Lion OS X Time Machine problem

I've updated my MBP to Lion last night, I have been unable to do a Time Machine backup ever since. I use a 1TB Seagate GoFlex, I've tried using both the USB3.0 cable and a FireWire800 cable.
I am not talking about getting past the "Preparing Backup..." phase, the backup process simply gets stuck at several kb. It doesn't seem that it will ever end.. It's getting kinda irritating. Pls help. Thanks!

I have the same drive (1.5 TB Seagate Freeagent GoFlex, with a 1TB Time Machine partition formatted properly GUID at top level, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) at the time machine level) and I have the same problem. It gets stuck on preparing backup for anywhere up to a half hour or hour before I cancel that, and earlier today when it got past that stage it would get stuck somewhere in the stages of transferring data, anywhere between a few hundred megabytes and tens of gigabytes (out of a total of 24 GB it's trying to transfer). The backup disk worked fine formatted the same way until I upgraded to Lion. I haven't found any information on google or elsewhere, but it seems it may be a problem specific to the GoFlex drive for some reason?

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Help, I am about to pull my hair out, can't get into a locked drive and Time Machine problem

I've screwed everything up, I think. I had Time Machine doing backups to an external 500Gig drive and somehow it got locked. I went into Get Info to try and change the access but it won't allow me. On top of this problem, my original drive died and I can't get into Time Machine to restore. When I click "Enter Time Machine", nothing happens. I created an eDisk and a startup disk to another external drive that I'm using now, but since everything that's been backed up is on the other drive that I can't access. When I try accessing the drive it gives: "The folder “G-DRIVE ” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents." I'm not knowledgeable enough to work from the command line, so if I need to do that to access the drive, please walk me though it. As for the Time Machine problem, I have no idea how to recover anything since it won't even come up, it just sits there. Outside of blowing my brains out, I don't know what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I can't afford to take it to Apple to let them try and fix it.

Hello, not sure how this might affect a TM drive, or not, but...
Here is what i needed to do for my drive "320GB HD", the last command is just for clean up
Open Terminal and type these commands carefully with the spaces & change 320GB HD to the name of your drive.
sudo chflags 0 "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chown root "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chmod 1775 "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo -k
That said, these should be sufficient to do the job:
sudo chflags 0 "/Volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chmod a+rx "/Volumes/320GB HD"

Time Machine problems

My question is this: Is there any way to force Time Machine to make a complete backup of all files, not just the recently changed ones?
My story so far:
Installed Leopard yesterday. Detected brand-new (and newly Mac formatted Extended Journaled) Seagate 300GB hard drive and asked if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. Answered yes. Thought I was through with worrying about Time Machine- wrong! First backups went OK- so I thought. First one took several hours and seemed to back up the whole drive. Subsequent ones were shorter, which seemed to make sense. After a couple backups had been performed, decided to see if I could "go back in time". The only window to show up was the original backup (which I never bothered to check to see if it truly was complete). This morning I was greeted with an error that it couldn't do the backup because it couldn't complete the library.
So I come to this forum and read posts advising me to reformat my drive and name it with no spaces (it was previously "Backup Disk"). I did that, erasing all previous backups. Seemed to help, but...
Now, unfortunately, Time Machine doesn't realize that the backups are not there anymore and will not do a complete backup with my completely empty external drive. I even tried removing the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file from its place in the directory to see if that would force the program to build a new library. It didn't.
Not even sure that making a complete backup again will solve all my Time Machine problems but it's a start!

I had this same problem when I first started using my Time Machine on my MBP. I had a portable drive (Western Digital 160 gig passport drive).
I was advised by the tech to do the following before the first use of the drive:
1. Turn off the time machine
1. format the drive with your disk utility.
3. configure the time machine for the drive.
4. Turn on the time machine. Make sure your not backing up anything but your main hard drive. (Your shouldn't back up any other external hard drives). At least not the first time you run Time machine.
5. start the backup.
The first backup is always the longest, but it shouldn't take that long, especially if your doing the Macbook Air.
Hope this helps.

Can i revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

can I revert to snow leopard from lion without a time machine backup?

You can with a Snow Leopard DVD, but if you don't have that or a Time Machine backup there's no way.

Mountain Lion Time Machine Problem

I have a 1.5 TB Firewire drive that has worked flawlessly with Lion. When I upgraded to ML, I reformatted it (I have a back up) and set it as my Time Machine Disk. My time machine backup starts, and several hours into it I get "back up delayed". I have made sure my computer is not set to shut down, reformatted the disk again, shut down and restarted, reformatted and renamed the volume, all to no avail.
The interesting thing is that the log below says 2.27 GB required, but the two drives I back up (my boot disk) and a disk with an external photo library are less than 1 tb.
I have looked up that error 19, but my back up drive is available and mounted, and if I hit manual back, it copies a few data too it, but then quits with the same "back up delayed" message.
Any ideas?
Starting automatic backup
Backup failed with error: 19
Starting automatic backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Odd Month/Backups.backupdb
Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD
Will copy (180.5 MB) from Macintosh HD
Using file event preflight for External FW Drive
Will copy (Zero KB) from External FW Drive
Found 357 files (180.5 MB) needing backup
3.06 GB required (including padding), 724.6 GB available
Copied 5658 files (256.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copied 5675 files (256.6 MB) from volume External FW Drive.
Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD
Will copy (Zero KB) from Macintosh HD
Found 16 files (Zero KB) needing backup
2.27 GB required (including padding), 725.81 GB available
Copied 564 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copied 572 files (93 bytes) from volume External FW Drive.
Created new backup: 2012-07-31-070343
Copying Lion Recovery set
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Thanks for any ideas!

jcabaleiro wrote:
Created new backup: 2012-07-31-070343
Backup completed successfully.
That backup did complete normally.
But it may be having a problem finding your drive on other occasions. Can you tell if there's any pattern when that happens, such as after your Mac has been sleeping?
A few folks have seen that, and turning off the Put the hard disk(s) to sleep . . . option in System Preferences > Energy Saver fixed it for a few of them.

Mountain Lion time machine problems.

Not long after updating to Mountain Lion, my time machine backups started failing. When attempting to backup, it is getting stuck at the "looking for backup disk..." phase and causing my computer to freeze.
To clarify, for at least a few days I had routinely completed a number of backups using time machine after the initial upgrade to Mountain Lion, so I don't think it is a problem with indexing a new backup etc.
Suggestions? Thanks.

Ha, yep, I've been poking around on pondini.org/TM but haven't yet found anything on being stuck at "looking for backup disk..."
Found a discussion of a similar problem when going from 10.6 to 10.7 here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13852.0. It sounds like after waiting 45 minutes or so the backup disk was finally found and the problem was resolved. I'm going to let it run for as long as possible and see what happens...

Mountain Lion creates Time Machine problem

Hello,
Since upgrading to Mountain Lion whenever Time Machine attempts to backup to my Time Capsule I get this error message:
"The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/(user)'s Mac Book Pro 2.sparsebundle” is already in use."
The Time Capsule firmware was updated a couple of weeks ago to supposedly make it ML compatible.
Anyone KNOW how to fix this or is it a bug?
James

You will not lose any of your backups. You just need to disconnect the drive and reconnect it.
Open time Machine preferences and click on Select Disk. Select the disk that you use as it should be listed at the top of the window. Click Remove Disk. this will remove the disk that you are currently set to use for backups, but leave all the data on the drive. You can then click on select disk again and select the volume that you want to send your backups to and it should then run correctly.

Migration Assistant and Time Machine Problems on Clean Install of OS Lion

I just completed a clean install of Mac OS X Lion. However, the Migration Assistant application does not detect my time machine backup on my external hard drive when I try to copy my files to my mac. Is there a way where I can transfer my files?

Are you sure its not shown? It should have a yellow or green icon, and list the name of the system and HD that was backed-up, not the one it's on.
If not, try to repair the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine problem after restoring to a new HD (after my original HD failed)

I am running Lion 10.7.5 on a MacBook Pro Late '11
My HD was getting SMART errors, so I did a complete back up using Time Machine using a WD My Passport 1TB external, and then sent my MBP to Apple for HD replacement (under my Applecare plan).
I collected it yesterday and restored my system using Time Machine (using the data from my external HD) and everything was restored perfectly, which was great,
However, I'm now encountering a problem after plugging my external HD back into my MBP on the new system. Rather than Time Machine doing a swift 'top up' back up, it appears that TM is attempting to do a full back up. (I have 300GB and it took nearly 24hours to backup on the faulty drive) Is this normal after installing a new HD? Bearing in mind the Time Machine data is still on my external drive?
It's also appearing to be taking FOREVER to do this entire back up again. It is stuck on 'preparing back up' and when I do get some movement, it's doing a couple of KB's at a time and with no genuine back up progress.
Fundamentally, I just want to just top up my Time Machine back up without having do a complete back up, again. (which doesn't actually seem possible, viable at the min)
Any help / support would be much appreciated

AFAIK, it'll do that since the HD has a different UUID and the old TM backup won't recognize it. See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

I just updated to Mountain Lion and now time machine won't recognize my backups from before the update.

I updated from Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.2 on my MacBook Pro
I used disk utility to restore my external hardrive because I read somewhere that that would fix the problem.
It did fix the problem but only temporarily. I was able to view my backups from Snow Leopard, but as soon as I tried to backup again, time machine was stuck
"preparing to backup" for 5 hours and when I quit the prepare I could no longer access my previous backups.

So what happens if you go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General? Are you able to go there at all? If you are able to go there, can you unlock the preferences using the lock in the lower left and your login name and password?
If you are able to do this, can you change the "Allow applications downloaded from:" to Anywhere?
Best of luck.

Time machine problems on clean-install, doesn't recognize old backups as such/permissions issues

My iMac had been pretty slow, and never received a clean install since I'd gotten it. With the security that I'd just restore whatever I wanted from Time Machine afterward, I used the recovery partition to format the hard drive and install Lion.
Everything's fast now! It's remarkably like it was when it was brand new with Tiger, which is pretty good for a nearly-six-year-old computer running today's OS. I'm having problems with the Time Machine part, though. Even after ensuring that my username is the same as it was before and making all the permissions my own in both Finder and with chmod, it throws me permissions errors when restoring some, but not all files, with no pattern about it. This isn't a big deal for restoration because I've just used sudo cp to put everything back where I wanted it, but now I have issues with backups. Even though TM sees my old backups and can restore the ones that don't give permissions errors, it still wants to take new backups of things I've manually restored, such as my iTunes folder of about 50GB. That's the big conflict now; I don't want to take up all that space for files that are already backed up. Can anyone offer a fix? Thanks!

coldcaption wrote:
Yes, the other drive was backed up before. If it was previously associated then perhaps something was messed up trying to re-associate.
As long as you pointed it to the backups of that disk, it should be fine. If not, or if in doubt, just run the command again.
It changes whether or not I have the previously-backed up external drive added to the things to back up (unless it's supposed to do delete the old ones in this case?),
I don't quite follow that. The Estimated size of full backup is just the total data on the drives that are included (unfortunately, there's no display of them), less any exclusions of files/folders on them.
Finally, though, the size of a backup if I were to take one right now would be 363 GB;
How do you know that? The only way to tell what Time Machine thinks is new or changed is to actually start a backup, and see what the display ("xxx GB of yyy GB") and/or log messages (". . . xxx MB/GB requested (including padding), yyy MB/GB available.") say. See #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for a handy widget to display the log messages.

MOUNTAIN LION, MBP RETINA : Time machine keeps saying to improve reliability, TM must create a new backup for you

Hello
I have a little network with 2 x Macpro, 1 x Macbook pro Retina, 1 x Mac Mini server and one DiskStation.
I have no problem to backup the two Macpro and the Macmini on the Diskstation
But I only have problem with my Macbook pro Retina.
I was told to start the 1st backup using Ethernet
After a few complemantary backup in WIFI I get the message :
I have done this MANY times
I have tried to repair the Backup file
THE PROBLEM IS ONLY WITH THE MACBOOK PRO RETINA IN MOUNTAIN LION
I had Apple support, answer : "no support because you are using a disk station" (I have used this diskstation since many years without ANY problem)
Looks like it is a WIFI problem !!!!
Thanks in advance for your help
Best
Cyril

Scott F wrote:
Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.
Yes. See #C13 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
My Time Machine drive is a 500GB drive connected to an Airport Extreme via USB.
I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See [Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Airport.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
You really should find a more reliable way to back up. See #2 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for your options.
I find this message confusing. Why must TM create a new backup?
As in the first link above, because they're damaged beyond Disk Utility's ability to repair them. Exactly what that is, we mere mortals don't know. It's only on network backups, and even folks using Time Capsules see this occasionally.

Time Machine problem - urgent

My time machine has stopped backing up every hour which it is programmed to do and comes up with the following message'
The backup disk image “/Volumes/Reginald Derek Bradley's T/Reginald Derek Bradley’s iMac.sparsebundle” is already in use.
Can any one help please.
Thanks
Derek
Mountain Lion

Thanks for your speedy reply. I do not have Airport utility on my system-at least I can't find it. Did download from yor recommended site but Mountain Lion won't install it. So what now and guess what I can't reply on my iMac - something gone wrong. s soon as I started to type a reply spotlight oped on my system - now how crazy is that! I,be even shut down the computer to no avail, so now two problems. sorry to burden you with this.
Derek

Lion downgrade using Time Machine

Anyone have a similar issue and might be able to shed some light?
I upgraded to Mountain Lion, started having screen freezing problems like some are reporting and am not able to use many functions because of it. So, I need to downgrade to Lion. I have a Lion install disk and a Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule drive. When I try to restore the last backup when I had Lion, the only options for a destination disk that come up are my externals, not my internal drive (where I need it). Disk Utility sees my internal drive and is able to do things like repair permissions. Any ideas? Right now, I can't go forward and can't go back.
Josh
Early 2008 iMac
4GB RAM

Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.

OS X Lion v10.7 Time machine won't do incremental backups.

Time machine under Snow Leopard used to do small incremental backups just fine. After upgrading to Lion though, every time I try to do a time machine backup, it attempts to perform a full backup (hundreds of gigabytes every time). Usually the first full backup completes fine but instead of doing subsequent small/incremental backups of the changed files, it starts over doing full backup but there isn't enough room on the backup drive for that so it fails.
I've found other people with the same issue here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1745345
And attempted several suggested fixes/tests but none of them work just as in that thread. Am I alone in this issue? Any suggestions?
I have a 10.7.1 install on a mid 2010 15" MBP with two drives (one SSD, one HDD, no optical). As I mentioned before, time machine worked beautifullly under 10.6.x backing up to external 1TB FW 800 -> SATA bridges.
Thanks,
M

I have the same problem only full backups all the time I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and on Snow Leopard I had no issues with Time Machine. So what I have done:
Formated the Time Machine Backup Disk (it's an USB-drive) - didn't help
I deleted all the Time Machine Settings (plists) - didn't help
Used Disk Utility to verify user rights and drive - didn't help
Used TechTool Pro 6 to verify the drive - didn't help
I still only get full backups. If I exclude the a catalogue/folder, the backup will be smaller, but it still takes a full backup of the items selected ...
My system is the same as before the upgrade - no new hardware and so on. This is really strange

Lion OS X Time Machine problem

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