I have a brand new external hard drive (the Lacie Porsche p9230.) Why do all my attempts to do a time machine backup stall? (usually immediately)

I have a brand new 3T external hard drive (the Lacie Porsche p9230.) I manually backed up several big files from my computer ok, but all attempts to do a time machine backup just stall, usually after only a few K are backed up. hours go by, no progress.
The first time, it did 3 gigs in just a couple minutes, it then got to about 9 gigs, then nothing for 2 hours. all subsequent attempts have done merely a few k, or megabytes, then all just stopped, still appearing as if they are proceeding, but with no results over a long time.
It could indeed be the hard drive on my computer itself, but aside from this the computer functions normally, though slow (it's old, 2009.)
As stated. I WAS able to manually back up a folder exceeding 250 gigs in size, and then another of about 14 gigs.
So, why can I nt do a time machine backup, effectively?

All is not lost yet. Lets take it from the begining. By default, the OS is set to mount and drive plugged in. And for the most part it does work. If you haven't already done so, pop open the external case and make sure all of your cables are well seated.
Next
Plug in the drive.
Fire up Disk Utility
In the window pane on the left-hand side, select the drive (selection with the size information of the drive ie - 232.9GB WDC WD2500. . . .)
Click on volume format and make sure Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is selected
Click on the Erase button
After a couple of minutes is should be done and mounted on the desktop
You can also use Apple System Profiler as a troubleshooting tool. Fire it up and select Firewire from the selections. This will bring up a list of all of the devices it can discover and talk to. If your drive is there and working, it should come up with the drive information such as size, manufactor, etc.

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Hi All,
So I had an email from Apple stating my hard drive might be faulty and they will replace it free of charge. So, I went out and purchased a brand new external hard drive to use as my time machine back up.
I formatted my hard drive to use only as a time machine backup. Half way thorugh my first backup, something interuppted it and it didn't finish the backup.
So, I've tried many times since to back up my machine and everytime i get this message............
[IMG]http://i922.photobucket.com/albums/ad67/Deano1903/Backup.png[/IMG]
I am using OS - Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Hello:
It is not helpful to you, but I have never seen anything like that before.
Did you install any Seagate software when you got your new drive?
Did you buy the "Seagate plus for Mac OS?"
Since I do not have a Seagate drive, I think it would be best if you went to the Seagate web site (http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/) and have them shoot the problem. If that does not help, come back and I will try to guess my way through the problem.
Barry

Time Machine incomplete backup on new External Hard Drive

I have a LaCie 2TB firewire external hard drive I bought 2 years ago. I made 3 partitions, one called "Time Machine" for TM backups of my iMac HD, one called "Video" for video files, and one called "HD2" that I used to install new programs and store edited photos and img files. I ran TM onto this HD for the last 2 yrs with no problems. I recently decided that I needed to have a backup of my iMac HD --- AND the 2 partitions (Video and HD2) on my LaCie. So I bought a Seagate 2TB external USB HD that I planned to use ONLY for Time Machine.
So I hooked it up and formatted it (no partitions), then went to TM options and selected the new Seagate Hard Drive to backup to, and in the options I excluded the Seagate (by default) and the Time Machine partition on my LaCie. Nothing else was excluded. In other words, I wanted to backup my entire iMac HD, and my Lacie Video and HD2 partitions.
My internal iMac HD has 116 GB used, my Lacie Video partition has 355 GB used, and my Lacie HD2 partition has 175 GB used. So I was expecting the Seagate to backup 646 GB.
When my Time Machine backup started at 1 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed "Backing up 1 GB of 646 GB." When I woke up at 8 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed
"Backing up 536 GB of 646 GB."
But it stayed stuck on 536 GB until 12 Noon, then started slowly working again. By 7 PM, the status showed "Backing up 623 GB of 646 GB." Then at 8 PM, the status box disappeared and it seemed like everything was backed up. But my Seagate HD shows only 629 GB of used space. So I decided to check the backup in Finder to see what went wrong.
In the Seagate backups folder, I have three folders - one named "Macintosh HD" which shows 112 GB on disk, one named "Video" with 341 GB on disk, and one named "HD2" with 175 GB on disk.
So it appears that my iMac HD was only backed up 112 GB out of 116GB, my Video partition was only backed up 341 GB out of 355 GB, but my HD2 partition backed up the entire 175 GB out of 175 GB.
So my question is - is this normal, or is my backup really missing 4 GB of files from my iMac hard drive and 14 GB of files from my video partition? I started to look at them file by file to see if they matched, but there are so many files, so I thought I would ask in case any of you might have heard of this before. If your answer is that my backups are corrupt or incomplete, should I reformat the Seagate and start over?
Also, is it safe for me to manually delete all the files in my time Machine partition on my LaCie hard drive, since I won't be using that anymore for Time Machine backups? Or is there a process I must follow to delete those older backups?
Thanks for reading this far and for any advice you can shoot my way.

Thank you for your well thought out response. It was really helpful by showing me where to look at things more closely.
Time Machine automatically excludes some things that aren't necessary for a restore, such as system work files, most caches and logs, and trash.
This is good to know. Although I didn't have anything in the trash, I have no idea how much is in the various caches and logs. I'd be surprised if they totaled 4GB, though. I'm still worried about this backup, as explained below after doing a Console log check.
If any files were open, they may not have been backed-up (a partial file wouldn't be of much use). I don't know of any special exclusions for video files or apps, but there may be some. You might want to try the Terminal command in the yellow box of #11.
I didn't have anything else running except TM, so no files were open. I checked the exclusions in the yellow box #11, the Terminal Command, and /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.pl ist, but nothing seemed to point to the video files I have saved. So I'm still at a loss with this part of the backup.
You might want to look at the log of that backup
I looked at the log - thank you for the link on how to see it - but the entries show that the size of the backup was even less than I thought - It seems I am actually missing 0.2 GB from the HD2 partition, 6 GB from the iMac HD, and 14.4 GB from the Video partition. And since it shows the exclusion amounts, I'm really at a loss for the iMac HD now. Here's what the Console listed for this backup:
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 174.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume HD2
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 355.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume Video
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 116.3 GB excluded items size: 30.5 MB for volume Macintosh HD
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 776.02 GB requested (including padding), 1.82 TB available
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Waiting for index to be ready (909 > 0)
Aug 29 02:37:30 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 3275 files (174.5 GB) from volume HD2.
Aug 29 05:49:40 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 5412 files (515.9 GB) from volume Video.
Aug 29 19:18:46 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 146976 files (626.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Is it possible to see how many files are in each drive that I was backing up? If I could match the file count, it might give me a better idea. I used Finder, but it only gives me the GB Capacity, Used and Free. For example, if I could see if the LaCie Video partition has exactly 5412 files (or 2137, if the file count above is a running total), I will believe that all the files backed up but may have been truncated. If the partition shows more than 5412 files, then I'll know that not all files were backed up. So at least I can start looking manually.
It will be much faster and easier to erase the partition with Disk Utility.
Thank you for this advice. This should save lots of time. I won't erase my other partitions when I do this, right? Also, will it leave a blank partition there so I regain my space?
I'm really bummed out by this backup. I haven't used my iMac for anything except Safari since this happened, because I do not want to start working again until I know that I have a safe backup, and I don't want to make any new files until I can resolve this. I thought of just reformatting the Seagate and starting over, but I have a feeling it may do the same thing. So at this point, I don't know if the Seagate is faulty, if the TM is not working properly, if I am making a dumb user error, or if this is perfectly normal. The worst thing that could happen is that my iMac HD or Lacie HD fails and I try to restore from my Seagate TM backup, only to find out that my TM backup is incomplete or corrupt.
So I really do appreciate your help and any additional insight you or anyone else might have. Thanks.

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Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
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Added:
Removed:
Changed:
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I have a brand new external hard drive (the Lacie Porsche p9230.) Why do all my attempts to do a time machine backup stall? (usually immediately)

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