Preparing to back up FOREVER 10.5.7

Hi, I recently purchased a Free Agent Go, plugged it in and chose time machine for it. Backed up everything. THEN added all my music (now iTunes plays my library from the agent). Still had it plugged in for a few days, back up worked everything was fine (it kept backing up every hour or whatever). Then I took it out (the right way, ejected it etc.) And then upgraded the computer to 10.5.7. Now the Agent is stuck in preparing to back up mode for a while. The logs are below. HELP!!!! I reallllly don't want to erase everything and then put my music back on etc.
May 23 00:10:12 sean-mansoorys-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[370]: Backup requested by user
May 23 00:10:12 sean-mansoorys-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[370]: Starting standard backup
May 23 00:10:12 sean-mansoorys-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[370]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Agent/Backups.backupdb
May 23 00:10:12 sean-mansoorys-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[370]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
May 23 00:10:12 sean-mansoorys-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[370]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|

I have the exact problem. I have read posts I thought relevant...
- I use a dedicated TimePort.
- It's worked for almost exactly 1 year without mishap.
- I have not added or changed any hardware or devices.
- I have over 315GB available out of 463.8GB.
- Only one folder, with my computer's name on it, appears in the Finder view of the drive.
- THere are tons of folders in that one, each identifying a backup.
- I have never accessed or deleted a file through the finder.
- The file at the bottom of the list, with the .inProgress extension, has the wrong date in the name... Curious... It is titled: 2009-05-20-202244.inProgress but today is 2009-05-22...seemed noteworthy.
- The most recent successful backup was May 15 and the folder is entitled: 2009-05-15-044313
- It has been stuck on "Preparing to Back Up" for hours... It was stuck on the same thing overnight last night.
- I REALLY don't want to erase my hard drive and start over.

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HT1998 Time machine no longer backs up. It prepares for back up OK but then fails to complete. The archive is still available. Any ideas? Thanks

Time machine no longer backs up. It prepares for back up OK but then fails to complete. The archive is still available. Any ideas? Thanks

Unfortunately, not much to go on here. There are any of twenty different reasons why backups are not occurring, and no shortcuts that I know of to find out why.
Work your way through Backup Failures in Pondini's excellent support document Time Machine --- Troubleshooting.
See C1 through C19.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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Time Machine stuck on 'Preparing to back-up'

Hi
Since upgrading to Lion my iMac has not completed a Time Machine back-up. It's constantly turning away, saying 'Preparing to back-up'.
Any suggestions please?
Cheers
Phil

A word of warning:
I too have this same problem, the Time Machine is showing "preparing Backup" for more than 24 hours.
I have tried all the solutions I could find on the 'net, and none have worked, so I took it all in to the Apple store in Sydney.
After 1 hour of them playing around they decided I had a corrupt "in progress" file on the Time Capsule preventing the backup from progressing beyond the preparation stage.
So what was the solution to my problem? I was told I had to either:
* delete all the backup data on the TC and format it or
* take it away, copy all the data to another 500+gb hard drive, format the Time Capsule and copy all the data back again.
Apparently Apple have "no liability" as it is a corrupted file, which "could have been caused by anything - installing or uninstalling software, or just a random glitch".
So it seems that because their Time Machine software can apparently cause a backup file to be easily and randomly corrupted by day to day usage, I now have to either lose all my backup data, or fork out hundreds of dollars for a new hard drive to copy all the backup data to.
I am NOT IMPRESSED that Apple can seemingly wash their hands of the failings of their software and hardware combination, causing me to be out of pocket.
If anyone here believes what I was told is wrong, I would be grateful for your advice, otherwise it looks like I'm going to have to spend out more cash to solve this problem...

TM backs up way more than it "Prepares" to back up.

I've been using Time Machine without problem for some weeks now.
Today I plugged the firewire drive into my Powerbook and opened up Time Machine preferences to watch what happened (as is my practice). It did a "Preparing" phase for a normal period of time and then said it was going to back up roughly 7 MB of data. This matched my expectations.
However, when the progress bar and numeric indicator both said it had gotten that far it just kept going!
The progress bar remained at 100% and BOTH the numeric target of how much to backup and the count of how much had in fact been transferred increased together.
By the time it reached 1 GB I decided to check the Console. There were no error messages in the Console. It did however have one oddity. It said that a backup had been requested due to disk insertion (which was correct), and that a "standard" backup had started. And then, shortly after that, there was ANOTHER message that a backup had been requested by the automatic scheduler.
That may be nothing but it was the only odd thing in there.
The backup was still going -- and rather more slowly than I'm used to for large TM backups.
Eventually it completed, having transferred 4.3 GB -- way more than I expected but of course by no means anywhere close to a full system backup.
I checked the Console again and found the normal messages: 4.3 GB transferred, no pre- or post-backup thinning required, nothing deleted.
I did a Disk Utilities Verify Disk on both the main hard drive and the Time Machine drive, as well as a Repair Permissions on the main hard drive. No problems reported.
I rebooted and commanded another backup. This one completed normally having transferred under 1 MB.
So again, the only odd thing I've been able to find was the Console report of the automatic scheduler having requested a backup while a backup was already in progress due to disk insertion.
I poked around in the Time Machine itself and could find no problems with this extra large backup, the one I did after it, or any of the prior history.
So there appears to be no actual damage done, although the size of that backup remains a mystery -- as does why it didn't show up as the target amount after the "Preparing" phase.
And oh, yes, the actual space consumed on my main hard drive has not changed. So I haven't suddenly acquired 4 GB of new stuff somehow. Which means the 4.3 GB backed up must have represented changes of some sort as opposed to new stuff.
I thought that Time Machine might have somehow picked up stuff from another Mac on the LAN, but the Time Machine display does not let you select the shared portion of a networked computer so apparently not.
Anyway, another TM mystery.
--Bob

No I've done multiple, hourly incremental backups since the QuickTime update. The size of the first of those backups after applying the update was reasonable given the size of the update and the files likely altered. The incrementals after that were all modest and thoroughly in accordance with the sorts of activities I had been doing.
(For folks reading this after the fact, the backup in question happened BEFORE Apple came out with the 2007-9 security update released later that same day. Also, I've got one virtual environment file -- a Virtual PC file -- but that's around 10 GB so it couldn't have been party to this 4.3 GB mystery backup. And it wasn't touched/modified since the prior incremental anyway.)
The weird thing is the idea that "Preparing" came up with a figure that matched my expectations (around 7 MB), but then the actual backup blasted right past that and just kept climbing to 4.3 GB.
Also, there wasn't anything that I was doing during that backup that might have invalidated the "Preparing" results. I specifically wanted to sit there and watch it complete the backup after I plugged in the firewire disk. I've been looking for cases where the backup appears to get hung up during the data transfer, only to complete after an unexplained pause of a minute or so. So I plugged in the disk, opened Time Machine preferences to see what happened, and just sat there watching it.
In this case the approx. 7 MB declared by "Preparing" transferred without any significant pauses and then I marveled as it just kept going. I didn't actually do anything until it crossed 1 GB, at which point I went to open the Console to see if it had any explanation.
Another significant factor, I think, is that the speed of the transfer was fairly slow. I've done multiple GB Time Machine backups (as when that Virtual PC environment file changes), so I have a feel for how fast this firewire 800 drive will do that. And this 4.3 GB transfer was quite a bit slower.
If I had to guess, I'd say that Time Machine was doing some re-writing of stuff FROM the Time Machine disk TO the Time Machine disk (so that the firewire speeds affected the data transfer twice). But there was nothing in the Console logs that suggest anything like that was happening. Alternatively Time Machine may have been reading data across the network and transferring it to the Time Machine disk. That too would account for the speed difference. But I can find no files in the Time Machine histories indicating that anything like that might have happened.
--Bob

Time Capsule Preparing and backing up!!

Dears,
My 1TB Time Capsule is not accepting back ups from My MacBook Air, for some reason it says preparing for 30 minutes then an error message appears "A network problem occurred and and your time machine could not back up". Although I've another iMac connected to the same time machine and it's working probably.
Please some help!!

colin warburton wrote:
there are other macs that use this drive as well to back up with time machine anyway of preserving them?
Ah, that may be part of the problem.
Their sparse bundles may have taken up so much of the space that there isn't much available for your Mac.
Whatever you decide to do next, connect via Ethernet if at all possible. It's going to take a long time, but will be 2-3 times faster than WIFI.
You have some options, none very attractive:
Via the Finder, see how large each of the sparse bundles is. If there isn't much space for the Mac in question, you could delete some old backups from one or more of the other Macs to make more space. 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).
You can delete the sparse bundle in question via the Finder, but it may take a long time. If you decide to do that, and it's taking a very long time, see the blue box at the end of #12 in the FAQ.
If the Time Capsule's internal HD just isn't large enough for all those Macs' backups (at least twice the size of the total used on all the Macs), delete the sparse bundle for the Mac in question, and connect a USB drive to the TC and back up that Mac (and/or some of the others) to the USB drive instead.

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some things to try:
if you are using a pc, try disabling any antivirus or anti malware software and try another sync... if it doesn't speed up disable the firewall and try a sync. remember to re-enable any of the above after you are done syncing.
if you are using a mac and have little snitch running disable it then close and reopen itunes and try again... don't forget to turn little snitch back on when done
if neither of those things work some have had luck removing the backup files from their machines (itunes -> Edit, Preferences -> Devices tab , select your backup and click "delete backup") close and restart itunes then force a backup manually (under devices in itune's main screen right click your iphone and choose "Back up")
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Unable to update iPad. Been backing up forever

Hey there SHEEL.handa,
As I understand it, your Settings app installing an update correctly that it downloaded. I would start by quitting the Settings app:
iOS: Force an app to close
Double-click the Home button.
Swipe left or right until you have located the app you wish to close.
Swipe the app up to close it.
When you have done that restart the device and test the issue again:
iOS: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting
If the issue persists, use this part of the article about troubleshooting updating in this manner:
Resolve issues with an over-the-air iOS update
If the issue persists, try updating your device in another network or use iTunes to update your device. Learn more about iOS updates.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
All the very best,
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I have a 2.66 Ghz i7 with 4gb ram, FCP 7. Neither my files, nor my projects are big. What is going on?? Of course this would happen when I'm under deadline.
Thanks for any help you can offer.

In addition, try repairing permissions and trashing preferences.
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Try here:
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Time Capsule gets stuck "preparing for back up

Can anyone help? Here's my log info:
4/8/13 10:27:15.960 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Starting manual backup
4/8/13 10:27:15.977 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Daryl%20Phillips;AUTH=[email protected]/Data
4/8/13 10:27:16.572 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://Daryl%20Phillips;AUTH=[email protected]/Data
4/8/13 10:27:34.933 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Disk image /Volumes/Data/DPcomputer (2).sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
4/8/13 10:27:34.945 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
4/8/13 10:27:38.720 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
4/8/13 10:27:39.235 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
4/8/13 10:27:42.017 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Finished scan
4/8/13 10:27:46.692 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Found 506 files (3.16 GB) needing backup
4/8/13 10:27:46.799 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: 3.79 GB required (including padding), 1.43 TB available
4/8/13 10:28:55.828 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Copied 700 files (Zero KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
4/8/13 10:28:56.838 PM com.apple.backupd[66682]: Backup canceled.

Try doing a verify of the backup and source disk.
A5 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Use ethernet.. and if you don't get anywhere, I would delete the backups and start over.. something strange is happening in UUID don't match. You have replaced the disk or something at some point.

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I have currently obtained a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz. On my old Macbook (Snow Leopard) I've always been able to run Timemachine on a seperate harddrive (G-Force 2T). Never had any problems. Used to back up once a week and timemachine never prepared a back-up any longer than maybe a couple of hours. And the HD on my old Macbook was packed!
Ever since I've been using Lion my timemachine gets stuck on 'preparing back-up'. I've read other posts on this subject which indicate rebooting/restoring the disk helps. I did this and it worked fine for a couple of days. After that it got stuck and still is... it keeps preparing for whole days. My Macbooks HD only has 2 GB of stuff on it... so I don't think it wouyld take all that long even if in a 'deep tarversal' mode.
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Hello linc Davis,
Underneath the text you said to post. The last error 256 keeps repeating with each time a different file. I just posted the first one in a looooooong line of fetching properties and error 265's. The first one at ten this morning and the last one just now... list keeps growing.
Does this mean anything to you?
05-03-12 09:39:05,083 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
05-03-12 09:39:06,188 com.apple.backupd: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
05-03-12 09:39:16,271 com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 19
05-03-12 09:40:43,602 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
05-03-12 09:40:43,669 com.apple.backupd: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
05-03-12 09:40:53,963 com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 19
05-03-12 10:12:17,115 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
05-03-12 10:12:17,713 com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/JOEP TM2T/Backups.backupdb
05-03-12 10:12:18,817 com.apple.backupd: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
05-03-12 10:12:18,872 com.apple.backupd: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
05-03-12 10:16:49,403 com.apple.backupd: Finished scan
05-03-12 10:47:25,471 com.apple.backupd: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “AppleDictionary.css” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7fc92ee42260 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/JOEP%20TM2T/Backups.backupdb/Joep%E2%80%99s%20M acBook%20Pro/2012-02-06-110231/Macintosh%20HD/Library/Dictionaries/Apple%20Dicti onary.dictionary/Contents/Resources/ar.lproj/AppleDictionary.css, NSFilePath=/Volumes/JOEP TM2T/Backups.backupdb/Joep’s MacBook Pro/2012-02-06-110231/Macintosh HD/Library/Dictionaries/Apple Dictionary.dictionary/Contents/Resources/ar.lproj/AppleDictionary.css, NSUnderlyingError=0x7fc92ee42150 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Input/output error"}

Back-up: error encounted whilst writing files - How do I fix?

I am running Photoshop Elements 10 on windows 7 (32bit). (I've installed using disk 1, not disk 2 as I'm not running 64 bit). I have imported photographs my catalogue has 1087 photographs (no video). I am trying to do my first full back-up. It tells me that the size is 30mb. (I've got 225GB free on my hard drive). It calculates the size of the back up, lets me select the destination files, tells me to wait whilst it prepares the back-up file and then I get the following message
It then just reverts to PSE organiser.
I have uninstalled and re-installed and it has made no difference.
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white feathers 1939 wrote:
do you think the software could be faulty?
No, the software works elsewhere for backups, and on your computer the software also works -- that error message means that there's a problem with one (or more) of the image files, or accessing the backup location for writing.
I'm out of ideas, except for the rather vague suggestion of checking the Read/Write privileges on the directories and filles.
Ken

Preparing to back up FOREVER 10.5.7

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