Time Machine Backup seems to freeze after a few megabytes saying Estimating TIme Remaining

My MBP (mid 2009, osx10.8.5) seems to take forever to Time Machine Backup. I'm backing up to an external (USB) disk that has plenty of memory. THe backup starts (Status window opens), Status says "Backing up 1,314,593 items", climbs to about 310 MB of 325.01 GB and then just sits there with a line that says "Estimating time remaining". I've let this sit for 2 hours so far and no other messages or errors. I haven't done this in a while and a previous , partial, Time Machine Backup was on this USB drive but I deleted everything on it because there wasn't enough space to do the new Time Machine Backup. It will have to do a full backup I'm sure, so I expect it to take a while to back up over 300GB but I don't see anything being copied to the backup disk, except the "Backups.backupdb" folder. It stays at about 265MB.

Try D4/3 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Similar Messages

Why does time machine backup seems to freeze iMac

Have just attached external hard drive to my new iMac - backup appears to have worked (although no confirmation). However, when clicking on icon in desktop, time machine is entered then freezes. Only way to get out is by disconnecting the hard drive from the USB port. Additionally, even if I'm not in Time Machine, but with the hard disk connected, I appear to be unable to turn the iMac off.
What am I doing wrong - have I not left things long enough to backup?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Sounds to me your hard drive doesn't have the appropriate firmware to be compatible with your version of Mac OS X. See my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html
Fortunately you can take the hard drive out and put it inside another case that does work. You can purchase these cases from http://www.macsales.com/ even in the UK.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Time Machine Backup seems to run constantly

My Time Machine backup seems to run constantly. When it happens, performance is also affected. Although a system restart will seems to get everything back to normal, the problem comes back. Any thoughts on what I am doing to cause the problem?

Thanks Mike,
I'm a bit new to Macs really and thought that once backed up, on my NAS system I would be able to view the photos etc. but I presume this isn't the case and I should not back up the photos as part of the Time Machine backup and back these up seperately in order to view them remotely etc?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Time machine backup seems to only have a Sparsebundle folder

I have had my MacBook for a couple of years and have only just got round to backing it up. I set off Time Machine lat night for a 200Gb backup. This morning I checked it and the Time machine backup seems to only have a Sparsebundle folder of 1000s of small files but apparently no iTunes or photos??
Any ideas????

Thanks Mike,
I'm a bit new to Macs really and thought that once backed up, on my NAS system I would be able to view the photos etc. but I presume this isn't the case and I should not back up the photos as part of the Time Machine backup and back these up seperately in order to view them remotely etc?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Cannot install Mountain Lion on my hard disc, as I keep getting the message" 'This disk is used for Time Machine backups'. Which it isn't - I don't use Time Machine

Cannot install Mountain Lion on my hard disc, as I keep getting the message" 'This disk is used for Time Machine backups'. Which it isn't - I don't use Time Machine

Check to see if you have a folder named "Backups.backupdb" at the root level of your hard disk. That can cause this error message.

Mail.app time machine backup not showing anything after upgrade.

Hi,
I have gone from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, and I have a concern that my Time Machine backup now does not show any of my emails since the upgrade.
Is this by design or has something more sinister occured?
Gavin.

Hi,
No, thats the point the only email visible is from after the upgrade a week ago.
My emails on this computer go back over a year, but I cannot seem to see them.
Gavin.

Initial Time Machine Backup - Extremely Slow/Freeze

Hello,
I recently switched my external HDDs and began utilizing a different HDD in conjunction with Time Machine. I have used this HDD in the past with Time Machine and never had a problem. The initial backup is proceeding at an extremely slow rate and often freezes - as of writing, it is currently standing at 125.3MB of 1.07TB - About 1,172 days. I have erased and reformatted the drive (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)), tested data transfer rates to it by transferring files myself (normal rate), repaired permissions, verified my disks, tried the initial backup while spotlight was off and have forced a spotlight re-index, allowing it to go to completion before attemtping a backup - however, no solution has thus far worked. I have not made any large changes to my computer since I switched the HDDs either.
Does anybody know what could be causing such a problem and how to fix this? Many thanks for any help,
- Cptbigt

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time machine backups seem to be gone

I have been running time machine flawlessly for a while. However, on April 26, I created a new user account. I dragged a very large file (clone of a different computer and time machine backup of a different computer) to that user desktop. Those files were previously being excluded from backups. Apparently, wehn I moved them to the new user it tried to include them and I got a warning about the External Drive not being large enough for the backups. I sorted out excluding that user completely but now I can not access any backups prior to the new user being created. Are they lost forever? Did it delete the External Drive to try to make room for the backup? I would think that it would have to check the size before it even does any deleting and then if it knew the backup was too big it wouldn't delete and it would just abort the backup. Can anyone help? When I enter into time machine the last backup shown is April 26, when I browse the drive the oldest folder is April 26 and when I look at the time machine menu it says the oldest backup is April 26.
I am using an iMac with Snow Leopard installed.
Also, I tried looking at the logs in the console but I could not seem to go back far enough.

Are you going into Time Machine from the old user? If you enter Time Machine from the new user, you won't see any files created before that user existed.
You can manually go into your Time Machine volume from the Finder, just to verify that your backups are all there. Don't make any changes in the Finder. Even if Time Machine's "starfield" interface isn't functional, you could still restore files manually if you had to. If Time Machine is really confused, best option is usually to just erase the Time Machine drive and start a fresh one.

Time machine backup is very slow after migration to Mountain Lion

After I migrated to mountain lion, Time machine backup is very slow. Time machine preference says there is no previous back up although I had Time machine on before migration. It did not help verymuch to connect an ethernet cable between my timecapsule and my Macbook Pro
Here are the screenshots I see:
Should I erase the previous backup made on Lion before backing up on Mountain lion? in this case how do I transfer the Lion backup file on another disk just in case something goes wrong before I have a good backup under Mountain Lion? just like any other file?

After further reading on the forum, the problem was solved: I used the possibility to back up on a second disk (in the preferences Time Machine choose a disk and save on both disks) to make a back up on another usb disk, and then erased the old .sparsebundle file on my Time Capsule. I have then re defined time capsule as the back up disk and then the backup was muuuuuch faster (one night instead of less than 1 giga after 3 days.....)

Time machine backup of mavericks gone after yosemite upgrade

I am a podcaster and enjoyed the podcast format in garage band. However, after upgrading to yosemite, my garageband is gone. So (annoyingly) I had to buy it again.
However, after doing so, I learned that in the latest version (10.0.3), podcast formats are not supported. I know I have the old garageband (10.0.2, I suppose) on my time machine back up of mavericks.
I figured I would just pull that single application out of the backup and throw it into yosemite. Not happening, because whenever I pull up time machine, it has marked the date that I made the backup, but it wont let me access it. It doesnt even tell me I can't. It's as if its not there, but then when I open my External HD in finder, there it is, the time machine backup file.
I read somewhere that when you first plug in the HD after upgrading, it has to "index" the HD, but after leaving it plugged in awhile, there appears to be no change. I've messaged apple about this over a week ago, and no reply whatsoever. Their customer service has really hit the fan these past few years.
Anyway, any advice would be appreciated. I'd like to get back to my podcasting. I should have never upgraded, but now I cant go back to mavericks because I can't access the **** back up.
Regards,
Colin

Yes, backups should be accessible.
I've been running Time Machine since it was launched (Leopard, I think) and have upgraded through all iterations of OS X and am currently on Yosemite. Whenever I've needed to restore a file (not often, but it does happen) that was created whilst running an earlier OS X they have restored as expected when running Time Machine from the latest OS.

I just moved iPhoto (9.6) library to EHD from my MBP. I had been running time machine backups. With the library now on an EHD, will time machine run a seamless backup next time i connect (if i allow TM to see other drives)?

I have MBP 2012 running Yosemite and iPhoto 9.6. I run Time machine backups daily.
I just moved iPhoto library to EHD and removed the iPhoto library on MBP. I have enabled external drives to be accessed on TM. The next time i run a TM backup with the EHD connected, will TM run a seamless backup or will it not like the fact that a backup is now spread across two devices where it used to be on only one?

By default EHDs are excluded for TM backups - you have to go to the TM preferences ==> options and remove them from the excluded list
And you need two disks connected -one for your iPhoto library and one for the TM backup - TM will backup all hard drives that ar not excluded - you do not need multiple TM backup disks
LN

Time Machine: Backup is too large and I have space on my Time Capsule !

Hi Everybody,
I am using Time Machine with my 1T Time Capsule. Everything was running nice till I get message telling that backup could not complete because there was an error copying backup files. I searched for solutions, erased TM disk, reset TM, and reset TC too. Now I have 937g available on TC, I tried to backup 63g but a message came out telling that backup is too large !
Any ideas please !?

Hi
The backup failed too !
These are the messages from the console:
Apr 2 11:53:12 hussain-almarshoods-macbook kernel[0]:
Apr 2 11:53:42: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 2 11:54:10 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Stopping backup.
Apr 2 11:54:10 hussain-almarshoods-macbook kernel[0]:
Apr 2 11:54:27: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Apr 2 11:54:27 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2010/2010-03-272/IMG0687.JPG to (null)
Apr 2 11:54:31 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Copied 168977 files (58.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Apr 2 11:54:31 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Apr 2 11:54:37 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Backup failed with error: 11
Apr 2 11:54:40 hussain-almarshoods-macbook [0x0-0x11011].com.tomtom.HOMERunnerApp[135]: Notifying device changed
Apr 2 11:54:42 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Apr 2 11:54:42 hussain-almarshoods-macbook [0x0-0x11011].com.tomtom.HOMERunnerApp[135]: Notifying device changed
Apr 2 11:54:42 hussain-almarshoods-macbook com.apple.backupd[413]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
These are from TM buddy:
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Hussain%[email protected]/Hussainz
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Hussain%[email protected]/Hussainz
Disk image /Volumes/Hussainz-1/Hussain Almarshood’s MacBook.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Backup content size: 67.9 GB excluded items size: 3.8 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 76.92 GB requested (including padding), 874.08 GB available
Copied 3.6 GB of 64.1 GB, 152 of 620764 items
Copied 7.3 GB of 64.1 GB, 31990 of 620764 items
Copied 9.7 GB of 64.1 GB, 143329 of 620764 items
Copied 13.3 GB of 64.1 GB, 151861 of 620764 items
Copied 17.3 GB of 64.1 GB, 153066 of 620764 items
Copied 20.9 GB of 64.1 GB, 154141 of 620764 items
Copied 25.0 GB of 64.1 GB, 154854 of 620764 items
Copied 29.3 GB of 64.1 GB, 155711 of 620764 items
Copied 33.7 GB of 64.1 GB, 156613 of 620764 items
Copied 38.0 GB of 64.1 GB, 157522 of 620764 items
Copied 42.2 GB of 64.1 GB, 159199 of 620764 items
Copied 46.3 GB of 64.1 GB, 160927 of 620764 items
Copied 50.7 GB of 64.1 GB, 161025 of 620764 items
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Data/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0128.jpg to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0112.JPG to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0115.JPG to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0123.JPG to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0125.JPG to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0136.JPG to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/s9am8/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/2010-03-273/IMG0137.JPG to (null)
Copied 54.6 GB of 64.1 GB, 168977 of 620764 items
This is the TM message:
http://img.skitch.com/20100402-mmjqp1ecca6f1mukn1aggp4uw6.jpg
I this the problem is that there are still some corrupted(damaged) photos in the iPhoto library? Is that right?
Do I have to verify the internal HD ? or find a way to delete the iPhotos files "which I do not want them thou"?
OR you have other method?
Thanks

Time Machine backup does not work after 10.7.2 update

Hi,
after updating to 10.7.2 time machine does not perform any backups on my time capsule (error-1). What can I do? Please help. Thanks.

Try this - Reset the iPad by holding down on the Sleep and Home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple Logo appears - ignore the red slider - let go of the buttons. (This is equivalent to rebooting your computer.)
 Cheers, Tom

Time Machine backups seem to be being randomly deleted

I was away in May-June and my time capsule was disconnected. When I left I had daily backups for most but not all the days in the previous month (a few days were missing due to absences from home). The first backup since my return was on Saturday 16th April. In the three days since then, backups for the month prior to my departure seem to have been deleted in a random fashion. All that remain are those for 28th April, 5th and 12th May, all Saturdays. Until yesterday I had a backup for Sunday April 15th, as the last one that had been kept prior to the 28th. That was deleted overnight. I now have weeklies going back from Wednesday April 11th: namely April 4th, March 27th etc. But I am getting worried that those too might go. Can anyone explain what is happening?
Just to point out that my time capsule is currently connected via ethernet cable and I am using TimeMachine Scheduler to restrict backups to the wee hours.

Londinense wrote:
I think I can rule out the fact that my MacBook has been connected via ethernet
Yes, that makes no difference.
So could the problem have been caused by TimeMachien Scheduler, which I have only been using since March or thereabouts? What do you think of that app?
I don't think so, but anything's possible. All those apps do is start a backup; all the actual work is done by the normal OSX programming -- there's no way to alter the "thinning" schedule.
I don't recommend altering Time Machine's default schedule of hourly backups. Unless you're making lots of changes to large files, the backups should be fast and unobtrusive. If they do cause performance problems, then something else is wrong. Reducing the schedule is just dealing with the symptoms.
If the backups are too large, considering what you've done since the last backup, see #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If the sizes seem reasonable, but the backups are slow and/or affect the performance of your Mac, see #D2 there.

Time Machine Backups Seem to take a long time

I'm running OS X 10.5.8 on a G5 iMac, and I've noticed some strange behavior recently when Time Machine does it's back ups. I back up to a LaCie external drive with a capacity of 465 GB and it currently has 65GB available. When Time Machine does it back ups, it seems to take a very long time, eventhough not much has changed. It might go for 30min to an hour. Sometimes the back up fails. I've tried to stop the back up, but that doesn't stop Time Machine, and also System Preferences becomes unresponsive. I can't quit or force quit System Preferences. I have to turn off the iMac to quit System Preferences by holding in the power button. I'm not sure if this is a Time Machine issue, or an issue with the external HD. I know the iMac is a bit dated, and due to be replaced. The HD is also at least 3-4 years old, and has only been used as my Time Machine back up. Any ideas on how I might fix this? Thanks!!

ELFritzen wrote:
I had problems verifiying and repairing the LaCie HD. At first the the computer would hang on "verifying" the HD. I finally got the HD verified by switching the on/off/auto switch on the HD from auto to on. At this point verification went quickly.
That doesn't sound good.
Try different port(s), cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another).
Do you have (or can you borrow) another HD you can try?
Or another Mac you can try with that drive?
As an extra measure, I tried to repair the HD, but again the program hung up and I had to reboot.
Just for future reference, there's no point to verifying an external HD -- just run Repair. They both do all the same checks. Starting with Verify on your startup drive makes sense, since, if there's a problem, you have to start from another source to repair it.

Time Machine Backup seems to freeze after a few megabytes saying Estimating TIme Remaining

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for