So, is Time Machine just broken in 10.5.2?

I know I'm in the minority here (although Macfixit has a bunch of people complaining as well), but ever since the 10.5.2 update, Time Machine has gone from rock solid to the flakiest feature of OSX since the days of 10.1.5. I've encountered pretty much every error you can think of over the past few days including:
1. My startup disk was showing up as the Time Machine drive (both the icon and in the pref pane)
2. I'm sometimes getting very slow backups (measured in KB!)
3. Time Machine is quitting out on me after it chokes on certain files (and when I omit those files, it chokes on another one)
I've done everything I can think of: reinstalled the full 10.5.2 update and the graphics update (for good measure), repaired permissions, deleted caches, ran DiskWarrior on everything, took my USB drives off the hub they were on, reformatted my Time Machine drives (loosing all my old backups in the process), and removed my SuperDuper clone from the Time machine drive, putting it back on its own partition.
I'm really at a loss, and I've submitted feedback to Apple, but everything was working fine under 10.5.1 and now with .2 it's all busted. What do you think, it Time Machine simply broken? Should I just turn off Time Machine until it gets fixed? My concern is that there is nothing to fix. That it's working fine for most people, and I've just been cursed.
Thanks for listening.

Barney,
The issue isn't with Time Machine backing up wireless to a NAS connected to a running workstation or server with open shared directory but with it not working when connected to a wireless router such as the Airport Extreme Base Station. As per Apple's online Time Machine documentation it states "Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but it does not support AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk feature. Time Machine can back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, or to a Leopard Server volume, or an Xsan storage device." Keep in mind though people were able to get Time Machine to backup to the NAS connected to the AEBS after entering the terminal command for Time Machine to use unsupported hard drives back when we used 10.5.1 but not since updating to 10.5.2. The reason people are upset is because Apple clearly advertised prior to Leopard's release that Time Machine would work over WIFI to a NAS connected to the AEBS but pulled that information just after releasing Leopard (Reference: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/26/appleyanks_wireless_backup_from_leopard_lastminute.html ). This was after several customers including myself had already purchased the AEBS with a NAS drive with the understanding from Apple that Leopard would support this set-up. Apple still has not fixed the issue and their only solution seems to be for customers to buy their Time Capsule which is just the AEBS with an internal NAS drive. I can't speak for everyone but I feel mislead by Apple which is frustrating because I didn't imagine they would pull something like this.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Just Doesn't Work Anymore

I was a happy Time Machine (with Time Capsule) user for months. But it just doesn't work anymore. It takes longer than an hour to do every hourly backup so it is backing up 24 hours a day. It finds hundreds of thousands of files changed every hour and tries to back them up. Finders says only tens of files have been modified all of today. I have tried rebuilding my spotlight indexes, repairing my Time Capsule with Disk Utility and starting over with a brand new backup. But it just backs up hundreds of thousands of files every hour. So I am turning off Time capsule since it is clearly broken. If anyone has any suggestions at all I would welcome them.

Marcia,
Consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412)
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can created major changes in the structure of your directories. Time Machine will backup every file that has changed since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if any of this helps.
Cheers!

Time Machine just killed two external HD

Hi All,
Time Machine (TM) just killed two external hard disk drives. I am running 10.8.3 on a MPB 2.3 GHz I7 with 16GB SDRAM and I have had problems with TM not recognizing the external hard disks. I purchased a new 2TB firewire HD and started TM and about 2 hours into the backup TM error out with an error and the disk no longer is recognized and can't be initialized using the disk utility as it says there are zero bytes available.
I reconnected my MBP to the original MT HD and it proceeded to do the same thing and the HD is no longer recognized and can't be initialized...
Anyone else seen this or have a clue how to fix it?

Open Disk Utility and select the disk device (not the volume name). Then click the Partition tab that appears, and use the drop-down menu to create "1 Partition." Then click the Options button and ensure "GUID" is used, and then select the Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) format and apply the changes.
When finished, set up Time Machine again and see if the problem persists. If so, then the issue is likely with the drive.
If it does happen again, are you able to select the drive in Disk Utility and perform a verification on it? If so, then are you able to see any errors? Do this by selecting the drive itself, as well as any volumes on it.

My time machine just stopped working. No power. I had it since 2011

I had my time machine for about 20 months, and it just stopped working. no power. I have a lot of backups on it. Anyone had the same issue? I read on some forums that it was reccurent, and that apple is not addressing this issue. Please help. Too expensive to just go in the trash.

Do you have any computer with current applecare?? If so apple will replace the TC as it is covered.
Less than 2years for a current TC.. that would be Gen3 or early Gen4 is a little bit short for these models.. mostly they do last to 3years now.
What is the A1xxx model number from the rubber foot?
Leave it to cool for several hours.. overnight.. and start it fresh after that..
Pay particular attention to everything..
The boot sequence should go something like this..
Power on.. green front led.. change to solid amber after a few seconds.
All the ethernet LEDS will flash green for a moment.
Front LED will start flashing amber and the hard disk will spin up.. place your hand on it to hear it spin up.
Other things happen and eventually if there are no errors the front led will go solid green... but flashing amber is fine.
Do you get any LED on at all?
Where in the world are you?

Time Machine backups broken in 10.8

I have a Mac Mini with a USB hard drive attached that serves as a network-attached Time Machine drive for my main Mac client computer. Today I have upgraded my rock-solid 10.6 home server to 10.8, hopeing they have finally ironed out the bugs in the SMB stack (that replaced Samba).
I immediately notice that Time Machine performance is very poor from the client machine (over gigabit ethernet). I googled around and apparently Apple has decided to gate Time Machine backup performance unless you purchase OS X Server via the App Store. So I purchased OS X Server via the App Store, and the performance issue is fixed.
Next I decide I want to start fresh with Time Machine backups, so I reformat the drive, and since then it won't show up in the drive list on the Time Machine preference pane (on the client machine looking to initate the backup). From what I can tell OS X Server just flat out prohibits backing up to network shares on an OS X Server. It appears you must designate a drive on the server for Time Machine backups. The server then creates a new share point 'Backups'. While this isn't as easy or as flexible as it used to be, bygones. After designating my hard drive via the Time Machine pane, I am able to choose the 'Backups' share on the client, but every time it tries to initate a backup it errors out with: The backup disk is not available.
At this point I am very frustrated. Apple has taken something that was very straightforward and twisted it into something that is more complex, more expensive, less flexible, and apparently non-functional. This seems very un-apple-like. Am I doing something wrong there? There seems very little actual information floating around about the mechanics and requirements of Time Machine on the server or client side (outside of developer reference docs about what specific AFP features are necessary for network Time Machine backups).

I have a Mac Mini with a USB hard drive attached that serves as a network-attached Time Machine drive for my main Mac client computer. Today I have upgraded my rock-solid 10.6 home server to 10.8, hopeing they have finally ironed out the bugs in the SMB stack (that replaced Samba).
I immediately notice that Time Machine performance is very poor from the client machine (over gigabit ethernet). I googled around and apparently Apple has decided to gate Time Machine backup performance unless you purchase OS X Server via the App Store. So I purchased OS X Server via the App Store, and the performance issue is fixed.
Next I decide I want to start fresh with Time Machine backups, so I reformat the drive, and since then it won't show up in the drive list on the Time Machine preference pane (on the client machine looking to initate the backup). From what I can tell OS X Server just flat out prohibits backing up to network shares on an OS X Server. It appears you must designate a drive on the server for Time Machine backups. The server then creates a new share point 'Backups'. While this isn't as easy or as flexible as it used to be, bygones. After designating my hard drive via the Time Machine pane, I am able to choose the 'Backups' share on the client, but every time it tries to initate a backup it errors out with: The backup disk is not available.
At this point I am very frustrated. Apple has taken something that was very straightforward and twisted it into something that is more complex, more expensive, less flexible, and apparently non-functional. This seems very un-apple-like. Am I doing something wrong there? There seems very little actual information floating around about the mechanics and requirements of Time Machine on the server or client side (outside of developer reference docs about what specific AFP features are necessary for network Time Machine backups).

Time machine just stops.

I upgraded to leopard a few days ago, and have been trying to get time machine working. Whenever I try to back up, it goes until about 13 or 14 GB have been copied, and then stops suddenly. Sometimes it says that the latest back up failed due to an unnamed error, but usually it just doesn't list any. I tried what the sight says to do, re-partitioning the drive so it uses GUID instead of the other one it came with. I have also tried with two different drives, a Toshiba External USB 250GB, and a DiskGO Edge External USB 160GB, and they both fail at about the same point. To be clear, I have the drives set up according to this article, TS1550. I spent a lot of money on these drives, I would like at least one of them to work as the back up drive. One last thing, the DiskGo was recommended by a certified Mac distributor.

Welcome to Discussions.
Double check the partitioning scheme in Disk Utility as sometimes the formatting doesn't "take". Click on the upper icon for your drive. At the bottom right of the window "Partition Map Scheme :" should be GUID. If it isn't try following the directions for formatting this article

Time Machine GUI broken on headless server

I have 10.5.1 server running on a headless mini C2D and outside of some other rough edges, is running quite well. My issue is that whenever I connect to the server with Screen Sharing and kick off the Time Machine UI (via the Dock) to browse my local backups, I don't see the fancy interstellar user interface at all. Almost nothing happens on the screen except my Finder window repositions itself. It behaves as if the UI is there (i.e. the Dock, while visible, doesn't respond, I can't do anything else) If I pretend that the Time Machine UI is there and click on where the "Cancel" button should be, my Finder window goes back to where it was and I get control of my server again.
It's behaving as if the Time Machine UI is running, but just not visible.
Any ideas? Anyone else seeing the same thing? (or *not seeing* as the case may be)
Config: Mac Mini C2D 1GM RAM, internal 80GB HD, external Seagate FreeAgentPro 750GB drive for TimeMachine. (here's a tip for future forum searchers: with the FreeAgentPro drives, you need to take it to a Windoze machine and disable the drive's sleep timer, otherwise OS X Server gets upset that the drive went to sleep on its own and makes navigating shares from a client give inconsistent results. The "Put drives to sleep" option in Energy Saver still works as expected, but the drive won't be in control of its sleeping schedule, the OS will be.)

What screen resolution has your headless machine defaulted to ? Since you can get in via screen sharing, see what it's defaulted to.
Consider that TM probably has a required resolution (like, Workgroup Manager requires 1024x768 minimum).
If you need to have the resolution default to a different setting on reboot, try this that I put together:
http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20070211165654615
It's not my work just easy-to-use packaging of existing software (read the article).
It's Universal and there's a link there for a double-clickable installer.
For those bemoaning their experience jumping ahead with 10.5 server in a production environment:
well, that's your doing. Did you do full pre-testing in a non-production setting and confirm for yourself that it's ready for your needs ?
If you think 10.4.0 was perfect you are living in a fantasy. 10.4 server was a very rocky road til around 10.4.3 and there were still many fixes needed that came with later revisions.
10.3 had plenty of problems (!!) and 10.2 was a beast til 10.2.8 and I don't miss it.

Time machine just hangs

Everything was working fine yesterday. This morning the first back up took for ever to mount the disk. Tried set up in airport utilities etc etc. Followed lots of advice. I would normally just wipe the disk, but I have other files on their I do not want to lose. Unless I can just delete the TM part. I can not open the sparsebundle image as I used to . Disc repair comes back with..Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Any ideas?

ledclone wrote:
Everything was working fine yesterday. This morning the first back up took for ever to mount the disk. Tried set up in airport utilities etc etc. Followed lots of advice. I would normally just wipe the disk, but I have other files on their I do not want to lose. Unless I can just delete the TM part. I can not open the sparsebundle image as I used to . Disc repair comes back with..Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Did DU fix any errors? If so, TM will likely work ok now, at least for a while.
If not, Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Copy and post them here.
Are you backing-up to a disk attached to a Time Capsule, Airport, or ?

Time Machine Just Churns; Backups Not Performed

Time Machine, which is connected to Time Capsule, has not completed a backup for about 3 weeks. It just says "Preparing to Backup," the clock icon spins for hours, and no backup is ever completed.
I tried to to a manual backup but got a message that the disk is full. Tried to delete stuff off it to free up space and got error messages there, too.
Any idea what's going on and how I can fix?
Thanks!

Try powering off both the TC and your Mac
Wait a minute
In addition to the connection from the modem, make sure that you have another Ethernet cable connected from one of the LAN <-> ports on the TC to the Mac
Start the TC first and let it run for a minute
Then start up the Mac and wait a minute
Open AirPort Utility again to see if the TC will appear.
If yes, click on the TC icon, then click Edit on the next window that appears. Then click the Disks tab to see the Erase Disk button.
By the way, you are not using the OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as your profile indicates. You are using Lion 10.7.4. Please update your profile to include that important information.

Time Machine Just Hangs Up?

Does anyone have any solution for the fact that Time Machine will just "hang up" from time to time? My iMac is brand new (literally, 4 days) and from time to time the back up icon in the status bar at the top of the screen will indicate that Time Machine is running, but, this goes on and on and on and the backup never completes. This same issue was encountered on the 2003-vintage iMac that I just replaced. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.....KV

There are a lot of similar threads on this.
Many are after doing an OSX update. As that adds/changes many thousands of files, there will be a long "preparing" phase. Within reason, that's to be expected.
Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget from: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. If you see something there that seems suspicious, copy and post the messages here (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the small window).
See item 7 in the +Frequently Asked Questions+ post at the top of this forum for details.
Otherwise, here are the usual suspects:
If it's your initial backup, the most common cause is the TM drive not being formatted correctly (even, on occasion, if TM formatted it!). Use Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) to verify:
Select the top line, with the make and size. Towards the bottom, the *Partition Map Scheme* should be GUID for an Intel Mac, +Apple Partition Map+ for a PPC Mac.
Select the line for the TM partition (with the name). Towards the bottom, the Format should be +Max OS Exended (Journaled).+
If either is wrong, you need to stop TM and reformat the drive. See instructions in item 5 of the +Frequently Asked Questions+ post at the top of this forum.
_*Other common causes/fixes:*_
1. Exclude your TM disk/partition from any anti-virus scanning.
2. Exclude it, at least temporarily, from Spotlight (System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy).
_*If backing up to a Time Capsule or External Disk connected to an Airport Extreme:*_
1. Check your System Name via System Preferences > Sharing. It it's blank, that's likely the problem. If it's over 26 characters long, trim it. If it has any unusual characters, try removing them.
2. Try moving the TC and Mac closer together.
3. Look for interference with another wireless device. Turn anything else off, or move it farther away.
4. Try repairing the Sparse Bundle on the TC with Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Mount the TC, then drag it into the Disk Utility sidebar, then use Repair Disk (not permissions).
_*If backing up to an External hard drive:*_
1. At least temporarily, de-select +Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...+ in System Preferences > Energy Saver.
2. Be sure it's connected directly to your Mac (no hubs, and not the USB port on keyboard).
3. Try different port(s), cable(s).
4. See if your drive has an automatic sleep or "spin down" feature you can disable.
If the problem persists after all this, post back with the Make, model, size and type (FireWire/USB) of your drive.

Time Machine just saying Preparing Backup and Does nothing

Has this happen to anyone? I have about 7gigs left, on my external hard drive.

This, along with many other 10.5.2/Time Machine related problems, has been reported many times before in this Forum. So far I haven't seen any post(s) which provides a universal fix. I'm assuming that it's a bug and hoping that if/when Time Capsule finally ships there will be an update for everyone (not just Time Capsule).

Time Machine just stopped working, Disk Repair & Read Only errors

So my TM backups have been running fine for at least six months now.
Today I started to get this error:
"Disk Repair
The disk "xxxxxx" was not repairable by this computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible."
followed by
"Time Machine Error
The backup volume is read only.
To select a different volume, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine"
I've searched high and low for a solution to no avail.
Here's what I've tried so far.
Attached disk to iMac, repaired the disk. It now verifies with no errors.
Changed permissions on the disk to 644 through terminal as per an Apple article.
Rebooted iMac several times, zapped PRAM.
Anyone have any ideas as to why this is suddenly happening? I would really hate to have to reformat the disk and start from scratch. This is very frustrating, I've changed nothing.
Here's the log from Time Machine Buddy:
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/FreeAgent Drive/Thomas Torrillo’s iMac_002332917af9.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of Thomas Torrillo’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of Thomas Torrillo’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
The target volume is read-only.
Backup failed with error: The target volume is read-only.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Message was edited by: Tom Torrillo (added log info)

See if this helps:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Time capsule and Time Machine just says "preparing"

I just bought Time Capsule and ran my first Time Machine backup.
It took three trys before it completed a backup.
Now when it goes to back up it either says "preparing" for a very long time. Or it says it can't find the back up drive.
Can anyone advise a fix for me?

ebiest wrote:
this sounds hopeful. How do I delete the sparsebundle file?
I wouldn't do that; it's a better idea to securely erase the TC via the Manual Configuration in Airport Utility.
In fact, I'm about to do that now; my backups from my MBP + another MB here were fine. After missing 3-4 days of backing up, I manually initiated one & it's just sitting on Preparing To Backup for over 20 minutes (on my third attempt).
I'm gonna let it rip through a secure erase tonight (a 1 TB Time Capsule (TC) can take a WHILE to secure erase. Remember; when you secure erase, it automatically adds necessary hidden files in the TC root) & backup my 170GB worth of junk (lol) tomorow night.
I just pray I don't loose my notebook between then

Using an external hard drive now my time machine is broken

Hi All,
i have an external hard drive now my time machne has overheated and failed
this works fine with time machine
Is it possible for me to backup my windows pc to this external hard drive???
thanks in advance
Jason

I guess the external drive is hanging off the Mac..
Getting access to the drive from PC should be possible.. you may need to move public directory onto the external drive and then set up permissions to do it.. I have not done it and simply would not do it.
External hdd are cheap enough buy one for the pc.. That is then formatted NTFS which windows is going to natively read.. this will be much easier if the backups are ever required than to use HFS+ formatted disk hanging off the Mac.
You can also get your dead TC fixed.
https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repairers

My Macintosh HD drive is not showing in Time Machine just Boot Camp.

how do I add my Macintosh HD drive to Time Machine on OS X 10.7.5

System Preferences/Time Machine/Options - if your hard drive shows there, select it and use the - at the bottom.

So, is Time Machine just broken in 10.5.2?

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