Time Machine continually running lately

Does anyone have any idea why Time Machine would continually run? This a relatively new problem and I'm not sure what to do to fix it. I don't get any error messages, and I'm not adding a lot of new content to the hard drive for it to back up.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
It sounds like you may have either or both of the following:
Your backups are too large. Something is being backed-up often, or every time, that is taking a lot of time and disk space. See #D4 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Your backups are running too slowly, for one or more reasons. See #D2 in the Troubleshooting Tip.

Similar Messages

How Can I Speed Up My MacBook When Time Machine is running on Time Capsule

My Macbook starts to run really slow and I consistenly get the color wheel when trying to do other tasks when Time Machine is running in the background. I am connected to Time Machine on a Time Capsule. Given this runs every hour its really annoying.

Plus to pondini..
If possible you can use ethernet.. that speeds things up greatly.
If you are close to the TC make sure it is connecting via the 5ghz wireless.. Check the actual wireless link speed. And transfer rates.. if rates are too slow.. then look at relocating the wireless or putting in some sort of wireless extender.
I guess the other question is what is slow.. the disk on the computer, internet, just overall feel of the computer.. perhaps give a specific.. what is slow.

HT201250 once time machine starts running, it never stops. what could cause this?

Using WD, My Passport for Mac, 2TB with Time-Machine. Updated software on MacBook, now once time machine starts running an update it does not stop untill cancel it!

1. The first time takes very long always, after that it will only do changes very hour and you will not notice it. The drive must be correctly formatted, Guid Partition Table, Mac Os Extended (journaled).
2. If you installed any of the 'smart' software that came with the disk (specifically with the WD disk), you have to uninstall it completely immediately, because it will cause data loss and speed at the minimum: in macs you do not not need such additional software, just make sure that the disk is correctly formatted. If you had such software installed, and now uninstalled, you better reformat the drive, restart the mac, and then start all over again with TM.
Lex

Time machine failing , running extremely slow

Working on a faculty member's MacBook (I'm an IT person at a college) (Macbook 5,1, 2.0 GH core2 duo, aluminum unibody). Her problem is that Time machine is continually failing , and has done so 'for about two weeks'.
This is a typical error:
Oct 25 07:48:11 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Starting standard backup
Oct 25 07:48:11 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Oct 25 07:48:14 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Mac HD
Oct 25 07:48:17 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Oct 25 07:53:31 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Finished scan
Oct 25 07:57:44 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: 34.32 GB required (including padding), 512.25 GB available
Oct 25 08:52:28 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 2.2 MB of 26.6 GB, 45136 of 57941 items
Oct 25 09:54:08 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 3.7 MB of 26.6 GB, 54478 of 57941 items
Oct 25 10:56:32 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 23.5 MB of 26.6 GB, 93659 of 93659 items
Oct 25 11:07:05 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
Oct 25 11:07:06 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 94623 files (74.0 MB) from volume Mac HD.
Oct 25 11:14:05 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Starting standard backup
Oct 25 11:14:05 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Oct 25 11:14:15 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Backup failed with error: 19
(note: the 'stopping backup to allow destination disk to be unmounted or ejected' entry did not correspond to anything of the sort initiated by the user)
Both the Mac and Time Machine drives check out with Disk Utility, and swapping in another disk to try a new Time Machine backup was similarly very slow (about 4 hours to copy ~ 7 Gigs) although it did not fail entirely.
I reformatted the new drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up her system; a complete backup with CCC took just over an hour (~130 gb) and no errors were reported.
The same USB port was used throughout, and the drives were directly connected to the Mac and have their own power supply.
Previously Time Machine was working just fine.
Any ideas? Just set the thing up with a newly formatted drive and let it run the 10 days it's claiming to need??

Spotlight does index the volumes as files are added to them. I'd imagine you can add the Time Machine volume to the spotlight "Privacy" list to prevent it from being indexed, if you're hoping that will speed things up a bit. The Time Machine backups, especially the initial one, can take a while.

Can I use my mac while time machine is running?

If I run Time Machine for the first time, do I have to stop using my iMac until the program is finished? Or can I continue to use it?

Technically, yes.
I try not to. Think of the "composite picture". If you have several files spread across several system-level and application-level directories, and related-files are changing at different rates, you may save different files that do not "match".
Given that most backups after the initial one should only take 5 minutes at most, I like to let at least a few backups each day be uninterrupted while I take a short walk.

Time Machine keeps running out of space

This is really annoying. Starting about 2-3 months ago, my Time Machine suddenly keeps running out of space. I have a MacBook Pro bought in 2009 summer with 500 GB Hard Drive. My Time Machine drive is als 500 GB. I currently have 117 GB left in my MacBook's hard drive, and 65 GB left in my Time Machine's drive.
As of this moment my Time Machine only have 1 backup that was done Yesterday. It's trying to create a new backup, but can't because apparently it needs 69 GB while I only have 65 GB.
Why does it need 69 GB? I can't imagine a reason why. I haven't downloaded anything more than 1 GB, if even that much, most likely not, and all I do on this MacBook is pretty much browsing. In any case, it's hard to imagine there's a 69 GB data change between yesterday and today. That's a lot of data by any standard.
Thanks for any help!

If your internal disk is 500GB with 117GB free then you are using 383GB
and your Time Machine disk is too small. It is recommended that your
Time Machine disk is 2 to 3 times bigger than the data you are backing up.
There are also some tools you can get that will display details from the
logs to show you what is being backed up, it may be worth getting one of
those to determine why the backup is so big. I think the first thing you
should do is get a bigger disk.
Dave

My iMac freezes when time machine is running a backup

Hi Guys, this is an iMac that had tiger and I upgraded to 10.5.8
I am using time machine with a 2TB external flex drive from seagate (brand new item)
The back ups went smooth for the first few days but now my iMac totally freezes up at least once a day and the time machine status indcator shows that it is running the whole time.
I tried apple/option/escape but that does nothing so I have to force shut down using the start button on the back of the iMac.
I don't know what to do next so any help would be awesome.

bassplayer360 wrote:
Hi Guys, this is an iMac that had tiger and I upgraded to 10.5.8
I am using time machine with a 2TB external flex drive from seagate (brand new item)
Start by making sure it's set up properly, per #C1 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).
The back ups went smooth for the first few days but now my iMac totally freezes up at least once a day and the time machine status indcator shows that it is running the whole time.
That sounds like something may be corrupted, either on your internal HD or the TM drive. Verify the internal, and repair the TM drive, per #A5 in Troubleshooting
I tried apple/option/escape but that does nothing so I have to force shut down using the start button on the back of the iMac.
If a backup hangs, try to cancel it, either via +Stop Backing Up+ from the TM icon in your menubar, or by right-clicking the TM icon in your dock. If it won't cancel after a few minutes, see #D6 in Troubleshooting.
Then see #A1 for a handy widget that will display the backup messages from your logs. Look at the ones for the backup you cancelled; a clue may be lurking there.
If in doubt, copy and post them here.

My Time Machine also runs "successfully" but doesn't back up anything.

I know on page 2 that this problem was already posted and solved, but it looked like the person didn't have Time Machine on or something like that. Can someone please give me a quick run down into why this is happening and how to fix it?
Thanks,
Chuck

Obviously I need help with why Time Machine is not backing anything up and not with why the Time Machine button doesn't work.
Thanks (again),
Chuck

HT203177 Time machine always running (backing up).

I understand Time Machine taking a longer time initially when first installed, however my Time Machine seems to always be running, backing up ALL my files each time not just the newer ones. i.e. "it" (Time Machine) is always running.

Hello,
You may have to have it start anew.
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Time Machine still running even though it is switched of.

I just did a fresh install of SL. I have sleeping problems (my MBP that is ☺ ) and in trying to solve this I switched TM of to see if this is he culprit.
Having done this it just keeps running as if it was switched on. Any suggestions how to fix?

ChangeAgent wrote:
Huh? What password? What are you backing-up to? Something on a network?
yes!
What?
And what, exactly, is the message?
If it's a Time Capsule, your keychain may be corrupted. From Keychain Access, select +Keychain First Aid+ and repair it.
That setting is not in the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist. It's in one of the +Launch Daemons.+
oeps! but you said above:
That sounds like the preferences file is corrupted. Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in User Tips at the top of this forum).
Correct. The file there is /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist. It has the destination, exclusions, and various other things, but does not contain the interval.
No such Launch Daemon in /Library/LaunchDaemons
Also correct. There are four of them, in System/Library/LaunchDaemons. Do NOT fool with them unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Does anyone know if I can run Time Machine when running 10.4 osx?

I have an older G4 that I want to run some type of backup program on because it recently crashed and was a bear to get the info back. I added an external drive to the system, thinking that I would run time Machine but I don't think it will run on 10.4. On my network I have three macs and two Apple Tv's. One of the Mac's is a MacBook Pro Intel version (4 years old). I also have one Airport Exteme. If I cannot run Time Machine from the 10.4 Power Book is there a way to connect the external drive to the AExtreme and use that to do some type of backup?
Thanks for any suggesttions.

Stiobhard Cassel wrote:
Not sure that it will work. When I took a quick look it says that it need the following
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4-10.6 or later.
The G4 does not have an intel chip.
Did I read that wrong?
Probably. Current version 2.6.2 should run fine on your PPC machine. It does on mine, though I don't use it for backup (Retrospect 6 for me, just from inertia).

Time Machine Continues to Back Up but No Backups are Available

Time Machine appears to be working as normal when backing up but when I go to check the contents of the backups nothing appears! At one time I was backing up to the Drobo when it was connected to my AE. Because of speed issues I since went to connecting the Drobo to my Firewire port. If I have to start over it is no big deal, I'll be bummed that something happened to my backups but I really didn't loose anything. Here is a log from my last backup:
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/MBP Time Machine/David Razorsek’s Computer_0017f2c8c06c.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of David Razorsek’s Computer
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of David Razorsek’s Computer/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 822.7 MB requested (including padding), 14.14 GB available
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Copied 3140 files (208.9 MB) from volume MacPro320GB.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 821.8 MB requested (including padding), 13.99 GB available
Copied 567 files (202.2 MB) from volume MacPro320GB.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.

this happened because you moved an Airdisk to be directly attached. remote backups are stored inside a sparse bundle which is mounted automatically when you enter TM and then you see your backups. directly attached backups are stored directly in a folder on a disk without creating a sparse bundle. However, if you move an airdisk with an existing sparse bundle with backups to be directly attached TM will continue backing up to that sparse bundle. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not. however, when you enter TM the sparse bundle won't be mounted automatically. presumably, TM doesn't know that it has to mount the bundle in such situation. to access your backups, open the TM drive in Finder and double-click on the sparse bundle and wait for it to mount. THEN, enter TM and you'll see all your backups. this is not terribly convenient so you might want to erase your past backups (just trash the sparse bundle and empty trash) and start backups from scratch.

Time Machine Service - Run scripts after backup

I am running Mavericks Server (10.9.5), server version 3.2.2
The server is used as a backup destination for a lot of Macs, and I am trying to create a complementary service that keeps track of all of the incoming backups and logs all backup events.
Is there any way to have a script execute whenever the Time Machine service completes a backup, or for that matter, and way to tell when a backup is running or has completed?
The options I have thought of so far are:
1. Script that monitors the logs to look for appropriate events
2. Run script on timer that scans the backup folder and looks for new backups
Neither of these seems ideal to mean, so I was hoping someone might have a better idea.
Thoughts?

In order to back up the configuration and state of some services the server needs them to termporarily be turned off. This includes the backing up of Time Machine.
So in order to back up the Time Machine configuration and details about what computers it is backing up where, the server would need to turn off the Time Machine backup service. But if it's turned off, it can't use it to back things up.
Similarly, imagine you needed to restore the backup. To view the backups you would need the Time Machine backup service to be working. But you can't overwrite the configuration and status information of a service which is turned on, because that would confuse the process doing the serving. But if the process is turned off, you can't use it to restore the backup.
So do what Linc said: use the System Preferences panel to back the computer up, and don't back it up to the same device you're backing up its Time Machine clients to.

Time Machine always running

My Time Machines backups are taking more than an hour to complete so my MacBook Air 2013 is constantly running Time Machine.
Using Time Machine Buddy, I'm able to see that each Time Machine backup is taking about 90 minutes. But it's only backing up about 4GB of data each time. I have a somewhat speedy (75MB/sec) portable USB 3.0 drive dedicated as my Time Machine, so I can't imagine that being a factor.
I know there's shareware to adjust the time interval between Time Machine backups. But really, it shouldn't be taking so long for such little data. Any tips or ideas why it's taking so long and how to fix?

Are you running a VM? Parallels or similar virtualization software?
I know there's shareware to adjust the time interval between Time Machine backups.
Right, don't use anything like that. Find out what the problem is and fix it.
Don't use any "anti-virus" software either since it has been known to cause the problem you describe.

Time Machine permanently running?

I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but my iMac seems to be permanently running Time Machine to back up to my Time Capsule.
It's literally just completed a 131Mb backup and has started now another one!
These backups seem to be extremely slow, yet the TC is connected using an ethernet connection.
Is it possible that my antivirus software is slowing the backup process down so much, that the next hourly backup starts almost immediately?
My TC is just over half full.
Also, when I Enter Time Machine, it takes ages - well, 5 to 10 minutes, really - before I can start scrolling through my old files. Is this normal?
Thank you,
Pete

The transfer is much too slow. Abort the backup, if it's still running, then boot in safe mode and try again.
Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode* and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
*Note: If FileVault is enabled under Mac OS X 10.7 or later, or if a firmware password is set, you can’t boot in safe mode.
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem(s)?
After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Time Machine continually running lately

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