Time Capsule won't back up Time Machine

Hi,
I work with an iMac and OS 10.5.7. O bought this with a Time Capsule and for the first couple of months it back up Time Machine fine.
It has now stopped doing so. I have reset to factory settings several times, the internet connectivity (ethernet cable to cable modem) works fine, but no matter how often I set up Time Capsule again on Airport and then go into Time Machine on System Preferences to select the Time Capsule as Time Machine disk, it simply won't do it.
I am at my wits' end on this. I may as well have bought any old harddrive, as the internet connectivity is not an issue for me!
Can anyone help?
cheers
Damien

Damien, welcome to the discussions!
The connection between your Time Capsule and your computer has been lost. Try these steps to see if they help re-establish that connection:
Open System Preferences and open Sharing. Make sure that your computer name appears. Try to eliminate any apostrophes or other punctuation marks and limit to 25 characters or less including spaces.
Open AirPort Utility and click on Manual Setup. Click the Time Capsule tab below the icons. Make sure that your Time Capsule name appears. Use the same guidelines as above.
Click in an open area of your desktop to show the Finder menus at the top of the screen. Click on Finder and then click on Preferences and then the General tab. Under the heading of "show these items on the desktop", make sure there is a check mark next to "Connected Servers"
Power down the Time Capsule and wait a few moments, then power it back up.
Now click System Preferences and Time Machine. Choose change disk and click your Time Capsule to highlight it and then click Use For Backups.
Please post back on your progress.

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Time Capsule won't back-up; it just stays at "Preparing Backup" What can I do to resolve it?

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On Leopard, it's hard to tell what's going on. See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

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The airport utility should still allow you to erase the drive of the TC.. that means a full wipe.. if you want to keep anything from the old backups you should archive it first.. that option was removed on the v6 utility but if any of your computers still runs Lion or earlier you can download 5.6 airport utility or use the inbuilt one.
In mountain lion you cannot install the 5.6 utility but there are ways and means of getting around that.. it does work.. it is relatively easy to unpack the utility and extract the file and just drag it to the utility directory.

My Time Capsule won't back up. It's stuck on 'calculating time remaining'. Any ideas?

My Time Capsule started playing up again lately, it simply won't back up and it appears that nothing is actually backed up on it at all. I've had it for over two years and have had trouble with it in the past. I just wonder if it is faulty. Do I need to take it into an Apple shop to get techinical assistance or is it something I'm doing wrong with the back-ups?
Cheers,
Cathie

If you live near an apple store I am sure a Genius can check it for you.. but unless it brings up a fault condition, I doubt it is faulty.
The TC does nothing at all.. really it is a hard disk in a router.
TM is software on the computer and it can have loads of issues.
I strongly recommend using the info from pondini to help you analyse the problem.
I also recommend you download and try out some other backup utilities. The plain fact of it, TM is too complicated for its own good.
A simple way to check is to plug a USB drive into the computer and make a Time Machine backup to that drive instead of the TC.. if it works. the issue is more likely the network than anything.. and with each update more and more network problems are creeping in.
From your profile you are using Snow Leopard.. which was highly stable and reliable.. but my guess is the latest acting up is because you installed Mavericks???
TM widget. A1
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Because otherwise you have no idea what TM is actually doing.
A4, do a full TM reset.
A5 because long prep times are often the result of corrupt drives.
It can also be network.. is the TC plugged in by ethernet to the main router.. and by ethernet to the computer. If it is wireless joining the network, it will never be reliable.

Time Capsule won't back up, privilege message error HELP!

Time Capsule used to work, now it doesn't.
1) I go to System Preferences > Time Machine
2) I click on Change Disk...
3) Window drops down and I select my Time Capsule, then click on Use for Backup
4) Window pops up saying "Enter your user name and password so Time Machine can access the file server "name of my Time Capsule". No field for user name, just Password - so I enter this and click on Connect.
5) Drop down window appears saying: "The specified user does not have read, write and append privileges on this network volume. Please connect as a different user or contact your network administrator."
Thing is - I am the admin.
Can't figure out how to rectify this. Have already tried restoring factory settings to Time Capsule but run into same problem.
Any ideas?

Exact same problem. In addition, Time Capsule won't let me create new folders in the root (/data) folder anymore, although I can still read and write files in already existing folders.
I thought it was because I upgraded to Snow Leopard, so I did a clean install of Leopard OS on my Mac Pro with erasing the HDD, but still no luck.

Time Capsule won't back up new HD - freezes MacBook Pro

Last week I replaced my 110 GB HD with a 640 GB WD HD, and then used Migration assistant from the old drive to transfer all of my data, applications and settings. When I took my MacBook home, it began freezing up. Away from Time capsule, no freezing issues. Checking Time machine, it hasn't backed up data since the new HD was installed. Apple Store "genius" checked with Disk Warrior and said the drive was failing. I asked whether the freezing problem could be due to Time Machine/Time Capsule and they said no. But, if I turn off Time Machine, there is no freezing. Is it possible to continue backing up the new HD with the old information, or do I need to restart and do a full initial back up? Any ideas?

Pondini wrote:
marcjo wrote:
When I have checked to see how Time Machine was doing, it seems to scan all the items on the HD, and then start to back up, but only 13 kb, or 20 kb or some low number is listed as being backed up before it freezes.
That sounds like something's corrupted, either on your internal HD or your backups. Verify the internal, and repair your backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. (The repair of the backups will take a while, but will be much faster via Ethernet).
I verified the internal HD and it said the disk was "appears to be okay". However when I verified the disk permissions, I got a list that when transferred to MS Word was 295 pages long of errors. I don't know if any of the specifics are useful in diagnosing my problem, but here are a few lines:
Group differs on "Applications/Utilities/AirPort Utility.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/AAUAdvanced.nib/keyedobjects.nib", should be 0, group is 80.
Permissions differ on "Applications/Utilities/AirPort Utility.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/AAUAdvanced.nib/keyedobjects.nib", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-rw-r-- .
Group differs on "Applications/Utilities/AirPort Utility.app/Contents/Resources/pl.lproj/AAUAssistant.nib/keyedobjects.nib", should be 0, group is 80.
I wonder whether this means that when our IT guy transferred my data from my old HD to the new one if there was a problem in the way he did it? Some of the log notes indicated that things had been modified and would not be repaired. I did not run the "repair disk permissions" yet because I am not sure that is the correct way to proceed with so many errors.
If I need to do a full back up, I will connect directly to the Time capsule as you suggested. If possible, I would rather delete the older backups after doing the new one. Is that going to be possible.
No, unfortunately, but it shouldn't be necessary to delete the old one, since there's plenty of room.
Time Machine will do a full backup of the new drive, automatically. Before it froze, it likely showed something like +Copying xx mb of 110 GB,+ indicating it was going to back up the whole thing.
Yes, it did indicate it was going to copy the whole thing. I tried connecting directly via ethernet cable, and it still only copied 13 kb of 107 GB.
Should I repair the disk permissions and try again?
Thanks for any more thoughts.

Time Capsule Won't back up the New iMac

Purchased the new iMac this December but can't get TC to back it up. I have tried:
(1) resetting TC to the factory settings but it still gets hung up (2) tried new wireless network (3) repairing permissions

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Start with the Using TIME MACHINE with a TIME CAPSULE *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Time Capsule won't back-up my new hard drive

I added a new hard drive to the drives I want Time Capsule to back-up. I get an error message that says "reformat required (case sensitive disk)" when I try to add the new drive. When I exclude this drive from back-up the error message goes away, but Time Capsule doesn't back-up the disk. How do I fix that?
Message was edited by: JackAldrich

JackAldrich wrote:
I added a new hard drive to the drives I want Time Capsule to back-up. I get an error message that says "reformat required (case sensitive disk)" when I try to add the new drive. When I exclude this drive from back-up the error message goes away, but Time Capsule doesn't back-up the disk. How do I fix that?
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
The problem is, a case-sensitive disk cannot be backed-up to a case-ignorant one.
Case-sensitive disks are rare in OSX; where did you get it or why did you set it up that way? Does it have to be case-senstive? If not, do you still have the originals of the data you put on it?
If you're not sure what case-sensitive is, see the pink box in #5 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time Capsule won't back up due to "sparse bundle" how do I fix this?

I recently updated to IOS6 now my time machine will not back up... due to some "sparse bundle" issue. Can anyone help me fix this?

I do not see how the two are related..
iOS does not use a sparsebundle. That is used by Time Machine in a Mac.
Reboot the TC .. does the issue go away.
I have heard there are some wireless issues with the new iOS release.. perhaps check in the iphone area.

My Time Capsule won't back up my SD card

My SD card (128g) holds all of my music and pictures so that the content doesn't monopolize my MacBook Air. I purchased the time capsule specifically to back the SD card up but, no matter what I do, I can't get it to include it. It's not listed on the exclusion list and is formatted, from what I understand, properly as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I am running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 on an early 2014 13".
Thanks in advance!

Well it seems the number of posts about Maverick having issues with TC and old backups is growing.
What model TC do you have?? Is it coming up in finder? Can you access the setting in airport utility?
Try plugging it directly to the computer by ethernet in complete isolation from the network. Factory reset the TC.. this will not affect the backup at all.
The Factory Reset Gen1-4.
Unplug your TC. Hold in reset. and power the TC back on.. without releasing reset for about 10sec. When the status light flashes rapidly; release it.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
Factory reset Gen 5
Hold in reset for about 5sec until the status light flashes quickly.
If your AirPort Time Capsule still doesn’t respond, do a similar reset to the Gen1-4.
Unplug your AirPort Time Capsule .. hold in reset and power the TC back on.. without releasing the reset.. wait until status led flashes rapidly.
Leave wireless off in the computer and see if you can use migration assistant to copy your files back to the computer.
I would archive off the old backup and start afresh.. do not try and continue using the old backup once you restore your files. But make sure you archive off if you want to keep the old backup.
Archive is available in newest 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 airport utility on the disk page.

My time capsule won't back up

My Time Capsule isn't backing up and has shown an error code 4568. can anyone explain what I have done? and how to get it working again?

You need to first of all do a reboot of the TC.
Make sure the disk in not running in the TC.. just put your hand on it.. it will have some vibration with hdd spinning..
Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord.. count to 10.. plug in power cord.
Maybe a whole network restart is worth it.. if it has not been done in a while.. start everything up again in correct order.. modem.. TC.. clients with 2min gap.
Then do a verify of the TC.
See A5 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Plenty more ideas in this thread.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3123920?tstart=0

Time capsule won't back up - Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Any ideas?

I have tried all the resets, the firmware is the latest version, the green light is on.
But I get this message "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
Any ideas?

Do setup again.. but make sure both your wireless and your ethernet have ipv6 turned on to local link.
Done this OK, but no idea about IPv6 - something new to me and rather Appley I think?
Unplug the WAN for the moment.. Just LAN port TC to the MBPr ethernet via thunderbolt.. (thunderbird was the kids puppet series.. Thunderbirds are go!!). Done - New real people Thunderbirds movie coming out soon I believe!!!
Reset the TC again.. sorry.. !! You're welcome ... done.
Make sure the ethernet now has an IP address.. 10.0.1.2 - Yep - done that - on ethernet anyway ...
You need to open the network preferences to find out. Yep - that's good ...
****** I then reconnect the TC WAN to the router - is this right?
And then I think I start going round in circles ... boot, reboot, restart, reboot again ...
The final result is green light on TC, but error message when trying TM is "Backup disk is not available".
Then open the airport utility and you should be able to setup the TC.
Do as little setup as possible and then run the TM backup and see how it goes.
I have managed to get Thunderbird to LAN on TC to create a folder on TC and copy a file onto it.
So I guess the drive is working - it must be the software, settings or perhaps even the operator that isn't quite so clever ...
I named network RFG, named device RFGTC. RFG network shown as IP 192.168.0.72
Wireless router is BT Homehub 3 with IP of 192.168.0.254 - is this issuing new IP addresses when rebooting TC?
I have three wireless networks here - the BT Homehub3 wireless, the TC wireless, and also a D-link power socket ethernet thingy for an ethernet connection to the telly - DHP-W310AV which is also wireless link. All are effectively connected to the BT Homehub - is there a conflict there?
Have several times achieved in Airport Utility schematic with internet shown as green, RFGTC shown as green, light on TC green, but no TM backup run ... "backup disc not available."
And there are no tall building around here to hurl myself off ... at least you can go to Sydney Harbour bridge - not too far away ... it was my son in Sydney that persuaded me to scrap Windows and go Apple ... it's all his fault ...

Time capsule/time machine set up question

Hi there,
I'm getting my new Macbook Pro tomorrow and am going to set up time capsule and have a couple questions on the best way to do it. I want time machine to back up my macbook at a regular interval. I also want it to back up my external hard drive manually (ie once every couple of months when I think about it).
Normally my external hard drive will be plugged into the back of my time capsule so I can access it from the macbook. I realize I'll need to plug it in to the macbook to back it up as I'm pretty sure the Time Capsule won't back up an external hard drive plugged into it. I'm just not sure what settings I need to change in time machine to acheive this.
Also, I have my Imac on the network which i don't want backed up with Time machine. Will it try to back it up automatically when I turn on Time Machine? What do I need to do to prevent this?
Thanks for your help,
Dug

Hello Dug.
I want time machine to back up my macbook at a regular interval. I also want it to back up my external hard drive manually (ie once every couple of months when I think about it).
This is no problem.. leave TM to do its hourly backups. It is faster that way and it will simply clean up the backups at the end of the day and end of week to remove the excess and repeats.
Read how TM actually works as it is good to understand.. It is not a simple piece of software.
The general info at the top here is great.. about TM and clones.. as well as the article on TM and magic.
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
This covers a lot more of the details.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I realize I'll need to plug it in to the macbook to back it up as I'm pretty sure the Time Capsule won't back up an external hard drive plugged into it.
Correct.. TM only backs up the disks plugged into the Mac.
It cannot backup network drives.. ie the TC. Or anything plugged into the TC.
You can setup TM to backup the external drive by removing it from the exclude list in preferences. When it is plugged in you might need to still go to preferences and remove the exclusion .. it will take a long long time to backup.. And I personally think this is the wrong way to do it. I think you are better keeping the backup of the external drive separate. I would use (I do) carbon copy cloner, which works great and is far more flexible than TM.. you can then backup the external USB drive plugged into the TC occasionally to the TC without any unplugging.. (although I would plug the MBP into the TC by ethernet). Which reminds me your first backup of the MBP should be by ethernet.. if you Mac has no ethernet port buy the thunderbolt to ethernet dongle..it is not expensive and well worth the money.
TC cannot do anything.. it is a dumb as a board hard disk in a fairly dumbed down router.
Also, I have my Imac on the network which i don't want backed up with Time machine. Will it try to back it up automatically when I turn on Time Machine? What do I need to do to prevent this?
TM is controlled by you.. if you don't want TM to back up, don't turn it on.. I am lost why you think TM will start automatically backing up. It won't.. it is going to sit there off.. and you can leave it off.

Strange time machine backups (duplicate?)

Sorry to cross post this - I posted it initially in 'Time Capsule' by mistake:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1935448&tstart=0
Thanks

Here's the orignal post from the other thread (since this forum is more on-topic:
I just set up one of the new 1TB Time Capsules and am backing up 3 machines to it. Everything seems to work.
However, my Mac Pro takes FOREVER to back up each time, and a look at the logs shows that its backup up roughly 1GB each time (every hour) that Time Machine runs. This doesn't make any sense because if it's been asleep all night, and I wake it in the morning, it backs up ~1GB. If it's been asleep for a couple of hours during lunch, and I wake it, Time Machine backs up ~1GB once it runs. Even if the system has literally sat idle for the hour between the last Time Machine backup and now, it seems to want to copy ~1GB each and every backup.
Not only that, but it copies almost an identical amount from both drives in the Mac Pro each and every time.
Mar 9 18:28:59 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.35 GB requested (including padding), 718.87 GB available
Mar 9 18:34:50 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: Copied 1783 files (1.1 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 18:35:00 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: Copied 1789 files (1.1 GB) from volume Work HD.
Mar 9 18:35:00 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.02 GB requested (including padding), 717.75 GB available
Mar 9 18:35:28 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: Copied 641 files (17.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 18:35:37 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2118: Copied 647 files (17.7 MB) from volume Work HD.
Almost the identical number of files to copy from each of the two drives, which makes no sense - they contain totally different data.
Mar 9 17:28:53 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.68 GB requested (including padding), 720.26 GB available
Mar 9 17:35:58 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: Copied 2266 files (1.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 17:36:58 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: Copied 3772 files (1.4 GB) from volume Work HD.
Mar 9 17:36:58 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.02 GB requested (including padding), 718.88 GB available
Mar 9 17:37:15 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Mar 9 17:37:24 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: Copied 659 files (13.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 17:37:33 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1901: Copied 665 files (13.0 MB) from volume Work HD.
Mar 9 16:28:48 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.35 GB requested (including padding), 721.22 GB available
Mar 9 16:28:48 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Mar 9 16:35:12 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: Copied 1578 files (1.1 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 16:35:31 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: Copied 1652 files (1.1 GB) from volume Work HD.
Mar 9 16:35:32 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.03 GB requested (including padding), 720.28 GB available
Mar 9 16:36:06 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: Copied 672 files (27.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 16:36:14 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd1742: Copied 678 files (27.6 MB) from volume Work HD.
And even when it's not ~1GB to backup (although it seems to almost always be, it's still an almost identical amount reported for both drives:
Mar 9 13:28:54 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.50 GB requested (including padding), 721.22 GB available
Mar 9 13:32:42 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: Copied 2584 files (426.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 13:32:51 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: Copied 2590 files (426.7 MB) from volume Work HD.
Mar 9 13:32:51 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.01 GB requested (including padding), 721.22 GB available
Mar 9 13:33:13 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: Copied 636 files (3.9 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 9 13:33:21 MacPro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd560: Copied 642 files (3.9 MB) from volume Work HD.
Am I just reading the logs wrong, and this is normal, or does this seem odd to anyone else?
The only thing I'm explicitly excluding from backups is my Parallels directory, which is also the only thing I can think of that would cause such large amounts of data to need to be backed up each and every time. I don't have any filesharing/P2P software installed (another possible culprit).
The Mac Pro backups have been like this since as soon as the initial backup was done - ~1GB for each drive every hour that Time Machine runs for this computer.
If very little is basically changing on my system (at least not hourly) why are these backups so large, and why are they of almost identical amounts from both drives?

Time Machine won't back up external drive to Time Capsule

I recently got a Time Capsule, and successfully set it up to back up my iMac's primary drive, but for some reason Time Machine won't back up my external drive to the Time Capsule.
I removed the external drive from the exclusion list in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and from what I've read this should be sufficient to make Time Machine back up the drive.
The external drive is connected to my iMac via Thunderbolt > Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adaptor > Firewire 800 input, and the Time Capsule is connected via Ethernet to my LAN.
Since I'm using Ethernet, I've disabled Wi-Fi on the Time Capusule by going to AirPort Utility > My Time Capsule > Edit > Wireless > Network Mode > Off.
The reason I believe the external drive is not being backed up is because when I click the Time Machine icon in the upper-right status bar and choose "Enter Time Machine", none of the folders on external drive show any older versions.
Furthermore, when I click Finder > Time Machine Backups > Backups.backupdb, I can see only one sub-folder which has the name of my iMac's primary drive. I can't see any equivalent folder for my external drive.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I don't see anything you have done wrong.. perhaps it does backup in a different way.
Load the widget.. A1 here... http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
That will allow you to track the log of TM to see what it is doing.
I would also try rebooting the computer.. exclude the drive again.. reboot.. and remove the exclusion.
You should be able to check the actual settings of TM in plist file.
And you can do a full reset of TM as well.. See A4. Check what is in the file. Pondini lists the location for you.
Nothing surprises me with Mountain Lion ...!!

Time Capsule won't back up Time Machine

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