Attempting to do an initial Time Machine back

Attempting to do an initial Time Machine back up on my wifes IMac. Approximately 190GB of data. The external HD is 500Gb cpacity. The first 70Gb goes pretty well, by the time it gets in to the 90Gb range it is only going at about 2Gb per hour and continues to go even slower. I never get an error message it seems to just to get continually slower. Its been running for 36 hrs and still at about 102Gb. Help

You may want to try on a different hard drive if possible. I was having similar issues with a LaCie drive where backups would take upwards of 24 hours each (for 4 GB of data!). I opened the casing and put the internal drive into a new casing and backups then took about 10 minutes. All of the advice I found about slow Time Machine backups never helped me. It wasn't even a problem with the drive itself. Something about the hardware was not working properly.
I still only use LaCie drives and recommend them highly, but that one casing had some problems that were impossible to see until I cracked it open and used something else.

Similar Messages

Initial Time Machine Back-Up

Hello,
I am backing up computer to a new seagate 500 GB external hard drive connected via USB.
As time machine begins back-up it displays a total of 40 GB to back-up. The back-up is going
incredibly slow. Is this normal ? After 4 hours it has completed 5 GB of the 40 GB total.
Any suggestions

there is usually nothing you can do to hurry TM up. but make sure that the TM drive is foirmatted ocrrectly. It should be formatted with GUID partition scheme if your mac is intel and APM if the mac is PPC.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018#5

I work with a Mac & I had to restore my computer for my time machine back-up. When I attempt to open/edit a photo with either camera raw or photoshop I get the following error message: Error 150:30 , it also sys that licensing for the product has stopped

I work with a Mac & I had to restore my computer for my time machine back-up. When I attempt to open/edit a photo with either camera raw or photoshop I get the following error message: Error 150:30 , it also sys that licensing for the product has stopped working?

Unfortunately when Adobe products are restored from backup, especial CS4 and especially Mac, it breaks licensing.
There is a python script included in the license recovery kit that should work if you are familiar with Terminal.
If not, you must reinstall your CS4 suite. You don't need to delete your preferences, so it should be the same as before.
Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS
Gene

HT1338 Attempt to install Mountain Lion has highlighted need for internal disk repair. Even after "repair" ML still says disk is damaged. Attempt to restore from Time Machine back-up failed - cannot 'see' internal HD to restore to. Help!

Attempt to install Mountain Lion has highlighted need for internal disk repair. Even after "repair" ML still says disk is damaged. Attempt to restore from Time Machine back-up failed - cannot 'see' internal HD to restore to. Help! Has attempt to install ML caused these problems or just highlighted existing need to Repair Disk? Even so, why can back-up from Time Machine not see the internal drive to restore to?

Csound1, William & Sig .... thanks for taking the trouble to reply. I fear you are right - I'll need a new disk. I'm booked in at the Apple Genius Bar in Bordeaux, France on Wed ... quite a challenge as my French isn't great! The current internal disk is 500gb, does anyone know whether I can upgrade my 21.5" iMac (circa Oct-2009 vintage) to a larger size internal disk, 1Tb or even 2Tb? I already have one external 2Tb drive and another one on order (I have masses of media stored and more planned as I've just taken up photography). Seems a bit of a pain managing with only 500gb internal storage. OR, can you advise me on how I can store all my photos on my new 2Tb external drive - I can't seem to figure out how to set the path for iPhoto to see them (I can't even figure out where they are stored right now!). Same with iTunes, how do I set the default storage to the external drive (I moved everything manually and then imported them all from the new drive - it worked but seemed very convoluted). Any advice on how to manage multiple drives gratefully received. And thanks again for previous replies.

Restoring from a Time Machine back up: iMac can't find them

A series of set backs after initially attempting to update Pages to be consistant and usable across my devices. iMac required me to update to Mavericks to be able to download the latest Pages update. After doing this, my iMac failed to reboot - just stuck on the white apple screen. This happened again next tie I attempted a Mavericks installation. So, I tried to restore from a Time Machine back up. After restarting in recovery mode I selected Restore from Time Machine back up - message reads "Searching for Time Machine back ups" (and hard drive is plugged in and switched on) but nothing is found.
How to enable the connection to the TM back up?
How to install Mavericks in this situ?
Thanks!

It may be that you can't do a full-system restore because system files were inadvertently excluded from your backups. But it could also be that the backups aren't usable at all. Since you don't know and can't check at the moment, you should assume the worst.
If you want to preserve the data on the startup drive, and it's not already backed up, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Start up from the Recovery partition, from Internet Recovery, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
2. If Method 1 fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
3. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
4. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

Problems Copying Time Machine Back-Up to New Hard Disk

I tried copying my old time machine back-ups from a 500 GB WD HDD to a new Seagate 1TB. Followed the instructions from "Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive". Although terribly slow it seemed to work all well initially. Had it run over night, then discovered the next morning the process was apparently hanging.
Thinking that maybe the energy saver options were the cause of the problem, I unchecked "put hard disk to sleep when possible". So went through the same painful process. Cannot believe that after about 7 h of transfering the whole thing is stuck again:
More than 2 million items were apparently copied, now nothing is happening at all... (neither GB nor minutes changing anymore)
1) Is this a common problem? More importantly: how can it be solved?
2) Is there another way to transfer time machine back-ups to another hard disk?
Thanks!

This is getting (more) annoying: turned out that something went wrong with the 500 GB HDD with the original time machine back-up. Managed to repair it in the 3rd attempt with disk utility. Heard of SuperDuper and thought I'd give it a try.
Cloning the back-up disk to the new 1 TB HDD seemed to work well, but I am a bit surprised with the result:
It seems time machine recognizes now the 1 TB Seagate HDD as a 500 GB (the size of the original WD) only?

Initial Time Machine Backup Stuck on "Indexing Backup"

I have Mac Mini running 10.7.2. I just got an external hard drive and am trying to run an initial back up using Time Machine. I am running my computer in Safe Mode as it won't start in regular mode. I formatted the HD and began to run Time Machine back up. HD is connected via USB 2.0 wire.
It has now been 12 hours and is still on Indexing Backup... Is this normal for initial back up? I know it takes a long time for initial but this doesn't seem right.What do I do to correct if it isn't correct? Should I stop and try again?

Thank you very much. With your info I gave up on the back up and ran Disk and Permission Repair for the 3rd or 4th time and crossed my fingers and restarted my machine and it WORKED! I ran time Machine back up and when I woke up this morning it was all done! Yeahhhh!
I wasn't sure what was causing it not to start in regular mode and as I'm not too much of a techie I was scared that I was teetetering on the brink of losing everything. The machine would run so I didn't think it was a hard drive issue, but not knowing for sure I was concerned and after losing everythign once before years ago, I was worried. I have it backed up on line but wanted a 2nd (local) version that wouldn't entail tying up bandwidth for days. In the end it worked out!
But the short answer is, Time Machine Backup does NOT work in Safe Mode...

Time to create initial time machine backup on time capsule

I am using a Time Capsule for my wifi service. Am attempting to use it for Time Machine for an iMac that has (with attached hard drives) ~ 268GB of stuff to back up. Time Machine says it will take 5 days. It never makes it past two before the computer crashes. Any ideas?

Things will go much much faster if you connect the iMac directly to the TIme Capsule using an Ethernet connection.
Connect from the iMac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the Time Capsule. Turn off wireless to insure that the wired connection will be used.
On average, about 30 GB per hour will transfer using Ethernet, so this should take about 9-10 hours or so.
Once the first backup is done, you can switch back to wireless since the incremental backups should only take a few minutes each hour.

Defrag Time Machine Back Up Drive??

getwellroad
Level 1 (0 points)
Jul 6, 2011 9:50 AM
i previously posted this question, but I mistakenly clicked my own comment as the correct answer. i think this makes the thread appear to be finished; so, because i'm still not completely sure what to do, i have attempted to copy and paste the discussion here:Sorry.
Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??
Grant Bennet-AlderWest of Boston, USALevel 7 (27,805 points)
If your backups take a few seconds longer, so what. I say leave it alone.Beige G3, G4/867, G4/dual 1.25 MDD, MacPro'09 w cheap SSD, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, and 9.2, 10.5 and Server - LW IIg, LW 4/600, ATalk ImageWriter L
The hatterLevel 8 (42,475 points)
Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd. Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set. 1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price. I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there. Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB? Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopardhttps://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.
getwellroad
my boot drive is my internal hardrive which is a 250 GB drive. The drive i am using for TM is 500GB, but you are saying that is really too small. TM, as i understand it, creates a copy of everything, and then subsequent backups record any changes that were made since the last backup. and what do you mean "bootable clones" and do you mean for my internal hard drive AND each of the 3 external hard drives that i have? i'm using one of the three for backup using TM, and i am storing movie files on the other 2. i work at a church, and we use many short films that we purchase online. i then import that file into iMovie to give my volunteers a consistent second and a half of black before the clip and 4 seconds of black at the end of the clip. This provides smoother transitions, i've found, than trying to use most of the clips in their original form. i then have been filing these away in folders on the other 2 hard drives. Regarding the TM drive. Drive Genius is telling me that "the used space on the volume 02 [that's the name of the drive] is 25% fragmented (59.14% of total space).
btw, Time Machine keeps:hourly backups for the past 24 hoursdaily backups for the past monthweekly backups for all previous monthsand the oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external driv

1st) A fragmented drive is not evil. It will not hurt anything. At worse it might slow down reading a file. However, as has been pointed out by others in this thread, who cares as this is a backup device, not a device you are going to be reading a lot.
2nd) The time you spend defragmenting the drive will far exceed the time you will save when writing new data to the drive.
3rd) Defragmentation will just increase your energy consumption, as all the reading/writing needed to move the files around in order to defragment it, will cause the drive to consume more energy than if it was just sitting idle waiting for the next hourly Time Machine backup.
4th) Defragmentation (if done frequently) may shorten the life of your drive. Not mentioned in "3rd" above is that the extra energy used translates into heat, plus you are moving the read/write heads back and forth all of which affect the drives mechanical and electrical components.
NOTE: There are situations where having a defragmented drive is useful, but mostly it has to do with needing to stream media at a high rate of speed, and fragmented files can affect that. However, a backup drive being used for incremental Time Machine backups is not in that category, and most home Mac usage does not need a defragmented file system either.

Can I use iPod for time machine back up?

I have several iPods that I don't use, and would like to use them as time machine back up drives, for multiple computers.
They are 30gb iPod videos. I am aware they aren't as reliable as an actual external hard drive and that this much read/write can cause the iPod to burn out, but for these purposes I don't care.
I have 300 computers that I want to restore to one master, as they are all used for the same purpose, but currently they all have OS 10.5.x of varying versions. I currently use a time machine backup on an external hard drive to restore the systems, but I have 15 iPod videos, and I would like to use 2-3 of them, to speed the process up.
I use carbon copy cloner once I get a system restored, to restore the stations around it, but time machine is about 15% faster than using CCC, so I would like to use these iPods to increase my ability to restore these systems on a regular basis without having to buy external hard drives or enclosures to make external HDs.
I have tried:
Erasing the iPod in disk utility.
-It will erase the volume as HFS+ (extended journaled) but it won't erase the main device as it shows in Disk utility, it consistently stays as Fat32.
--Same idea if I recreate the partition. I tried GUID partition scheme, Apple Partition Map and Master boot record, but all produce the same result.
I also selected the iPod and attempted a zero-out of the whole iPod using the security options in disk utility. The system still will not let me use it for time machine.
Has anyone been able to use an iPod for backup? Are there any other techniques anyone can suggest to get this iPod to work?
Thanks for your help.

And to clarify, originally I made sure disk usage was enabled on the iPod.
I have also tried dragging and dropping the contents of a time machine backup to the iPod, but it's still not seen as a backup volume. I suspect there are some hidden files that enable a volume as time machine capable. Any ideas on how to maybe copy the hidden files or any other methods that might work?

Will Time Machine back up iTunes media on a different internal drive

I have my iTunes media on a different internal drive.
Will Time machine back up that data as well?
I have two other internal drives, each 750gb.
Does Time Machine back those drives up as well? Or does it contain itself to the OS disk?

Stephen,
Amazingly, Time Machine will do this by default!! In fact, Time Machine will back up every volume that is present at the time of the initial backup, unless told to do otherwise. I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on a secondary partition of my MBP's hard drive, and Time Machine backed that up automatically.
Your backup will be contained in a "Backups.backupdb" folder on whatever external volume you choose to use for Time Machine. Within this folder, you will find other folders named for the various volumes that are being backed up. As far as I know, there is no limit to how many can be kept.
Scott

Time Machine back up to MyBook (2TB).

When Time Machine backs up to WD MyBook (2TB), it transfers 100GB of my iMac HD (500GB capacity) each time. Consequently, MyBook is full. How do I get Time Machine to only add changes/alterations to the next backup?

Thanks again rkaufmann. I have successfully deleted all files from MyBook. Unfortunately, I now have a large number of large files in my Trash that I am having trouble deleting. However, my initial problem is resolved. I will try to find a way of getting TM to only apply updates to existing files on MB.
Regards ........ LM

Trying to restore Time Machine back-up from WD MyBookLive - whats the Password?!

Hi all,
my son has a Macbook Pro running Lion. Yesterday it hung when downloading the 10.7.3 update and wouldn't reboot properly.
We logged in via safe mode and managed to sort this out, however I was initially looking at doing a restore from his time machine back-up. I had booted the recovery partition and chosen the 'restore from a time machine back-up' - then it had prompted me for a username and password to gain access to the back-up...
When I set up the Time Machine Back-ups I always have selected (as recommended by Apple and Western Digital) the Guest user. Therefore I have no idea what the username or password should be??? I've hunted on the web for any kind of answer however theres no certain answer...
I'm hoping someone out there will know what username and password it is expecting? Is this from Time Machine, or a default username/password set by the Western Digital NAS???
I hope someone can help - my time machine backs up both my own, my wifes and my sons macbooks, its all very well having the back-ups but not worth it if I can never get access to them when I need to!
thanks in advance

I think you are not restoring your files in the correct way.
If what you want to do is to restore a complete Time Machine backup, you have to do it in OS X Recovery, so first hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up. Then, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow its steps.
If you want to restore individual files, you cannot restore that type of user files because you are using them. Instead, you can restore individual files in your user folders. Read > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Time Machine Backing up too much data (fixed, I think)

About a month ago, I upgraded my Mac Pro from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and in so doing hooked up new external drive for TM backups.
First backup was large, bit slow, and expected.
All backups after that were fairly slow, which I took initially to be partially related to doing recent OS upgrade.
Within last week or so, I started to notice that my backups seemed to be much larger than expected. I went down about 350 GB on the backup drive in a matter 2 to 3 weeks, while adding at most 10 GB of data in that time.
Well today, I discovered the issue via the (freel) app Time Tracker, which showed 10+ GB of data for each backup was coming from TechTool Protection (in Application Support). I went into TM and did a 'delete all' for this backup, and it restored a good 350 GB back to my TM drive.
As I typed this, I initiated a TM backup, that is now 10 MB, which seems normal and expected.
I still feel like a relative novice when it comes to the fine details of using TM, but glad I found this solution.
Definitely have to give shout out to Pondini for pointing me to Time Tracker and for the umpteen other tips I've received from reading the Pondini.org site.
As I marked this as a question, I would say there are 2 items for me that are still outstanding:
1 - the backup of 10 MB is slow - still showing under 100 KB. As I'm used to this from last few weeks, not a big deal, but I'm up for any pointers from anyone who thinks this can be fixed or ought to be fixed.
2 - I'm still curious about exclusions, especially within a 10.6 OS environment. I've excluded items that make sense, either cause I have them backed up elsewhere (i.e. iTunes Library) or because I didn't see the need (i.e. Apple Loops in Library/Audio folder). The ones that perhaps make less sense to exclude, but I'm currently not backing up are:
- Applications folder (did initial TM backup and then excluded)
- DropBox folder
- Library/Caches
- Library/Mail Downloads
- Public folder and Users/Shared folder
If you feel these ought to be included, let me know. And if you feel there is anything else to exclude, I'm up for hearing that.
Thanks.

incidently it seems that time machine backs up everything the first time and only uses the exclusion list on subsequent times

HT201250 If I wish to see the contents of my I photo in a time machine back up I am getting a 'cant see because its in a Time Machine back up so how can I be sure that I can delete some photos from my mac

I have used Time machine back up and as I wish to delets photos on my I mac I want to confirm that I have backed up ok. However when I go into Time Machine and attempt to open I photo I get the message ' cant see becasue its in a time machine back up'.
How do I get to see whats in the back up... any of them

Time Machine is backup, not an archive. You should not use it to keep permanent copies of things you have deleted from your main disk. Once the original is gone, the Time Machine copy will not last forever. If you want to keep a permanent copy of a photo "offline", you must make a copy of it somewhere.

Attempting to do an initial Time Machine back

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