Time machine backup partition could not be changed

Hello, I found that the backup partition could not be changed in OS X 10.7.5. When the option button was clicked, it could be seen that all partitions except the OS X lion partition were listed in the excluding list. And the excluded partitions could not be unselected using the "-" button, they are presented as gray.

when you select the TM hard drive in disk utility (the model, not the name) look at the bottom of the DU window. Do you see the line
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table?
Also, I looked at your first post again and it says that you only have 2.5GB of space available on your main drive. I don't know how big your hard drive is but that's a tiny amount. You need to offload part of your data to a different drive ASAP. when free space gets that low, disk fragmentation becomes a very serious issue. system slows done and start behaving in unpredictable fashion. This can lead to all sorts of problems including directory damage. Run "verify disk" on your main drive and see if any errors are reported. I don't know for sure if this is related to your TM problems but it very well might be.

Similar Messages

Time Machine: Backup Volume Could not be Found

I recently upgraded to Leopard. I have a brand new Lacie external hard drive.
I have tried to use Time Machine with the Lacie HD, but it fails and gives me this message, "Backup volume could not be found."
I did some troubleshooting. I tried to reformat the HD, but that gave me errors as well, stating "Could not unmount disk"
The HD is currently formatted to Mac OS Extended.
I am not certain if this is a problem with the HD, or just user error! I also had problems with iTunes when I tried to move the Library to the HD. I got and error message stating "you don't have sufficient privileges"
I only have 2.5G left on my internal HD, so I am a bit concerned. Any guidance would be much appreciated!!

when you select the TM hard drive in disk utility (the model, not the name) look at the bottom of the DU window. Do you see the line
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table?
Also, I looked at your first post again and it says that you only have 2.5GB of space available on your main drive. I don't know how big your hard drive is but that's a tiny amount. You need to offload part of your data to a different drive ASAP. when free space gets that low, disk fragmentation becomes a very serious issue. system slows done and start behaving in unpredictable fashion. This can lead to all sorts of problems including directory damage. Run "verify disk" on your main drive and see if any errors are reported. I don't know for sure if this is related to your TM problems but it very well might be.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
BTW, I did try a "restore from Time Machine" option the first thing I had my "new computer" (old hardware, 2009 iMac) up and running, using Migration Assistant, and it ran for many hours and then failed in the wee hours - what that has to do with anything I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

I cannot load Maverick on my iMac HD. It reports that my HD is used for Time Machine backups and will not load to that drive. I do not use this drive for backups. Help.

I cannot load Maverick on my iMac HD. It reports that my HD is used for Time Machine backups and will not load to that drive. I do not use this drive for backups. I use an external 1 TB WD My Book for backups as well as Super Duper Backups. Can anyone offer advice. Thanks.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You have got the "Backups.backupdb" folder in the root level of your hard drive. This is the folder used by Time Machine to save backups to, and the OS X Mavericks installer thought that your hard drive is being used to store Time Machine backups
To fix this, open a Finder window, select the Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type:
Then, delete "Backups.backupdb" and empty the Trash. Finally, open the Mavericks installer from the Applications folder and follow the steps

Time Capsule "backup disk could not be found"

I occaisonally receive an error message on my Macbook Pro and iMac, both running OS 10.8 that my time capsule "backup disk could not be found." I can access the Time Capsule with Airport Utility, can see my backups in Time Capsule-it just won't back up. It doesn't matter whether I am connected via wifi or ethernet cable. I have had to basically disconnect and then go through a complete backup when this happens, which kind of makes Time Capsule useless for a real backup plan Any suggestions?

I recently came accross an instruction to reduce the number of characters in the Time Capusle backup disk name. After a year of having to restart my Tiem Capsule to get my MacBook Pro to backup, it now seems to do so consistently.

Old time machine backup partition erased, but new partition failed

I had a defective time machine backup and had to start over. My disk has 4TB. The original time machine backup contained two backups from different laptops and was in the largest partition of 2TB. I then had two addition 1TB partitions. I remade new time machine backups to each of the 1TB partitions for each of the mac book pros. When I went to delete and change the original 2TB partition I found I could minus it out to create free space, but all attempts to try to repartition it as 2TB or as 2 1 TB pieces and even a piece as small as 200MB failed and asked me to resize closer to the original partition.
I have seen many similar issues, but not quite like this. I have already shut down the external drive and unplugged it and the restarted my machine, but to no effect. I now have 2 1 TB partitions and a 2 TB empty space.
Any suggestions?
I'm a little afraid to copy the Time Machine backups to a new drive as I heard that is NOT a good idea.
Is this a problem created when a partition is used for a Time Machine backup?
Han

How are you looking for the backup?
Time Machine will only show the active backup.
You can hold down the Option key while selecting the Time Machine menu and you will have the option to Browse other Time Machine backups.
Here is some good info on how Time Machine "thinks:" http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Can i restore from a time machine backup that is not the latest one?

I am trying to restore from a May 7th time machine backup. At that time my username was michaelhood. I had a system crash and when my computer was returned to me I inadvertently set it up under a different username, thinking I would do the restore later. Between May 13 and today, Time machine did backups under the name mhoo4494. Changing the name didn't let me access my May 7 backup, nor did creating a different user account. I have erased the hard drive and am reinstalling from the Install CD. I have set up a third user name. I now want to restore my data from the Time Machine May 7 backup. How do I do that? Migration assistant saw two users -- mhoo and mhoo4494 (michaelhood was not an option). I selected them both, but got no data for either -- no docs, no music, no pictures. This procedure should not be this hard~!!

Hi uclamikey90,
It is possible, using Migration Assistant, to restore the contents of your hard drive selectively. See this article -
Mac OS X v10.6: How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from a Time Machine backup - Apple Support
In particular -
To migrate data from a Time Machine backup
In Finder, press Command-Shift-U.
Double-click Migration Assistant.
Click "Continue" and enter an administrator name and password when prompted.
Select the "From a Time Machine backup or other disk" option, then click "Continue".
Select your Time Machine backup disk or Time Capsule (enter the user name and or password if prompted), then click "Continue".
Select the Time Machine backup you would like to restore (such the most current one you just made), then click "Continue".
Select Items to Migrate, then click "Continue". Note: The "Continue" button will be dimmed until the "Calculating…" stage is complete.
A user account sheet may appear if you have a user name on your Mac that is the same user name in your Time Machine backup. You will have to give the username in your Time Machine backup a new username to avoid conflicts. Note: This will create a new user account on your Mac to hold the data from the Time Machine backup. After migration, you can use the /Users/Shared folder to transfer data files the accounts.
Migration Assistant will begin the process of transferring the items you selected to migrate. When it is finished, click "Quit" to exit.
When you reach step 7, deselect items that you do not wish to migrate. Videos, photos and music are likely candidates for this as they take up a lot of disk space. You can later put items on an external hard drive.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

How can I delete a Time Machine backup which did not complete?

I was running a Time Machine backup when the disc got unmounted. Therefore I know all of the data is not backed up.
I would like to delete that entry and rerun "Back Up Now" to start over.
I tried deleting the folder with the latest time stamp on the drive and ran "Back Up Now". There was a very small amount of data that it then backed up.
Obviously there is a large gap in manually managing this process and I would like to know the best fix.
Thanks in advance.

Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
tmutil compare | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear below what you entered.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.
Caution: Under some conditions, tmutil may falsely flag files as not having been backed up when in fact they have been. It can be confused by multi-linked files, or by files with a modification date earlier than the one in the snapshot. This will not be an issue for most users. If the results of the above procedure surprise you, inspect your snapshots directly.

Airport Extreme/Time Capsule backup volume could not be found?

I am having problem with Time Machine. When I try to backup using Time Machine, I get an error message, " The backup volume could not be found." Strangely, Time Machine recognized the drive when setting the Time Machine preferences, but not when I backup.
If i select from the 'select disk' again and try again i get Keychain Access error 25299 and have to delete that in the Keychain for it to even get to the point of counting down to start back up
I have erased my Time Capsule recently and was starting fresh but now i cannot get time machine running again...
In the shared section of the finder the time machine backup is only appearing in the network area rather than directly there...
Any ideas?
Many thanks.

Hi there.
I would suggest First Aid of your Keychain, but that hardly ever works (especially in this situation).
What I would do first, is go to ~/Library/Keychains/, grab the login.keychain and move it to the desktop. Log out, and log back in again. If that fixes it, then get the old login.keychain from the desktop and put it in the trash. (You will lose all your saved passwords for networks etc.)
If that doesn't work, unfortunately the only option would be to do an Archive & Install.
So you just need to put your 10.6 disk in again and install over the system.
Your personal data/files should still remain intact. Although I would still suggest making a backup (ironic considering the situation)
Cheers
Taylor

Time Machine ,,,,,sparse bundle could not be accessed (error -1)

Time Machine on my iMac (2.66 i5) is failing with the message:
Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup image "/Volumes/Time Machine/Shaggylane iMac.sparsbundle" could not be accessed (error -1).
This error appears when the backup is started......it spends a bit of time "Looking for backup drive", then displays the message.
The directory "/Volumes/Time Machine" has the following permissions:
drwx------ 13 root wheel 398 24 Aug 13:15 Time Machine
I was able to login as root and go into that directory. I didn't see any broken links or anything that stood out.
I was also able to go into Time Machine from the desktop and flip through the backup history. It seemed to be responding normally.
Time Machine has been working fine for 2+ years. I suspect it got buggered-up when I accidentally rebooted while it was doing a backup October 12th. Lion was installed in the spring. On the 12th, I installed a Lion patch bringing it up to 10.7.2.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Doug

I have not found a long-term solution (fix), but in my case the volume where the Time Machine backup should occur usually is mounted on the desktop but not as a shared volume (incidated as a drive with the people holding hands superimposed over the drive icon). If I drag the drive to the trash (unmount it), the next time Time Machine is scheduled to run, it completes successfully.

Problem with Time Machine Backup or Maybe Not Time Machine

The problem manifests after a Time Machine backup.
I have an iMac 24-inch, Early 2008. iMac 8,1
Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM.
Last week I purchased two 4-Terabyte G-technology G-Drives. Each drive is equip with FireWire 800 and USB 3.0/2.0. In general use they seem to work fine on the iMac.
I designated one drive as a Time Machine Volume. This is where the problem happens.
Time Machine will do the initial backup just fine. Then it runs once per hour with no problem. Intermittently however, Time Machine will fail and report :
“Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “hard disk name”.
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.”
Interestingly enough if I try to open a folder on the Time Machine volume using the Finder I get:
“The operation can’t be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -50).
If I try to eject the volume I get the irksome “Cannot eject volume because it’s currently in use by one or more programs.”
To resolve this I’ve tried everything, from the banal verifying permissions, to swapping the two G-Drives around, swapping out all the cables, etc.. When the error occurs I go into the shell and check with lsof and always find no software apparently holding or using that volume.
Very frustrating
I can force eject the volume, then remount the volume and things are back to normal. Same with restarting.
This happened under OS X Mountain Lion and is now happening under a clean install of Mavericks.
I thought that even though I don’t see any MDS related processes using the drive, it might be spotlight, so I told spotlight not to index the volume. Problem still happens.
I’ve found that one person had almost this exact same problem at:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4756742
His solution turned out to be replacing the G-Drive with another brand new G-Drive.
Unfortunately, I cannot return the drives to the Apple store because the boxes were tossed out. I also don’t relish trying to explain that the drives work just fine until some glitch that occurs either just before or just after a Time Machine backup.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

You can also contact G-Drive while the drives are under warranty (one year I believe).
I have the same problem using Time Machine with the 2T G-Drive and my MacBook Pro. G-Tech emailed me a Firmware Update Utility app and, when that didn't solve the error message problem, they sent me a replacement drive and new cables, twice. The problem persisted; I get one or two backups each day and then the error message. I also can't copy anything to the drive and have to force eject it, so G-Tech suggested I see how well it worked with the USB cable.
Time Machine works flawlessly with the USB cable and the G-Drive, so G-Tech suggested it is a problem with my Firewire 800 port. I worked with Apple Care over the phone, doing all the tests suggested in Eric's post - testing with Disk Utility, Time Machines interface with my User Accounts, the Operating System, then resetting Time Machine, etc. and then I took it to the Genius Bar so they could run the tests themselves. All looked like it should be fine (but they were using a 1T G-Drive and all testing was done within 30 minutes)...when I got home, after two good backups, I got the error message again.
Apple Care finally suggested I make a Genius Bar appointment and sit at the store working with my MacBook, the G-Drive and Time Machine running until I got the error message, to prove the only thing left that could possibly be the cause of the problem, is the port. I did this last Wednesday.
It is 9 days later and I got my computer back this afternoon...the logic board was replaced because the Firewire 800 port is attached to it...I got my first Time Machine back up at 5:34pm...and the error message again at 7:34pm.
The only solution, it seems, is to use the USB cable instead of Firewire. USB and Thunderbolt seem to be the direction Apple is taking, which is why so many people have been posting about this problem, here and elsewhere, with no real solutions from Apple. See this article: http://www.infoworld.com/t/mac-laptop/how-cope-the-end-of-firewire-205957
I hope the USB works for you too.

Time Machine backup volume will not mount

Once I goy Time Machine up and running over almost two years ago, I have had little cause for concern. A few lengthy backups here and there but I have been able to restore without any problems whatsoever. It has been extremely useful many times.
A couple of days ago, I noticed that the backup volume was not mounted (I backup to one of my four internal drives) and launched Time Machine. I got the error:
The storage location for Time Machine backups can't be found.
When I run Disk Utility the generic disk icon is in the left hand pane but not the volume. None of the tasks are available except Erase and Partition - there is no option to Verify Disk, Repair Disk, Verify Disk Permissions or Repair Disk Permissions.
According to my logs, the last backup at 18:12 on 20th November was successful. I didn't notice that the volume had not mounted the until the next day.
I'm very concerned that I have lost almost two years of data security. Is there any way I can repair the disk or recover the backups?
Thanks.

If Disk Utility can't see any partitions, it's not good.
First, turn TM off.
Then try ejecting, disconnecting and powering the drive off for a few minutes, then reattaching it. Then try again with Disk Utility. If still no help, the drive is likely dead.
There's a very small chance that +Disk Warrior+ (version 4.1.1 or 4.2 only), or another heavy-duty disk repair app can fix it, if you already have one. But I wouldn't suggest spending the $$ for one unless you think you'll need it in the future -- DW is about $100.
Most likely, your disk is dead. There's a small chance that a +Data Recovery+ app such as +Data Rescue+ can recover some of the data. Check via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com for +Data Recovery.+ There are services and apps, none cheap. Some of the apps have a free demo or test mode that will tell you if there's anything that can be recovered, and perhaps actually recover a single file; then you pay for it and recover whatever else can be recovered. You'll need another external disk to receive the recovered items.
You won't get the normal Time Machine folder structure, though, just "raw" files. Even if you do recover files, you'll most likely have to figure out what goes where and copy them to the right places manually.
So I'd suggest immediately getting a new drive and doing a new TM backup to it, so you have something. Put a second partition on it that you can use for the recovered files if and when you do that.
If those are your only backups, I'd recommend getting a second external, perhaps a portable one, and using CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to make a full "bootable clone" to it, then take it to your safe deposit box, workplace, relative's house, or other secure location. And/or, you might want to look at Mozy, Carbonite, or other online backup services.

Time Machine backup doesn't recognize recent changes 100%

I have an iMac and 2 external hard drives ("A" and "Time Machine" for purposes of this post).
I just updated my iMac and also A before running a manual Time Machine backup to "Time Machine".
What gets backed up via the Time Machine software to the physical hard drive "Time Machine" is my entire iMac and A. Nothing is excluded.
After the manual backup completed I opened my Time Machine hard drive icon and opened the folder "Latest" to review the new backup. I noticed a problem right away with the date/time stamps. When I open Latest I see 2 folders, A and iMac. The A folder is the problem in that I just put new files on A moments before I ran a manual backup however Time Machine is saying A hasn't been modified for the last month. The iMac folder date/time stamp however indicates that I just made changes to my iMac (which I did) pre-back up. And yes, I reviewed A to see that there are indeed new files there with today's date/time stamp info.
Thoughts?

First, do not access your backups via the Finder; use the Time Machine "Star Wars" display.
If that shows nothing on drive "A" has been backed up for a while, see #D5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

Time Machine Backup Partition on Ext drive unmounts. Other partition doesnt

I have a 500 GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro FW/USB drive that has two 250 GB partitions. I use one for storage and one for Time Machine backups and have been using it this way for a long time. The backup partition never unmounts unless I drag it to the trash. The backup partition constantly unmounts after a while.
I have run Disk Utility and DiskWarrior on the disk and partition many times. They show no problems. I have reset PRAM.
If the backup partition is mounted when I put the computer to sleep, it is still mounted when it wakes up.
Nothing will keep the partition mounted indefinitely, while the other partition on the disk is always mounted. Any suggestions?

deerhound2 wrote:
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Error: Flushing index to disk returned the error: 0
TM was having a problem writing to the backup disk, so the backup failed and ejected the disk.
Start by repairing it, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine Backups Up "Do Not Backup" Folders

For my first Time Machine backup, I started with a new 1TB drive properly formated. I selected 2 folders I did NOT want backup up. Once TM finished I entered the backup & there are the Do Not Backup folders with all their contents. Should I trash the Plist? which one?
Thanks

James,
I'm betting your messed with the backupd.plists which are different than the TimeMachine.plist.
*Backups Have Ceased With No Error Messages*
I think something is wrong with the backupd.plists. If something is wrong with these .plists you can select your backup disk in Time Machine Preferencess. But you CANNOT initiate a backup, even when selecting "Back Up Now" from the TM menu. And no error message will appear when it fails. You should still be able to launch Time Machine’s “time travel” interface though.
In a Finder window navigate to the LaunchDaemons folder. The file path is /System/Library/LaunchDaemons.
Click on the NAME column to arrange everything alphabetically.
Scroll down to the 4 backupd.plist files. They are:
com.apple.backupd-attach.plist
com.apple.backupd-auto.plist
com.apple.backupd-wake.plist
com.apple.backupd.plist
Now launch Time Machine from the Dock.
From the time scale on the right choose a date before backups began to fail.
When the windows stop moving, Hold the Shift key down and click on each of the 4 files to select them.
They should all be highlighted now. Click "Restore" in the lower right-hand corner.
You will be asked to enter your Admin Password.
When asked 'Do you want to Replace the existing files' say yes to each one.
Now Highlight one of the restored files and Get Info. Sharing & Permissions should be:
system - Read & Write
wheel - Read only
everyone - Read only
Reboot your Mac. Once back at the desktop try initiating a backup.
If this does not work you may have to do an Archive and Install to restore Time Machine functionality.
Let us know if this resolved the issue
Cheers!

Time machine backup partition could not be changed

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for