Time machine disk access on almost allthe time

Hi, I have an external disk set up for Time Machine. So far it seems to be working ok. The only thing I notice is that the access light on the disk is on almost all the time. Even when the system is a sleep?
I'm not sure if there is actually disk access going on or the light is just on. I do see the light go out for a few seconds now and then. So is it normal to have accessing the disk all the time?
Thanks.
Pat.

oldpeddler wrote:
I have a 1 gig time machine drive for backup and it always shows the drive as "locked" even when it is unlocked. (The lock at the bottom is open, but there is a lock on the large disk icon) It won't allow me to create a new folder no matter what I do.
Is a time machine drive 100% dedicated?
no. the fact that yours is locked is not normal. run the following terminal command (copy and paste please)
sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/*
you'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see). that's normal.

Similar Messages

TS3243 The light on my Time Machine disk is on all the time. The back ups still occur OK and without any issues but I need to 'turn off' the light. Any ideas?

The light on my external Time Machine drive is on all the time. Up until about six onths ago it only came on when it was backing up. The drive is working perfectly and backing up regularly, but the light is driving me mad. I have tried to find an option to put it out but so far have not managed to do it. The drive is a Seagate 1TB Freeagent and has 913 GB free so cannot be anywhere near full. Can anyone offer any advice or guidance to turn the light off?

I suggest that you contact Seagate technical support.
Ciao.

Time Machine Disk can be attached to LAN and still be used with TM?

I had many Time Machine's Backups with an external Western Digital USB Drive.
Now I had purchased a LaCie 2big Network. I use it for my Windows XP Network.
This Lacie has 2 Usb ports. It can be configured to use external disk also with time machine.
I would like to know if I can use my disk without lose my last TM backups.
I asked to Lacie support team if I could use my Western Digital without lose alla my previous backups.
They did tell me that they do not offer support for Time Machine problems.
I would like to try, but I quit fear to lose everything...
Did anyone tried to connect an "already time machined" disk to network and use time machine again directly from LAN?
Thank you...

first, i should mention that TM backups to NAS devices are not officially supported. the only exception is a Time Capsule and it also works with drives attached via USB to an Airport Extreme Base station. some 3rd party NAS devices claim to support TM backups. your does claim it which means that it should work. however, if you move your current TM drive to be plugged into the Lacie NAS you'll have to start a new backup sequence. that's because directly attached backups are stored differently from remote ones. directly attached backups are stored directly in a folder on the drive and remote ones are stored in a sparse bundle.

Time Machine backs up everything all the time

Time Machine is backing up every file all the time. This is a recent development.
Don't know if this is related but I installed 10.6 on an external HD recently. I was told there wasn't room on the time machine disk so i turned off time machine. I used that boot disk for a week and then switched back to the 10.5.8 drive. After that but I can't be sure the exact date is correlated I noticed the Time Machine backup.

trinko wrote:
I figured out how much is being backed up by looking at the size of the files on the time machine disk in the finder and with omnidisksweeper.
Those won't show an accurate picture. Time Machine uses an unusual and complex structure, involving multiple hard links (sort of like aliases) at both the file and folder level. The files that were the same at the time of each backup will be counted +*in each backup,+* although they were only backed-up once; the total will exceed the total amount of space used on the disk.
For some reason on Mar 6 Time machine did a new full backup--650GB. Then it said it couldn't do any incremental backups because there wasn't enough free space--the drive had about 300GB free but Time Machine said it needed another 302GB which makes me think it wanted to do another full backup.
Yes, that's possible. Some of the common causes are listed in #D3 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
When TM decided it needed to do a full backup, it likely deleted all but the last one, trying to make enough room. Unfortunately, your logs for March 6 are probably gone by now, so we can't figure out exactly what happened then, much less why.
I then excluded all but 100G of files. Time machine did a full backup of that 100G and then on the next days backup it also did a full backup. Files that hadn't been touched were copied based on looking in the Finder and omnidisksweeper said the files were taking the full amount of space as well.
Again, that's not necessarily so. Click here to download the TimeTracker app. It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). Some prefer the BackupLoupe application.
Either one should clarify whether everything is really being backed-up each time. Take a look at the subsequent backups from after you excluded all but 100 GB, and post back with your findings.

Two computers backed up on the same Time machine disk, one computer is dead. How to access data?

Hi guys,
I backed up two different computers on the same time machine disk. Now, one of my computer is dead. I can see the backups on my time machine disk. How can I get the backup data that belongs to dead computer. When I enter time machine, I only have access to corresponding backup. I do not want to destroy the backups. My timemachine backup structure looks like below:
-->Backups.backupdb
-->Computer-1
-->Computer-2
Now, my Computer-1 is dead, and I am using Compter-2. If possible I wan to know a way of accessing Computer-1 data without destroying any other backups/files etc. Than you!

I loathe sending people offsite for information except WRT time machine. The late James Pond was a master at all things Time Machine related...maybe more....may he rest in peace for his contributions to ASC.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Time Machine could not complete the backup "Time Capsule". Unable to access disk image backup "/ Volumes / Time Capsule / iMac.sparsebundle" (error 112). How can I repair it?

Time Machine could not complete the backup "Time Capsule". Unable to access disk image backup "/ Volumes / Time Capsule / iMac.sparsebundle" (error 112).
How can I fix it?

You might want to take a look at Pondini's excellent support document......Time Machine Troubleshooting
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
See # C17

My external Time Machine disk is almost full. I know TM is supposed to erase the oldest back-ups to makew room for newer ones but is it safe for me to just erase the back-ups from 2 or so years ago to make room for TM as well as anything I might want to

My external Time Machine disk is almost full. I know TM is supposed to erase the oldest back-ups to make room for newer ones but is it safe for me to just erase the back-ups from 2 or so years ago to make room for TM as well as anything else I might want to add to this external drive?

Time Machine makes room for backups as necessary in a complex and sophisticated fashion, and it's not something to mess with lightly. However there are instructions at the bottom of this link which tell you how you can. Those instructions are part of the ultimate resource for all things Time Machine, put together by an Apple Support Communities member who is greatly missed.

Restrict access to Time Machine Disk?

I'm hoping I'm missing something simple here, perhaps someone can enlighten me:
I've set up an external drive on a new dual band Extreme Base Station to act as the Time Machine volume for all of my family's computers.
In order to get the backups working without user intervention I have to enable file sharing on the disk in Airport Utility, and then because I have "Secure Shared Disks" enabled, I had to make sure the password was saved in each user's keychain (at least 1 per computer).
My problem is that this now allows users access to the sparse images on the time Machine Disk.
Can anybody suggest a way to restrict access while maintaining automatic Time Machine backups in the background? Like I said, I feel like I'm probably missing something as this seems like it should be a standard feature, no?
Thanks!
Jake

Hmm, two points come to mind (again, with the caveat that I don't have any of the equipment and can't test or check anything).
..."I think the reason this doesn't work as we'd expect is that it would kill the ability of TM to back up to the network disk when logged in as anything other than the Admin user."...
I don't think that's right -- if the password is stored in the "System" keychain, it shouldn't matter whether or not anyone is logged in. Just to make sure we aren't talking about different things, I was referring to the "System" keychain, not any individual users' keychain, including "admin" users or the "root" user. A user's login keychain would not normally be unlocked (requiring the user's password) unless they log in, but the system should have access to the "System" keychain whenever it needs it.
..."Even if I could hide just that particular share in the Finder sidebar, I'd be happy with that."...
That raises an important point that I had previously overlooked -- initially, when I had raised the possibility of restricting file access to the backup itself, I suggested that restricting access to the password would be better. However, upon further consideration, it would probably be preferable to do both, because while restricting access to the password would limit users' ability to mount the share and look at backups whenever they felt like it, it might not prevent them from browsing backups while the system has mounted the remote volume and is in the process of performing the backup. That too would depend on how things are mounted (which I have no way of checking).
Just something to keep in mind while you are experimenting...

Repeated Corruption of Spotlight Database on Time Machine disk?

I'm going to try this here since I don't seem to get much traction with this question in the Time Machine forum, and there is no forum here specific to Spotlight issues in Leopard:
I've been seeing repeated corruption of the Spotlight database on my external, Fireware 800, LaCie drive which is used exclusively for Time Machine. The symptom is that searches done in the Finder window after entering Time Machine produce no results or partial results.
There is no problem with Spotlight on the main hard drive for my laptop.
I received instructions from AppleCare for how to find and delete the hidden folder which makes up the Spotlight database on that drive -- an action which causes Spotlight to immediately rebuild the database on that drive from scratch -- but within days after doing that the database is corrupt again.
An additional symptom is that errors appear in the Console during a reboot -- but only if the Time Machine drive happens to be attached during the reboot. If the drive is attached AFTER booting and logging in, no such errors appear. The errors are from the "mds" process, and indicate either that a portion of the Spotlight database's "Stores" folder is having problems "storing dirty pages", and/or that a portion of the Spotlight database needs to be "recovered". Once those error messages start to appear, they will appear (identically) on every reboot where the drive is attached. No "recovery" happens. And searches after entering Time Machine fail to produce full results as described above.
There are no other Console complaints that appear relevant. No corrupt files during Time Machine backups, no errors when having entered Time Machine to view or restore files, no errors during searches themselves while in Time Machine.
Attempting to rebuild the Spotlight datbase on that drive by dragging it into the System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy list and then removing it are fruitless. Spotlight indexing fires up for only a couple seconds after removing the disk from Privacy and there is no change in the search failures. And no new error message are entered in the Console. The same thing happens when attempting to use the "mdutil" command from Terminal to force a rebuild (as instructed by AppleCare). Only completely trashing the hidden Spotlight database folder on that drive suffices to get Spotlight to rebuild the database from scratch and start over in a fresh, uncorrupted state. But that doesn't last!
Meanwhile, Time Machine backups themselves are working just fine. No errors -- everything seems to be getting over to the drive -- and viewing within or restoring from Time Machine continues to work without problem. That is, the problem is entirely and ONLY within Spotlight for the Time Machine drive. (Again, that drive is used only for Time Machine.)
And as stated above, Spotlight continues to work without issue on the main hard drive.
Disk Utility > Verify Disk also has no complaints about that Time Machine drive (or the main hard drive)
And the usual panacea cures (booting once in Safe Mode, reset PRAM, reset PCU, Repair Permissions) also have no effect on this problem.
The computer in question was an "upgrade" install from 10.4.10 and has two accounts on it -- a non administrative account for normal work and an Administrator account that is almost never used. Only the one drive, the main hard drive, is being captured by the Time Machine backups. Nothing has been excluded from the Time Machine backups. I've even done a successful "full restore" of the system from that Time Machine. I.e., this is all very plain vanilla stuff. I can't fathom why I'm having this problem.
My Time Machine dates back to after installing 10.5.1. I've tried the process of deleting, and thus recreating, the Spotlight database several times without any luck.
Yesterday, after applying the "Time Machine and Airport Drivers" update to my 10.5.2 system, I decided it was time for a fresh start just in case there was something about the data put onto the drive by the older, 10.5.1, Time Machine that was causing Spotlight such grief.
So I erased the Time Machine drive and did an entirely new initial backup.
That completed without errors.
I then did a few incremental backups on top of that. After which I did a reboot to see if there were any Console error messages from mds. There were none, and my tests of searches while viewing in Time Machine all produced correct and complete results.
So far so good.
However, this morning, after I booted up with the Time Machine drive attached, I went immediately into Console and found the dreaded error messages from the mds process. And sure enough my searches inside of Time Machine now only produce partial results again. Here are the two messages I'm getting at the moment (with personal information "xxx"d out):
3/20/08 1:48:48 PM mds[26] (/Volumes/xxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/4CE0F19E-8757-43F1-A5DD-06B1DCAD0E50)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 30
3/20/08 1:48:48 PM mds[26] (/Volumes/xxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/ABE285E8-4E3D-45BD-A3EF-D9A5B4A149DA)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 30
So far I have NOT yet seen the messages saying that the Spotlight database "needs recovery".
I'm at a loss on this one. Again, the Time Machine backups themselves seem to be fully complete and fully functional. And Spotlight was perfectly happy after the new, initial backup, and a few incremental backups.
But I just can't get Spotlight to STAY happy with this Time Machine drive.
Any suggestions?
--Bob

OK I've completed the repartitioning test and the results are unexpected! Here's what I did and what I've spotted so far:
First, the only differences between what I'm going to list here and what I've done before is the repartitioning of the drive and the fact that I decided to do things this time entirely while logged in to my Administrator account. In the past, I did this stuff logged into my "standard" account and supplying Admin passwords when requested:
@ Rebooted with the drive attached and logged in to Admin
@ In System Preferences > Time Machine, did a Change Disk to No Disk to turn off Time Machine backups.
Note: In what follows, each of the several times Time Machine asked me if I wanted to use the external drive as the new Time Machine drive I selected "Cancel".
@ Used Disk Utility to re-partition the Time Machine drive into 2 untitled partitions (Apple Partition Map since this is a Powerbook Mac, Mac OS X Extended (Journalled) formatting, Mac OS 9 drivers turned off). I then partitioned it AGAIN back to 1 partition titled as my Time Machine drive (same settings). I did this two step process to make SURE the partitioning data was actually being re-written.
@ Used Disk Utility to Erase the single partition just created -- using the option to Write 0's to the drive to make sure all of the drive was exercised.
@ Checked and found the Time Machine volume was now identified as disk1s3.
@ Used Disk Utility to Verify Disk on my main hard drive.
@ Checked in Console after all of this and there were no I/O or other errors logged.
The next few steps were done to maximize the chances that my new "initial backup" would be as clean as possible.
@ Shut Down the computer and rebooted once into Safe Mode to let the Safe Mode boot delete caches and do its other background maintenance tasks. Shut Down immediately from the Safe Mode login window instead of logging in.
@ Rebooted while resetting PRAM. Just because.
@ Logged in as Admin, and used Disk Utility to Repair Permissions on the main hard drive. No messages were generated by this.
@ Rebooted once again and logged back in as Admin to get things into a fresh state.
At this point I was now ready to start the new, Time Machine "initial backup". However before I did that I decided to check the Console one more time.
Imagine my surprise when I found one each of the two Spotlight related error messages I reported above! There was one "needs recovery" error and one error trying to "store dirty pages"! (Note that normally I see TWO of each of these.)
Keep in mind that the drive had just been freshly partitioned and then erased again. Time Machine had never been given access to the drive. And no other user applications had been run. And yet the Spotlight database was ALREADY generating errors on that drive!
Upon checking further, I discovered that the first pair of these error messages was generated during the Safe Mode boot above. They were generated again during the boot where I reset PRAM.
BUT, there were NO ERROR MESSAGES in the most recent reboot I had just completed!
At this point I decided to do a 2 more reboots and there were NO ERROR MESSAGES in either of those.
Curious indeed! Well perhaps some sort of recovery had happened.
In any event, at this point I decide to do the "initial backup".
@ In System Preferences > Time Machine, I selected the drive for Time Machine use and let the initial backup complete. I also had Console running during this. The backup completed without any significant messages. In fact one additional incremental backup also completed without errors before I noticed it was done.
At this point, I entered Time Machine and tried my usual test searches which have demonstrated the Spotlight corruption in the past, and there were no problems. Spotlight was apparently good.
I then rebooted and checked the Console and son of a gun but the Spotlight error messages were back -- this time 2 of each.
However, when I checked searches in Time Machine -- THEY WORKED! This is the first time I've ever seen a case where the presence of those error messages during reboot wasn't accompanied by search failures inside of Time Machine.
I immediately did another reboot -- AND NO ERROR MESSAGES!
I've since done several additional incremental backups and several reboots, and I can't find a pattern anymore. The error messages OFTEN appear on reboot (if the Time Machine drive is attached), but not ALWAYS as was the case in the past. And up to now searches inside of Time Machine are working without problems.
I can see several possible explanations:
1) The error messages are spurious (or there is some sort of automatic recovery that is working now when it didn't work before) and the repartitioning above actually fixed the problem.
2) The database is indeed corrupted, but the corruption has moved to a portion of the database that my test searches aren't exercising.
3) I need to do more incremental backups before the database corruption will actually become visible in my test searches. I.e., the problem just hasn't had time to develop yet.
Meanwhile I heard back from LaCie support that they have not heard of a problem like this for Time Machine or Spotlight on this particular drive. I've also pointed them at this thread for details.
So I'll just continue to use this Mac normally over the next few days, while periodically checking to see if the Spotlight search failures reappear and to see if I can spot any pattern as to why those Console error messages sometimes appear on reboot and sometimes not.
I'll report back when I have more info.
Again, if anyone has any insight into what those 2 Console error messages actually mean, or if anyone else is seeing those error messages, or is having Spotlight search failures when inside Time Machine whether or not you see those error messages, please chime in.
--Bob

Time Machine disk and Airport Extreme issues

I have a portable USB drive I use as my Time Machine disk. It works great, but only when I manually mount the disk.
I recently got an Airport Extreme, which allows me to mount a disk off of it. So, I figure I'll mount my USB Time Machine disk there so Time Machine backs up hourly.
Well, the first issue I get is that Time Machine tells me the disk isn't properly formatted! Odd, since I've had it configured via the app for backups. I go into preferences to select a disk, and I choose my Time Machine disk. When I next tried to run a backup, it indicated I don't have enough room on the disk, requiring ~106 GB .... almost as if it thought it hadn't done any backups before and was going to run a full one.
I dismounted the drive from the Airport Extreme and hooked it back up locally, and I get the same results within Time Machine.
I also noticed a new file on the root of my Time Machine, with a .sparsebundle extension. Is this related in any way?
Anyway, what can I do, short of a full reset of my Time Machine disk, to get it working through my Airport Extreme?

Me again ...
I hooked up my USB TM disk again to my Airport Extreme. I don't see it as a mounted drive in my Sidebar. However, I see it under the Devices on my sidebar, under "my" computer, then Time Machine Backups, then a backups.backupdb folder.
To start fresh with TM backups I'll need to erase the drive. From what I see, do I just delete the 'backups.backupdb' folder and its contents?

"Open With" in Finder/Mail Causes Time Machine Disk to spin up

When Leopard builds a list of suitable applications for "Open With" it spins up the Time Machine disk.
This is bad for several reasons:
1) it slows down what used to be an almost instantaneous process
2) The list of applications contains some things twice (the /Applications copy and the Time machine copy)
I also noticed this when patching MS Office today, the installer asked me which copy to patch.
Anyone else seeing this behavior?

Yes I am seeing that as well. Annoying, and sometimes confusing, but doesn't seem to do any harm.
I haven't found any fixes for it either.

Have to wait for Time Machine disk before opening or saving

I can't tell you how irritating it is, when it click open or save (any program) , to hear my Time Machine hard disk begin to spool up. As soon as hear that sound, I know that means I have to sit and wait for the Time Machine disk to initialize and get all set before I can save my work. This is majorly ticking me off.
This problem is present on any document i go to save/open.
Why is the OS trying access the Time Machine disk when I try to open or save anywhay??? There's no reason for that! No one is ever opening up and saving to Time Machine while doing normal workflow! The only thing the Time Machine hard drive should be responsible for is backing up!
I swear, I'm thinking about disconnecting my Time Machine disk while I'm working and just reconnect it when I'm away from the computer...it's getting that bad. I shouldn't have to do that. That's ridiculous.
Any ideas?
Thank you

Why is the OS trying access the Time Machine disk when I try to open or save anywhay???
The system will wake ALL hard disks when the save dialog is opened TM is not excepted from this. There is nothing very special a TM volume other than its icon.
There's no reason for that! No one is ever opening up and saving to Time Machine while doing normal workflow!
There are many users who use a TM drive for data other than TM backups.
What make and model is your drive? Some drives have power management controllers which have to be set with disk management software. If you have one of these drives you may need to turn off the hardware power management with this software. The problem here is that some manufactures only provide this software for Windows. Seagate is one such manufacturer

Time Machine - Browse other Time Machine disk - not showing all files

I have an Xserve, running 10.6 server, where we keep all of our files. It backs up via Time Machine. Many users use the shared drives on the Xserve, and I encourage them to put their files there. We work in a design / production house, so many people collaborate on files. Due to the nature of the business, with frequent design changes, we need to go "back in time" and pull out previous versions of designs, etc. Usually I handle this by remotely accessing the Xserve, starting up time machine, and pulling out the old versions of files from the backups.
However, when I'm not in, I wanted to make this option available to another user, without giving her full access to the server. I discovered the "Browse Other Time Machine" option, and after making my Time Machine disk (actually a rack-mount Mercury Pro RAID array) shared, I was able to mount it on her Mac, also running 10.6. I thought this would be a nice solution.
The problem is, in some directories, when browsing from her computer, Time machine is showing no backups. It's impossible to go back more than a few snapshots with it. Meanwhile, if I do it on the server, everything is fine. So I thought perhaps it was a permissions issue, but I don't want to muck up the permissions on my time machine drive and risk losing everything. I did add her account as a user with read-only access to the time machine drive, and told it to apply to all sub folders. This didn't make any difference.
What is the issue? Is it permissions? Or is my Time Machine too large (6TB) that it can't load all the data over the network? Has anyone encountered this before? What is the best way to troubleshoot?

If you still have the old imac connect tbe two with an ethernet cable and use migration assistant. Move your data to a new Mac - Apple Support

After reinstalling Snow Leopard, migration assist and doesn't see my time machine disk.

I had to erase my hard drive and reinstall Snow Leopard and when I tried to us Migration Assistant, it didn't see the Time Machine disk. Restoring from Time Machine directly didn't work because I couldn't gain access to and backup prior to the reinstall although the backups are all there when I open the Time Machine disk and look at folders from before the reinstall they all open perfectly. How do I get to restore from pre-reinstall dates backups?

I couldn't get Mail to open. It bounced in the dock but wouldn't open. All other programs were very slow, Disk utility showed the disk couldn't be repaired, so I erased and reinstalled and restored from time machine. Everything we OK for a couple of weeks, then all the response times became very extended or wouldn't open at all. Took the iMac to the Apple Store where they checked out the hardware and found it to be OK. They told me to erase, reinstall and use migration assistant to bring only my profile over. The erase and reinstall were fine, but the time machine drive could not be seen by migration assistant, and I don't have access through the time machine utility to any backups prior to the first reinstall.

ITunes library backup on Time Machine disk

Never used Time Machine before, and I am getting a new ext hard drive this week for this purpose.
Can I also manually put files on the Time Machine backup as well? Basically, does a Time Machine drive mount normally in that I can create folders and copy files to it, as well as use it for Time Machine's automatic backing up?
Reason I ask, is I'd like to backup my iTunes library to a folder on the drive as well as have it do Time Machine backups. Also, if this is redundant, and Time Machine will have all this stuff safely backed up (with easy access), let me know. Thanks.

skiltrip wrote:
Never used Time Machine before, and I am getting a new ext hard drive this week for this purpose.
Can I also manually put files on the Time Machine backup as well?
You can, but there are some cautions. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Basically, does a Time Machine drive mount normally in that I can create folders and copy files to it, as well as use it for Time Machine's automatic backing up?
As you'll see in #3, yes.
Reason I ask, is I'd like to backup my iTunes library to a folder on the drive as well as have it do Time Machine backups. Also, if this is redundant, and Time Machine will have all this stuff safely backed up (with easy access), let me know. Thanks.
Unless you tell it not to, Time Machine will back up almost everything on your system. It does exclude a few things automatically, such as system work files, most caches, your logs, and trash.
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ.

Time machine disk access on almost allthe time

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