Error occurred creating backup directory

Question

I've been using Time Machine with a Time Capsule reliably since March. Now I keep getting failed backup attempts because, "An error occurred while creating the backup directory." Nothing really much has changed except for regular software updates, etc. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Sometimes a software update changes so many files that Time Machine takes a very, very long time going over the changed files. In the past I have had to reformat the partition on the external drive the backups sit in. Lately the updates haven't been monumental. What I DO notice is that when time machine gets buggy with a lot of errors, or simply doesn't perform, it's a corrupt file in one of the backups. What usually fixes that is going to applications--->utilities--->disk utility. Open her up and navigate to the drive you use for backups. Make sure your time machine's backups is turned "off" (find that in your system prefs panel in the time machine pane). Select the disk and repair it. Go back to the time machine prefs and turn time machine back "on". Make sure the correct disk is chosen for backups when you turn it back on.
An example fix with disk utility:
Verifying volume “TMBackup”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Incorrect number of Access Control Lists
(It should be 678366 instead of 678367)
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume TMBackup needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Verify and Repair volume “TMBackup”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Incorrect number of Access Control Lists
(It should be 678366 instead of 678367)
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Repairing volume.
Indirect node 870898 needs link count adjustment
(It should be 1 instead of 16385)
Rechecking volume.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume TMBackup was repaired successfully.
In this case the bug was that Time Machine was thinking my backup drive ran outta room and the backup required 5 billion GBs of space. LOL! Gotta love Apple.
Here's the quote:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 5153960960.0 GB but only 203.0 GB are available.
To select a larger volume, or make the backup smaller by excluding files, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine."
If the message persists, get out your osx cd and boot up from there, and run disk utilities on your startup disk because the errors are sometimes coming from there as well. Not sure why yet.