HT3275 time machine backup keeps increasing

While Time Machine is backing up, the amount of date to be copied keeps increasing. It gets most the way through the backup, then both figures (backing up / to be backed up) increase in tandem.
I'm using a WD My Cloud.

Hello,
The timer isn't all that accurate, but should count up as it finds more needing backup, bit how long has it been now?
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imagine something not being covered there.

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Upgraded to Mavericks and time machine backups keep failing.

I upgraded to Mavericks a few days ago and now I find my time machine backups keep failing. I first tried turning off the power to the time machine then turning it on again and I managed to get one complete backup but that took over 20 hours to complete.
The time machine backup mode never seems to get beyond " preparing backup" then showing the message "backing up failed, disc already in use"
The time machine backup worked fine before I upgraded, is there a way round this problem or will I have to go through reloading the time machine as if it were a new piece of equipment?
My wife's iMac is still on mountain lion 10.8.5 and the backups on the same Time Machine work fine.
Any help would be gratefully received
Greg

Hi,
I have exactly the same problem.
MBP 2011 running 10.9 named "ebook"
MacMini running 10.8.5 server with TM share
everything works fine UNTIL for some reason the MBP is interrupted during a TM backup ...
After that I get the disk already in use error !
Rebooting the MBP wont help, but I narrowed the problem down ...
Looking on the Mini server I noticed :
- the TM backup user stays connected over AFP, even after several hours of inactivity and a couple of reboots of the MBP. Killing the AFP connection works, But problem stil continues !
- looking on the MBP with "lsof | grep ebook" showed me that the SparseBundles were still in use by the AFP process ... Using the Server control panel and restarting AFP solved that ...
After restarting the AFP process the remote TM Backup started to work again !
A couple of days later, the same problem occurred again, fixed it by this work around ...
I hope there will be a more permanent solotiun for this !

My Time Machine backup keeps failing...how do I find out why?? MacBook Pro 5,1 OS 10.5.8, 6GB ram backing up to new OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 2TB

Forgive my clumsiness ---
My Time Machine backup keeps failing...how do I find out why?? MacBook Pro 5,1 OS 10.5.8, 6GB ram backing up to new OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 2TB

Have you formatted the disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?
Caio.

My Time Machine backup keeps failing. I get a message the "Volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup". Please advise.

My Time Machine backup keeps failing. I get a message the "Volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup". Please advise.
Thanks, Howard

You can change the case sensitivity of the sparsebundle.. but I really doubt the error is real.
See A8 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
The sparsebundle should have case sensitivity turned on.
I cannot even fathom how it could have changed.
Let me recommend before you start fooling around with the sparsebundle.
Do a full network start.
Power everything off.. start up modem.. wait 2min.. power up the TC.. wait 2min.. power up any other network gear like switches.. wait..
Now power up the computer and try it.
If the error is the same.. I would do a factory reset of the TC.. give it all short names, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. Then reset TM .. see A4 in the same reference as above.. and do a verify of the backups.. A5 above and try the backup again..
No luck..
Then erase the TC and start over.. it is sometimes necessary as TM does get itself in a knot.

My time machine backup keeps failing

My Time Machine Backup keeps failing . Does anyone know what I should do

Launch your console program (located in the utilities folder) and click on all messages in then left column then type "backupd" in the filter box in the upper right. Read the messages, it may give you a clue as to what's causing the problem.

Time machine backup keeps going up - slow over via airport extreme

I have a 2tb external drive that ive just connected to my airport extreme, purely to use for time machine backups.
I realise the first backup will take a while, my hard drive currently has 810GB of data on it according to the mac itself. When i first started the backup time machine said the backup was 865GB, however its now been going for over 4 days and still hasnt completed, its on about 830gb now, but it keeps going up, its now saying 830gb of 920gb completed.
So why does the backup take a ridiculous amount of time (the MBP is plugged into the airport via ethernet, then the drive to airport via usb) i thought using ethernet directly to the airport would speed it up, its purely over cable so why is it so slow?
And why is my backup now saying its 920gb when my hard drive only has 810gb in total of data?

That's one Apple's more infuriating messages, but there's usually another phrase after "Time Machine Error."
Most likely, Time Machine is having a problem with a file, but they don't bother to tell you that.
See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will probably lead you to #C3.
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, what you've done, and the results.

HT3275 Time Machine backup does nothing

Question: Is there a magic fix I can apply? or do I need to format the backup disk and make a new backup from scratch? or do I need to replace the backup disk with a new one? Or am I asking the wrong questions?
After a mysterious freeze yesterday, followed by a shutdown and restart, Time Machine claims it is "Preparing backup ... Finishing backup" and is done very quickly. It does not spend its usual long time looking through a couple of hundred megabytes of files, nor does it do the subsequent stage of actually transferring data to the backup disk. "Entering" Time Machine seems to show it's at least a little confused: a test file created on the desktop fails to show in backups, while old files that have been moved appear on some backups, vanish on others.
I'm not much good with log files, but they show something like this:
12-02-29 10:54:49.260 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
12-02-29 10:54:49.287 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Jim Clarke backup/Backups.backupdb
12-02-29 10:54:50.247 AM com.apple.backupd: 3.11 GB required (including padding), 334.62 GB available
12-02-29 10:54:50.726 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 29 files (153 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
12-02-29 10:54:51.329 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
12-02-29 10:54:51.330 AM com.apple.backupd: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
12-02-29 10:54:51.459 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
The "29 files(153 bytes)" part is always the same, except for once when it said "21 KB" instead of 153 bytes.
I'll be very grateful for guidance. There's lots of advice on Time Machine out there, but I can't find anything relevant to this situation.
Jim Clarke

Time Machine uses the modification times of folders to determine whether their contents need to be scanned for changes made since the time of the last snapshot. For some reason, that criterion occasionally fails, and TM doesn’t scan folders with contents that have changed. You may be able to get backups to resume by updating the modification times of all your folders.
Important: This procedure will change the modification times of all folders on the startup volume. It won’t affect anything that’s not a folder, and it won’t change your existing backups at all. If you have a reason to want to keep the modification times of folders as they are, STOP.
Before proceeding, you must have a current backup of all data. Since your existing Time Machine backups may not be current, you’ll have to back up in some other way; for example, by starting a new TM backup set on another external drive. It’s a good idea to do this anyway, as you need more than one backup.
Launch the Terminal application by entering the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. If that doesn’t work, then in the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens. Another way to launch Terminal (if you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later) is from LaunchPad: click the Utilities icon, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Drag or copy – do not type – the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
sudo find / -xdev -type d -exec touch {} \;
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.
The command may take several minutes to run. When a line ending in a dollar sign ($) appears below what you entered, quit Terminal.
The next snapshot will take longer than usual, because all folders will be scanned for changes. When it’s complete, check the results to see how much data has been backed up.
This procedure will only affect the backups of your startup volume. If you back up other source volumes with Time Machine and are having the same problem with those, you’ll need to take additional steps.

HT3275 Time Machine backup not completed because "the backup disk image ....sparsebundle already in use"

Time Machine backup not completed because the "backup disk image"/Volumes/Data/MacBookAir.sparsebundle" is already in use. ??

Reboot the TC.. this is most common issue since Mountain Lion.
Look at the More Like This just on the right column.

Time machine backup keeps running, total rising

Hi all,
My Macbook Pro (late 11, osx 10.8.2, everything updated) has suddenly started having a roblem with time machine. I'm using an external harddisk (Western digital Passport, 500 Gb) to backup my 250 GB Internal SSD. It's been working fine for the 5 months I've had them both. Now it has suddenly developed a problem where the Time Machine backup looks like it will go on for an infinite amount of time:
When the backup starts, after teh "Preparing backup..." cycle, it starts off displaying a sensible amount of backup to run (e.g., "backing up 0 MB of 980 MB"). Then after hitting or getting close to that total, the target amount rises contantly to always be ahead of the backup amount, i.e., it will start:
backing up 1.2 GB of 1.7 GB
backing up 2.3 GB of 2.5 GB
backing up 4.6 GB of 4.8 GB
etc
The longest I've left this for is about 25 minutes and it has no signs of stopping. Is there a solution to this problem? I noticed some similar questions on the forum but from 2 years ago, and some links that were suggested as possible answers are now no longer working. Any help gratefully received!

I did find a solution which appears to be working, at least in my case. Here is what I discovered was happening on my Mac Pro:
On one of my internal hard drives, I had created 4 different folders, and those folders contained various sub-folders. Just for the sake of this discussion, We'll call them folders 1-4. When I checked Get Info on the HD as a whole, it told me 1.12 of 2.0 TB was used, which was accurate. When I checked folders 1-4, their totals all added up to 1.12 TB used. However, When I went into certain SUB-folders within folders 1-4, and added up their totals using the Get Info command, it did not equal the total HD space used when I checked the main folder as a whole.
In other words, if I had 3 sub-folders in the "Main" folder #2 - and folder #2, using Get Info, said it contained a total of 450 GB, when I add up the 3 sub-folders contained within folder #2, it would equal 750 GB.
These extra GB, located in only a couple of places on sub-folders of the HD, were confusing Time Machine. It would act as stated above... it would take the total of 1.12 TB for that drive, attempt to back it up, but when it reached that total, suddenly, OS X ML would realize there was more data in folder #2's sub-folder, and the numbers would continually rise until the external backup drive was full, thus creating an error on Time Machine's backup.
Now, I don't know why this happened. Apparently when I deleted certain files and emptied the trash, it didn't completely erase them. I've tried using "Secure Empty Trash," but with the large video files I use, the empty procedure freezes before it can finish. I cannot explain this phenomenon because I'm not well-versed on the inner-workings of OS X.
My solution was simple, albeit a pain. I went into the sub-folder, selected all the items inside (folders, documents, videos, audio, etc.) and moved them out of that sub-folder. Now, they are all floating freely in folder #2. Then, I deleted that sub-folder, emptied the trash, and then re-created that sub-folder with the same name. Finally, I moved all the items from that sub-folder back into the newly created one, and voila!!!! When I added up all the sub-folders totals via Get Info, they matched exactly what Get Info proclaimed for folder #2!
Again, don't know why this happened, but I was able to successfully back up everything, and have had no troubles in the week and a half since.
If any of this doesn't make sense, please feel free to ask questions. But this is how I solved the problem.

HT3275 Time Machine Backup Issue

My most recent Time Machine backup is listed as delayed with the following error message: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/... Capsu/iMac_.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)." Does anyone know about what this message is refering and/or how to fix the issue?

See Here > " . . . sparse bundle could not be accessed (error -1)"
From Here > http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine backups keep failing

My backups to external disk keep failing; it shows only 100 MB of available space. OK; Fine; so I tell it NOT to back up a number of extra folders; in an attempt to add extra space; but I can't change that 100 MB number, no matter what I do. Is there a fix. Should I repair the external disk?
thanks
Message was edited by: raspberryaddiction

Are you running Leopard or Snow Leopard? You've posted in the Snow Leopard forum, but your signature shows 10.5.3, and the handling is different.
If you're on Leopard, go to +Time Machine Preferences > Options+ and remove the check from the +Warn before old backups are deleted+ box, and try again. Time Machine will delete your oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones, if it can.
If it still fails, or you're actually on Snow Leopard, see #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine Backup Keeps Growing

I'm running Mountain Lion on a MBP and have been backing up to a Time Capsule for the past few months without a hitch.
For the past couple days, every time it tries to back up (projected at ~700mb) it continues to grow and grow, well past 10gb.
I've tried restarting the computer, verifying backups, and performing a full reset of Time Machine (http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html), all to no avail.
It also sees two "Data" Time Capsule discs, even though there's only one.
The Time Capsule itself is shared with another computer, so I'd really prefer to not have to format it if possible. Backups also work fine for the other computer using it.

The double disks is ML bug.. now that you are a beta tester.. you get these things.
Was the ML install clean or upgrade.. I think you can have issues with upgrade.
Keep reading Mr Pondini. D4 for instance.
Install the widget to figure out what it is doing.

Time machine backup keeps failing

I have a WD 2TB my book essential disk for about a year. I've kept it connect to my airport extreme. Starting a few days ago, the AE keeps dropping the connection to the disk -- rebooting solves the problem for a while. So I decided to connect the disk directly (via USB) to my macbook pro 13". In the past this has always worked. However, now when Time machine does it's backup it gets about 10% of the way through and then it quits giving the non-specific message:
Time machine error
The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.
I've run repair both on disk utility and drive genius 3 on the disk and both say that there is no problem. Any suggestions?

That's one Apple's more infuriating messages, but there's usually another phrase after "Time Machine Error."
Most likely, Time Machine is having a problem with a file, but they don't bother to tell you that.
See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will probably lead you to #C3.
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, what you've done, and the results.

HT3275 Time Machine backup error message: The backup disk image "/Volumes/Backup Files/Burke iMac.sparsebundle" is already in use.

I'm getting the following error message from my Time Machine for two days now:
"The backup disk image “/Volumes/Backup Files/Burke iMac.sparsebundle” is already in use."
I haven't changed anyting lately and can't find the problem...

Try just rebooting the TC.. or restart of the whole network, in correct order.. modem.. router/TC.. clients.
Read C12 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Look at the more like this on the right. it is a very common problem.. especially since ML we have this question 5 times every day.

HT3275 Time machine backup problem

When Time Capsule runs the regularly scheduled backup I get a message that reads "Time Machine could not complete the backup.
The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/myusername's iMac (3).sparsebundle” is already in use." If I click on the Time Capsule app it runs for awhile but doesn't connect and shows the message "The operation can’t be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -6584)." Last successful backup is shown as 9/25/13.
Any suggestions on how to restore the backup program so that it runs successfully?
Thanks,

You have two different errors there.
The already in use is the most common.. that just means the TC connection to the computer has broken down.. a simple reboot of the TC is enough usually to get things going.. but see C12 for more details.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
I would do a full network restart in correct order.. so with everything powered off.. turn on
Modem.. wait 2min
TC.. wait 2min (any other network clobber like switch or EOP adapters, in order they appear by connection)
Computers etc.
No luck you also have a possible backup corruption.. 6584 is a serious error.
Do a disk verify.. see A5.
If that passes but you still have problems the best solution is to wipe the TC via airport utility.. erase.. you only need a fast erase and do a fresh clean backup.

HT3275 time machine backup keeps increasing

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