Can't backup using time machine anymore

so my Mac's hard drive recently crashed and had to be replaced. No big deal as I have 2 backups (1 on my Time Capsule, and one via a plug in hard drive I named Time Machine) when I got the new hard drive I restored it from the Time Capsule and everything was perfectly fine, except that it wouldn't backup anymore. Normally it would automatically backup every hour, but a week went by and I got the ! notifcation in the status bar, 2 weeks went by and even manually getting it to backup wouldn't allow me to back up anymore so I had to start a whole new backup on the Time Capsule before it would finally start backing up again. Well I finally got around to backing up on the Time MAchine again and same problem, it won't let me manually backup it just keeps searchign an searching and seraching for the backup disc. What can I do to get it to start backing up again? I figured since it was restored FROM a backup that it could just go back to backing up on those smae discs again, but it doesn't seem to.

Pondini addressed this issue (and many others) in his excellent site on Time Machine. See pondini.org, and specifically http://pondini.org/TM/19.html ("I got a new Mac, or a new or erased internal HD -- now what?").

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Can't backup with Time Machine: "sparsebundle is already in use"

Can't backup with Time Machine suddenly. Message says "back up disk image ...'/Volume/... /myMacname.sparsebundle' is already in use".
I have no idea what this means. Can someone please help? Please note that I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion.
Thanks.

Been having the same problem on mountain lion
Most forums say you must disconnect the users in AirPort Utility, but v6.1 no longer has this feature
So simply open “Finder” on the left under “Devices” you should see your “Time Capsule”. If not then it should be under “Shared”. Click on it and then select “Disconnect”. Then simply reconnect and that should be it
You can also restart the Time Capsule just by using Airport Utility.
Open Airport Utility and select the Time Capsule. Then up on the top bar select Base Station and click on Restart
Mine is now all working again

HT201250 Can I do a backup using Time Machine on a server, or it needs an external drive only?

Can I do a backup using Time Machine on a server, or it needs an external drive only?

Time Machine can back up to a server. The drive or partition used still needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(65169)

HT203177 My backups using Time Machine to my Time Capsule worked fine until a week ago. Since then it gets stuck on "Preparing ...". I have left it preparing overnight and it doesn't get past this stage. What else can I do? Bob

My backups using Time Machine to my Time Capsule worked fine until a week ago. Since then it gets stuck on "Preparing ...". I have left it preparing overnight and it doesn't get past this stage. What else can I do?

Mavericks does really nasty stuff..
Try manually mounting the sparsebundle and extract the files you want.
Yet another Pondini reference. http://pondini.org/TM/15.html
We have avoided Mavericks you see knowing that it would cause these kinds of issues..
You never ever load a new OS without doing a disk image beforehand.. TM is not reliable enough or trustworthy to be depended on.
If none of the above work..
I would get a USB drive on the computer and install Mountain Lion or whatever OS you had before you unfortunately upgraded to Mavericks.. Then use TM from that decent installation but mount the sparsebundle and choose the backup from a date well before mavericks was installed.
Once you have extracted the files.. or even done a full restore you might be able to extract the files you want.

I recently upgraded my Macbook pro with a new Hard Drive. I then transferred the data using Time Machine. Now when I want to backup using Time Machine again, it won't do it as it did before to the same external HD. How can I get it to reconnect?

Purchased a new, larger solid state drive to replace my old drive. I installed OSX then I had Time Machine do it's magic.
Now when I want to do a backup using Time Machine, it tells me that the external HD is full. When I did so prior to upgrade, it would erase old backups and then do a new backup.
Please help. I am worried about losing files, and am tired of seeing the "Time Machine hasn't backed up in xxx days" Error Message.
Thanks.

it thinks yours is a new machine so it doesn't want to start deleting another machine's backups
see the bottom of this page
http://pondini.org/TM/19.html

HT3275 can't backup with time machine

I can't backup with time machine and I do not receive any errors, time machine just stays in the 'looking for backup disk' mode and will not go any further. I went as far as buying a new usb backup disk to replace the old one and still the same issue occurs. I've tried using different usb ports on my mb pro and that doesn't work. No amount of restarting, ejecting discs or checking preferences helps. Disk utility states the drive is fine (even the new one), the permissions or sharing haven't changed.
My system is up to date with the latest updates, and this all just happened out of the blue one day. I suppose I could do a system restore but I'm afraid of losing my data; and I'm not 100% sure how to do that.
I'm running OSX 10.8.2, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB memory

There is good advice available about Time Machine. Go to Pondini's paper(s) before you do anything so drastic as a system restore.
Time Machine - Troubleshooting
Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions

I cannot restore my backups using Time Machine - please help!

My iMac has been returned from repair and as part of this was reset to its factory settings, depeting everything. I took backups using Time Machine to an external hard drive before it went off for repair, and after it came back I restored the data - so I thought. It seemed to work for a long time, but on completion no files had been restored, and all the backups from before the iMac went for repair are now inaccessible in Time Machine. However as far as I can see they are still on the hard drive however.
The iMac has since been backing up the now empty machine to this hard drive, over-writing the data, but I have now switched Time Machine off.
How can I restore my back-ups and recover my data please?
John Wood

'depeting' is a typo for 'deleting'. I don't seem to be able to edit this out above

After a clean install, how can I continue using Time Machine?

After a clean install, how can I continue using Time Machine?
I booted from my recovery partition, erased my HD, installed the same OS, (Lion, 10.7.5) then restored from my TM.
If it asks if i want to use TM, I say yes. When I chose the drive, it seems to want to start all over, instead of just picking up where I left off.
Is there any way of picking up where I left off?

Hi Frank,
You are sure you looking in your Library in /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library and not /Library at the top level of your harddrive?
When you open iCal what do you see? Are the calendars the two default Home and Work ones?
I really appreciate the responses -- especially if you are in the UK as opposed to Ontario.
Why, do you have something against London Ontario?
John M

HT4859 How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?

How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?
I think I have missed something in trying to read all of the pages on apple site about icloud.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
You can't back up a computer to iCloud.
You can use any back up software, you should always back up to a different drive.

I recently bought a WD My Book Live to backup using Time Machine, now that I've upgraded to and my old NAS won't support Mountain Lion. The WD drive appears in the Finder, it doesn't appear as an option when setting up the backup disc in Time Machine.

I recently bought a WD My Book Live to backup using Time Machine, now that I've upgraded to and my old NAS won't support Mountain Lion. The WD drive appears in the Finder, but it doesn't appear as an option when setting up the backup disc in Time Machine. Any ideas please?

" now that I've upgraded to and my old NAS won't support Mountain Lion. "
Do you have a few words missing in the original question ?.
When i upgraded from LION to MOUNTAIN LION it made NO difference at all to my MyBook Live !!!
reading the original post again and again, do you in fact have two My Book Live units, an old one and a new one ?
tim

Can I backup with Time machine and continue to use my mac?

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Thanks!

The automatic backups aren't nearly as noticeable as the initial backup. Time Machine is designed to do its thing politely in the background while you use your computer. I rarely even notice it. However, if you are using resource intensive apps you might want to turn off Time Machine in System Preferences until your are finished so your apps have access to all available horsepower.

Why can't I restore backup using Time Machine and/or Disk Utility

Backed up my entire computer on a Buffalo Ministation as I need to install new OSX and don't want to lose any files. Tried the handful of options listed in Support to restore and nothing is working. Using Time Machine, the Restore button is greyed out so I can't select it. Using Disk Utility, when adding the source image, the Open button is greyed out so I can't select it. Please help.

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Macbook Pro 2012: Backup using Time Machine

I am running Mavericks. I have not used Time Machine before. I am assuming I need an external hard disk or can I make a copy in iCloud? I have Parallels with Windows 8.1 VM. Will both those also be backed up? Thanks,

You can't make a backup of your MacBook Pro on iCloud. There's no enough cloud storage available to do this. Instead, make backups of your files on an external drive with Time Machine. See > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
By default, Time Machine will make a backup of all your files in the OS X volume. If you don't want to back up your Windows 8.1 virtual machine, open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, press the + button, go to Documents folder and add the Parallels folder to excluded items, so it won't be backed up

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No you can't and the reason is Apple blocked the ability for Time Machine to backup over WIFI to a NAS connected to the AEBS. Though I was able to use iTimeMachine to enable the feature prior to the recent Leopard update 10.5.2 which seems to have closed this ability once again. Apple's comment to me was to buy Time Capsule claiming the feature was never supported over WIFI with the AEBS even though their advertising just prior to Leopard's release stated differently. A lot of us on this forum paid for an AEBS and NAS drive based on Apple's own advertising regarding a feature they later blocked/removed and are extremely upset with the way the issue seems to be ignored by Apple support who pretend there was never an issue to begin with.

Can I Backup My Time Machine Backups?

I am currently using Time Machine to archive my iMac to a 1TB USB drive. The Backups.backupdb folder is just part of the disk contents but currently comes in at over 500GB and contains archived data back to May 2009.
Because I was in need of a little more disk space and was able to get a brand new DLINK DNS-323 NAS enclosure for 30% of retail at a chain's liquidation sale, I have just set up a small NAS with two, 2TB drives (formatted as two separate volumes, without RAID and using ext3). I understand the DLINK NAS uses SMB.
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Doing things this way would provide the additional data security I desire, while giving me access to the Time Machine archives when I needed them.
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Thank you very much in advance for your input.

I'm sure it's possible to make this work, but you shouldn't make this work. Backing up a backup is not a good idea, since any problems with the original backup will be propagated into the "backup backup". Instead, make a fully independent backup with different software. That way, if you one day find that you need your backups, but the TM backup is corrupt for some reason (not implying that's normal), you'll still have a second independent backup. If it's just a copy of a corrupt TM backup, it won't help you much.

Can't backup using time machine anymore

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