Time Machine freezes iMac

Time Machine was working fine with external LaCie 500 USB drive. Since installing Mac updates on 11/5/07, when I open Time Machine--2 finder windows open and the whole computer freezes. Is this because Fire Vault was turned on during the software update??

It happens to  me  on my iMac as well using Lacie Porsche 500Gb. Can't use Time Machine. Every time I try  to launch TM it goes till a point where only the cursor is alive but nothing else. Sometime is half the way to the full screen in TM, sometime stars start  to glow...and then the cold universe freeze.
But the problem I have now I had it before  when I was using a 2nd partition on my iMac
Exactly same problem.
Freezing all the time  using TM. I was afraid to have one of those iMac with freezing problem
but it never freezes any other time.
I guess using a Lacie is not the real problem. The problem is TM consuming probably too much memory. Spotlight doesn't remember I excluded TM disk from indexing and also Tm +Spotlight is deadly for Leopard.
Apple should do something and soon.
I feel I'm back at the time of classic, system 7: freezing and restarting,  freezing and restarting .

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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.
I am NOT running antivirus software. I had Intego loaded on the computer, but removed it completely after reading on Apple blogs that this could interfere with Time Machine. I have reformatted the external hard disk. Still, Time Machine freezes. Apple has put out a couple of patches, I understand, but that was months ago and all of my software is up to date.
I have called Apple support TWICE and they act as if I am from the moon -- how dare I question that the Time Machine does not work properly?
Does anyone out there know how to fix this? I am ready to return this computer to the Apple store, which cheerfully sold me on the idea of an external hard disk as a back-up.

Hello Zurichmike (lovely country):
Welcome to Apple discussions.
There are several things you could try. Easy ones first:
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.
Barry

Time machine freezes during back-up.

Time machine freezes during back-up. Have to unplug HD before I can regain controll over Time Machine In System Preferences. Tried loading folders the old fachion way—sometimes freezes during that also.
At first I thought I had a bad exteral HD, but I am on my fourth and still the same problem. My first Time Machine HD (THAT WORKED) now has the same problem.
I have been working with someone with apple support for weeks. We just replaced the interal HD, and still have the same problem. My iMac is only five months old
Any ideas ? ? ? .

you sure this is a Mac Pro and not a MacBook Pro first. Most every report of issues with bus powered like Passport are best solved using a drive case with its own power instead.

Lion + Macbook Pro 17 + Time Machine = Freeze

I recently upgraded to OS X Lion on my mid-2009 MBP 17" and I am also getting complete system lockups - the mouse moves, but no keyboard, no clicks, no window movements, and all menu bar items stop updating, including the system clock. Power cycle is the only solution. This is happening often while a Time Machine update is running on my external drive (after it's been running for several minutes). I believe it has also occured with video playback (as others have reported), but not often. I'm not sure if it is related to waking from hibernate/sleep; e.g., last night's big 60GB Time Machine backup ran ok (took several hours), but this morning, after waking the machine and working for a while, it kicked off again and froze at the 90MB mark (of 270MB) right after I clicked on the menu bar icon to view progress. I had an xterm window and Firefox open, plus a few utilties like Adium. No video playing anywhere.
Any others?
Other notes: 8GB ram; no "Automatic Graphics Switching" option on Preferences pane, probably b/c this is a 2009 MBP(?).

I see nobody is reacting to your problem.
I have (almost) the same problem, but with 10.7.5.
Not only Time Machine freezes up (over WiFi and USB-connected), but also my Music downloads (everything else works fine) to my iPhone 5 (with iTunes 11.1) and also Spotlight (indexing for minutes and then freezes).
All these 3 actions (which usually take longer than anything else) freeze up after 3 to 15 minutes. Never the same, always different durations. Very annoying.
On the other hand: ever since I disabled Spotlight, my MacBook Pro A1286 is as fast as when I bought it in 2009.
This all happened suddenly, out of the blue. No added software, hardware. No changes in prefs.
I had my hardware checked. I have done a memtest. All the tricks in the book. To no avail.
Aopple techs tell me to wait till Maverick......some solution ;-)

Time Machine freezes during back up to Passport Ext drive

Time Machine freezes during first back up to My Passport Ext drive. It is a 1TB, and seems to keep stopping at 6 to 10GB stage so never actually backs up. I have excluded files to limit first backup to about 40GB.

you sure this is a Mac Pro and not a MacBook Pro first. Most every report of issues with bus powered like Passport are best solved using a drive case with its own power instead.

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

Time Capsule 4 gen. with iMac OS X Lion 3 Windows PC (XP OS, Vista OS, Seven OS) cable modem with TC as Wi-Fi. Time Machine on iMac found TC for backup easily. Have Wi-Fi access on PC XP with Airport utility but cannot create TC.

Installed today Time Capsule 4 gen. with iMac OS X Lion. I also have 3 Windows PC (XP OS, Vista OS, Seven OS). Internet Access is cable modem with TC as Wi-Fi. Time Machine on iMac found TC for backup easily. Have Wi-Fi access on PC XP with Airport utility but cannot create TC. Does the Airport utility under Windows is way to access backup capabilities with TC ?

The TC is really just an external networked hard disk plus router.. you can access the hard disk and place files on it from any computer. You can backup any computer to the TC but it will have to use a backup software in windows.. there are literally thousands available. The built in msbackup is horrible.. but you can download lots of different software and buy then online for not a lot. Macrium Reflect has a free disk image backup, and when you pay for it includes incremental. I think disk images are well worth it, as they recover much better.. and their is a proper method of recovery using a boot cd.
BTW the TC space is not endless. And it is designed to hold a large number of incremental backups.. so anything you do in backing up several machines will make the number of backups limited. Remember you can also use a usb hard disk plugged in as a Network accessible disk. But it has to be formatted HFS+ or Fat32.. the later being highly undesirable.

Time Machine freezes with USB External attached to iMac

I've got a WD 320GB external USB HD attached to my iMac. I've formatted the external and set it up for Time Machine backups, but it freezes every single time midway through the backup process. Yesterday I tried for the third time, wiped the drive and again set it up for Time Machine. I then started the backup process, with an estimated 8-9 hours remaining. Woke up this morning and the time machine process stopped backing up at ~70gb, still saying it was in progress but nothing was being accomplished. My computer is not set to sleep whatsoever and the hard drive is having no issues with SMART status. It's been formatted properly as Time Machine recognizes this and does start the backup process.
How can I ever utilize Time Machine if something in Lion keeps preventing the backup from being completed? Any suggestions/recommendations?

Boot in safe mode. First, disconnect all wired peripherals except keyboard, mouse, and backup drive, if applicable. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including your login items.
Manually start a backup from the Time Machine menu or preference pane. Same result?
After backing up, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)

Time machine freezing mac since mavericks update

Time machine is freezing up my mac since I updated to Mavericks. I was having issues with it so I just decided to reformat my time machine external drive. I can back up manually when I tell it to, but when left alone to do automatic back ups, I will come back to my mac and it is unresponsive, I see the time machine drive light flickering, and when I turn off that drive, the computer starts responding again.

Interesting. I now have my external TM HD connected directly to my iMac through USB 2. All seems to be working properly now. Had the computer set to wake up last night at 12 and it did do a back up then. Also when I logged on and woke it from sleep this this AM it went into a back up. Could it still potentially be the HD or FW 800 cable? When I connected the FW 800 directly to the mac, it didn't improve anything, but that was one of the same cables I was using before. If I use FW I do have to daisy chain the drive to my other external iPhoto drive due to having only 1 FW 800 port on my mac.

Time Machine Freezes During Initial Backup

I have a 500gb external Western Digital HDD I am trying to use as my Time Machine backup drive. The computer I'm using is a 24" iMac with about 250gb of data on it. The external drive is partitioned as a GUID / Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
When I try to run the initial backup, it will randomly freeze during the process. Sometimes it gets halfway through the backup and freezes, other times, right away. Sometimes there is an error, other times there isn't.
I have tried re-partitioning the drive many times, manually starting the backup and also letting the backup start on its own. All of my applications are closed when the backup begins, but no matter what I do, I cannot get the initial backup process to complete.
Ironically, I had the same problem on ANOTHER iMac of mine, with the same model Western Digital drive. The backup would freeze randomly during the initial process but I would keep manually re-starting the backup until it magically finished the backup. Now that computer seems to be working fine.
However, I still can't get this other iMac to work. I find it strange that two separate computers with two separate 500gb Western Digital drives would have the same problem with Time Machine, unless the problem is with Time Machine itself.
Any ideas out there how to resolve this?

Bruno321 wrote:
However, I still can't get this other iMac to work. I find it strange that two separate computers with two separate 500gb Western Digital drives would have the same problem with Time Machine, unless the problem is with Time Machine itself.
Why do you assume it's TM, not WD?
There are many possibilities.
Did you completely erase the drive before formatting it? Sometimes the utilities, etc., that come on new drives can interfere with TM.
Is your iMac an Intel? If it's an older PPC, you need the Apple Partition Map, not GUID.
Is this USB or FireWire? USB is often much slower and less reliable.
If it's USB, does it have it's own power, or does it draw from your Mac? Often there's just barely enough to run a drive; if you have another USB peripheral, it can take enough power to interfere with the disk.
Does it have an automatic "spin down" feature? If so, can you disable it?
Does it have the latest updates? I thing I saw a post here recently that a WD update fixed, but I can't find it now.
Are you running any anti-virus scanning? If so, exclude your TM drive from it.
Sometimes excluding it from Spotlight as well, at least during a large initial backup, can prevent conflicts between TM and Spotlight.

Time Machine Freezes on Backup

I am trying to back my imac up for the first time using Time Machine (10.9 Mavericks) however it keeps freezing at 15.17gb and won't move on from there.
I am backing up to a Western Digital My Passport Ultra drive formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and it's Partition Map Scheme is GUID Partition Table.
Please Help,
Harry

See C1 in the first linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine freezes/stalls now that I have a new external HD

I have been using a LaCie HD for years to back up my computer with Time Machine. All has been fine. I have an iMac/OS 10.5.8. But a few months ago, I got an EZQ 1 TB external HD to store my video. The Time Machine is still set to store my backup on the LaCie. But now, every so often, Time Machine will freeze up and stall while trying to back things up. I can't force quit anything, so I need to do a hard restart of the computer. It takes forever to reboot, and when it does, it can't find my EZQ HD. What's going on? Thanks for the info.

Kyrak21 wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried all of them, but I'm still having problems. Could the new hard drive be messing up Time Machine, even though they are not connected?
Possibly, directly or indirectly.
Is Time Machine backing-up anything on the EZQ drive? If so, exclude it for a while and see if the problems stop.
How are these drives connected to your Mac? If they're not on separate ports, try that if at all possible, at least temporarily. If a hub or daisy-chaining is involved, try connecting directly if at all possible. Those should narrow down the possibilities.
If not, it's possible that OSX is having trouble with the EZQ, slowing things down, but not too badly until Time Machine also needs some resources. What happens if you eject and disconnect it -- do the problems stop?
Another way to see what's happening is to watch your CPU usage via the +Activity Monitor+ app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). When it starts, select either +All Processes+ or +Active Processes+ in the toolbar, and sort the list by the +% CPU+ column, so the highest numbers are on top, and select the CPU tab towards the bottom. For this purpose, also select +View > Update Frequency > Less Often+ or Normal from the Menubar.
Various processes will "spike" up and down normally as they do things, then are idle, so you need to watch it for a while and get a feel for the processes that are using the most CPU, and the +% Idle+ at the bottom.
Let it run; try to keep at least the first few lines visible at all times, so you'll be able to see them when your Mac slows down or freezes. When that happens, see what process(es) are using the most CPU.
If the process(es) involved aren't familiar to you, post their names here (and or check this out: http://triviaware.com/macprocess/all)

Time Machine cause iMac to crash

Hello. I'm new to using Macs, but I purchased a new 24" iMac a couple of months ago. I had a few problems with it locking up due to some AVI files. I ended up pulling them off the computer totally. When I installed Leopard, I went from an occaisional freeze to non-stop freezes. I pinned it down to Time Machine. I totally reinstalled and re-formatted the computer back to when I bought it, didn't install anything extra other than Leopard. Once installed, again nothing but crashes. I'm using a Seagate 320G external. I just started the advice of turning Spotlight off for the external drive, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'd like to be able to use the features of Time Machine, but it's getting very frustrating.
Does anyone have any other insight and am I missing something?

Time machine working perfectly well with my 24" iMac (with an external USB HD) and used to work fine with my Power G5 (internal extral HD) - but after I did the Erase and install of the OS on my Power G5 (upgraded to 10.5.1) - it is just crashing my computer twice, still finding a way to fix it

Can Time Machine freeze the system?

Hello,
Twice in the last month or so, Time Machine has apparently frozen my iMac while trying to find my external USB drive. Both times, all applications and the finder froze, although I could still maneuver the mouse (could not click on anything). Force Quit would not work and worse, powering off and powering on would not force a reboot -- the same frozen screen would reappear.
After a lot of investigation the first time, I realized that the Time Machine menu button had stuck in place and my external LaCie drive was not responding. I also found that when I tried Force Quit, I saw a process listed -- backupd-helper -- for a short period of time that helped point me to a Time Machine issue. Both times, the only solution was to turn off the external drive.
Normally, Time Machine works great with this drive. I leave it on and it does its thing every hour. I think the drive is formatted correctly (GUID), with only one partition, and it checks out ok with drive utility, so I'm not sure the drive is the issue.
Perhaps someone here has experienced the same kind of odd behavior? Or could point me to a log file to review for possible evidence of what's going on? It seems like the drive mounts most of the time as required, but for some reason has failed to on these two occasions.
Thanks for any help!

Folks;
I am new to this board but I have experienced a similar problem and thought I would pass along what I THINK has solved the problem.
I purchased a new 27" imac about three weeks ago. At the same time I also purchased a "g drive mini" (500mg) that I used as a back drive to use with Time Machine. Over those three weeks my imac froze about 6 times and this seemed to happen during Time Machine back ups. I would get a message about "calculating changes" and the machine would freeze at that point for many hours (often during overnight hours) - forcing a hard shut down of the imac.
After researching the internet for a solution, one suggestion I found was to turn off "sleep mode" for the comouter and ALSO turn off "put hard disks to sleep when possible". These can both be found in the Preferences section of your mac.
I made these changes on Wednesday evening (6-1-2011) and the machine has backed up every hour since then (now 6-3-2011) with no problems.
So, having said all of that, I think the turning off of the the two sleep modes has done the trick.
Apparently, when the computer and/or hard disks are asleep, Time Machine cannot always wake them up and do a back up to the external drive. I plan to let the machine run through the weekend and see if I have any more problems - but so far - so good.
Matt

Firewire issue--Backup drive not found w/Time Machine after imac sleeps

I've had a lot of problems with Time Machine on my G4 imac since starting to use it a month ago. I think I have isolated the problem:
Time Machine functions properly while the computer is in use, and it has no problem after a restart or shut down, but if the computer goes to sleep and then TM runs its hourly backup, I get an error that it cannot find the Backup Drive. Once this happens, TM will no longer work until I've deselected the drive in TM, unplugged it, plugged it in again, and reselected the drive as the backup Drive. Sometimes this requires a shut down or restart too.
Here's what I've tried:
1. connected the drive via USB--it operated without a problem
2. unplugged all devices from the computer, shut down, waited, 20 mins, restrted, plugged the external drive back in via Firewire--the problem persists as described above.
3. deleted the TimeMachine.plist file, restarted--problem persists.
I've read that the Firewire port can be reset with other procedures such as zapping the PRAM or updating the firmware. I've also read that new problems can arise after reseting the PRAM so I'm hesitant to do this. Can anyone shed some light on the PRAM option?
I cannot find where the firmware updates are located on the mac site. Could someone point me in the right direction? I've looked under downloads and after searching, came up with a long list, but nothing was labeled clearly. Each listing mentioned firmware in the header, but it seemed to always pertain to a certain issue (eg. superdrive, or installing appleworks). I could not tell what was the most recent firmware released for my machine, and I fear installing something retrograde that will create new problems.
If anyone has any thoughts on how to deal with the firewire problem, or if you think my issue with using a FW connected drive with Time Machine might be rooted with something else, please comment.
Thanks!
HM
Message was edited by: imaginary_forest

fzgy wrote:
"Mac OS X can't repair the disk. You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
It's possible a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app can fix it, but they're expensive (DiskWarrior is about $100), and there's no guarantee it can do it.
Am prompted to reformat but I don't have a good understanding of what this means and how to do it.
That will erase it. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #5.
It sounds very much like the disk is beginning to fail, although it's possible there's a bad port, cable, connection or power supply (if it has its own).
I'd suggest getting a new one, and using it for your Time Machine backups; once you have a good backup there, reformat the old one (and select Security Options to write zeros to the whole drive -- if that fails, you know the drive is toast). Use it for secondary backups, per FAQ #27. If it has failed, get a second new one for secondary backups.

Time Machine freezes iMac

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