Re: TIME MACHINE on MacBook Pro - not backing up automatically

Hi,
I am new to the forum so I hope someone can help me.
I have a MacBook Pro running Leopard. I have a MAXTOR one touch 4 mini 120G EXTERNAL hard drive attached (I brought it before all of the bad comments about maxtor I have read). When I plug it in Time machine recognizes the drive however does not automatically back up. When I select preferences under next back up there is no time just --. I am able to manually backup by selecting "Back up now" from the Time machine icon on the Dock.
Is there something I should be doing?
I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the hard drive without success.

Welcome to the forums.
Not sure I can help, but here are the obvious things to double check. Forgive me if this all seems super obvious, but once you do all these steps, if you are still having problems then we will know that its not something simple. Its always best to eliminate the obvious.
1) right click Time Machine in the dock, and select "Time Machine Preferences..."
2) In TM prefs, flip the "big Switch" to OFF.
3) Click on the "Change Disk..." button. Reselect your Maxtor and click "Use for Backup"
4) In TM prefs, click on the "Options..." button make sure nothing is excluded (unless you want it excluded). Hit the - minus sign to un-exclude something.
5) Now turn the Big switch back to on.
6) Close out of prefs, sit back and wait and prey to whatever higher being you believe in.
NOW if none of that worked for you (give it some time), then your next step is to wipe your Maxtor. Turn off Time Machine (the big switch in prefs) and use Disk Utilities (in /Applications/Utilities/) to Erase your MAxtor drive. Format it as HFS+ (journaled). And on the Erase tab in Disk Utilities, click on the Security Options button, and choose the second choice down to zero your disk. It should say something like "Write zeores".
Once you have completely wiped the drive, and reformatted it as HFS+ journaled, then you should set up Time Machine again (pointing to the the newly formatted disk). Obviously remember to turn Time Machine on with the big switch. As before, the first backup will take awhile. Once it is done with that first back up, restart your mac, and watch it for the next day to see if the problem is fixed.
NOW if that doesn't work, im at a loss.

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