External Disk Connected to Time Machine is giving Errors

I have an external disk that I have used with Time Machine for a couple of years, at least as long as leopard was out. Recently I got the new 13" Macbook Pro and configured time machine + Airport Extreme + External USB drive. After using it for a few months, I discovered Time Machine had errors backing up and would arbitrarily stop. I decided to plug in the USB drive directly to the macbook pro and ran disk Utility. Upon 'Verify' - the following showed up
Incorrect number of Access Control Lists
(It should be 0 instead of 714)
I hit 'Repair' next. Problem solved.
Except a few days later, I decided to 'verify' the disk again, it gave me the same ACL problem with a different number - it should be 0 instead of xyz. My questions are -
1. How can one solve this problem?
2. Is my external disk having bad sectors and I need to buy a new one?
It concerns me that since this external disk is my only backup solution, if it fails on me - I might be in trouble. Currently, I have borrowed a friends disk and made a clone of my entire HD - which I repeat every week - not the most efficient use of time. I am hoping time machine can take over this task successfully without Access Control Issues!!!
Thanks in advance for your help.

ACLs have nothing to do with disk errors. Furthermore you cannot repair permissions on a non-system volume. You can try the following to reset ACLs:
Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder and enter the following at the prompt:
sudo chmod -a# 0 /Volumes/volname
Provide the external volume's volname. Press RETURN.

Similar Messages

Replacing external disk but keeping Time Machine history

Today I have a 500 GB USB3 HDD connected to the Mac and backed-up by Time Machine.
This HDD has less than 30GB free space and I have a replacement one (a bigger size and faster HDD).
I have copied the files from the old to the new USB3 HDD (using Finder as this is just pictures, videos, musique, docs, so nothing complicated that would require cloning).
To keep the history of modifications and deleted files from the old external HDD once I use exclusively the new external HDD, how shall I do that?
Having the same HDD name is enough?
Thank you for your help

Having no answer, I took the decision to experiment.
I renamed the new external USB HDD with the same name as the older (soon to be replaced) ones and copied via Finder all the files on it (Aperture libraries, videos, documents).
By using Time Machine while on the new drive (not backing up, but just looking at older backups), I was able to see the previous versions of the external USB HDD files. So I thought that was that easy.
So I decided to manually trigger a new TM backup. However, it computed something like close to 500 GB to backup. Thus eventhough in terms of history for now I can trick TM to think it is the same HDD, when it comes to create a new backup, it simply wants to rebackup everything.
Now I'm getting worried because:
I don't know if the history will be kept after the backup has run;
Because it will push 500GB of data to the TM storage, it might fill it up and TM will start to remove older backup whereas this would have been unnecessary.
Note: I don't rely solely on TM for backup, I use Crashplan as well. So if I lose TM, it is "OK" as I could always restore something from Crashplan, but then for the oldest backup (for the last 2 years) I would only have one copy instead of 2... It is not that critical as I do not think I deleted something I would like to restore from that time period. But our of curiosity I would like to still found out how to properly change an external HDD that was backed-up by Time Machine without losing the history.

Hi everyone, after updating to 10.6.8, i've been unable to backup to my external hard-drive on Time Machine. anyone having same issues?

I did a software update to 10.6.8. and I've been unable to back up my files to my external hard-drive on Time Machine. The error message it gives says "he backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk."
It recommends using Disk Utility to repair the backup disk and i've tried that but it finds nothing wrong with the disk!
I even tried copying files off it so i could re-format the drive but it apparently can't do that and the error message is that there's a wrong case sensitive file. Please help, I really need a solution.
Thanks,
Regards,
Chi.

If you mean you're getting the same message:
see #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.
If that's not the message you're getting, please clarify.

Can external disk added to time capsule be used with time machine?

I have a 2011 Apple Time Capsule with 2 TB of storage, which I use for Time Machine backups. I would like to add storage, or alternately just use a higher capacity hard drive for Time Machine backups. Can I attach a 3 TB external backup drive to the Time Capsule's USB port, for example, and use that for my backups instead of the internal hard drive? Apple says you can't do this with the Airport Extreme, but doesn't say whether it will work with the Time Capsule.

"OS X Time Machine supports compatible unencrypted USB disks connected to AirPort Time Capsule (802.11n and 802.11ac), and AirPort Extreme (802.11ac).": Meaning All Time Capsule Support it.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
AirPort base stations: About USB disks - Apple Support
Time Machine backups are supported via USB hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme"ac" version.
Time Machine backups were not supported via USB hard drive connected to earlier versions of the AirPort Extreme.
Some users who tried this on earlier version AirPort Extremes seemed to have some success with Time Machine backups....some had moderate success and some had no success with this.

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there.

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine

Recently upgraded Mac 24" to Lion (clean install) and now no external hard disks work with Time Machine.
installed new internal disk first with fresh 10.7.3 Lion software. Also upgrade ram to 4GB. Work great, super fast.
BUT.... my WD 1TB firewire400 external disks no longer work with the Lion enabled machine now.
FURTHER... I read somewhere that WD is problematic with Lion but Seagate was not... so I went and bought a new 3TB Seagate GoFlex.
When it didnt work properly either, I patiently searched and found a software/firward upgrade and applied.
I re-partitioned disk to extened/journaled standard, etc.
Then assigned the particition to Time Machine. Drive turned the blue/grey color, so I thought it would work.
But, it has now been in "preparing" mode in Time Machine for HOURS....
What is up Apple? So dissappointed. Ive read these type of problems are notorious with Lion and I wish I never upgraded.
Are you trying to make issues with External disks, to drive people to iCloud? That trick ont work in me. I will not reward bad behaviour Apple.
Please provide a fix... I wasted hours/days screwing around with this, instead of using the Mac for what its intended!

Solved by Pondini, on another thread I opened...
Answer:
Sounds like either:
A directory problem on your internal HD. Verify your internal HD, and Repair any other volumes being backed-up per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Something in OSX may be damaged. You've tried the "combo," so a fresh copy of OSX (that won't disturb anything else) would be worth a try (and you don't need a tech for that). See Installing the ''combo'' update and/or Reinstalling OSX.

I've been getting the error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by the computer". I can't open system preferences, disk utility, or Time Machine. I'm guessing it has something to do with my external hard drive, although it hasn't been touched.

I've been getting the error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by the computer". I can't open system preferences, disk utility, or Time Machine. I'm guessing it has something to do with my external hard drive, although it hasn't been touched lately, but I can't figure out how to solve the problem. Any suggestions? Thank you!

Thanks for your quick response. I had a look at your discussion... I tried it on a Windows machine and I thought that was compatible with ExFAT?
Therefore I need to attempt to use my external hard drive with a machine that boasts OS X 10.6.5 or above and then it should work?
Thanks

Backing up photos on iMac using external hard drive and time machine

How do i back up photos from my imac using an external hard drive and time machine
Thanks in advance

Apple explains how to use Time Machine in http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427.
Setting up and using TM is very simple to do, connect any external HD (format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility ) and your computer shoudl ask if you want to use that EHD for a Time Machine backup. If you have any questions visit your local Apple Store or reseller and they can answer how to setup and use TM and also should be able to offer suggestions on EHDs. My personal preference is OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro due to the build quality and OWC's level of support.

Backing up an external hard drive with time Machine

I backed up my internal disk with Time Machine, but I can not back up an external drive that I use for my media. I see the drive in the options part of Time Machine system preferences, but the minus sign to take it off of the "do not back up these drives" is blanked out. Any suggestions?

I successfully backed up the contents of an external hard drive, but the next time Time Machine did a backup, I didn't happen to have that drive connected, so Time Machine said it couldn't find it and deleted the existing backup. Is there any way to get it to keep the backup? The drive I want to back up is only used occasionally (naturally, anything I use more frequently is on my Mac) and I don't want to have to plug in both hard drives every time I want to run a backup, only to risk losing all of that history if I ever accidentally plug in only the backup drive. But I do want to keep Time Machine backups of that drive because it contains my iPhoto Library.

External Hard Drive for Time Machine - 2 TB. Can I remove other external drives it was backing up?

I have an external drive dedicated for Time Machine, it's 2 TB. Last year I started backing up computer (500 GB) and one external hard drive that has 500 GB. IAlso, I have another external drive that is 1 TB connected to my computer. I noticed last week that I was hearing that other external drive sounding funny, so I thought I would add it to Time Machine to back up. Now today my Time Machine failed. I tested the drive or verified the drive and all was well. My thought is because I added this drive to Time Machine it failed because of not enough room? Is there a way to remove that other external hard drive and go back to just the computer and the 500 GB?
I did btw out of a panic mode buy the GDrive that has Thunderbolt with 3 TB, yet I can't use Thunderbolt because that plug is used for my monitor, bummer. But, maybe using this new external drive I can back up the 500, the computer and the 1TB. Any thoughts?

aashton wrote:
Now today my Time Machine failed. I tested the drive or verified the drive and all was well. My thought is because I added this drive to Time Machine it failed because of not enough room? Is there a way to remove that other external hard drive and go back to just the computer and the 500 GB?
When you say the Time Machine failed, do you mean the drive containing the Time Machine backups failed, or what failed was trying to back up the new drive you added? If Time Machine was able to complete the first full backup of the new drive, then adding Time Machine didn't cause the problem, it was a coincidence. If Time Machine runs out of space it just starts deleting the oldest backup. I suppose it might fail on the first Time Machine run after the initial backup if it didn't have space to delete stuff. When you look at the Time Machine drive in the Finder, is it in fact full? If there's plenty of space left on it, it's not clear what the failure was about.
Also, testing and verifying with Disk Utility will spot some problems but not all.
aashton wrote:
I did btw out of a panic mode buy the GDrive that has Thunderbolt with 3 TB, yet I can't use Thunderbolt because that plug is used for my monitor, bummer. But, maybe using this new external drive I can back up the 500, the computer and the 1TB. Any thoughts?
Thunderbolt can be daisy-chained, so if it or other Thunderbolt devices have a pass-through port it might be possible to do all that. But it might be better to return the drive and get a USB 3 drive instead. It would be fast enough, cheaper, and more versatile. For a single hard drive (not a RAID or SSD), Thunderbolt is not really much faster than USB 3.

Restoring an external hard drive with time machine

I'm having a problem restoring an external hard drive using time machine. I'm on a macbook Air Running 10.7.5.
The external hard drive where I store all my photos crashed a few days ago. Not a total disaster, because it's backed up, but I can't figure out how to restore the drive onto a new hard drive. When I go into time machine without the corrupted drive attached, it does not show up in the time machine browser as an option for restore. (The files are definitely there, though, because I can see them when I look at the time machine files in Finder. I'm afraid if I just transfer the files by dragging, though, I'll mess something up.) I tried using the migration assistant, but I'm having the same problem there.
Anyone know how to do this? I'm a little frantic to get my photos back.
Thanks!

I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them.

Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?

Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?

As john noted, eventually that external is probably not going to be big enough, but it certainly is for now. The HD just needs enough capacity to cover the amount of data on your internal HD, not the internal HD's total capacity.
Format/partition the external as follows and you should be set to go:
1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.
2. Open Disk Utility on the MBP.
3. Select the external HD in the left pane.
4. Click on the Erase tab.
5. Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (which I always think is a good idea, but does take time), click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.
6. Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.
7. Click the Partition tab.
8. Click on Volume Scheme: and choose the number of partitions (just one in this situation).
9. Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.
10. Click Apply.
11. Quit Disk Utility.
Backup your internal to the external. What application are you using to backup with? I highly recommend both SuperDuper! and CarbonCopyCloner.

Time machine is giving me this error;sparse bundle could not be access (error-1)

The time machine is giving me this error; Disk Image"/Volumes/Data/adminstration Mac Book Pro (2).sparse bundle" could not be access (error-1)

Restart the TC.. ie pull out the power.. count to 10.. plug in power.
Still have issues restart the whole network in correct order.. modem.. TC.. clients. 2min gap. Any other network clutter.. restart in order it is connected..
See C17 for more info if you still have issues.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
C12 is most popular problem.. but C17 is close second.
I would also read C9 as your naming is perhaps a cause of the problem.

IMac with external HDD backup to Time Machine

I have an iMac with a 1TB internal HDD and have run out of space due to the number of photos in my library. I want to move the photos to a 1TB external HDD, then add a new 2TB external HDD to serve as the new Time Machine backup drive. So my setup will include the iMac and two connected external HDDs. What is the best way to set this up so the new Time Machine backup drive captures both the internal iMac HDD and the external photos HDD? Any tips or tricks would be appreciated. Thanks!

First of all, note that Time Machine can only make backups of drives formatted in HFS+ (known as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"), so your 1 TB external drive has to use that format before moving your photos to it. As you are using it to make Time Machine backups, it is already using that format.
There are two possibilities in order to start using a different external drive for Time Machine:
Move your old Time Machine backups made in your 1 TB external drive to your 2 TB external drive.
Start a completely new backup, deleting the old ones.
In the first possibility, you only have to follow these steps -> Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Soporte técnico de Apple After moving your Time Machine backups to the 2 TB external drive, remember to format the 1 TB drive with Disk Utility in order to store your photos there.
In the second possibility, just go to System Preferences -> Time Machine, and choose your 2 TB external drive as your Time Machine drive. Then, format the 1 TB external drive.
In both cases, Time Machine does not make backups of external drives by default, so after moving your photos to the 1 TB external drive, you have to go to System Preferences -> Time Machine -> Options, and remove the 1 TB external drive from the excluded items list. By doing that, the next backup will also include your 1 TB drive.

Disk utility or time machine not discovering back up drives

Hi I'm new to Mac and before getting lost in all the benefits am looking to set up automatic back ups using my LaCie network space drives I previously used from my P/C. I have managed to discover the drive and copy required files in Finder. Next step was to re-format to Mac but Disk Utility does not discover the drive. Am using the same connection route as Finder. Have also tried finding via Time Machine without any luck. Your assistance appreciated

If I am correct on this, and I think I am, Disk Utility and Time Machine are all configured in OSX to find and communicate over only USB and Firewire, NOT ethernet. I talked to Apple Support once about employing a Buffalo Technology NAS over ethernet to backup my iMac using Time Machine and i was politely informed that this was NOT supported by Apple and likely not doable. So, we may not like it, but apparently those are the rules we must play by. As for Finder, it too primarily finds connections to devices using USB or Firewire. The exception to this is that you can connect using Finder over Wi-Fi or Ethernet to another computer, but this ability presumably involves Finder locating a device that has an IP address.
You just may be at the point where you need to consider obtaining a USB and/or Firewire based external drive. Keep us informed.
Hope this helps
Message was edited by: Radiation Mac

External Disk Connected to Time Machine is giving Errors

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for