Time Machine Backup will NOT unmount

Can anyone help me troubleshoot? I'm using Time Machine with Time Capsule. After updating to 10.5.5, I've been seeing some odd behavior. Backup prepares, completes and finishes properly, but the image will not unmount. I tried manually unmounting it with mixed results. Sometimes it would do so properly and others it would not saying it was in use by another application.
All firmware updates are installed.
Thanks.

Milton,
It's unclear which disk icon you're referring to.
You see when Time Machine initiates a backup it first mounts the Time Capsule hard disk (Green drive with Clock), then it mounts the disk image of your backups (White drive icon).
Often, the TC disk (Green drive with Clock) will NOT unmount on it's own, particularly if you have manually mounted it already. That OK, subsequent backups will proceed successfully with the TC disk mounted on the desktop.
However, if the disk image (White drive icon) does not unmount once the backup is complete then you have problem. Frequently the very next backup sill fail, because Time Machine thinks it is still "in use." See an article on this here:
[http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1715977}
So which disk are you referring to?
Hope this helps.
Cheers!

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External Time Machine Disk Will Not Unmount

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RecalcitrantRon wrote:
The MacPro backs up fine and says the backup is completed but it will not unmount the external Time Machine disk I use for the backup after completion.
Wait a minute . . . I missed that before.
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Kenneth Epstein wrote:
get an error message in Time Machine about error occurred while copying files:
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Hi there,
I am having an error message when trying to back up time machine. Therefore I went to disk utilities and verified disk.. said it needs to be prepared. When I try to repair time machine, i then get the following message "The disk “Time Machine Backups” could not be unmounted". I tried again and then it says its been repaired. so when i tried a backup of time machine i get "time machine error. unable to complete backup. an error occurred while copying files to the backup volume"
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One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode, see if external Drive can be repaired...
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Reboot, test again.
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Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?

50maz wrote:
Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in
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Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
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* https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile
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File ▹ New Calendar
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Power off both your Mac and the Time Capsule and wait a few minutes
Power up the Time Capsule first, and let it run 2-3 minutes by itself
Power up the Mac next and let it run a full minute.
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Locate the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file and move it to the desktop
Then repeat the complete the entire procedure above to see starting at the top, to see if you can select the Time Capsule for Time Machine backups.

Time Machine: Backup Disk Not Available

I realize there are a few topics floating around about this issue, but I'm still not finding a solution. Not sure if my situation is different than the others but figured I'd take a shot a describing my scenario in a new thread and seeing if it generates any new ideas.
I have a 2TB Seagate external expansion drive connected to a MacMini on my home network. The drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and is not partitioned.
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I have an older MacBook Pro, my sons MacBook, and my wife's Macbook also on the network. Each of these Macs can mount the backup drive, select it in the TM Preference pane and successfully begin and maintain the TM backup.
I have created a second "test" account on my MacBook Pro. I have followed the same steps and have had no problems with time machine preparing and successfully beginning the back up account.
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Other steps I have taken on my MBP with my main account include:
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* Restarting into applejack and performing an "applejack auto restart". No luck
* Removing all timemachine related entries in the Keychain, running Keychain FirstAid. No luck.
* Reformatting the external drive on the Mini, repairing permissions and running a disk repair and starting all over again. No luck.
In each case above a restart was done before attempting to reinitiate the TM process.
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I resolved this issue just this morning (see below). This may not (or may) apply to your situation because yours magically corrected itself, but hopefully it will help somebody.
Environment Architecture: We appear to have a very similar system architecture to the one you describe. In my case, we have 4 macs all relying on Time Machine and a networked 1TB Time Capsule for backups. Each of 3 workstation macs share data from the 4th, which we use as a primary server. I ran into my problem when the Time Capsule filled up and stopped backing up our primary server due to lack of available space. All recommended solutions for freeing up space appeared time consuming, and because we do daily off-site backups through MOZY (we use Time Machine for simplicity of recovery for hourly backups) I could take the "easier" path of just reformatting the Time Capsule's data drive and start again fresh.
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Where to look:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2048
Mac OS X 10.5.3 or later: Time Machine - "Backup volume could not be mounted" after changing network volume's password
* Last Modified: October 14, 2008
* Article: TS2048
As it turns out, Apple stores that password in multiple places in your Keychain (don't ask me why!), even using the identical Keychain entry name. All I can presume is that one piece of the software looked in one Keychain entry, and another looked in a different Keychain entry. The passwords were different (one was my original password, and one was my new password). Once I changed them to the same thing on each of my satellite stations, they all worked again and Time Machine is happily chugging along on all workstations.

Time machine backup is not recognized in Setup Assistant

Hi, I went through lots of discussion but could not find answers to my case.
My Macbook pro crashed the other day and replaced HDD.
I had Time Machine Backup several days ago and was trying to restore.
I started with install CD and used utility to restore from backup.
It recoginzed the volume of Time Machine Backup and next step, it does not show any backups that I can choose.
I installed Mac OSX and tried "transfer from a Time Machine Backup" but it does not recognize my the backup.
I checked hard drive on other computers and can see backups and no issues with hard drive.
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Thanks.

Dear Pondini,
I found the .exclusions.plist file at the 3/6 backup and it has the bunch of exclusions list...I guess this was the reason. But I really didn't set this up.
Thanks again. Somehow, I don't have "com.apple.mail.plist" in "~/zzang/library/preference". I foundt it under "~/zzang/library/containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/".
1. I first deleted the current preferences files and copied the com.apple.mail.plist from the backup to ~/zzang/library/preference/ folder.
2. I also delted all the files under ~zzang/Library/Mail.
3. I copied contents under ~Library/Mail/ from backup.
4. I started Mail and saw basic account settings and different mail accounts were there. But all the contents (mail, signature, mailboxes under each accounts (sent, deleted, spam, etc.), mailboxes on my mac, are missing.
5. I rebuilt the root mailboxes and no effect.
6. Hence, I checked copied mailboxes and got information and it only has size of 8KB each. When I copied, it was copying 6.6GB. I don't know what is going on here.
7. Hence, I started again from the process 1 above. It is now copying 6.6GB again.
8. What I noticed when I started Apple Mail, it says it will import mail but it was very short and then went back to the same status. No contents....
I looked at more details...
Original backup has V2 directory and no other directories or files ~zzang/Library/Mail while my current Mac created bunch of other things over there. See below images.
3/6 backup
Copied mail on the computer.

How to setting up new (June 2011) TC to do wireless time machine backup but not connected to network?

Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
My understanding is that I can use Time Capsule wirelessly to do Time Machine backups by switching out of my wireless network to - I assume - a new Time Capsule generated network(?). It's an extra step, but that beats connecting cables to the computer everytime I need to do backup. Basically it's like an external wireless hard drive that I have to join everytime the backup is updated, right? (Again, if there is a better way to go about doing this, please let me know.)
So how do I go about doing this? The setup manual isn't helpful (not at all).
Here's more detail if necessary. I have 10.8 Macbook Air (which I plan to upgrade to 10.9 soon) and my spouse is running 10.9 Macbook Pro. I am also assuming I don't have to partition Time Capsule, and when the Time Machine backs up, it'll figure who's who.
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Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
Security is ok.. but performance is abominable.
The TC unfortunately has some design limitations that Apple imposed that makes it rather poor for anything but ethernet.
There is a couple of ways around the problem of sequential internet or backups.
1. Get a wireless bridge that is suited to your in-building system.. and plug that into the TC so it can take normal router settings .. This will give you double NAT but I doubt your in building system will be handing out public IP anyway. An airport extreme can do this. Although it is pricey for the same results as a $35 standard wireless bridge. All devices in your place will then get both internet and backup direct to the TC.
One flaw here could be the download limits.. if you have two connections do you get double the downloads.. ??
ie how many IP are allocated to you?? And is it divided between all of them or the more IP clients the more download bandwidth?
2. Use a USB wireless stick in the Mac.. these can be tiny little things now.. just buy Mac compatible ones.. use that for internet and use the internal (faster) wireless for local connections. there are some manual setup tricks needed here but nothing hard.

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This is the screen as it is on my computer:
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Here is a screen shot of the other options:

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