Time Machine error message - "case sensitive volume" conflict

Question

After apparently working fine for a month or so, Time Machine is giving me an error message that reads, "A volume you are backing up is case sensitive, but the backup volume is not." I don't know what this means. How do I identify the case sensitive volume, so that I can exclude it from backup, assuming that's the correct action?
Help is appreciated! Thanks

Answer 1

I've had this occur to me too, but I think that maybe - and it's important that I underscore the 'maybe' part - I might have put my finger on the cause and, perhaps, the solution.
In my case, I happened to have had Disk Tools open when I downloaded a .dmg disk image. It seems that Disk Tools tends to 'remember' the disk image as a mounted volume, even though it's no longer on the desktop. I don't know what this might have to do with Time Machine, (and hopefully there is an Apple tech who is monitoring this thread), but when I deleted the disk image from the Disk Tools volume list, the "Case-Sensitive" error went away.
I don't know if this is really the root cause, but if anyone is experiencing the same "case-sensitive volume" error, try opening Disk Tools and see if there is a disk image volume appearing at the the bottom of the Disk Volumes list. If so, select it (or them, if there's more than one), and do a Command-Delete to remove them. Once the disk-image volumes have been removed from the list, try running Time Machine again. If the error is gone, post here so that other readers can try the same thing!
Best,
Tom
Message was edited by: Tom Beardmore