OS X Lion non responsive when Time Machine kicks in

Say, has anyone noticed any issues with Lion, where the OS seems to freeze (with Spinning Beach Ball), for anything up to 30 secs or more?
I've found, that when I've got iTunes going, and Time Machine kicks in to back up, I'll get this "freeze", and the audio stops. Or, if I quit a program, I'll get the beach ball and no response for ages, before the program finally quits.
Never happened in 10.6.x

Oh, come on! Seriously? This is NOT NORMAL. I've been a Mac user for several years, and I product a podcast at http://HelpIGotAMac.com with ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY NINE episodes devoted to answering people's questions about the Mac.
Dude, I've had Time Machine backign things up since they came out with Time Machine. Until a few days ago, Time Machine had NEVER ONCE stopped the playback of my music in iTunes, gave me a spiinnng Beach Ball and kept me from performing ANY OTHER TASK AT ALL on my Mac.
This IS NOT NORMAL!!!!!!!

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What to do when time machine seems stuck on "Preparing Backup"

This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos. This means that the only backup will be for the system, profiles, and the app. I have been running this for a few months andhas been doing OK until up to now.
My problem is that my time machine seems to get stuck on "Preparing Backup". The latest backup was done last Nov 8, 2011, whcih is about 11 days from now. I am also aware that the time machine drive has only about 200 mb space left, but I am not worried at all because I've always TM to delete the oldest backup to free up space. My oldest backup was still Sept 8, and I'm ok if that will be deleted.
So I'd like to find out why it still stuck on "Preparing backup" ,and I am wondering if deleting a backup can solve it. Can it? what do I do to solve this?
Also, I use my computer alot , so it is basically running for about 18 hours a day, but still time machine didn't quite work well. I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.

Comments inline below.
Pondini wrote:
joshua raphael wrote:
This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos.
You may want to revisit that strategy:
A backup on the same drive isn't very secure -- when (not if) the HD fails, you risk losing everything.
In most cases, if there's a problem with OSX the best way to fix it is to just install a fresh version. But you can't do that from that backup.
Indeed!
Backing-up apps that way will also be useless in some cases. 3rd-party apps that came with their own installers put other files in other places (and sometimes "helper" apps as well). Unless you know what and where they all are, and restore them, too, the restored app won't work properly, if at all.
I think you're confusing each other with terminology. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are NOT "Libraries", which has a specific meaning when it comes to OS X. "Libraries", in OS X normally refers to /Libraries and ~/Libraries folders. This is not where iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored within ~/Music and ~/Pictures, respectively.
I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.
Disk Utility changed a bit in Lion. When you select an entire disk, it only repairs the partition map, not all the volumes. You must repair each one separately.
Wow, good to know. (What a stupid change to make, for backwards compatibility, if for no other reason!)
See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to figure out why the backups are hanging.
Whew. This editor makes it so hard to make comments inline. The key thing when time machine seems stuck is patience. Sometimes it needs to be left to run overnight. Unfortunately, it doesn't log or report it's progress very well.
Opening Time Machine settings in Preferences plus a command like this left running in Terminal.app is how I monitor progress. And even so, there is very little logging indicating progress.
sudo tail -f /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/My\ Computer/2012-07-11-133352.inProgress/.Backup.363731632.496216.log
The parts in italics will need to be adjusted. Tab completion makes this easy, e.g type
sudo tail -f /Volumes/
and hit tab, type the first few letters of the relevant volume name, hit tab...
Also, I have a hypothesis which needs testing.
I know that Time Machine gets confused if one deletes large files from a backup - specifically, Time Machine doesn't recognize that the size of the backup has changed.
I know because this made restoring a thinned out time machine backup ("thinned out" by deleting files from within the GUI while inside the Time Machine) to a small SSD harder than it should have been. I had to restore to a big disk and then clone that volume to the SSD - even though the SSD had enough space, Time Machine didn't think so; it didn't "understand" that it had been thinned.
My hypothesis is that Time Machine also gets confused if the Time Machine partition is resized. I shrunk a Time Machine partition (no it wasn't on my main disk!) and about that time, Time Machine stopped working. After thinning the volume, it started working again.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive. Help

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

Wifi issue - Sleep/resume when Time Machine is active results in lost connection

I was having issues with wifi connectivity to my Time Capsule since upgrading to Lion. I've narrowed down the scenario to having my Macbook go to sleep when Time Machine is backing up. When I later resume, my wifi connection is dead and I have to disable/reenable to connect to the Time Capsule.
Running early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" with OS X Lion.

I am having the same problem.
The only short term fix I have found is to Force Quit Finder (press Alt + Cmd + Esc, or go to menu bar Apple Logo -> Force Quit then select Finder and click Force Quit). Finder then quickly restarts and I am able to reconnect to my WiFi.
I was hoping the latest update, OS X 10.7.1, would have resolved this but unfortuately it has not. I hope Apple can resolve this issue quickly.
Dan
p.s. I can't confirm that this problem only occurs when my mac goes to sleep during a Time Machine back up, simply becuase I have not checked for this. I will try and check and report back.

When Time Machine is backing up files, I can't work on other apps

When Time Machine backs up files, I am not able to work on other apps such as Safari. I try to cancel the back up but nothing happens. Then the rainbow-colored wheel appears and I can’t do anything. I have turn off the computer and the external hard drive, restart both and log in. After this happens, I see that Time Machine is no longer backing up anything and I am able to continue work on Safari. What is happening? Should I quit Safari before Time Machine starts backing up files? Please help. Thanks.

to ssis6:
I guess this is something that happens once in a while because Time Machine is backing up files now and I am able to work on Apple Discussions and reply to your post. I just wonder if in addition to your explanation, there is any other explanation as to why what I described happens. Thanks for your help.

When using Time Machine, if I delete items from my computer, will they still be backed up to access later on my external hard drive? In other words, when time machine backs up again, will it delete the files from the back up?

When using Time Machine, if I delete items from my computer, will they still be backed up to access later on my external hard drive?
In other words, when time machine backs up again, will it delete the files from the back up that I have deleted from my computer?

No, I do not believe so. Time Machine would keep all those now-deleted files in previous backups, and as time goes by those backups might be deleted if you needed room, but it would still keep one backup from each day in last month, as well as one from each week forever, as long as you don't start running out of room, then just the oldest would be deleted to make room if needed.
I use a backup drive about double the size of my drive to be backed up, so I would guess it will never get to the point where deleted files being replaced by new ones being backed fill up that drive to the point where backups actually have to get deleted.

How Can I Speed Up My MacBook When Time Machine is running on Time Capsule

My Macbook starts to run really slow and I consistenly get the color wheel when trying to do other tasks when Time Machine is running in the background. I am connected to Time Machine on a Time Capsule. Given this runs every hour its really annoying.

Plus to pondini..
If possible you can use ethernet.. that speeds things up greatly.
If you are close to the TC make sure it is connecting via the 5ghz wireless.. Check the actual wireless link speed. And transfer rates.. if rates are too slow.. then look at relocating the wireless or putting in some sort of wireless extender.
I guess the other question is what is slow.. the disk on the computer, internet, just overall feel of the computer.. perhaps give a specific.. what is slow.

When Time Machine deletes old backups......

My Time Machine disk is about to be full. I realize that when the disk becomes full, Time Machine will delete old backups.
I am not clear, however, exactly what this means.
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
I suspect it is #1 and #2. So if you had a computer where files are added over time (without meaningful deletions), this strategy will not help a lot---you just need to get a new disk.
Is another option to just make a complete new full Time Machine backup (losing all the intermediate backups)? How is this done?

Jeffrey Folinus1 wrote:
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
I have no idea what that is.
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Yes. More to the point, files that were changed or deleted long ago.
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
No.
When Time Machine does it's first, Full backup, it of course copies every file and folder on your system. It also makes a folder in your backups, named with the date and time of the backup. This folder appears to contain all those copied items.
But it doesn't. It contains "hard links" to the backup copies. Think of these as extra-fancy aliases.
Thereafter, TM does "incremental" backups. It copies only the files and folders that were added or changed, and makes another dated folder for that backup. In that folder are links to the new items, plus links to the items that didn't change: so they're cleverly named "multi-links." This is how TM appears to have many full, complete backups of your system when it obviously doesn't.
When TM deletes a backup, all that's really deleted are the folder and the links.
Consider what happens when you do a normal (not secure) deletion of a normal file: OSX basically "forgets" where it was, so the space can be re-used. TM is a little fancier: as long as there's even one link to a file, it isn't forgotten, so it's available to be recovered from any backup that has a link to it, and the space isn't re-used. When the last link is deleted, the copied file is forgotten.
Thus, when you delete a backup, the only actual backup copies that are deleted are the ones that have links in no other backup. So, for example, once you've done a Full backup and a single Incremental, you (or TM) can delete the Full without losing it's copy of anything current.
Another way to look at it is, *each backup is, in effect, a full, complete copy of your entire system the way it was at the time of that backup.*
So much for "fancy." The "extra" fancy part is, TM doesn't necessarily make another link for every single file and folder that didn't change. Instead, if a folder wasn't changed, and nothing in it was changed, TM makes only a single link, to the folder. When you consider that your System folder, for example, contains many tens of thousands of sub-folders and files that rarely change, you see how efficient this is.
For more details: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
and: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14

When Time Machine is backing up, my computer is so slow that it is essentially useless. Backups occur irregularly, and take a long time.

When Time Machine is backing up, my computer is so slow that it is essentially useless. Backups occur irregularly, and take a long time. How do I get Time Machine to work properly?

Hello,
Have you verified both drives in Disk Utility?
See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?

I am getting this error when time machine tries to back up to a time capsule. "The backup disk image "/Volumes/JUDY ARCENEAUX's Time Capsu-1/JUDY ARCENEAUX's MacBook Air.sparsebundle" is already in use." Same time capsule has worked in the past.

I am getting this error when time machine tries to back up to a time capsule. "The backup disk image “/Volumes/JUDY ARCENEAUX's Time Capsu-1/JUDY ARCENEAUX’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle” is already in use." Same time capsule has worked in the past.

First, restart the computer and the Time Capsule. In most of the cases, this should solve the problem.
If it doesn't work, see > http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html

Lose internet when time machine starts backup

Title says it all. I lose internet connectivity (wireless) when time machine starts. If I turn airport on and off from the taskbar, it works and the backup completes itself.

Me too!
It used to work just fine, but ever since I upgraded to snow leopard, I was having these intermittent internet outages, and it was driving me crazy. I finally realized it was happening every time Time Machine would start up. I turned Time Machine off, and now my internet works just fine. But this is obviously not an ideal solution. I'm glad to see I'm not alone.
Anyone else having this problem??

Losing internet when time machine starts backup

is anyone losing their wireless internet connection when time machine starts its automatic backup? if so, do you know a work around?

Problem here too...it's driving me nuts! There must be a solution - but I have a feeling it'll need an airport/OS X update of some sort?

Can I recover my Mountain Lion Server from my Time Machine Backup if there was no Recovery HD created moving from Lion?

Several years ago I upgraded my Mac Server from Snow Leopard the to Lion and then to Mountain Lion, where it is now. I believe I can fix a problem if I can rebuild my Mountain Lion Server from my Time Machine backup, however I just discoved that there is no Recovery HD on the drive. Is there still a way to use my Time Machine Backup to rebuild the server drive?
Any help will be appreciated.

Recovery Drive – Restore Missing

HT3275 Im getting the following error message when Time Machine is trying to backup: backup disc image/volumes/data/mycomputer.sparsebundle is already in use, how do I correct?

Im getting the following error message when Time Machine is trying to back up: backup disc image/volumes/data/my computer.sprasebundle is already in use. What does this mean? How do i correct? Thanks!

90% of the time, all you need to do is power off the Time Capsule, wait a few minutes, and power it back up.
If no luck, then go to the more sophisticated fixes in the link above.

If i upgrade from 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion and do a Time-Machine-Backup, is it possible to restore my mac on Mountain Lion?

If i upgrade from 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion and do a Time-Machine-Backup before, is it possible to restore my mac on Mountain Lion with this Backup made on Snow Leopard?
Thx guyz

You don't need to restore anything.
Just upgrade. That replaces Snow Leopard with Mountain Lion, without disturbing anything else.
But by all means, always keep up-to-date backups, in case something goes wrong.

OS X Lion non responsive when Time Machine kicks in

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