Preparing Backup for Days!

My Time Capsule has been in "preparing backup" mode for three days now. I've had the Time Capsule for over a year and haven't had problems with it before. It's only been 16 days since my last backup so it's not as if a lot has changed in terms of what it's backing up. I've tried resetting the Time Capsule (unplugging and plugging back in) and resetting in the preferences, but it's still taking days to prepare backup whereas before preparing for backup only took a couple of hours at most. Do I just need to let it run its course no matter how long it takes or is there something I can do to fix this issue?

that's not giving enough !
this is an example of mine:
+Starting standard backup+
+Mounted network destination using URL: afp://user%[email protected]/Data+
+Backup destination mounted at path: /Volumes/Data+
+Disk image /Volumes/Data/MISSION CONTROL_00145119d47e.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of MISSION CONTROL+
+Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of MISSION CONTROL/Backups.backupdb+
+No pre-backup thinning needed: 354.3 MB requested (including padding), 259.26 GB available+
+Copied 503 files (6.0 MB) from volume POWERBOOK.+
+No pre-backup thinning needed: 347.0 MB requested (including padding), 259.26 GB available+
+Copied 397 files (0 bytes) from volume POWERBOOK.+
+Starting post-backup thinning+
+Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of MISSION CONTROL/Backups.backupdb/MISSION CONTROL/2009-10-17-204514: 259.26 GB now available+
+Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed+
+Backup completed successfully.+
+Ejected Time Machine disk image.+
+Ejected Time Machine network volume.+
i expect you stopped the back up process. let it run a bitter longer, maybe even over night.
i recommend you connect yout TC to your Mac by ethernet cable (set your Mac not to sleep !)
let's have TM buddy's comments afterwards

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Preparing Backup-for two days

I have time machine on a partition on a 750 gb firewire drive. Had not problems prior to a few days ago,when it seemed to quit working. I erased everything on the partition, and started Time Machine fresh.
Its now been "preparing backup" for two days. Is this normal behaviour?
If I query the system log, there is not a single "backupd" entry in there, although when I tried it yesterday there was one to the effect of "Ownership not set on Time Machine Drive, setting Ownership"
Any one have any ideas?
Joe

Hi Joe and Welcome to Apple Discussions.
jcabaleiro wrote:
Its now been "preparing backup" for two days.
Well, you get the award for patience No, not normal behavior by any stretch.
jcabaleiro wrote:
"Ownership not set on Time Machine Drive, setting Ownership"
Choose your TM volume in Finder and get info using "-i" key combo. Under "Sharing & Permissions" (you may have to unlock the lock and authenticate) be sure:
Your name = Read & Write
Staff = Read & Write
everyoner = Read only
Now erase your TM partition and try again.
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack

My new iphone 6 plus has been restoring from iCloud backup for days. I do not have all my apps or music yet

my new iphone 6 plus has been restoring from iCloud backup for days. I do not have all my apps or music yet. How do I fix it?

Hello Bernharp,
Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like your iPhone 6 Plus is taking a long time to restore from an iCloud backup. I can understand why you'd be concerned after several days of waiting.
This might happen if your backup contains a lot of content such as pictures or your Wi-Fi connection isn't consistent.
If the restore still hasn't completed, take a look at the information in the "Restoring my device from an iCloud backup is taking a long time" and "A message says restore incomplete or some items could not be restored" sections of this Support article:
If you need help restoring from an iCloud backup - Apple Support
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HT203177 I have not backed up my computer using Time Machine since before I updated to Mavericks. It has been "preparing backup" for a half hour at least and shows no indication of how long this may take. Is something wrong?

I have not backed up my computer using Time Machine since before I updated to Mavericks. It has been "preparing backup" for a half hour at least and shows no indication of how long this may take. Is something wrong?

No. TM has to look through your entire drive contents and copy them all. This will take some time.
Once the first backup is made, then subsequent backup will be much quicker, depending on how much data has changed since the last one.

Time Machine Backup Stuck on Preparing Backup for 12 hours

Hello,
I have a 2011 iMac and am running OS X 10.7.2. Up until a few days ago, my Time Machine backups (to a USB 2.0 external hard drive) were running fine. Now, when Time Machine tries to back up, all it does is display the progress bar with the words "Preparing backup..." below. This message will remain indefinitely (I've let Time Machine run for as long as 12 hours and nothing changes).
I have done a fair amount of searching online regarding this problem and have tried the steps in Pondini's troubleshooting list ( http://pondini.org/TM/D1.html ):
1. I first tried downloading and running the Time Machine buddy widget. I installed it but the widget was just blank. So, I went into Console and saved one my logs instead. My log consisted of a huge string of similar entries. Three of these entries are shown below:
1/28/12 12:12:53.629 PM          com.apple.backupd          Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “yprime.h” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f91ae359590 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason%20Qu int%E2%80%99s%20iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh%20HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/ex tern/examples/shrlib/yprime.h, NSFilePath=/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason Quint’s iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/extern/examples/shrlib/yprime.h, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f91ae358480 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
1/28/12 12:13:20.758 PM          com.apple.backupd          Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “yprime.mexmaci64” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f91ae071010 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason%20Qu int%E2%80%99s%20iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh%20HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/ex tern/examples/shrlib/yprime.mexmaci64, NSFilePath=/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason Quint’s iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/extern/examples/shrlib/yprime.mexmaci64, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f91ae072e40 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
1/28/12 12:13:47.893 PM          com.apple.backupd          Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “include” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7f91ae071010 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason%20Qu int%E2%80%99s%20iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh%20HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/ex tern/include/, NSFilePath=/Volumes/JQTimeMachineBackup/Backups.backupdb/Jason Quint’s iMac/2012-01-25-234450/Macintosh HD/Applications/MATLAB.app/extern/include, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f91ae072050 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
2. I then tried performing a "full reset" of Time Machine, as explained on Pondini's page. This didn't fix my problem.
3. Finally, I used Disk Utility and clicked "Repair" for my external hard drive --no problems were found. I also selected my internal hard drive (my main drive with OS X on it) and clicked "Verify"; no problems were found.
Any ideas what might be going on? Note that I had emptied about 70 GB of files from my trash and deleted some other movies from my hard drive soon before these problems cropped up.
Thank you very much,
Jason

This issue has been reported a few times, and it's clearly a bug in Time Machine, but I'm not sure what triggers it. TM creates multi-linked directories, and it seems that these links sometimes get broken.
The first thing you should do is a start a new backup set on another drive. You should do that anyway, because one backup isn't enough, even if you're not having problems with it.
Was the MATLAB application one of the items you had deleted from the source volume? If so, and if you're sure you'll never want to restore it from a backup, I suggest you delete it from the TM repository by entering TM, selecting it in a snapshot, and then choosing "Delete All Backups of..." from the action menu (gear icon.) You may have to do the same with other items that are giving the same error.

My Time Capsule/Time Machine has been showing Preparing Backup for past 48 hours continuously!

My Time Capsule reported Full the other day. I now have only 26.8MB of 497.96 GB available. Since then it seems to backing up continuously. The Time machine preferences window shows "Preparing Backup" andnothing else, and it has been doing so for at least past 48 hours. Any ideas as to the problem?
Stuartyboy

Yes, the problem is the drive is full.
If you have other files or TM back from other computers, TM on your computer having issues will not be able to delete enough to get sufficient space to backup.
Read how to clean up and delete parts of backups.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Not a good idea though.
Solution.
1. Buy a new bigger TC.. cheaper (Than the original 500GB at least), faster and now the smallest is 2TB.
2. Plug in a USB drive.. archive the TC.. then erase it and start a fresh set of backups.. April 1st great day to do it.
3. Open up your old TC.. remove the 500GB drive and install a 2TB (if Gen1 a 3TB might even work). Google for how to do a hard disk upgrade.
Problem.. old power supply could die the day after and then the total cost would approach 1. Better to backup, wipe the 500GB and sell it on ebay and buy a new TC with 2 or even 3TB (2TB is better value IMHO).
4. Plug in a USB drive .. formatted to HFS+ and use that as the target.
Very slow. much slower than the same drive plugged into your computer.

TimeMachine 'Preparing Backup' forever

It is showing 'Preparing Backup' for about two hours before I lost patience and cancelled it. And during that two hours, there's even no disk activities or CPU usage so I guess something's broken. Has anyone had the same problem?
PS: I'm running Mavericks(upgraded at day one). The last backup was several days ago and I actually did nothing(no system update or something)

Well this is awkward. Before posting this I rebooted my machine, unplugged the external drive and it is working now...(the previous several times of reboot didn't work though, weird)

Time Machine - Preparing backup - It's endless

My C2D Mac Mini is hanging on Time Machine - Preparing Backup for the second time since "Upgrading" to 10.5.2
I had to re-format my backup disk last time and start all the backups again.
Here is an extract from the console log:
29/04/2008 23:50:13 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Starting standard backup
29/04/2008 23:50:13 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie Disk/Backups.backupdb
29/04/2008 23:50:15 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
29/04/2008 23:50:15 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
Does anyone recognise this? I'm a Mac novice so I don't understand what it all means. I hope I don't have to reformat and start again as I was converted to Mac from PC on the advice that "A Mac Works!"
My backup drive is a 500GB Lacie Mini if that is of any relevance. Spotlight is told not to index the drive and also the Lacie drive is told not to back itself up.
Can anyone help as it's driving me nuts!

Are Lacie really that bad? I thought that the main reason they are mentioned in these forums is that Lacie are one of the only brands of external storage that apple actively promote through their own web stores so there a good chance that quite a few Mac users will buy one. Anyway I can't afford to buy another Hard Drive at the moment and the lacie works perfectly apart from Time Machine.
The problem seems to be with Mac OS the more I delve into these forums and more importantly the 10.5.2. update which is where Time Machine appears to be providing users with a lot of troubles.
The Apple support self service on the website is far from comprehensive as I guess they want you to purchase Apple Care for ongoing support after the 90 days initial period but come on apple give us a break and sort it out or provide a support email address for specific problems!

Upgraded from 10.6 to 10.8 and time machine is stuck on 'preparing backup'

I am running a MBP, purchased in 2011. I upgraded on Sunday from 10.6 to 10.8 and everything seemed to be working fine. Thought I would do a backup but the drive has just been stuck on 'preparing backup' for ages. Does anybody have any ideas of what I can do?
Thanks.

I was going to suggest a restart - glad that I didn't. When upgrading OS's, there's usually a lot of data to back up, but I'm surprised that it took 'ages'!
Clinton

TM has been preparing bkup for 4 days?

What is the deal? I moved to the MacPro at work and ever since setting it up I haven't been able to get a backup from TM to even start. I just sits there and has been for days saying it is "preparing". I know it is suppose to take a while for the first back up to start, but 3-4 days? What am I doing wrong?
I have 2 drive in the machine, on as the system and one partitioned as a storage drive and the TM backup. Both drives are Seagate 750gb and the one that is partitioned is just cut in half. Is there a trick I don't know about.....

CCGIANTS wrote:
Yeah I tried all the methods associated with my specific problem. I'm not quite sure what you mean by my "setup". What time of information do you need? I have an iMac G5 PPC running 10.5.8. I use an external IOMEGA 500gb external hard drive connected by USB. I have had this drive for 2 years plugged into the same port, with the same cord, and haven't changed any settings. I turn it on everyday to perform backups, which is does flawlessly.
That's usually not a good idea. TM usually works best if you let it do it's hourly backups. If they seem too large, see item # D4 of the Troubleshooting Tip. If they take too long, see item #D2 there.
Modern disk drives are designed to run all the time; some makers say they'll last longer if they're not turned on and off.
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|"
See #C2 in the Troubleshooting Tip for an explanation of those two messages. Something abnormal has caused them (as explained there, once they start, you'll see them, and a long "preparing" phase, until a backup completes successfully).
You can find my destination volume location and the error message below it.
What do you mean by that? Below what? Is there another message after the "deep traversal"? If so, what?
UPDATE: While I was writing this I was running repair disk on my external time machine drive. It says "invalid sibling link" followed by "Rebuilding Catalog-B Tree". I'm not sure what this means but it has a few minutes left on it so I'll repost if it's able to repair.
If DU can't repair it, run it again (and again) until it either fixes everything or can't fix any more. If it can't fix them all, post back and we'll go farther.
You might as well be warned, your drive may be failing. They all do, sooner or later.

How can you merge multiple daily backups into one backup for that day?

Ok, so I had some trouble getting Time Machine to backup some new files and finally had a force a "deep traversal." But now I have 20+ backups for today before I did the "deep traversal" because I was selecting "Back Up Now" to get it to backup up the new files.
Because it is annoying to have so many backups for one day, which differ only by incoming and outgoing emails, I am wanting to combine all the backups for today into a single backup for today. Is there any way to do this?
Thanks!

BibbleBobble wrote:
Because it is annoying to have so many backups for one day, which differ only by incoming and outgoing emails, I am wanting to combine all the backups for today into a single backup for today. Is there any way to do this?
Yes. Wait 24 hours, and Time Machine will do it for you. It keeps all backups for 24 hours, but only one (the first of the day) for a month. Thereafter, it keeps one per week, deleting the others, as long as there's room. See #12 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).

Time machine makes 30 backups for the last two days, no backups for any earlier times: is there a way to control it?

I've been running Time Machine in the background for as long as I've owned my current Mac--- a few months. It is a completely generic set-up: it's a desktop (rarely shut off or asleep) connected to an external hard drive that is much larger (1 TB) than my internal hard drive (0.5 TB), and Time Machine is configured to save backups of my whole internal drive to the external drive. The external is half-full, and the internal is a little more than half-full. I often hear my external crunching away, working on something.
I recently needed to access an old file, so I went into Time Machine mode on the folder where it had been deleted a few weeks ago. While I'm not upset that it isn't available (it's my own fault for deleting it), I didn't expect the Time Machine to have such a bad distribution of saved backups. There are 30 backup snapshots of the past two days, and nothing earlier. I was expecting something more like a few from today, a few from this week, a few from this month, and a few going all the way back in time--- a broader distribution.
I don't see any way to control this in the Time Machine Preferences (in fact, very little control at all). Is there a secret way to control it, or some tip to ensure a more useful distribution of saved snapshots?
Thanks,
-- Jim

Thanks, but it doesn't exactly address my question. TimeMachineEditor allows me to set the intervals or times when backups occur, but it doesn't control the algorithm that decides which snapshots should be deleted. My problem was that Time Machine chose to delete all of the old snapshots and keep only the most recent ones: I'd like it to keep more of the recent ones than the old ones, but still keep some old ones.
In fact, the (unmodifyable) text on the Time Machine control panel says that it keeps:
hourly backups for the past 24 hours
daily backups for the past month
weekly backups for all previous months
That would be perfect if it were true.
Perhaps the algorithm did the wrong thing because the size of my internal hard drive varied quite a lot a few days ago: a process got out of control and used up all of my internal disk space. I killed the process and deleted its output (several times), so my internal disk eventually went back down to normal. Perhaps in the intervening hours, Time Machine made a backup, once an hour, and used up all of the external drive space. When it had to choose between keeping "weekly backups of previous months" and "hourly backups of the past 24 hours", it chose to keep hourly backups of the past 24 hours. This was the wrong choice in my case (it was the unwanted output) and is probably the wrong choice in most cases.
Is there a way to control the algorithm that decides which backups to keep and which to delete? I would have it delete the hourly, daily, and weekly backups in a way that preserves their relative distribution.
By the way, while I have made it sound like my problem was a runaway log file (something that would be easy to put in an excluded directory with Time Machine's "Options" button), it was a VirtualBox snapshot merge. The data in question are precious, but were unnecessarily copied many times while VirtualBox failed to merge them properly. I can't simply exclude a directory: I'm talking about a more general problem.
Thanks!
-- Jim

My time capsule has been "preparing" for days--what to do???

My time capsule has been "preparing" for days--what to do???

See # D1 in Pondini's excellent Time Machine - Troubleshooting guide.
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html

Need to keep the expired backup for 7 days extra

Hi All,
I need help from you guys.
My problem is.
1. As per backup schedule, I have to maintain the backups for 14 days (retention period in RMAN)
2. Now the people are asking to keep the backups for 31 days.
3. I changed the retention period for 31 days.
4. When I checked with crosscheck backup, it is showing the backups older than 14 days as expired.
5. How to recatalog (keep) the expired backups.
regards,
Kiran

you can see the demo here..
Re: control_file_record_keep_time vs retention policy
Khurram

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