Time Machine Freezes and Corrupts Disk

Hello,
I have been attempting to set up one of my external hard drives for use in Time Machine, but every time I click "Erase" when Time Machine asks me to, Time Machine freezes, and my Hard Drive gets corrupt. After force quitting Time Machine and mounting my drive again, it says "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I have had to go back to a PC on numerous occasions and format the disk as FAT32, and then come back and try it again. I have attempted to erase the disk through Disk Utility, but the same error occurs.
I am attempting to do this with a 100GB Store-It drive by Hitatchi. Please let me know if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can solve this issue.
Thanks,
Thomas

I had the same problem with a new 120GB WD external 2.5" HDD. It seems to perform the initial backup then gets frozen at the very end of the first actualization, CPU running at 100%. Doesn't mount any more, DU shows it but declares it as non-repairable because of different issues: index faulty, B-tree header faulty etc. The same on another Mac. Re-formatting leads to the same results.
What to do?
Berndt

Similar Messages

  • Time Machine "freezes" and I am NOT running anti-virus software

    I am incredibly frustrasted and disappointed as a first-time Apple user (brand new iMac (Intel-based) with an external LaCie 500 GB external hard disk). The problem is Time Machine. It backs up on schedule, but when I enter Time Machine, I cannot navigate at all. The background screen (outer space) moves, the cursor moves, but I cannot click on anything. I have to "force quit". So I guess I have things backed up, but can't do anything with them.
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    Hello Zurichmike (lovely country):
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    Erase and reformat your external HD.
    Run repair disk from your software install DVD (on your internal HD).
    Go to Macintosh HD>library>preferences. Trash the TM preference file (com.apple.timemachine.plist) and restart. The TM preferences will need to be changed as they are now default values.
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  • Both time machine drive and startup disk can't be repaired by disk utilities and needs to be formatted!!??

    ok so i accidentally remove the USB while my laptop was backing up to the time machine partition on my external HDD. I plug it in again, and no time machine partition. just the other part (fat 32 partition). so i open disk utilities.. the partition is there but grayed out. so I repair it.. and it says it cant repair it i need to back it up and format it. ok great.. i tried to do that and it said it can't access the disk.. super.
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    As you have indicated, you don’t want to touch the partitions on your existing external drive because it has live files in the FAT32 partition for which there are no copies anywhere else.  That leaves you with two sets of data that are currently not backed up: your FAT32 partition and your system drive.  I suggest you need at least one more external HD for backups.
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    http://help.bombich.com/kb/usage-scenarios/backing-up-tofrom-network-volumes-and -other-non-hfs-volumes

  • HT201250 Time Machine freezes and screens are blank.

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    Are you trying to Revert from Mavericks to the OS you previously had on your Mac ? If so...
    See >  http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14176
    And >  https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6161

  • Time Machine says "The Backup Disk is Not Available"

    Line 0:  I have a 400 GB external Western Digital drive that I leave plugged into an Airport Extreme.  Previously, this worked mostly without a problem.  It took some massaging to get it to work at first (I had to create the backup with the drive directly connected to the computer, and then I moved the drive over to the Airport Extreme and it was fine after that), but after that, it worked forever.  This was in the previous version of the OS that I was running (snow leopard?).  I very recently upgraded to Lion and it seemed to be OK, but then suddenly it gave me an error that said it had not been able to do a backup for 10 days.  I thought "wow, that means it hasn't backed up since I upgraded to Lion." 
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    It should not have worked in the first place.. when you moved it from the PC to the airport extreme.. that is not correct.. I don't know how SL managed to work around it.. but Lion obviously cannot.
    You will need to start all over again..
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  • Time machine error: The backup disk image could not be mounted

    Time Machine worked OK for several months. Now I get this error every 10 minutes or so.
    I unplugged Time Machine capsule and "Change Disk" in Time Machine options.
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    I cannot Enter Time Machine either. "Connecting to Server, Connecting to backup" does not work.
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    Christine

    Christ1ne,
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    *_"The Backup Disk Image Could Not Be Mounted" (Console - “Failed to mount disk image”)_*
    First, it is important to distinguish this error message from another, similar Time Machine error that states “The backup volume could not be mounted”. This is important as the causes and cures for these two errors can be very different.
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    *Unmount the Backup Disk Image* (TC)
    If, for some reason, you have manually mounted the Time Machine backup disk image (sparsebundle), or Time Machine failed to eject it after the previous backup, subsequent backups may fail. (Console - “Failed to mount disk image”… “Backup failed with error: 21”)
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    *“Disconnect All Users…”:*
    If your Time Machine backup drive (“Backup of Users Computer”) is mounted on your desktop or in the Sidebar of the Finder window. then Time Machine may think the drive is already in use. Alternatively, if the Time Capsule hard disk has been recently accessed by a Windows machine, it may not have fully relinquished control. Do the following:
    Open Airport Utility and select the Time Capsule on the left.
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    Select “Disks” at top of window.
    Click “Disconnect All Users…” at bottom of window.
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    Now try Backing up again.
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    *Proper Computer Name* #
    Make sure your computer has a proper name. Go to System Preferences --> Sharing. Time Machine needs to differentiate your computer from others on your network (i.e. "Bills MacBook" or "Office iMac"). If the "Computer Name" field is blank, create a name. Realize that if this step is necessary, you will likely have to start the Time Machine backup process over again and do another full initial backup.
    According to this article, [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760], Time Machine may experience problems if your computer name includes certain characters. Make sure the computer name only includes ASCII characters from the following set.
    (0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ)
    Once a change in the computer name occurs, you should stop and restart Sharing on the affected computer. Uncheck and then recheck Sharing in the Services list on the left.
    # Try removing the apostrophe from the disk images name (sparsebundle).
    *A Stalled .inProgress Files:* #
    It may be that the previous backup attempt was ungracefully interrupted leaving remains that Time Machine can’t deal with.
    Stop any current backup attempt. Choose “Stop Backing Up” from the Time Machine menu.
    Open the Time Machine Preferences and turn “OFF” Time Machine.
    Open your Time Machine drive.
    Open the folder labeled “Backups,backupdb”.
    Now open the folder containing backups of the computer in question.
    Are there any “.inProgress” files there. Delete them by dragging the file to the Trash. Or Ctrl-Click the file and select "Move to Trash" from the contextual menu. (Give this time as deleting a large file on an external disk can take a while.)
    Turn Time Machine back “ON”. Now try backing up again.
    NOTE: If the above procedure becomes impossible to perform, try accessing the disk image from another Mac. Some have discovered that attempting a repair from another computer succeeds where the original computer failed.
    Let us know if any of the suggestions above helped to resolve your issue.
    Cheers!

  • Time Machine crashes and freezes the OS, I fixed it!

    Hello,
    My MacBook Pro (OS X 10.8.2) has experienced this week troubles when backing up with Time Capsule, and I searched on the community and the web where is a lot of same cases, but I didn't found any solution that fit on my case.
    The problem ?
    Simply when I start a manual Time Machine backup to the Time Capsule it goes normal for several Gigs and crashes with no error massage and then the OS freezes when trying to stop or force close Time Machine.
    Then ?
    The only thing to do for resuming the OS is to hard restart the device.
    I found some advices on this community and other forums, but no chance. I will list some:
    Open Disk Utility, and select the device's hard drive then choose "Repair disk permissions". You may try this on the backup disk if you are using an external drive for Time Machine.
    If you are on an incremential backup, try to delete the old backup file (if you use a Time Capsule) or format (erase) the external drive using Disk Utility. So you start the backup over, even if that should take a long time to finish it may solve problem.
    I have tried those steps, and I used both Time Capsule and an external drive for my tests, but I came with no results other than hard resetting my mac every time after a couple Gigs of backup and starts over.
    Solution?
    The solution that fixed this error, is to open Option window on the Time Machine Preferences and to Add ( + button) your personal folders one at a time to the excluded items list, and try to backup, if it freezes try to Add another one and try over, until the backup succeeds, the last added folder should the one that causes the crash. you can remove the first added folder but keep the last one, and execute the backup again. For me, after adding System files and Applications folder, Music, Downloads, Pictures the last folder I added before the backup runs normal was the Movies folder. and then I removed all my folders keeping the Movies folder excluded I managed to backup my Mac to both external drive and Time Capsule smoothly again.
    Hope that will helps you.

    Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.
    You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
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  • Time Machine backup and main drive corrupted. Help! (REWARD OFFERED)

    Here's the deal:
    I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini both runnign Snow Leopard. I use the Mac Mini as a kind of media center / server, it has a few external drives connected to it. On of these drives (1GB) is dedicated to Time Machine, the Mac Mini (80 GB hard drive) backs up to it directly and the Macbook Pro (500 GB hard drive) does it over the network (Time Machine created a sparsebundle). This has worked well for years now. Occasionally I got the error that Time Machine needed to start a new backup because the old one was corrupt. That happened about 2-3 times a year (did the same thing when I backued up via USB). Now about 2 weeks ago, that error came up and I just let the Macbook Pro on overnight and connected the ethernet cable for faster transfer.
    When I woke up, the Macbook Pro didn't respont at all, spinning beachball, no response at all beside mouse movement. I let it do it's thing for another 10 hours (while I was at work) and just held down the power button to power off and restart it. But all I got was the gray-on-gray flashing folder with the question mark in it, that's what you get when the Mac can't find bootable partitions. So I popped in the OSX Snow Leopard install disk, ran disk utility. It saw the hard drive, but no partition (i.e. Machintosh HD) on it. I checked the Time Machine backup and the sparsebundle was 300 GB (the Macbook Pro had 400 GB used, the remaining 100 GB were free). There is no way to restore from an unfinished Time Machine backup...
    First thing I did was clone the internal (Macbook Pro) hard drive to a DMG disk image using DiskDrill (the only program I found that could recognize the drive at all, not even DiskWarrior could). I also bought the exact same hard drive model and partitioned it like the cloned the corrupted hard drive to the new one using ddrescue (a command line tool that doesn't quit upon i/o errors but proceeds and tries to recover as much as it can). It copied everything except 65 kilobytes, the corrupted drive seemed to be physically damaged in a bunch of sectors relatively at the beginning of the disk. Since I had now an exact copy on a fresh, healthy drive, I went crazy trying out Disk Warrior (didn't recognize the drive at all), data rescue, testdisc, p a Windows isk, etc. Only R-Studio (on windows) showed the EFI and Macintosh HD partitions on there, they started and ended on the same sectors on the corrupted drive and its clone. After some research, I figured that the partition table was corrupt so I reformated the clone disk using the OSX Snow Leopard install disk (1 HFS Journaled Partition with GUID Partition table). R-Studio showed the EFI and Macintosh HD on that reformated drive, again, same sectors as before. So I figured I could just copy just the bytes where the Macintosh HD starts from the corrupted drive to the clone (using ddrescue). That worked, after almost 24 hours, I had the clone drive with a "disk1" partition on it that even disk utility could see.
    Now I was able to run Disk Warrior on it, but all it could do was recover a few Application folders (Resource-Folders and lproj-stuff), about 100 MB in total. It couldn't repair more of catalog file apparently. Luckily, Time Machine backed up quite a bit (300 GB out of 400 GB of data) and I was able to manually copy all the Dokuments, Desktop, user Library, Applications, Music, Download and Movies. Unfortunatley, only a little bit of the Pictures folder was copied. iPhoto library (80 to 100 GB) was nowhere to be found, backup must have failed right then. I can salvage the drives (time machine drive, original hard drive with a few broken sectors, DMG-image of that drive, 1-1 copy of that drive with partition table repaired) but that only gives me files with numeric names and today's date on teh JPEGs (instead of the date the picture was taken).
    Is there any way I can recover that iPhoto library? It appears the catalog file got corrupted because the hard drive (only 8 months old...) failed on a few sectors. If I understand it correctly, the catalog file on HFS+ file systems is where the folder structure and file names are stored in a B-Tree. I can't imagine that some i/o error during backup can totally annihilate that file when it was working perfectly before. Here's a few things I want to try out but haven't figured out how so far:
    - Time Machine had to start a new backup. There's plenty of free space on that drive so there's a good chance there's old data left on it. Is there a way to restore files (including file names) and fodlers from deleted time machine backups?
    - Is there any way to re-build that catalog file from what is there left on the original hard drive? I can't imagine 65 kilobytes destroys it all.
    - Are there other ways to recover my iPhoto Library? The raw JPEG (and AVI) files with correct file names or metadata would suffice.
    Thanks in advance for any help, I'll actually reward the person with a working solution, 5 years of photo memories are somewhat important. It really ***** that a failure during a backup destroys that...

    Final Update:
    The catalog file on the original hard drive could not be fixed. Seems like Mac OSX tried to repair the catalog file while the sectors this file resides on failed. To make things worse the partition table was also broken beyond repair, even overwriting the sectors with a new correct partition table didn't help. DiskWarrior found less then 100 MB worth of stuff, mainly Applications folders.
    I recovered pretty much everything from the incomplete Time Machine backup by right-clicking the sparsebundle and browsing through the folders with the long alphanumeric names, looking for the version of the folder with the most files in there. All I was missing was part of the ~/Pictures folder, i.e. photobooth pictures and the whole iPhoto Library. My best option was to recover these files using data recovery tools.
    DiskDrill proved to be the absolute best, fast, responsive, efficient, and the only one able to mount the DMG-file with no valid file system on it. As there were many i/o errors and broken sectors on the original hard drive, I made a copy of it using a free command line tool called ddrescue (the standard dd tool just aborted when it encountered the i/o error). ddrescue copied the whole drive to a DMG image, I had 56 kilobytes with errors on the first pass, but it managed to shrink that down to just 4 kilobytes (wow!) after the second pass where it tries to re-read the broken secors. It took about 24 hours for a 512 GB 2.5" drive (5400 rpm) but well worth it. Be advised that ddrescue is really persistent and tries everything to recover those last errorneous bytes. At the very end of the process, the read/write head of the hard drive just goes wild trying to catch the data on the sectors with different momentum. This works but I assume this is pretty damaging for the original drive. I also copied it all to a new hard drive (again using ddrescue) and tried partition and catalog repair tools on that (DiskWarrion, testdiks, pdisk, etc.). Still no hint of a good result.
    I made a deep scan on the clone hard drive with DiskDrill. At the end (after about 8 hours over USB) it found 13 partition (I assume that's the Macintosh HD, EFI and some DMG files lying around) and  hundreds of thousands of pictures. I restored some JPG files just to check the quality, some were damaged, some were good with all the EXIF data intact. I just made it copy all JPG files into a folder. I know the pictures taken from my camera produce JPGs larger than 1 MB and smaller than 5 MB, so I sorted them by size and moved the smaller and larger files into seperate folders. I took the remaining folder (100 GB) and just dragged it into iPhoto. It imported them overnight. Auto-Split by events and I got my library back, alas with different file names, originals and edited versions side by side, lots of duplicates, some damaged, some not. But hey, all the pictures in chronological order. Okay there was also one large event with all the JPGs without valid EXIF data landed inside, iPhoto just takes the file creation date (i.e. the date where the recovered file was copied). As far as I can tell, these are all just data corpses, halfway overwritten copies, random pictures from the internet, desktop pictures, etc.
    I started to work my way back through the events, deleting the duplicates and renaming the events. There's an app called "Duplicate Annihilator" which apparently can find duplicate pictures in iPhoto and mark them for you. The free version only does 500 pictures but if it works, I'll get the full version. It can mark th eduplicate photos by adding something to the picture comment in iPhoto so you can manually review it all. Good stuff!

  • I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard.  Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

    I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard.  Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

    Hi there,
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  • My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you

    My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you think it is? It won't recognize any hard drive I put in the machine, so might it be the sata cable?

    Boot the Recvoery USB, use Disk Utility to select the internal drive makers namea and size on the left.
    Now select erase and select the midde option and click erase, it will take a bit to complete but it's best for the drive.
    Now select Partiton tab, click the big box and Options: GUID and then Format: OS X Extended journaled and click apply.
    Quit and you should be able to install OS X now with your Apple ID and password.
    see
    http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/

  • I am running 10.7.5 and getting Time Machine error The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Kathy P's MacBook.sparsebundle" is already in use. what do i do now?

    i am running 10.7.5 on an older MacBook and getting Time Machine error The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Kathy P’s MacBook.sparsebundle” is already in use. what do i do now?

    See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

  • Since upgrade, Time Machine starts and stalls.  Waited 24 hours. Formatted disk-no change.

    Since upgrade to Mavericks on Mini, Time Machine starts and stalls.  Says "292 Mb of 147.68 Gb", wheel spins. Waited 24 hours, no change. Formatted disk-no change.  Tried every solution found in threads; no fix.  Doing manual backups. Help!

    If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
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    ☞ 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.
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    View ▹ Show Log List
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    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
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    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.

  • I am trying to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard.  When I insert the disk and install starts, it states "This disk is used for Time Machine backups" and Mac OSX can't be installed.  Does anyone know how to correct this (since Tiger doesn't have Time Mach

    I am trying to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard.  When I insert the disk and install starts, it states "This disk is used for Time Machine backups" and Mac OSX can't be installed.  Does anyone know how to correct this (since Tiger doesn't have Time Machine)?

    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2986

  • Recover files with no Time Machine Backup and disk 'can't be repaired'

    My Macbook Air (Mac OS X 10.7.4) was acting funny for a few days (crashing Safari, crashing Mozilla, crashing other third party software, requiring reboot, etc.). When I tried to reboot it, a loading bar and a rotating wheel came, but got switched off. It happened every time I tried. I got into Recovery mode (by pressing Command + R) to fix the disk. The disk could not be fixed. I tried reinstalling MacOSX, but it is not showing any disk to reinstall the OS in. I do not have Time Machine On.
    I have some really important pictures and documents in the Mac. I want to save these files before I erase the whole disk. Any advice?
    Thank you!
    TL;DR
    Mac dies while booting
    Disk can not be fixed
    Shows no disk to reinstall the MacOSX in
    Never switched on the Time Machine
    Want to save important files before deleting whole disk

    One of the data recovery apps needs to be run on the disk.  You have some options, none good:
    • Take your Mac to an AppleStore (make a reservation at: http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/), or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (start here to find one: https://locate.apple.com/country).  They won't run the recovery, but can tell if the drive is physically damaged.  If so, and your Mac is under a year old, or covered by AppleCare, you won't have to pay for the replacement, but be sure to get the old drive back.  It can then be put into an enclosure, making it an external HD for use with one of the other options:
    • Take your Mac (or the drive) to a recovery service.  They'll charge a large fee, and return an external HD with whavever data they can recover.  You'd then need to erase the internal HD, install OSX, and try to reassembe your data from the external.
    • Do it yourself. Buy an external HD (better, get two: one 3-4 times the size of the data on your Mac) and do it yourself.  You'll install OSX on it and run from it to recover whatever data you can to the other external:
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    Then install OSX on one of them.  When your Mac restarts, it will start from the external, and you'll set up a user account, etc, just as with a new Mac.  When it starts again, you'll be running from a "bare-bones" system on the external HD. 
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  • Can't use time machine due to corruptness even after reinstalling snow lepoard how to fix?

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    UnitedSTates
    Eastern timezone

    Didn't really read much at all of your post. Much, much too long, irrelevant details and & no paragraphs.
    Can't use time machine due to corruptness
    Post over here -> Mac OS X v10.6 - Snow Leopard forum
    About my macbook and apple ID how can I upgrade my Macbook from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 with out all the permissions being changed and corrupt??
    Same as above. Post in the correct forum.
    Need to gain access to my apple Id that would be a great start
    -> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5625

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