Machine failed to update, and what consequences they would have. After putting back the original security package, I tried updating 10.6.7 again. Nope, no dmgs would open - i HAD to use the new Security package for anything to open. Fair enough, but even with that, the installation would inevitably fail.
Problem with the package? Nope. Tried a fresh download, and checked the SHA and everything.
Time to do some blitzing. I pulled out my trusty Snow Leopard DVD and did a reinstall on top. That's gotta get my problem, right? Well, nope. After resetting to 10.6.0, the 10.6.7 combo updater STILL failed on installation. Furthermore, the updater no longer worked on MY MBP either.
What gives?
As it turns out, it was related to this:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11317470?messageID=11317470
In short, some files had the user immutable flag switched on, preventing changes from being made to those files (manifests as a little lock icon on the file icon). They included (and I'm sure not limited to) the Acknowledgement.rtfs in /Library/Documentation/, as well as a majority of the fonts in /Library/Fonts.
Checking back in the backup drives, it was clear that Time Machine was the culprit - instances of those files in the backups were also locked. When did that happen? Looking back, it looks like it happened when I transferred the backups from one Time Machine drive to another. But it wasn't all at once - in the first backup on one drive, one of the Acknowledgement.rtf files was locked, and the other one wasn't, but in the second onwards, both were. It was clear that Time Machine seemed to be doing it to those files. Which files and why? I have no idea.
So removing the uchg flag with "sudo chflags -R nouchg /" in terminal finally allowed me to apply the 10.6.7 combo update without failure.
So were the troubles over then?
Nope.
While checking if everything was fine, I noticed iPhoto on the MB had all the thumbs missing - after rebuilding, they weren't back, and only a .plist trashing fixed it (I consider this pretty normal - probably looking for the files on the old UUID drive or something).
But what gives? ALL the photos taken on the trip were gone! Not just the thumbs - the actual files were missing from the iPhoto Library! The data in the albums existed, just the actual files, just like my instance in Aperture on my own MBP.
Checked the Time Machine - again, it was clear Time Machine had completely stuffed up - the files were nowhere to be found on the Time Machine drive.
So currently, I've returned the original internal drive to the MacBook, performing a FRESH on new reformatted disk Time MAchine, and will use THAT to restore.
Nightmares, indeed. It's several days of work doing all the restores, considering I have limited drives to work with. And yes, rest-assured, I was doing enough permission repairs, and PRAM resets to ensure they weren't issues.
It occurs to me there are several faults with the most recent version of Time Machine (maybe 10.6.6 or something as that's when people had some of the issues above):
1) At some point in time, Time Machine may not update a necessary Security package (and probably other files too - I believe the files around it were also not updated), meaning that if you use that Time Machine to restore, the outdated package will cause your computer to fail to boot.
2) Transferring your backups to a new destination Time Machine drive may cause certain files to become user immutable or 'locked', with one consequence being you cannot update the OS.
3) Time Machine may fail to backup image files with the Aperture or iPhoto Library. Trying to remember back, I *think* this may be related to the fact that we changed time zones, as the unupdated image files were after the zones were changed. Strangely, every other file within the Library packages were updated, as album data was updated - just not the actual image files and folders.
Conclusion? I no longer trust Time Machine. The basic foundation of a backup service is that you trust it to do what it's supposed to do. After all this, how can I?
You might think they are isolated incidents, but they were occurring on two Macs that I have, and they same errors can be found in others.I think I have detailed some root causes, but who really knows.
At any rate you should keep an eye on at least these files I have detailed. Would love to hear Pondini on the matter, as I know he knows a lot about Time Machine.

Someone has suggested just installing Snow Leopard on the machine. Will that work?
If you can find a copy of the workstation version of Snow Leopard shipped with the same model of Mac mini, yes. Apple has not, to my knowledge, shipped a retail version of Snow Leopard new enough to boot your mini.
I've also heard there is a way to install SL while connected to my old Powerbook in order to suck the entire old drive onto the new machine in an operable manner. Is this accurate, and can this be done if my old machine is the Powerbook on the old apple chip when the new machine is intel based
No, it's not accurate. The OS on your PowerBook will not boot your mini.
what are the differences between the single pack and the family pack?
If you mean single and family pack of Mac OS X, the single pack is licensed for installation on one computer only, while the family pack is licensed for installation on up to five Macs.
Regards.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Time machine external hard drive in windows not working.

I recently bought a Western Digital external hard drive to use with time machine so that I would have my laptop backed up. When I set up the time machine, it had to format my hard drive, erasing the WD files that were on the drive. I was able to continue using it as an external storage device on the Mac side of my laptop, but when trying to use it on the windows side, it wont show up in My Computer. I'm starting to wonder if I will be unable to use this external drive on anything other than a Mac now that it is set up as my Time Machine.
If that is the case, is there a way that I can reset my drive to not show up as my Time Machine Disk.
Thanks,
JT

If you're going to use the drive on both platforms, does it need to be set up first on the PC, allocating 1/2? to Windows NTFS format, then disable/reset/delete Time Machine backups doing the Mac HFS format thing on remainder of External?
Setup on my Acomdata 7200rpm External is Mac 150GB HFS, Windows 150GB NTFS. On Windows side, is Vista, W7 (32 &64Bit) and recently my daughter's HP Laptop XP which posed a problem until I found that NtBackup.Msi was in VALUEADD folder on the Windows XP install CD. Also available from Microsoft if no install CD. NtBackup makes a .BKF string of the hard drive, runs maybe a little slower than Vista & Windows 7 Backup/Restore Maint. Long time since I restore a .BKF but think it requires an OS - unlike Vista + Windows 7 where the install Disk will retore from External in ~30 minutes.
I have not figured out how to get Leopard restored short of format, then complete (re)install with Time Machine restore kicking in at the end of that process. Takes a great deal of time and some things need fixing after completion. Wondering if Snow Leopard/Disk Utility has any improvements on this score. Refuse to pay for anything that I consider to be intrisically necessary to use of product.

Copy from Time machine to an new iMac doesn't Work ?

I bought a new iMac and want to copy from time machine that is on an external disk. Copying stops after 10 minutes. What to do?

Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.

Time machine backup from USB stick doesn't work

Hi all,
I've got an MacBook Air (1st gen) with Lion, with a 80GB internal HD. This HD is quite full now, so I decided to move my rather large iPhoto library (c. 30GB) to an external 64GB USB stick. Up to that point, everything worked well.
I'd like to include the USB stick to my Time Machine Backup. The USB Stick is formatted as HFS+. It appears in the list of excluded drives in the Time Machine setup. If I click the 'minus' button to remove it from that list, it goes away, but comes back as soon as I leave the TM setup and reopen it. Accordingly, Time Machine does not generate any backups of the USB stick. The external Backup has enough free space to make a backup, so this should not be the problem.
Any ideas how I could fix that problem?
A workaround could be to use a 3rd party tool to backup the library. I tried Carbon Copy Cloner, but CC can not do incremental backups of bundles. Any recommendations?

I am having the same issue on my macbook air (end 2010)
I bought a 32gb usb stick and Time Machine always excludes it.
I assume that Time Machine should be able to backup it.
Could it be because it is a USB stick and not a USB hard drive ?
Also as a workaround could be make that a usb stick is reconnized as a hard drive ?
Any recommendations?
thanks

Time Machine on Mavericks: restore file doesn't work

I've successfully located a file I need to restore from Time Machine backup by doing a Finder search for the filename (something.graffle, an OmniGraffle document), and when 0 items are found, I "Enter Time Machine..." and use the back arrow or click on a date some months ago. This process finds two copies of something.graffle, and I can select these and Copy them, or I can select them and click Restore. Neither, however, works. When I try Copy, then Cancel out of Time Machine, there is nothing to Paste. When I try Restore, the image of the item glides to the present-day folder and is present for a moment in the present-day Finder window after Time Machine closes, but it instantly disappears, and Find once again cannot find it.
My Time Machine backup is on an external disk connected by Firewire.
I found some other threads mentioning a bug with dual displays, so I already tried disconnecting my external displays--it didn't help. Seems to be a different problem.
Any ideas?

I solved this problem, which also appears on this thread: time machine can't restore files
The solution, for me, was to open the folder that I thought probably had the file. I knew it was probably in one of my two ~/Documents/OmniPresence folders, and in fact it was in a sub-sub-folder of OmniPresence, i.e. ~/Documents/OmniPresence/workfiles/stencils/something.graffle. This time doing the search produced 0 items, I entered Time Machine, went back to the earlier date where I'd seen it before but been unable to restore, and again Time Machine showed me two copies of the file. But this time, the files had their proper OmniGraffle document icons, and the context menus showed Restore options that hadn't been present earlier. I used Restore this file to… and successfully brought it into my presentday OmniPresence folder. From there I moved it into the workfiles/ subfolder where it belonged.
I hope this helps others.

Time Machine backup on external drive no longer working after upgrade to Yosemite

Can anyone explain why, after upgrade to Yosemite, Time Machine is no loger working? Backup on external drive stops few seconds after it has started. What can I do?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Try running a DVD Lens Cleaner disc through it, a little bit of dust or dirt is all it takes to throw them out and it might just be co-incidental with the upgrade.

Time Machine backup on a new Mypassport not working

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The only thing I've done on this passport is dump pictures and videos onto it last summer/fall and there's tons of space on it. Problem is, I forget how to do all this stuff! I plugged it in and Time Machine opened and began backing up. Then, my whole computer froze and I had to push and hold the power button to reboot it.
Can someone walk me through this process?
Thank you!!!!
Christine

Oscar Rodriguez wrote:
My MacBook Pro's display died and I'm having the machine replaced by Apple under warranty. I backed up the information using Time Machine before I sent it to Apple for repair. Question is whether restoring the information on my new replacement MacBook (soon as I get it) will be as simple as plugging in to the external drive, where all my backups are, as soon as I power it on for the first time
Almost. See #19, especially the green box, in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
By the way, you've posted in the +Time Capsule+ forum -- a Time Capsule is apple hardware combining a wireless router and hard drive. It's one of the possible destinations for Time Machine backups.
If you have more questions, or problems with that, feel free to post back here.
But if you have other problems with Time Machine, not involving a Time Capsule, please post in the +Snow Leopard > Time Machine+ forum at: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342

Time Machine Backup to Shared Firewire Drive Not Working

Hello
I know this may have been posted before, but I am looking for a simple troubleshooting / diagnostic process I can follow to resolve my issue:
I have a Imac running Lepoard with all possible software updates. A WD Studio 500GB drive is attached via Firewire 800. The drive has the latest firmware etc. I also have a 15" powerbook G4 (last model) running leopard. All Macs are connected to the a Netgear DG834N router, via ethernet cables.
The Imac and Firewire connected external drive works normally with time machine.
I have shared the external drive on the Imac and given all 'built in' groups read/write permissions.
I can mount the external drive on the powerbook and see the files that are backed up by the Imac, I can traverse the folder tree within the folders contrained in the backup. Double clicking on these folders invokes the 'star trek' style time machine window.
When trying to backup the powerbook, I could see the external drive as a time machine target disk.
The backup failed twice. Having checked the disk a sparse image was created. I tried again a number of times without success - I deleted the sparse image and tried to start again.
This time I could not find the disk in the selection in time machine, a reboot of everything revealed the disk, but when selecting the 'use for backup' button in time machine on the powerbook nothing happens.
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

You have a pretty simple problem: time machine does not allow you to backup two computers to the same hard drive or partitioin. the way to fix this is to repartition you WD drive into two partitions, one for each computer. if you already have other data (not from time machine), make three partitons: one for iMac, one for PowerBook, and one for Other. do not put any data other than time machine data on the iMac and PowerBook partitons, always put it in other. you can partiton a disk easily with disk utility, but wait:
_CAUTION: THIS WILL CAUSE YOU TO LOOSE ALL THE DATA ALREADY ON THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!_
to avoid this, first use disk utility to make a disk image of the external hard drive, and save it on your internal drive. if the image won't fit (your internal drive doesn't have enough capacity, then you can either erase all the data on already on the hard drive with the reformat, or buy another disk to use for the PowerBook) then, when the disk is partitioned correctly, mount the disk image and copy all the files on it back to the correct* partition of the external hard drive. *if the files on the external hard drive came from the iMac, then put them on the iMac partiton of the drive. if they came from the powerbook, put them in that partition, and if it is not from time machine, put it in othe
Hope you followed all that!
nate

Time machine with spotlight does not seem to work

I created a text document with Pages. The text: This is a test for time machine.
I saved the document in 1 folder as a pages doc, MS Word doc, and rtf.
I gave each document a different name, so only the contents was the same.
After 5 hours I deleted the documents.
If I search in the folder using time machine, I can recover them. However, if I type "This is a test" spotlight cannot find them once they have been deleted.
I was thinking spotlight was supposed to work in conjunction with Time Machine. But it seems not.
Keith

WOW guys, I have been searching for the answer to this ALL DAY long. I even spent about 2 hours on the phone with a level 2 tech who could not figure this out for the life of him. Glad I found this page. Here is the catch however, the tech claims his 10.5.1 system does not behave this way and automatically spotlight searches everywhere. Even worse, I called the Apple store and they stated the same thing, that there new 8 core MP running 10.5.1 did not do this either, that spotlight searched everywhere even in the user/system folder automatically. Now I am totally lost. Are there different builds out there that work differently?

Time machine volume does not appear but backup works..

Hi. I have a Sno Leo server used for Time Machine backups. When I try to add a bew user to the backup, the backup volume does not appear (Time Machine Prefs > Select disk). The backup clients that have been previously set up work as normal.

In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-C, or select
Go ▹ Computer
from the menu bar. A window will open showing all mounted volumes. Select the one in question and open the Info window. What is shown as the Format in the General section? If it's not "Mac OS Extended," Time Machine can't back up the volume.

Time Machine is it or isn't it working

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