Time Machine freezes with OS X Mountain Lion

I recently bought a Seagate 3TB backup drive for my Mac Desktop, which runs on OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. The Mac recognizes the drive, but when I launch Time Machine to execute the backup, it starts to work and begins counting the backup bytes, but then freezes and goes into the spinning wheel death spiral. Despite leaving it run for extended periods of time, it does not complete the task and requires me to do a hard power down (ugh.) Have tried it several times now, from two different login IDs.
I must have a setting somewhere that is causing it to get hung up. It stops at the exact same count each time. Very frustrating. Suggestions?

Maybe this will help:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20083046#20083046

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Time Machine backup not working after Mountain Lion Install

Oh my. It seems that Mountain Lion and Lion Server are different species and cannot be interbred! Is this really true?
I am running OSX Lion Server on a late 2009 iMac with the main purpose of allowing the MacBook Pros in the house (both running Lion 10.7.4) to wirelessly back up to Time Machine. All has gone well until I upgraded one of the MacBooks to Mountain Lion. Now it appears that Time Machine via the server is no longer available on that MacBook. Also, the Server Admin app is also disabled.
My questions are:
Is it necessary to upgrade to OSX Server if I wish to use the server a Time Machine target for Mabooks running Mountain Lion?
If I do upgrade to OSX Server, is it also necessary to upgrade all the Macbooks to Mountain Lion?
Is OSX Server stable enough to bother with at this time?
Thanks in advance for your replies!

Well I can have a go at answering you questions
Is it necessary to upgrade to OSX Server if I wish to use the server a Time Machine target for Mabooks running Mountain Lion?
I'm not sure about this one as it didn't check before I upgraded my server to Mountain Lion but I would be suprised if a Lion Server (10.7.4) could not back up a Mountain Lion (10.8) client
If I do upgrade to OSX Server, is it also necessary to upgrade all the Macbooks to Mountain Lion?
No, I am running a mix of 10.8 and 10.7.4 clients with a 10.8 server and they all backup with Time Machine.
Is OSX Server stable enough to bother with at this time?
This is a very subjective area - my server is running well using Mountain Lion, it's not used heavily as it's mainly for backing up a few clients, running the built in wiki, web server, calendar and contacts. It's running fine and I like the additions enough to put up with the bugs [single sign on / kerberos is the one impacting me]. However if you search here you can find other who are having many more issues. This one is a personal choice you'll have to make.
For the server app, you have to run the same version across the server and the client to use it, you can always use screen share to get to the server and run the server app directly on the server. This is what I do when using a 10.7.4 client.
Hope this helps with you decisions.

I have my complete computer using Lion backed up on the time machine. Then I installed Mountain lion. I do not like it at all. Is there a way I can remove ML and put my old Lion system back pin my computer?

I have my complete computer using Lion backed up on the time machine. Then I installed Mountain lion. I do not like it at all. Is there a way I can remove ML and put my old Lion system back pin my computer?

If you have got a backup, press Command and R keys in boot and restore an old backup. You can install Snow Leopard and upgrade to Lion if you haven't got the backup

Can not access my Time machine HD after CLEAN install Mountain Lion

Hi Everyone!
Thank you in advance for your interest and help, I really appreciate it.
I recently did a clean Install of Mountain Lion and already did all the updates that appeared. However, before doing these clean install, I did a back up with Time Machine on my external Hard drive. Now I can't access to it, doesn't even appear on my sidebar when I connect it. On the other hand it does appear as connected when I open Disk Utility, but I can not access to it. There I have all my 5 years of University works and classes, photos, and music. This Hard drive is only dedicated for my Mac Backups and nothing more.
I guess that if I install again Snow Leopard, it will work, but I have to re install everything as my Mac is a Mid or Late 2007 15-inch Macbook pro and it came with the OS before the snow leopard 10.5 or something like that.
What can I or should I do to access my Hard Drive again?
Best Regards
Edd

Hi Mende,
Sorry for my late reply but I want to thank you for your help.
I followed your instructions and now I can access the drive thank you a lot for this. However, now I don't want to restore everything from my last back-up just some files, How can I do this? Also I want to restore My iLife, but the copy I have from the CD that came with my mac doesn't allow to install it, what can I do.
Take good care, and happy holidays.
Best Regards
Edd
PD. Are you from Spain?

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.)

Imac keeps crashing in time machine backup after upgrade to mountain lion

2008 imac kept crashing (shutdown and restart) during first backup after upgraded to mountain lion. The backup size was about 10GB but time machine crashed after a while (at most 2GB) and never completed backup. So, I don't have any backup since right before I upgraded from Lion. Any suggestion?

Something strange happened. I was able to get time machine to work by going out to the login screen (the account kept logged in) and let it run the backup with the screen off (screen auto off after a few min). I tried it on two different external drives and that did the trick on both. Since the initial Mountain Lion backup was huge (155 GB), I was quite surprise that it worked at all. I assume your MBP was a Lion to ML. I also just did a 2012 MBP upgrade but that one was smoother. I did not recall having crashing issue. One thing I did find during this was that my WD passport USB drive was corrupted. Not sure it was the cause or not. I had to erase and reformat to get it back to work. Maybe do a verify disk to confirm. Good luck.

Cannot Access Earlier Time Machine Backups After Upgrade To Mountain lion

I went into Time Machine to recover some past emails. It shows that it had backed up my emails for the last year, however it will not let me recover anything before my upgrade to mountain lion. Does anyone know of a workaround for this problem. Thank you.

Christopher Sant wrote:
Once it does finally recognize (after a good while) it simply says "Error, time machine could not complete the backup"
There should be more to that message. See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup, what you've done, and the results.

Restoring a Lion Time Machine back-up to a Mountain Lion iMac.

I have a Time Machine back-up that was backed up on an iMac running Lion. I'm now buying a new iMac and it will be running Mountain Lion. Will this cause a problem if I try to restore my new computer with my time machine back up that was done using Lion? Do I need to do anything before I plug in the backup? I can’t update my old iMac because it died and Apple said it would cost several hundred dollars to fix it.

Nick,
Thank you for the reply. I’m a relatively simple MAC user. I don’t do a lot of stuff on my Mac other than pictures, videos and documents… simple things. Very little third party stuff was on my Mac.
When I booted my old machine I know there was a screen asking for me if I want to use a time machine back up to transfer data to my new iMac, at least there was in Lion. I used that feature when the HDD went bad in my old iMac. It was very easy. Do you know if I can use that same feature or do I have to do something special because it is a different OS? I don’t want to go back to Lion. I just want to make sure it will recover my old stuff easily.
Again. Thank You!

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Older Time Machine backups not available in Mountain Lion?

My wife relies heavily on Time Machine to restore old files that have been deleted or previous versions of a file. Recently I upgraded her Mac OS from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Today she discovered that she is unable to search and/or restore files from any point before the upgrade to Mountain Lion, although she can see dates along the timeline that indicate that there are backups present. She has backups going back almost 3 years now, so this is a pretty serious potential loss. Is there a work around for this? If not, we'll have to roll back to her Snow Leopard OS from theTime Machine. Just FYI, her system specs are: iMac (24-inch Mid 2007) Mac OS 10.8.x 3GB RAM

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

Time Machine Won't Open on Mountain Lion

Hi all,
I am currently using time machine to back up a MacBook Air to an external 1TB hard drive.
The drive is partioned into 2 halfs as it backs up my iMac as well.
When I click on the Time Machine app or 'enter time machine', I am not greeted by the 'star wars' page, it just does nothing.
The back ups say 'last back up' and shows the latest back up being only recently, so it appears to have backed up correctly.
When I unplug the hard drive then click on time machine it says cannot find drive, as would be expected.
Any ideas?
Cheers,
Stuart.

Please try each of the steps below that you haven't already taken.
Step 1
From the menu bar, select  ▹ System Preferences ▹ Time Machine and make sure TM is ON.
Step 2
If you're backing up to an external hard drive attached to your Mac, open the backup volume in the Finder. You should see a folder with the name "Backups.backupdb". You should not see a file with a name ending in "sparsebundle". If you do see that, the backup was created over a network and can only be used that way.
Step 3
In the Finder, select Go ▹ Go to Folder from the menu bar, copy the text on the line below into the box that opens, and press return:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the Finder window open for now.
Relaunch the Finder by selecting  ▹ Force Quit from the menu bar, then selecting Finder and pressing return. Your Finder settings will be lost.
Try again to enter Time Machine. If you still can't, put back the file you moved to the Desktop, replacing the newer one that will have been created in its place.
Otherwise, close the Finder window you opened and delete the file you moved to the Desktop. Recreate your Finder preferences.
Step 4
Launch Disk Utility and select the icon of the backup drive in the pane on the left (not any of the volume icons below it.) At the bottom of the window, you should see this:
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table
If the partition scheme is anything else, the drive has to be repartitioned (with the loss of all data.)
Step 5
Boot in safe mode by holding down the shift key at the startup chime. Try again to enter Time Machine.
Note: If FileVault is enabled under OS X 10.7 or later, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t boot in safe mode.
Step 6
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.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Try again to enter Time Machine. Post any messages that appear in the Console window – the text, please, not a screenshot.

Time Machine "freezes" with Restore attempt

My Time Machine backups appear to work as they should. However, when I launch the Time Machine app (such as to do a Restore) I can move the cursor around the screen but nothing at all happens when I click on any object. I have waited for as long as 30 minutes for the app to become responsive, but no luck. So I have all this great backup data but could not do a Restore if necessary.

You're in the wrong discussion group... This is about iDVD '08.

Time machine freezes with any drive

I have tried everything - connecting several new drives, plugging it directly into the USB 3 port, taking it to the Apple store.

Are the drives formatted properly?
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

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 ;-)

Error -1202 in iTunes for Mac SOLVED with upgrade to Mountain Lion

I recently had lots of trouble with iTunes and error -1202; my summary to Apple support is excerpted below. Turns out the problem has gone away after updating my OS from Lion to Mountain Lion. I still don't know what -1202 is, but the problem's gone. Sympathies to those whose machines can't upgrade to Mountain Lion.
Here's what I wrote to Apple:
I'm having difficulty connecting to the iTunes Store. When I click on virtually any link in the store, a popup window comes up stating "We could not complete your iTunes store request. An unknown error occurred (-1202). There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later."
I'm using a MacBook Air purchased new at the beginning of this year. OSX 10.7.5. I've had the same result trying to get at the Store with this machine from different sites (i.e. work and home). I'm able to use my wife's Mac (we share the same account on two machines) to access the store without difficulty. I can purchase something on her Mac and download it to my MacBook Air, but I can't make the purchase--or even navigate in the Store--with my machine. I've confirmed that the time on my machine is correct, and all the billing information for the account is up to date. I thought I'd wait to contact you until I had a chance to update iTunes, but the problem persists with iTunes 11. I've found many references to the -1202 error in the Apple website's discussion area, but none of them have solutions.
Then in follow up to Apple:
I am still having difficulties, and I think I've identified a larger issue. I can't use my machine to navigate the iTunes store with my Apple ID, and I can't use that same Apple ID to access the App Store, FaceTime, or photo ordering in iPhoto.
I mentioned in my first email to you that my wife's MacBook Pro uses the same Apple ID, and we can use her computer to do all of the functions that the other machine can't: I can get to FaceTime, the iTunes Store, the App Store, and photo ordering in iPhoto.
I also created a completely new Apple ID, which has been OK'd by the AppleID website, and it doesn't work on my machine, either.
To summarize: I know the Apple ID works, but there's something about my computer that isn't using it correctly.

You can use the balance of a redeemed iTunes gift card to purchase Mountain Lion.
Keep in mind of any applicable taxes and or fees that may be added to the purchase price.
iTUNES STORE - MAC APP STORE -TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Time Machine freezes with OS X Mountain Lion

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