Time Machine doesn't work for one out of four computers

I have Time Machine running on my Time Capsule and three out of my four computers are backing up reliably. My MacBook Air was away from home for six weeks and on my return TM refused to start. I have deleted the old backup file and set up TM again. I get the usual "Preparing for Backup" message but this persists for ever (at least for 48 hours). A backup file sized at about 250MB is created on the Time Capsule but that is all. During this time there is no evidence of activity and I have finally had to cancel the backup and turn off TM. I've tried everything I can think of but to no avail. Any help would be appreciated.

I have solved this and thought others might be interested. Last evening I was at the London Mac User Group monthly meeting and raised this problem during the Q&A session. One member asked if I had anti-virus protection installed on the MacBook Air. Indeed I did. I had installed iAntiVirus during my absence from home. So I first tried disabling iAntiVirus and this did not work. I then uninstalled the package and rebooted. Time Machine then sprang into life and is working as advertised. It seems that some (if not all) anti-virus systems can prevent TM from working, but I am not sure why.

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IMac: Time Machine Doesn't Work

The time machine doesn't work it says it can't find any wireless devices (Airport cant find any wireless devices)? I'm connected to the internet so shouldn't it work?
Help please.

Would love some help..

Since installing mavericks my WD time machine doesn't work, it keeps insisting it needs more space? This wasn't an issue an hour earlier?

Since installing mavericks my WD time machine doesn't work, it keeps insisting it needs more space? This wasn't an issue an hour earlier?
Id also like to know if Powerpc software will be supported? I have C&C Generals on disc but it doesnt run now mavericks is installed?!
Annoying!

Regarding time machine, it probably took a full backup after you put mavericks on. To investigate, open Console, select "All Messages" and type "backup" (without the quotes). It will then only show you backup-related messages. If you're not sure how to read those, copy them and paste them into a reply here; we can investigate the situation.
I don't know anything about your PPC software issue, sorry.

Time Machine doesn't work

Hi guys,
I’m new on Mac. I have a new MBP retina display running on OSX 10.8.2. I used time capsule 2Tb as a external hard drive for Time Machine. It worked fine for about 10 days. Then it stopped backing up, not sure if it coincided in time with an upgrade of the operative system I did some days ago. At the beginning, TM didn’t report any error (for days). Airport is updated. TC has a lot of free GBs.
Since I noticed the problem I surfed the communities and found this is a common issue of users after upgrading to Mountain Lion. I tried many different solutions that were useful for many people, none of them worked for me. Let me show you some of these ways other people found to fix the bug.
Checked the names of the MBP, TC and network, remove appostrophies and spaces in those names.
Switched time machine off and on several times
Tried to reconnect to the TC server by the finder, so trying to avoid a ghost hard drive it appeared on time machine
Looked for a button to “Verify backups” that never appeared on my time machine menu
Soft reset of the TC
Full reset of the time machine
Around a pair of dozens restarts (TC, TM, MBP, networks…)
Excluded antivirus and dropbox files as potentially source of troubles
Disable the option “Put the hard disks to sleep when possible” on the energy saver preferences
Right now, TM says it has None backups done, and I cannot use Time machine. When forcing a “Back up now” it spends a minute “Looking for backup disks” but it never finds anything. Today a couple of error messages have finally come up: one said something like The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/xxxxxxx.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1).
The other was an error number of four digits, starting in 6 (sorry I didn’t copy it).
I don’t care if I have to delete previous backups, it would be ok for me. However, I don’t want to erase other big amount of data stored in the TC that is different from the backup image. I tried to delete the backup image file from the TC but I couldn’t.
I need help, please. MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE

My Time capsule didn't work for reasons unknown.
I'm posting this because the solution i found was not posted.
I reinstalled my Operating system. Here are the steps for anyone who needs them.
1. Goto Applications.
2. Then look for the "Utilities" Folder.
3. Click on the app called "Disk Utilities"
4. In the White box on the left, you will see your internal Hard Drive Icon.
Click on the very first Drive at the top of the list.
5. Look for the two buttons: "Verify Disk" and "Repair Disk". Click on the "Verify Disk" button ONLY!
This will verify if your hard drive has any internal problems.
6. After it finishes verifcation, the Details box will who the following list:
Verifying volume “Whatever the name of your drive”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume "Whatever the name of your drive" appears to be OK. (in Green Letters)
7. If your hard drive shows a green message like the one above, your drive is ready
to reinstall your operating system on it.
If your hard drive (SHOWS A RED MESSAGE) INSTEAD of a green message, your drive is NOT ready
to reinstall your operating system on it AND it will need to be taken to an Apple Genius Bar.
8. If your drive appears to be OK (in green), turn your computer off, wait 10 seconds and restart it.
9. Once the grey screne shows, hold down the "Option" button until something pops up on the screne.
10. Look for the "Recovery HD" grey Hard Drive icon.
11. Use the Up and Down buttons to choose your internet connection
(or none at all if it's automatically connected).
12. Use the Left and Right buttons to choose your Recovery HD Hard Drive icon. Click Return.
13. Wait for the Window called "Mac OSX Utilites" to pop up.
14. Choose the icon that says (Reinstall Mac OSX).
15. Everything else will be self explanatory.
16. Hope this helps. Your system will be reinstalled without any problems to the files on your computer.
This only works for Mac computers made 2012 and after. I have no knowledge of any computer systems before OSX 10.7.
My Time Capsule works perfectly. Hope yours does as well.

Time machine doesn't work in Yosemite.

Time machine is not working with my clean installation of OS X Yosemite. It appears to back up, but that's where it stops. I can't access the backup. When I enter time machine I can't do anything. If I click on the top window it just disappears and goes to the next. The time bars on the right side are all red. If I try to search the time machine volume directly, it will show the files but when I try to open them Finder says The alias "file name" can't be opened because the original item can't be found. This means that time machine can only be good for doing complete restores, which makes it useless as a time machine. I require the ability to restore individual files, which is the whole point of time machine. I have read that this problem has been around for a while (at least a year), so why hasn't Apple fixed this!!! I now need to find a backup program that actually works.

See #C6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine doesn't work with Windows Server 2008

At work we use a Windows Server running with Windows Server 2008 to backup our work via Time Machine. All my collegues are running Snow Leopard appart from on that runs under Leopard because it's a G5.
A few weeks ago I installed Lion to try it before upgrading all the computer and found that time machine won't work. Apperantly I found that it is due to an AFP connection.
Can anyone tell me if I can do anything apart from trying to use another Backup Software like Data Backup?
Would really like to use Time Machine as it's SUPERB ;-)
Regards

Perhaps that drive is too small to use for Time Machine. Your Time Machine drive needs to be at least twice the size of the drive it is backing up, preferably 3 times.

IMac freezes & Time Machine doesn't work anymore

Hello,
For several days now my trusty iMac (two years old) keeps freezing without a recognizable pattern. Programs like iTunes, iPhoto or maybe even the Finder just stop working and display only the rotating ball - the only thing left to do for me after that is to manually terminate that process or (in the case of the Finder) to restart the whole iMac. I'm really clueless as to where this behaviour suddenly comes from, up until about a week ago the iMac worked perfectly. And now something like this happens every single time I start it.
Another thing that doesn't work anymore is Time Machine. My last automatic backup is from September 17th. After that it just stopped working. Every time an automatic or manual backup is initiated it just says "Searching for backup volume" but doesn't find it, even after several hours of looking. The Time Capsule itself works perfectly, no errors whatsoever.
My iMac is up-to-date, I also already ran the disgnostics of the hard drive program - everything seems to be fine. Can anyone help me?
Thank you in advance,
Paul

When you next have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
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.
Scroll back in the log to the time you noted above. Select any messages timestamped from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time Machine is not working for me

There is no way that Time Machine is working right for me. Backups are taking a split second and are reporting crazy small amounts. Example, I have added to my Mac 1 gig of movies and 1 gig of images. I backed up today and Time Machine reported 28k of material being backed up and it took less than 1 second to start and finish the backup. None of these files are in areas that Time Machine has been told to not back up.
How do I get Time Machine to work again? Please help me. TIA.

Agreed. This particular glitch doesn't affect a lot of users, apparenly, and Apple is aware of it and hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I've learned over the years (mostly the hard way, of course ), never to trust my backups to a single app or piece of hardware: no app is perfect, and all hardware fails, sooner or later.
Like many here, I keep both full Time Machine backups, plus a "bootable clone" on a separate external HD. I use CarbonCopyCloner, many use the similar SuperDuper. That gives me the best of both types of backups, plus of course a completely separate, independent backup.
CCC is donationware; SD has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling. Either is easily found via Google.
And/or, see Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.
ps: glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the star.
Message was edited by: Pondini

Restoring from Time Machine doesn't work

I am attempting to restore from Time Machine on my 13" Late 2008 MacBook, but the restore stops about halfway through.
Some background information: A few weeks ago my computer started exhibiting some weird behaviour. It would turn the disk off or log me out after a few hours (I typically sleep with it on and use at as my alarm clock). Then, apps would crash and quit unexpectedly. It would kick in the HDD when I was not using anything that required it, and the fan would turn on for no reason. Then the worst thing happened: Some days I would get the dreaded "You need to restart your computer" screen multiple times. It almost seems like a virus. The problems persist after multiple PRAM and SMC resets. Sure enough, I tried turning on my computer yesterday and it just won't even start. It would give me the Apple logo, a spinny loading indicator, and then it would give me a very slow progress bar. As soon as the progress bar gets to about one tenth of the way, the computer turns off.
I have everything backed up to a very recent Time Machine. I opened the computer in Recovery Mode and verified the disk. It needed repair. So I repaired it, and it said the repair was unsuccessful and needed to be restored. So I tried restoring it. I ended up having to erase Macintosh HD and reinstalling Lion (which thankfully I could do over the Internet). After reinstalling that, I tried "Restore from Time Machine." It got to about 30% of the restoration and then took me back to the Utilities page spontaneously. It didn't give me an alert or an error of any kind. It has done this multiple times. I may try Migration Assistant and see how that works. I know that a 4-year old MacBook is a bit of a dinosaur anyway, but the machine has been very useful and powerful for the whole time I've had it, and this is not how I'd like to see it die.
I also have a lot of important data on the Time Machine and fear that whatever afflicted my MacBook may afflict the MacBook Pro I intend to get soon, which I will load my TM onto.
Any and all help is deeply appreciated.
-Sam Taylor

I have always had problems restoring from my backups. I just replaced my hard drive and did a restore and now there are no icons in the dock (all ?'s) and I cannot click on my Applications folder in any finder window. (Oh, and the fans run constantly at top speed after being on for about 3 minutes.)
This is probably the 10th restore I've done in the past couple of years and I don't think one has worked for me.

HT1770 Time Machine doesn't work anymore after changing a bad hard disk.

Hello,
I have an iMac OS X 10.5.8.
One of my external drives failed.
I changed the disk, and restored the data successfully with Time Machine.
However, when Time machine was doing a back-up, it generated an error message: The copy can’t be finished. There has been an error while linking files on the backup volume.
I asked for help in the apple shop where I bought my new disk, and they advised me to delete my backup volume, … and start with an new backup from scratch.
For me, this is not the right way in using a backup system. I don’t wana throw away my old backup because it might include usefull older data.
My problem is: how can I tell Time Machine to link the data on the new disk to the old data on my backup volume?
Is it an issue that I changed the old disk of 1 TByte to a new disk of 2 TByte?
Who can give me an advise?
Thx,
Marc

Marc,
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html

Why backup to Time Machine doesn't work on Mavericks?

I upgraded to Maverics from Mountain Lion two weeks ago and I've experienced number of issues since then.
This time I have a problem with Time Machine backups. It has stopped creating backups since the upgrade to Maverics.
When I try to create backup I'm keep getting following message:
'The disk image "MyName Macbook Pro.sparsebundle" is in use
Try ejecting the disk image'
The problem is that Time Machine seems to be ejected. I checked that it is ejected properly both in Finder and Disk Utility.
Please could someoune possibly help me with the issue?

That's a known problem with AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule. If you have got any of these ones, restart your Mac and the AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule, and turn them on again, so you should be able to back up again.
Remember that Apple released a firmware update for them in order to fix this issue. Open AirPort Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) and follow the steps.
If you have got an external drive instead of the Time Capsule, disconnect it and connect it again

Backup (NOT time machine) doesn't work

I want to backup a few files to iDisk (for off site storage). The Backup program creates archive, copies files, compresses archive, and starts to upload. The modem flickers. This Uploading goes on for over an hour. The How Much Is done bar goes up to about 3/4, then the next time I look it is back to 1/2. It acts like it is stuck in a loop.
This has happened since I loaded Leopard. Time machine works good, to a Hard Drive. Backup does NOT work.
How do I fix it??

Why not post this to the Apple - Support - Discussions - iDisk forum?

Time machine doesn't work because reads the wrong disk size

Time machine started insisting I had not enough space on the disk. Normally it would delete old backups and get on to it. But this time I kept getting the "disk full"or "not enough space message" (do not remember witch one). So I formatted the disk, many times. The message stuck.
No I checked what Time Machine itself was seeing, and it is pretty weird. Time Machine thinks it is a 700mb disk, while it is a 1Tb one as you can see below.
It was working well enough, thank that started.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
PS: I use Yosemite 10.10.1, Imac 20, mid 2011

The first screenshot shows the amount of data on the volume, not its capacity. Apparently it's not large enough to hold all the data you're trying to back up, including about 20% of padding that Time Machine requires.

Bounce Doesn't Work for One Song

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I am new to Logic and I wonder if there is something that I can check to see why this song isn't able to be bounced like the others.
Thank you,
Paul

Looks like some plugin causes that... First bypass all processing plugins in the project or at least these which are on the "Bounced" Master channel if any. Start with the "Third Party" plugins - they are the first which can cause such fantom bouncing.
!http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4967/aglogo45.gif!

Shuffle doesn't work for one playlist

I followed this article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61574
and made sure I have the right settings, but it still doesn't shuffle one of the playlists. All the rest of the playlists seem to shuffle, but this one always shows only in alphabetical order, no matter what I do. This has been frustrating me for quite sometime, and I finally decided to post here, and I appreciate any help. I have the latest firmware as per the updater.
Thanks,
Hari
PC Windows XP Pro

I followed this article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61574
and made sure I have the right settings, but it still doesn't shuffle one of the playlists. All the rest of the playlists seem to shuffle, but this one always shows only in alphabetical order, no matter what I do. This has been frustrating me for quite sometime, and I finally decided to post here, and I appreciate any help. I have the latest firmware as per the updater.
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Hari
PC Windows XP Pro

Time Machine doesn't work for one out of four computers

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