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Question

Hi,
First, I have tried all the tips I could from the sticky tips etc from the top of this forum. No dice.
I am trying to start a time machine backup from fresh
- completely empty 1tb Lacie USB2 drive
- was used for time machine backups for 1-2 years previously
- was working until I had to swap out my 'new' 640gig WD drive (see other forums about why)
Now running a 500gb 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar. Everything is good except Time Machine wont backup.
I have checked the disk for faults, erased it several times, renamed it, repaired it with Disk Warrior, used a Lacie D2 500gb firewire drive.
I have also followed the tips of deleting the preferences, disabling Time Machine, turning off the disks, restarting, all in the correct order.
All result in the same error.
Time Machine Buddy reports
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/ericTimeMachine/Backups.backupdb
Backup content size: 371.1 GB excluded items size: 80.5 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 348.71 GB requested (including padding), 930.57 GB available
This backup started at 09:13 this morning, using the Lacie 1tb USB2 drive. In my time zone its now 18:42.
Any idea anyone, as I am having to resort to Carbon Copy Cloner, and whilst this is a great tool, I would rather Time Machine did it for me.
The USB drive is connected to the rear of my 24" cinema display, with the Macbook Pro plugged into that. To test the function of this drive I copied an 18gig folder to the disk and then deleted. All ok.
The firewire drive was directly connected to the MBP.
Cheers
Eric

Answer 1

firman wrote:
repaired it with Disk Warrior, used a Lacie D2 500gb firewire drive.
Did that show any errors?
Try it with the drive connected directly to your Mac -- no hubs, no daisy-chaining, etc.
Also try a combination of ports and cables -- a plug that works fine in one port may not make full contact in another.
But if you're getting exactly the same condition with both a USB drive and a F/W drive, and in both cases the drive was empty, formatted properly, and connected directly to your Mac, then there may be something corrupted in your installation of OSX.
If so, I'd suggest downloading and installing the "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_8_ComboUpdate (If you're not on 10.5.8, either use this to upgrade, or change the "8" to whatever's appropriate.) Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
But don't delete the update yet; if that doesn't help, your next step will be to do an "Archive and Install" of Leopard, followed by the "combo" again. See the *Archive & Install* section of the Glenn Carter - Restoring Your Entire System / Time Machine *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum, for instructions.