Initial Time Machine Back-Up

Hello,
I am backing up computer to a new seagate 500 GB external hard drive connected via USB.
As time machine begins back-up it displays a total of 40 GB to back-up. The back-up is going
incredibly slow. Is this normal ? After 4 hours it has completed 5 GB of the 40 GB total.
Any suggestions

there is usually nothing you can do to hurry TM up. but make sure that the TM drive is foirmatted ocrrectly. It should be formatted with GUID partition scheme if your mac is intel and APM if the mac is PPC.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018#5

Similar Messages

Attempting to do an initial Time Machine back

Attempting to do an initial Time Machine back up on my wifes IMac. Approximately 190GB of data. The external HD is 500Gb cpacity. The first 70Gb goes pretty well, by the time it gets in to the 90Gb range it is only going at about 2Gb per hour and continues to go even slower. I never get an error message it seems to just to get continually slower. Its been running for 36 hrs and still at about 102Gb. Help

You may want to try on a different hard drive if possible. I was having similar issues with a LaCie drive where backups would take upwards of 24 hours each (for 4 GB of data!). I opened the casing and put the internal drive into a new casing and backups then took about 10 minutes. All of the advice I found about slow Time Machine backups never helped me. It wasn't even a problem with the drive itself. Something about the hardware was not working properly.
I still only use LaCie drives and recommend them highly, but that one casing had some problems that were impossible to see until I cracked it open and used something else.

Initial Time Machine Backup Stuck on "Indexing Backup"

I have Mac Mini running 10.7.2. I just got an external hard drive and am trying to run an initial back up using Time Machine. I am running my computer in Safe Mode as it won't start in regular mode. I formatted the HD and began to run Time Machine back up. HD is connected via USB 2.0 wire.
It has now been 12 hours and is still on Indexing Backup... Is this normal for initial back up? I know it takes a long time for initial but this doesn't seem right.What do I do to correct if it isn't correct? Should I stop and try again?

Thank you very much. With your info I gave up on the back up and ran Disk and Permission Repair for the 3rd or 4th time and crossed my fingers and restarted my machine and it WORKED! I ran time Machine back up and when I woke up this morning it was all done! Yeahhhh!
I wasn't sure what was causing it not to start in regular mode and as I'm not too much of a techie I was scared that I was teetetering on the brink of losing everything. The machine would run so I didn't think it was a hard drive issue, but not knowing for sure I was concerned and after losing everythign once before years ago, I was worried. I have it backed up on line but wanted a 2nd (local) version that wouldn't entail tying up bandwidth for days. In the end it worked out!
But the short answer is, Time Machine Backup does NOT work in Safe Mode...

Will Time Machine back up iTunes media on a different internal drive

I have my iTunes media on a different internal drive.
Will Time machine back up that data as well?
I have two other internal drives, each 750gb.
Does Time Machine back those drives up as well? Or does it contain itself to the OS disk?

Stephen,
Amazingly, Time Machine will do this by default!! In fact, Time Machine will back up every volume that is present at the time of the initial backup, unless told to do otherwise. I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on a secondary partition of my MBP's hard drive, and Time Machine backed that up automatically.
Your backup will be contained in a "Backups.backupdb" folder on whatever external volume you choose to use for Time Machine. Within this folder, you will find other folders named for the various volumes that are being backed up. As far as I know, there is no limit to how many can be kept.
Scott

Time Machine back up to MyBook (2TB).

When Time Machine backs up to WD MyBook (2TB), it transfers 100GB of my iMac HD (500GB capacity) each time. Consequently, MyBook is full. How do I get Time Machine to only add changes/alterations to the next backup?

Thanks again rkaufmann. I have successfully deleted all files from MyBook. Unfortunately, I now have a large number of large files in my Trash that I am having trouble deleting. However, my initial problem is resolved. I will try to find a way of getting TM to only apply updates to existing files on MB.
Regards ........ LM

Trying to restore Time Machine back-up from WD MyBookLive - whats the Password?!

Hi all,
my son has a Macbook Pro running Lion. Yesterday it hung when downloading the 10.7.3 update and wouldn't reboot properly.
We logged in via safe mode and managed to sort this out, however I was initially looking at doing a restore from his time machine back-up. I had booted the recovery partition and chosen the 'restore from a time machine back-up' - then it had prompted me for a username and password to gain access to the back-up...
When I set up the Time Machine Back-ups I always have selected (as recommended by Apple and Western Digital) the Guest user. Therefore I have no idea what the username or password should be??? I've hunted on the web for any kind of answer however theres no certain answer...
I'm hoping someone out there will know what username and password it is expecting? Is this from Time Machine, or a default username/password set by the Western Digital NAS???
I hope someone can help - my time machine backs up both my own, my wifes and my sons macbooks, its all very well having the back-ups but not worth it if I can never get access to them when I need to!
thanks in advance

I think you are not restoring your files in the correct way.
If what you want to do is to restore a complete Time Machine backup, you have to do it in OS X Recovery, so first hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up. Then, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow its steps.
If you want to restore individual files, you cannot restore that type of user files because you are using them. Instead, you can restore individual files in your user folders. Read > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Time Machine Backing up too much data (fixed, I think)

About a month ago, I upgraded my Mac Pro from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and in so doing hooked up new external drive for TM backups.
First backup was large, bit slow, and expected.
All backups after that were fairly slow, which I took initially to be partially related to doing recent OS upgrade.
Within last week or so, I started to notice that my backups seemed to be much larger than expected. I went down about 350 GB on the backup drive in a matter 2 to 3 weeks, while adding at most 10 GB of data in that time.
Well today, I discovered the issue via the (freel) app Time Tracker, which showed 10+ GB of data for each backup was coming from TechTool Protection (in Application Support). I went into TM and did a 'delete all' for this backup, and it restored a good 350 GB back to my TM drive.
As I typed this, I initiated a TM backup, that is now 10 MB, which seems normal and expected.
I still feel like a relative novice when it comes to the fine details of using TM, but glad I found this solution.
Definitely have to give shout out to Pondini for pointing me to Time Tracker and for the umpteen other tips I've received from reading the Pondini.org site.
As I marked this as a question, I would say there are 2 items for me that are still outstanding:
1 - the backup of 10 MB is slow - still showing under 100 KB. As I'm used to this from last few weeks, not a big deal, but I'm up for any pointers from anyone who thinks this can be fixed or ought to be fixed.
2 - I'm still curious about exclusions, especially within a 10.6 OS environment. I've excluded items that make sense, either cause I have them backed up elsewhere (i.e. iTunes Library) or because I didn't see the need (i.e. Apple Loops in Library/Audio folder). The ones that perhaps make less sense to exclude, but I'm currently not backing up are:
- Applications folder (did initial TM backup and then excluded)
- DropBox folder
- Library/Caches
- Library/Mail Downloads
- Public folder and Users/Shared folder
If you feel these ought to be included, let me know. And if you feel there is anything else to exclude, I'm up for hearing that.
Thanks.

incidently it seems that time machine backs up everything the first time and only uses the exclusion list on subsequent times

Verifying a time machine back up package?

Hi
I need to do a clean install on my macbook. I have started a time machine back up of 200Gb or so, the backup was progressing over several hours but i can't confirm that it was completed. When i came back to the MacBook the message "this computer must be restarted due to a serious problem, etc, etc" was displayed.
Is there a way of verifying that the time machine back up is not corrupted? Time Machine is backing up now - a backup package of changes of 85GB size.
It seems to suggest that the first large backup was successful, or is it unwise to make that assumption?
the initial 200Gb backup took all night - approx 12 hrs. Can i verify the package?
many thanks for your advice
Nick

hi again, an update
the second, or perhaps more correctly, second half of the first back up completed with this log:
Starting standard backup+
+Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb+
+No pre-backup thinning needed: 95.18 GB requested (including padding), 108.57 GB available+
+Waiting for index to be ready (100)+
+Waiting for index to be ready (100)+
+Waiting for index to be ready (100)+
+Waiting for index to be ready (100)+
+Waiting for index to be ready (100)+
+Copied 28.6 GB of 78.8 GB, 20748 of 790814 items+
+Copied 38.9 GB of 78.8 GB, 22274 of 790814 items+
+Copied 43.6 GB of 78.8 GB, 22276 of 790814 items+
+Copied 58.6 GB of 78.8 GB, 22276 of 790814 items+
+Copied 71.5 GB of 78.8 GB, 22276 of 790814 items+
+Copied 22631 files (73.2 GB) from volume MacBook.+
+Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: MacBook+
+Starting post-backup thinning+
+No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist+
+Backup completed successfully.+
it seems that there were issues but no hanging or problems. the transfer rate appeared to accelerate and it finished with approx 6Gb remaining on the clock but the log appears to reflect this - the size appeared to be miscalculated.
I've forced a second backup through time machine, not waiting for the hourly schedule and it wants to do a deep traverse, perhaps due to the misreported size of the initial( incomplete) back up. Although, as i write this expecting a lengthy deep traversal it appears to have completed that in minutes. I have now selected a 3rd off-schedule backup and nothing happening much ie v quick check, so it would appear time machine is up to date.
I'm hoping all is normal. I'm now going to verify the disk.....done in only 2 or 3 minutesand log as follows:
+2010-11-02 19:36:41 +0000: Verify and Repair volume “Time Machine”+
+2010-11-02 19:36:41 +0000: Starting repair tool:+
+2010-11-02 19:36:42 +0000: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.+
+2010-11-02 19:36:42 +0000: Checking extents overflow file.+
+2010-11-02 19:36:43 +0000: Checking catalog file.+
+2010-11-02 19:37:09 +0000: Checking multi-linked files.+
+2010-11-02 19:37:12 +0000: Checking catalog hierarchy.+
+2010-11-02 19:38:03 +0000: Checking extended attributes file.+
+2010-11-02 19:38:33 +0000: Checking multi-linked directories.+
+2010-11-02 19:40:32 +0000: Checking volume bitmap.+
+2010-11-02 19:40:32 +0000: Checking volume information.+
+2010-11-02 19:40:32 +0000: The volume Time Machine appears to be OK.+
+2010-11-02 19:40:33 +0000: Volume repair complete.2010-11-02 19:40:33 +0000: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.2010-11-02 19:40:33 +0000: Repair tool completed:+
+2010-11-02 19:40:33 0000:
+2010-11-02 19:40:34 0000:
Having completed your advice i forced a back up (selecte 'back up now') andafter a quick check there was approx 50Mb of data to complete. So all would appear operating normally in time machine.
Now the acid question, can i trust this backup for a restore (as per the advice on top tips etc) as i'm about to run a clean install to my MacBook, the reason why i came here.
Many thanks for your help pondini, any more tips appreciated.
regards
Nick

Brand new Mac, had to erase drive through disk utility as time machine back up failed. Now disk utility only has the option to install Mountain Lion which my Mac won't allow. Anyone any ideas as my Mac won't load anything up but disc utility!

Brand new Mac, had to erase drive through disk utility as time machine back up failed on initial setup, USB cable popped out Now can only access disk utility as won't load to log in screen. The only has the option in disc utility is to re-install Mountain Lion which my Mac won't allow or loading another time machine back up but after an hour of it processing, that didn't resolve the issue either! The time machine back up is the latest back up of my Mac Book Pro which was using OS X Maverix. I'm guessing I'm going to have to take my Mac to the store but that would be a hassle so does anyone have any ideas?

Follow this guide using another Mac.
Insert your newly created Mavericks USB into you Mac, press the power button and then hold down 'option,' until it gives you an option to boot from the USB. You will then be able to erase the internal disk with Disk Utility and reinstall Mavericks straight after.
After that you should be able to use Migration Assistant to restore your applications and user data.

Restoring from a Time Machine back up: iMac can't find them

A series of set backs after initially attempting to update Pages to be consistant and usable across my devices. iMac required me to update to Mavericks to be able to download the latest Pages update. After doing this, my iMac failed to reboot - just stuck on the white apple screen. This happened again next tie I attempted a Mavericks installation. So, I tried to restore from a Time Machine back up. After restarting in recovery mode I selected Restore from Time Machine back up - message reads "Searching for Time Machine back ups" (and hard drive is plugged in and switched on) but nothing is found.
How to enable the connection to the TM back up?
How to install Mavericks in this situ?
Thanks!

It may be that you can't do a full-system restore because system files were inadvertently excluded from your backups. But it could also be that the backups aren't usable at all. Since you don't know and can't check at the moment, you should assume the worst.
If you want to preserve the data on the startup drive, and it's not already backed up, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Start up from the Recovery partition, from Internet Recovery, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
2. If Method 1 fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
3. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
4. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

Snow Leopard OS will not "see" older Leopard Time Machine back-ups

I upgraded to OSX Snow Leopard from Leopard using a new hard drive (I wanted a bigger drive so it was actually a fresh install rather than an upgrade). OSX SL could see Time Machine back-ups from the Leopard system initially (before performing an OSX SL back-up). Now that the OSX TL back-up is completed, the previous Leopard back-ups cannot be seen by Time Machine. Any ideas on how/if I can get it to see them (as I could before I did a full back-up)?
I can see them on the drive, but just can't get to them via Time Machine.
Thanks!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Yes, Time Machine normally only shows you the backups for the Mac you're on.
You need the +*Browse . . .+* option. See #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

HT204057 Time Machine back up via ethernet on airport extreme

Forgive me if this is answered elsewhere, i just can seem to find the exact answer.
Can i plug an external hard drive into my airport extreme (4th/5th Gen) with ethernet and carry out Time machine back ups wirelessly? I've tried with USB connection to it and it takes far too long - overnight and its still not finished. also i'd like to be able to transfer / store independent files on the hard drive in addition to the back ups, via wireless?
the other option is via USB 3 directly into my rMBP to do the initial back up and then plug this into the AP extreme, will it do top-up back ups from here which i guess will only be things i've changed since the last back up - will this work and if so which option would be best.
Truly i'd love to buy a new time capsule but after upgrading to my rMBP, i'm low on funds for a while..
thanks,

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?
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. Count me in the "no success" category.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5924?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Discrepancies / limitations on how Time Machine backs up?

I have a Macbook Pro and a Macbook with Snowleopard 10.6.8 installed on both. I back up both laptops on a single Western Digital External Hardrive configured for two partitions so that each laptop has their own Time Machine back up volume. This external drive is connected directly to my Macbook Pro via Firewire 800 where the first partition is reserved for its time machine back up. Therefore, my regular Macbook connects to the second partition over the local area network since I turned on file sharing for this drive.
When I click and view the Macbook Pro's partition, it shows a folder called Backups.backupdb which obviously has the time machine backup contents for this laptop.
When I click on and view the second partition for my regular Macbook which connects to it via the local area network, it shows some kind of dmg file called "John's Macbook.sparsebundle". When I click on the file, it mounts and shows the folder Backup.backupdb which has this laptop's time machine backup contents.
1. Why is the Macbook pro partition showing a folder where the Macbook partition shows some kind of dmg file?
I also noticed that I can't see the time machine backup for the Macbook if I try restoring from a fresh install of Snowleopard (going through the initial setup of using the OS where it asks if you want to restore from a time machine backup). It only shows the Macbook Pro as an availble restore option.
The only way I can see the time machine back up as a restore option for the Macbook, I have to boot from the snowleopard DVD, click on Utilities from the top menu, and click on Restore System from backup.
I'm confused on why the back ups are a little different and why I can't see the Macbook TM backup if restoring from a fresh install of Snowleopard.
I appreciate it if anyone can shed any light on my set up.

Sorry, I do not know how to restore from a networked Time Machine backup. I'm sure there is a way, I've just never had to do it.
Just wondering if you boot into Snow Leopard, then with hard drive attached to the Mac, double click on the .sparsebundle. That should mount the Time Machine backup as a file system. Then maybe try running pointing Time Machine at the now mounted image and enter Time Machine.
I guess you could also keep the disk on the other Mac, and network mount the disk, then again double click on the .sparsebundle and point Time Machine that the now mounted Time Machine backup, then enter the Time Machine utility and restore the files you want.
Again, this is just speculation as I have not done a restore.
Anytime I'm changing my boot disk, I generally use SuperDuper (or Carbon Copy Cloner) to copy the original drive to the new drive. That way I do not need to do a restore from Time Machine.

Time machine back-up issue in Mavericks

Hello,
I have a query about Time machine back up to an external drive.
Initially, I installed Mavericks and was using the back up disc and everything was running fine.
Then, I had to clean install Mavericks as I had to submit my MBP to repair at Apple store.
Following the return of the machine, I migrated the backup data to my MBP.
Since then, I ran a back up and then it took 3-4 hours where the Time Machine cleaned the old backup. and I presume that it deleted the old back up removing approx 188 GB or the partition of 350 GB. And then, I got a notification that the back up failed, and the message states that it requires minimum of 200 GB and asks me to get a drive with larger capacity.
So I am not sure what to do now. Should I just erase the back up partition? I think it is not advisable.
Please suggest a solution.
I am also confused about the larger size of the back up which requires larger drive for Time machine backup. Is that because of Mavericks?
Thanks,

Time Machine needs to perform a complete system backup after upgrading to Mavericks. Before you erase your Time Machine backup do the following.
Turn off Time Machine in Time Machine's Preferences. Eject and disconnect the backup disk, if it is locally connected (not a Time Capsule).
Select the following line (triple-click to select the entire line), then control-click, and from the contextual menu that appears, select Services > Reveal in Finder:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
Drag the selected file directly to the Trash. You will need to authenticate.
This procedure will not delete your existing backups any differently than Time Machine would normally perform that task.
Reconnect your backup device, then from Time Machine's Preferences, turn on Time Machine, select your backup device, then select Back Up Now from the Time Machine icon. TM will remain in "Preparing Backup..." for a long time. When it eventually begins backing up, you may notice that the "backing up xxx of yyy" numbers will appear to change unpredictably. That's normal, and TM activity will return to normal after the initial backup of the Mavericks installation.

Problems Copying Time Machine Back-Up to New Hard Disk

I tried copying my old time machine back-ups from a 500 GB WD HDD to a new Seagate 1TB. Followed the instructions from "Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive". Although terribly slow it seemed to work all well initially. Had it run over night, then discovered the next morning the process was apparently hanging.
Thinking that maybe the energy saver options were the cause of the problem, I unchecked "put hard disk to sleep when possible". So went through the same painful process. Cannot believe that after about 7 h of transfering the whole thing is stuck again:
More than 2 million items were apparently copied, now nothing is happening at all... (neither GB nor minutes changing anymore)
1) Is this a common problem? More importantly: how can it be solved?
2) Is there another way to transfer time machine back-ups to another hard disk?
Thanks!

This is getting (more) annoying: turned out that something went wrong with the 500 GB HDD with the original time machine back-up. Managed to repair it in the 3rd attempt with disk utility. Heard of SuperDuper and thought I'd give it a try.
Cloning the back-up disk to the new 1 TB HDD seemed to work well, but I am a bit surprised with the result:
It seems time machine recognizes now the 1 TB Seagate HDD as a 500 GB (the size of the original WD) only?

Initial Time Machine Back-Up

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