Time Machine backups no longer incremental

My two week old MBP refused to boot up this morning, so I restored the OS from my Time Machine backup (an unsurprisingly slick process)
However, Time Machine now refuses to do incremental backups, it can see all of my previous versions and restore to them, but it is forcing a backup of every item on the disk. I have not let it fully complete yet, but it scans 1million+ items, and the it says "preparing 1million+ items", and then attempts to back up 53.4 GB, even though nothing has changed from the backup it just restored.
How do I make it incremental again?

ttmonk wrote:
My two week old MBP refused to boot up this morning, so I restored the OS from my Time Machine backup (an unsurprisingly slick process)
However, Time Machine now refuses to do incremental backups, it can see all of my previous versions and restore to them, but it is forcing a backup of every item on the disk. I have not let it fully complete yet, but it scans 1million+ items, and the it says "preparing 1million+ items", and then attempts to back up 53.4 GB, even though nothing has changed from the backup it just restored.
That's correct; everything you put on the disk is considered as changed, so will be backed-up again: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338

Similar Messages

Time machine backups no longer include hidden system folder like /usr and /sbin

My Time Machine backups Aug - Oct seem complete. When I look at them I see all the expected folders and files. Starting in November key system folders disappeared: /sbin, /usr, /bin, etc. However, the non-hidden one are there: /Applications, /Library, etc. Later in November certain things show up again like /usr/share/man/whatis and /usr/share/man/ri, but nothing else under /usr/share. I've looked for all possible places where folders might be excluded and have found nothing.
I'm using Mavericks on a MacBook Pro with a Time Capsule. All software and firmware are completely up to date. I can't explain the behavior. If I take one example I can see /usr in the Nov 5 backup and it is fully populated. It is gone in the Nov 12 backup. In the Nov 19 backup it is back but only with /usr/share/man/whatis. There are no errors in my logs although my logs don't go back that far, so if something happened the week of Nov 5 I don't know.
Anyone with any guesses?
K-Family

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 that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. 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 to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
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 Backup No longer available under Lion

I was having a problem with Time Machine, although I didn't know it until today. It had been going through the backup procedure every day. But today, I decided to go into Time Machine just to look around. It took several tries but it finally came up, however, there wasn't any dates listed on the right side other than today. On the Time Machine Preferences panel, it showed the oldest backup was from August. After reading some comments online, I went into the Select Disk option in the preferences, with the backup disk selected, I set do not back up. I then went back into the Select Disk option and reselected the same disk. Now it shows the oldest date to be none. Other comments said that it would update once a backup is done. When I attempted to do the backup I got an error message that the Backup Disk is not available. Here is the messages:
Dec 1 21:56:09 MacbookPro com.apple.backupd[482]: Backup failed with error: 19
Dec 1 21:58:18 MacbookPro com.apple.backupd[506]: Starting standard backup
Dec 1 21:58:18 MacbookPro com.apple.backupd[506]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Becky%[email protected]:548/TM%20Backups%20MacBookPro
Dec 1 21:58:19 MacbookPro com.apple.backupd[506]: NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80 for url: afp://Becky%[email protected]:548/TM%20Backups%20MacBookPro
Dec 1 21:58:29 MacbookPro com.apple.backupd[506]: Backup failed with error: 19
This backup disk is mounted on an imac, which is also mounted on my MBP. I can open the disk and see all the backup files, however, Time Machine will not honor it (for some reason).
I have rebooted both the MBP and the imac, thinking that would fix it, but it hasn't. I have turned off all backups for now. Can anyone tell me if I can still use the old backups or do I have to start again? If I have to start again, what did I do wrong?

Daniel Wieder wrote:
This backup disk is mounted on an imac, which is also mounted on my MBP.
Try connecting it directly to your MBP. To see the backups, you'll have to manually mount the sparsebundle they're in (since Time Machine isn't expecting that), and use the Browse ... option, per #E2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting
You may want to try repairing them, per #A5 in that same article.
If that either finds no problems, or fixes whatever it does find, re-connect it to the iMac and go through the setup procedure again, per #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
Here's the next thing I tried, with no luck.
MacbookPro:Volumes dwieder$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup
That only works when you get a new Mac, don't use the normal ways to put your data on it, but want to continue using the same set of backups. See #B6 in the Troubleshooting article.

Time machine backup too long.

I use an ethernet connection to backup to my time capsule - wireless takes too long. I am backing up 292.6 GB onto a time capsule with 602 GB available (Airport 5.6). The backup is crawling. The time to backup shows 7 days. This has never happened before. Any ideas?
MacBook Pro
OS X 10.7.3
Thank you.

Update: The backup time is now down to 13 hours. However still incredibly slow.

Time machine backups take way too long

Greetings,
Having trouble with Time Machine backups taking way too long. (No, it's not the first backup after some momentous event, as 90% of what I read about slow backups mentions; it's _every_ backup.)
20" iMac purchased Oct 2008. OS 10.6.8. 500 GB internal hard drive. 3 TB external backup drive. Was tested at the local "Genius" Bar, but they found nothing wrong with it. The best they could do is to recommend a restore from Time Machine, and if that didn't work, start clean and reload the OS and then copy my stuff back. I don't think so. I actually did a full Time Machine restore for a different reason, and it didn't help (except that I gained a few GB of disk space!).
My Time Machine backups now take about 39 minutes to complete. I have a 500 GB internal drive and this problem happens regardless of which external drive I use. (I have 3: 2 WD hard drives and one [noisy!] G-drive.) My current backup drive is a 3 TB WD drive with 2 TB of free space.
These are small incremental backups, typically about 35 MB. It doesn't take half an hour to copy 35 MB!
All phases take a long time, but the most irritating one is where TM appears to get stuck for a long time at the beginning and end of the copying phase. For example, at one point it will say something along the lines of Backing Up 7 KB of 34.4 MB. And it'll be like that for minutes on end. Later it will say something like 35 MB of 35 MB and hang there for minutes on end. During these periods the write I/O rate will go up and down, and CPU usage will often be very high (with backupd using 90 - 100%, in addition to highly elevated System CPU usage). In one particular backup the I/O write rate for one part of it looked like a heartbeat on an EKG! I should have taken a screenshot.
At the beginning during the Calculating Changes phase, backupd is using between 90 and 100% CPU.
There is also high CPU usage during the next phase, Preparing. And the number of items being prepared is in the thousands.
It always goes in two rounds because it finds that the root directory (/) has been modified.
I've Googled and searched Mac forums and found nothing useful. I started with a new .plist file and nothing's changed.
Can anyone help? Thanks!
I wrote the above Jun 28. Yeah, finally getting around to posting it. Since then it's gotten worse. I now do a manual backup once a day and it takes almost an hour. I tried re-indexing Spotlight. No good.
Can anyone help? Again, this is not a "first backup." It is _every_ backup.
Thanks!
AEF

Thanks for your efforts. Here are my answers, comments, and further info:
I believe I have repaired permissions on my drive as part of my troubleshooting. And I'm sure I checked SMART status, which came up with a thumbs up, so to speak. I'm trying again. I don't see any useful messages in any logs on the console. I'm looking at "All Messages" and there is so far nothing useful. Oh, I think you must mean repair as in "Repair Disk," not "Repair Disk Permissions." I believe the "genius" at the Apple store did that or something just as good. The machine checked out fine according to them.
Checked SMART status just now: passed. Ran Quick Drive Test: also passed.
Oh, I installed "Time Machine Buddy". Occasionally, and only occasionally, I get a "deep traversal needed message" like this (I copied this from .Backup.log):
Running preflight for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
        Scanning nodes needing deep traversal
        Node requires deep traversal: /Users/alanfeldman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|
        Calculating size of changes
        Should copy 2919 items (27.8 MB) representing 7116 blocks of size 4096. 546805181 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
Time elapsed: 1 minute, 39.000 seconds
But the vast majority of the time I do NOT get this message. But if there's something wrong with this apdb file, what can I do to fix it?
Note that there is usually, if not always, a lot of CPU activity or I/O (disk) activity, but not a lot getting done.

I just installed Mountain Lion on my iMac that was previously running Snow Leopard. Bugt I found that some key applications no longer work, so I would like to go back to snow Leopard. I can't use time machine backups for this. what can I do?

I just installed Mountain Lion on my iMac. But In was dismayed to find that my Canon scanner software (Canoscan LIDE500F)no longer works. Nor do any of my MS offce applications. I tried to use time machine to reinstall Snow Leopard (my previous operating system), but unfortunately my time machine backups did not include system software. Also, the original system install disk that came with my iMac would not allow me to install Snow Leopard in place of Mountain Lion. I would appreciate it if somebody could tell me how to solve this problem.

The reason your Office doesn't work is because it is PowerPC code. If you will upgrade the 2004 Office to 2011 Office then that will work.
I don't understand how you managed to get your Time Machine backup to not backup the system.
Now if you still what to downgrade you will have to erase the disk and reinstall Snow Leopard. Most likely all of your application and then restore your data from Time Machine.
To me it sounds like it would be easier to upgrade your software and stay with Mountain Lion instead.
Allan

After having the logic board replaced, Time Machine will no longer backup my computer to the same backup files as before.

After having the logic board replaced due to bad NVidia chip, my Time Machine will no longer backup my computer to the current backup. Is there a way to reset something to get Time Machine to continue to use the same backup files as before for this laptop?

As far as TM is concerned you have a new computer, so it will make a new backup. If you don't have the space for both backups then erase your backup drive before backing up the computer.

I am trying to do a full Time Machine Backup to a new external disk. The backup starts, and it says "Time remaining about 4 days." That seems like a very long time, but the real problem is that the computer "logs off" after a few hours, and the b.u. stops

I am trying to do a full Time Machine Backup to a new external disk. The backup starts, and it says "Time remaining about 4 days." That seems like a very long time, but the real problem is that the computer "logs off" after a few hours, and the backup stops. The system preferences are set to "Never" for Computer sleep and Display sleep. The computer does not ordinarily log off automatically, but it has done this twice since I started the Time Machine backup.

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 all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
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 still on drive, no longer in Time Machine

I have two computers backed up to the same drive, and I cannot backup Mac#2 because the backups of Mac#1 are taking up too much space.
On Mac#1, I went into Time Machine and used the Delete Backup option on several of the oldest backups. I ran into one problem (a bug, actually) in the process, which is that after you've done the first Delete Backup, when you do the second, the "Are you sure you want to permanently remove..." dialog box does not appear, and you have to just hit the Return key on your keyboard to proceed.
The second problem came when I saw no indication of any kind that the backups I was removing were really being deleted. So I exited Time Machine, and found a small window in my Finder showing progress bars for the processes of removing the backups — there were several of the progress bars, all of them "barber poling." I didn't realize how long the deletion of each backup would take, so assuming there was some kind of problem, I stopped progress on all of them, and went back into Time Machine to see if I did them one at a time, waiting in between, if that would help.
Once back in Time Machine, the backups I'd previously tried to delete no longer appeared, but when I go in the Finder to the externa drive's Time Machine Backups > Backups.backupdb > My MacBook Pro, the folders for those dates are still there.
Now, I suspect it would be a bad idea to remove these folders manually from within the Finder. But if I can't remove them via the Finder, and those dates no longer appear in Time Machine, how do I get rid of them?
Erasing and partitioning the drive are not an option at this point because there are other things on the drive, not just the Time Machine backups.

Never found a solution to this. I ended up buying a second external because I needed more room anyway, and partitioning it before using it for Time Machine.
If you don't think you'd need anything but the most recent backup, you could always reformat the drive, partition, then turn each partition into a separate Time Machine, one for each computer.

Time Machine Backup - 1st time very long?

Iv'e finally decided to use this app - bought an external drive, and started time machine backup. I have 3 internal drives with over 400 GB total info to back up and it's been going for almost 24 hours so far, and the file on the drive is 100 GB or so. Is this normal? At this rate the backup could end up taking another 2 days. That seems like an awfully long time! Any comments on this would be helpful.
Thanks!

OK, thanks for the input again. All subsequent backups have been recorded as successful by the way…
Here's the log from the first one that gave the "Unknown" status:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/GLYPH-1 TB/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 454.50 GB requested (including padding), 889.92 GB available
Copied 12.3 MB of 378.2 GB, 505 of 1998322 items
Copied 20.6 MB of 378.2 GB, 799 of 1998322 items
Copied 107.6 MB of 378.2 GB, 1089 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 177956 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 178236 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 178516 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 178795 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 179095 of 1998322 items
Copied 18.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 179379 of 1998322 items
Copied 50.8 GB of 378.2 GB, 210562 of 1998322 items
Copied 210563 files (51.1 GB) from volume StudioA!.
Copied 355630 files (174.6 GB) from volume StudioB!.
Copied 174.7 GB of 378.2 GB, 355894 of 1998322 items
Copied 174.8 GB of 378.2 GB, 356307 of 1998322 items
Copied 174.9 GB of 378.2 GB, 356703 of 1998322 items
Copied 175.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 357101 of 1998322 items
Copied 175.4 GB of 378.2 GB, 357528 of 1998322 items
Copied 175.9 GB of 378.2 GB, 358133 of 1998322 items
Copied 176.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 358613 of 1998322 items
Copied 176.0 GB of 378.2 GB, 358966 of 1998322 items
Copied 176.1 GB of 378.2 GB, 359678 of 1998322 items
Copied 176.4 GB of 378.2 GB, 360936 of 1998322 items
Copied 177.7 GB of 378.2 GB, 362831 of 1998322 items
Copied 225.6 GB of 378.2 GB, 396918 of 1998322 items
Copi
As I said, though, it looks like all the files are there. If this is a good and "safe" backup then I'm good to go!
Hypothetically though, if I wanted to start from scratch, how would I do it?
Thanks again,
Wayne

OS X Lion v10.7 Time machine won't do incremental backups.

Time machine under Snow Leopard used to do small incremental backups just fine. After upgrading to Lion though, every time I try to do a time machine backup, it attempts to perform a full backup (hundreds of gigabytes every time). Usually the first full backup completes fine but instead of doing subsequent small/incremental backups of the changed files, it starts over doing full backup but there isn't enough room on the backup drive for that so it fails.
I've found other people with the same issue here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1745345
And attempted several suggested fixes/tests but none of them work just as in that thread. Am I alone in this issue? Any suggestions?
I have a 10.7.1 install on a mid 2010 15" MBP with two drives (one SSD, one HDD, no optical). As I mentioned before, time machine worked beautifullly under 10.6.x backing up to external 1TB FW 800 -> SATA bridges.
Thanks,
M

I have the same problem only full backups all the time I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and on Snow Leopard I had no issues with Time Machine. So what I have done:
Formated the Time Machine Backup Disk (it's an USB-drive) - didn't help
I deleted all the Time Machine Settings (plists) - didn't help
Used Disk Utility to verify user rights and drive - didn't help
Used TechTool Pro 6 to verify the drive - didn't help
I still only get full backups. If I exclude the a catalogue/folder, the backup will be smaller, but it still takes a full backup of the items selected ...
My system is the same as before the upgrade - no new hardware and so on. This is really strange

Incremental backup from time capsule (time machine backup) to external disk

I have two questions regarding backing up a time capsule backup.
I would like to backup the time machine backup of my Macs from a time capsule to an external hard disk. The time capsule is a first geneneration one with 500 GB. The external hard disk has 500 GB as well with USB and firewire ports..
First question: What is the best way to connect these two hard drives - I am using a MacBook Air with two USB ports ?
Second question: What backup software could I use to do incremental backups - I tried ChronoSync but it is not picking up the changes of the sparcebundles ?
Thank you for every valuable advice
Regards

CAAN wrote:
I have two questions regarding backing up a time capsule backup.
I would like to backup the time machine backup of my Macs from a time capsule to an external hard disk.
Backing-up your backups is generally not a good idea. If there's a problem with the original backup, it will be copied to, and perhaps magnified on, the copy.
You'd be much better off making "secondary" backups separately. See #27 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum), for some suggestions.
About the only alternative is to "archive" the TC's contents to a USB drive connected to it, but that's not incremental, and has other downsides as well. See #Q6 in [Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/TimeCapsule.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

HT201250 How long should an initial time machine backup of tack for 675 GB?s with a USB external hard drive?

How long should an initial time machine backup of tack for 675 GB?s with a USB external hard drive?

Not much faster than 40 GBs-60GBs per hour. So, minimally, around 12 hours.

Time Machine backup disk no longer available since upgrade to Mountain Lion

He everyone,
I've been using Time Machine for years to backup my iMac to an external USB harddrive (Samsung HD103Sl), and everything used to work just fine up until I installed Mountain Lion.
Now Finder nor Time Machine can see my external harddrive. If I go to DIsk Utility, the harddrive is listed there, and everything seem to be just fine. I tried to run a disk verification and a repair, but Disk Utility tell me everything is OK.
Is it a Mountain Lion bug? Can someone help me with that?
TIA
Charles

I'm not sure if I have exactly the same case as yours....
I got the problem with my external HDD (with 2 partitions) while I was using one of the encrypted partition as Time Machine backup. I could not erase it after I upgrade to Mountain Lion, and it shown "this patition contain a locked disk and can not be resized until it is unlocked" in Disk Utility.
You may have a look if that's the same in Disk Utility.
Finally I get it fixed by the "diskutil" command in "Terminal" in "OSX > Applications > Utilities".
I used the command "diskutil" to verify the UUID of the "Logical Volume Group (LVG)" of the locked partition.
Then use the command to delete the LVG.
** All logical volume under this groiup will be deleted!!
Once the operation finished, I am able to recreate the partition in Disk Utility.
Hope this help!!

New backup to Time Machine taking ridicously long. Is this normal?

I bought a brand new 1TB WD Mybook external drive to use for my Time Machine backups. It is connected via USB to my Macbook Pro 15" running Leopard 10.5.7. This is my first back up to Time Machine and I have only about 110GB of data for backing up. I have been backing up now for about 28 hours and the Time Machine status bar still says it only has backed up 864MB of 110GB. This cannot be right can it? Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I just continue to wait it out? Please help.

V.K. wrote:
PT wrote:
Time Machine doesn't really care if the volume is GUID or MBR,
yes, it does.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550?viewlocale=en_US
It is referring to drives that use Master Boot Record (MBR) partition type, not GUID or APM, causing that issue. It then goes on to tell you how to reformat the drive for either GUID or APM for use with Time Machine.
While the article does suggest one type for Intel Macs and another for PowerPC Macs, that really only matter if you are trying to make a bootable drive. Since TM volumes are not bootable, you can use either sceme.
Regards,
Patrick
EDIT Whoops sorry about that. I read your original post and my mind substituted APM for MBR (as you can see in my reply here). But then when I re-read your post I see you were talking about Master Boot Record and NOT Apple Partition Scheme.
Silly me!
Message was edited by: PT

Time Machine backups no longer incremental

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