Time Machine Freezes During Backup!

Question

Hi there,
When I back up my computer for the first time using Time Machine, it gets to around 53.2 GB. After that, it sits there with the blue progress bar at the same level. Then, i get a message that says I did not eject the disk properly, and then Time Machine alerts me that it could not finish the backup. NOTE: When it says the disk has not been ejected properly, I still see the disk in both Finder and disk utility. Also, I currently have the disk in 2 partitions, but I'm only using the Mac OS X (Journaled) partition for my Time Machine backups. Please help! Like I said, it seems to eject my external hard drive (Hitachi 250 GB Simple Drive) after freezing up for a while. I am able to use other things on my computer the whole time. The only application that was open during the backup was iTunes. Here is the log from Time Machine buddy:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/External HD/Backups.backupdb
Backup content size: 142.3 GB excluded items size: 30.7 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 133.85 GB requested (including padding), 213.91 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 48.9 GB of 111.5 GB, 250192 of 667394 items
Stopping backupd because the backup volume was ejected!
Stopping backup.
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/********/Library/Mail/IMAP-********@******[email protected]/INBOX.imapmbox/Attachments/3234/2 to /Volumes/External HD/Backups.backupdb/*******’s MacBook/2011-03-12-104926.inProgress/A8B8FCD0-3EA2-4A4D-B313-4A9EE0C56252/Macin tosh HD/Users/********/Library/Mail/IMAP-*********@********[email protected]/INBOX.imapmbox/Attachments/3234
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Copied 259985 files (49.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Copy stage failed with error:11
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Backup failed with error: 27
Thank you so much!
Message was edited by: Host

Answer 1

As a first step, launch Disk Utility, select the backup volume, and run "Verify Disk" (NOT "Repair Disk"). It will take a long time to run, maybe hours. If any errors are found, copy all data on the device to another drive, then run "Repair Disk." Be prepared for the possibility that "Repair Disk" may destroy the volume beyond recovery. It may also fail to repair the damage, in which case you should replace the device -- DO NOT erase it and continue to use it.