Time Machine frequent backups

I have a Time Capsule connected to my iMac. The OS is 10.6.8. I've had the Time Capsule for about a year. Time Machine seems to work fine but I've noticed lately that it seems to be backing up a lot more frequently than once an hour and that it's taking longer. Part of the problem is that if a backup takes a long time, the next backup will be scheduled for shortly after the old one has finished. So, for example, if a backup starts at, say, 10 am and takes 30 minutes, another will start at 11 am, only 30 minutes after the first. That's a lot of backup activity during the course of an 8-hour day. Sometimes, Time Machine is backing up no more than 10 MB of data, sometimes a lot more, but it does spend what seems like a lot of time prepping, finishing, and cleaning up.
The Time Capsule has a 500GB drive and less than 100 GB of that have been used. I can't find anything unusual in the system log. Otherwise, operation appears to be normal.

Well, the workaround that I found simply involved shutting off Time Machine and using the "Back Up Now" item once a day to back up to the Time Capsule. I couldn't find any other solution here. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the reason for the slowdown is not the transfer speed (gigabit Ethernet) but the possibility the Time Machine is doing a lot of work comparing snapshots and deciding which files to backup. However, that's just a guess. Be that as it may, as I noted in my original question, left to its own devices, it can take 30-45 minutes to back up a relatively small amount of data between preparation, backup, and closing. Then it sits idle for 15 minutes and starts the process again. Maybe there is no solution. Maybe that's the way it's designed to work. Also, I don't have much on my internal hard drive, maybe 25 GB all told of a 500 GB drive. So, it's not like I'm backing up massive amounts of data at any given time. From hour to hour, maybe 500 MB get backed up, and that is most likely because a lot of system files have been touched in that time period.

Similar Messages

Using Time Machine to backup FROM a network drive

Can time machine be configured to backup files that are stored on a network drive? Drive is mounted via SMB.
Thanks
Simon

disconnected wrote:
although it is now capable of backing up TO a network device, there must be a work around.
It will back up to some network drives, but not reliably to one connected to your Airport Extreme, and possibly not your NAS, either. See #2, especially the pink box, in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Possible solution: mount a networked drive as a local volume so that as far as time machine is concerned, it is seen as a local drive. How could one accomplish this?
No such hack has been posted here, and it's doubtful there is one.

Can I set Time Machine to backup both my hard drive and an external hard drive?

Hi. I've been working with a lot of family video lately and my internal hard drive has filled up significantly. iMovie doesn't seem to have a good archiving facility like Adobe InDesign which I use at work were all the relevant files are gathered together into one folder. Apple advised me to relocate my movie files to an external hard drive and herein lies my query.
Is there a way for me to set Time Machine to backup both my iMac's internal drive and the external hard drive that would contain my movie files? I've been using Time Machine for my backups for a few years now, but backing up the external as well has me stumped. If Time Machine could be used then all the necessary file accociations etc would be safely backed up as well - that's why I don't want to have to manually backup the external.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

7string48 wrote:
Thanks so much Pondini!! You just quickly answered a question that none of the Mac people in 3 stores or Apple Care have been able to answer.If you can format it HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
I'm not too surprised about the Apple Stores, as they don't get much training on Time Machine. But AppleCare sure ought to know.
Oh...what about if the external drive is an array...like a Drobo with it's own proprietary formatting...I guess that would not work...??
I've never used a Drobo. A number of folks here have used them as their Time Machine drives, but I don't recall seeing anyone try to back one up with TM, so can't say for sure. But if you can format it as HFS+ (any variation of Mac OS Extended), it will work. If not, it won't.
At least part of the reason is, Time Machine uses the File System Event Store, a hidden log of changes that OSX keeps on each Mac-formatted disk/partition, to figure out what's changed and needs to be backed-up. See How Time Machine works its Magic for details.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations of backing-up multiple volumes with Time Machine.
However, even if it will work, that may not be your best strategy, depending on your circumstances:
Since Time Machine keeps copies of things you've changed or deleted, the destination needs to be considerably larger than the data being backed-up. How much larger varies widely depending on how you use your Mac, but a general "rule of thumb" is, it needs at least twice the space to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
If you have a large internal HD, fairly full, plus a large external HD, and the files on the external don't change frequently, you might want to use Time Machine for the internal, and a different app to a different disk or partition, on a different schedule, for the external. Especially if space is a consideration, you might not need to keep previous versions of files on the externals. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some alternatives.

Using time machine as backup AND external hard drive?

So I got the Time Machine so I could use it as a wireless external hard drive. Thought my computer just crashed and realized i realllly need a backup.... is there any way that I could back up my computer on it WITHOUT erasing my 100,000's of photos on the time capsule? Please be POSITIVE they wont erase.
Thanks
Ben Yorke

BenYorke wrote:
Sorry - forgot about this question.
My hard drive is about full. Its full of photoshop and rosetta stone stuff and I just would rather not loose it all if my computer were to crash (think 140GB).
As posted earlier, your best bet for that is a larger internal HD.
I just want one backup, maybe one that automatically backs itself up ever month/week and REPLACES the old one. Not looking for the time machine to work as it normally does, saving every backup it can. Looking to use the time CAPSULE as a backup, to save one copy at a time. Although not necessary, it would be nice to have it automatically REPLACE that ONE copy.
If you're going to have a backup of your system, you might as well use Time Machine. It's most recent backup is, in effect, a full backup of everything. If you let it do it's hourly backups, you'll never lose more than an hour of data.
You might want to review these:
What is Time Machine?
Time Machine Tutorial
and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
Yes, there are other backup apps; many won't back up to a network drive (such as a Time Capsule).
See Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product.

When ever the power goes out or I restart my iMac the external hard drive that is used by Time Machine for backups is dismounted ?

When ever the power goes out or I restart my iMac the external hard drive that is used for backups by Time Machine is dismounted and all backups are gone. I can reselect it and it will start working again, but I am worried if the iMac hard drive should fail will I be left without a backup ?

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.

How to reconnect Time machine to backup file on hard drive

How do I reconnect my Time Machine to the Backups.backupdb on a hard drive? Time Machine got set to a new drive but I want to return to the older backup.

James Macallister wrote:
How do I reconnect my Time Machine to the Backups.backupdb on a hard drive? Time Machine got set to a new drive but I want to return to the older backup.
If you want to back up to the old drive, just select that drive via +Time Machine Preferences > Select Disk.+
But if you just want to view or restore from the old backups, and not back up to them, use the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine Deleted Backup?

I have three hard drives in my mac pro: two 5 gigs and 1tb for time machine and a few other small files. Yesterday, both disks went heywire at once and I've spent today trying to restore from time machine. One hard drive restored successfully, the other one didn't.
The disk that struggled to restore seems dead. It is going excrutiatingly slow (est. thousands of hours) to restore, or repair with diskwarrior, or even erase. I have tried repairing and re-erasing the disk. It seems dead, but that's ok because I have a backup.
But my backup has just magicly disappeared. Time machine suddenly has no record of anything before the restore of the first disk. The hard drive that my backups are on suddenly has 336.63 gigs available. I see a backup file that seems to have just been made from the HD I restored, but no trace of the backups of the one that failed to restore. My icon, disk name, and few other files on the time machine disk are still there, so I didn't accidently erase them. Did Time Machine just delete my entire backup without asking? Or is there a chance it is hiding somewhere, even though there aren't any places to hide?
Help.

giantrats wrote:
But after TM made a new back up, only the later date has been an option.
Doesn't sound good, but still doesn't quite add up.
Time Machine will never delete the last remaining backup, for obvious reasons.
So even if it did a full backup of the restored drive, on that backup it wouldn't have deleted the last remaining backup, so the previous backup of the drive shouldn't have been deleted to make room.
So, something else must have happened. If, for example, you'd excluded the failed drive from backups, then done other backups, there wouldn't have been previous backups on those, so the older ones might have been deleted. Seems unlikely, but what you see, and the empty space, would tend to confirm something like that.
First, just to make sure there isn't some sort of directory problem, run Repair Disk on it, if you haven't already.
If that doesn't turn up anything, you may have to try to recover the data, some of which has probably been overwritten. See Data Recovery. That probably won't be much fun.
Sorry not to have better news.
You may have learned the hard way (most of us do ), that its; always prudent to keep "secondary" backups. See the green box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for some suggestions.

Time Machine - Deleted Backups/backupdb

I've searched everywhere but I haven't seen this exact scenario. So, here's the deal: I got a new AirPort Extreme, recently, and was reading online that I could attach my external HDD to it, via USB. I'm thinking, "Great! I can take this thing off my desk, to give me more room." I ejected the XHDD and connected to the APE. I could see it under Devices/Shared, and when double-clicking on it, I could access all my files. (I have other folders on the drive; Movies, iTunes Music, eBooks, etc. Using AirPort Utility, I could not select the drive to use as a Time Machine backup drive. I had been using this XHDD for TM backups, for a while, when connected directly to the iMac. I then read "Sadly, we can't do a Time Machine backup and then move it to the AEBS, so we have to do it this way." So, I deleted the Backups/backupdb folder, and everything in it, so I could then reattach the XHDD to the AE and set it up to work for TM backups. I DID NOT delete my other folders. When the Trash finished emptying the 2.5+ million files, I tried to eject the drive, but got a message saying that it was in use and could not be ejected. I thought it might be performing some residual background task. After about an hour, I tried again to eject - No Joy! So, I rebooted the iMac. Now, the volume won't show up on my desktop and it has been sounding like its working (doing something) for the past couple of hours. I can see the drive in DiskUtility, but there is no volume listed under it. Not sure what I should do to get this thing to mount. I'll worry about the TM issues later -- right now, I just need to access the other folders on the drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I do have Data Rescue, as a last resort, I guess...

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Ouch!
First, you need to know that Time Machine backups via an Airport Extreme are "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Second, Time Machine works best when the backups are in a separate partition. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). If yours had been done that way, you could have simply erased the partition via Disk Utility, in a matter of moments.
I don't know what's wrong with the disk now.
Disconnect it from your Mac. If it has it's own power supply, unplug it or turn it off for a few minutes. Reboot your Mac again, just to be sure everything's cleared, then reconnect it (via a different port, if possible) and power it on.
If that doesn't help, what does Disk Utility show for the *Partition Map Scheme* on it (at the bottom of the window when you select it)?
If it's either +Apple Partition Map+ or GUID, that's correct. If not, that may be at least part of the problem. Does it show the correct *Total Capacity?* What does it have for *Write Status?*
If you have a copy of +Disk Warrior,+ or another 3rd-party heavy duty disk repair app, it might be able to fix it.
Otherwise, yes, you may need +Data Rescue.+ Make sure it's a compatible version.

Time Machine wont backup

I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
Thanks

jmhoskin wrote:
I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
The drive is probably set up with the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition map, that Windoze uses. To use it for TM you must completely reformat it, which will erase it. If you have enough space (or can borrow another external temporarily), you can copy the data off, reformat it, then copy the data back.
TM works best with it's own, exclusive space, so you should partition the drive anyway. If you're going to use the other data with a PC, make the other partition MS-DOS (FAT).
For formatting instructions, see item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Also see #1 of the FAQ Tip for size considerations.

Time machine and backup

I have a quick question. I'm pretty new to macbooks. I just recently bought a macbook pro 13" and hooked it up to an external harddrive. I used Time Machine to backup the entire system. I take a lot of pictures so I've used up about half my hard drive capacity. My question is....can I use the same external hard drive just to store pics and also as Time Machine? Or...do I have to buy another external hard drive to just store pics?

Time Machine works best if it has its own, exclusive space. If you want to put other things on the same drive, partition it. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
But before you do that, how are you going to back up those pictures? If they're in the same partition as your backups, Time Machine cannot back them up. If they're in a separate partition of the same drive, when you tell Time Machine to back it up, it will send you a message reminding you that it's not a good idea to have your originals and backups on the same physical HD. When (not if) it fails, you risk losing both copies.
If your pictures are valuable, yes, get another drive for them. Format it for a Mac, per #1 in Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks. External HDs are excluded from Time Machine by default, so go to Time Machine prefs > Options, select the new drive, and click the minus sign at the bottom to remove it from the exclusions box. Then Time Machine will back it up along with your internal HD.

Time Machine vs Backup

I plan on reformatting my computer and would love to know if I should use Time Machine or Backup. I want to keep some of the programs and data from the computer, but not all of it. Which one will allow me to select data to "bring back"?
Thanks for your help!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You do not want to use Backup for large amounts of data. It's fine for it's original purpose: to get relatively-small amounts of data off-site to iDisk, automatically, but don't use it for anything more.
Time Machine will back-up your entire system by default. The first backup is, of course, lengthy, but thereafter it will back-up only new and changed items hourly. This gives you an excellent chance to recover things that were deleted or changed in error, or somehow corrupted. But whether you use Time Machine or some other app, use something or you can lose some or all of your data in an instant.
But the question here is, are you doing this only to get rid of some apps and files? If so, that's not the best approach. Unlike Windoze, a periodic reload is usually not needed on Macs.
Unless your internal HD is over 85% full, your best bet may be to get an external drive thats at least twice the size of the data on your Mac and let TM do a full backup. Then start identifying and deleting the things you don't want. If you delete something you shouldn't, you can easily get it back from Time Machine (for a while).
Most applications on Macs can just be deleted. Some need uninstallers. Apps will be where you put them, hopefully in your Applications folder. Most data will be in +<your home folder>/Library/Application Support,+ usually in a file or folder containing the name of the app or maker.
Unless you're very tight on space, you could make a folder named +Apps to be Deleted+ or something similar, at the top level of your home folder, and move them and their data files there, rather than delete them immediately. You could even create a sub-folder for those apps that have data files, and put both the apps and files inside them. Once you're sure they're not needed, delete them.
Doing it the other way is much riskier; if you omit things you actually need, all sorts of things may go wrong, unpredictably.
For info on Time Machine, you might want to review this Time Machine Tutorial
and this: Time Machine Features
and perhaps the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of the Time Machine forum.

Time Machine same backup size every time

Anyone have any idea why Time Machine would backup the same amount every time? Every hour mine backs up 1.8 GB, unless I've added more than that to my hd.
I only back up the internal drive on my macbook to a 500 GB Time Capsule via wifi (802.11n only, 5GHz). Not that I figured it would make a difference, but it still does it if backed up via ethernet.
I've also noticed that as soon as it completes the backup, it will backup all over again - and not because an hour has passed. I'm not sure if it does this every time (but I think i does), or if it does it more than twice when it happens.
Thanks in advance!

See if the following might give you some ideas as to why...
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if this resolved your issue.
Cheers!

Time Machine - all backups gone, backups fail

I've been backing up with time machine for 10 months via direct USB connection. I've recently been receiving a string of Time Machine error messages including "Error completing backup, an error occurred while creating backup folder" and "backup disk not available." When I clicked "enter time machine" all of my backups were GONE. Nothing there but "now".
I repaired disks, verified disks, unplugged and rebooted, all several times. After unmounting then repairing the external hard drive, TM was able to complete one backup but the problem came back within a day. All the old backups have disappeared completely.
Ideas?

That sounds like a problem with your external HD. All those messages indicate a problem writing to it.
When you say you've verified and repaired disks, does that include both your internal HD and your TM drive? If not, do both just to be sure. Then, before attempting another backup, try the Browse option, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). If your backups are there, and not corrupted, that should show them.
Also check all connections to the external. Use different ports, cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may make intermittent contact in another).
If the drive has it's own power supply, check those connections as well.
Restart your Mac, if you haven't during all this.
Check with the maker for firmware updates.
How old is the drive? Is it still covered by warranty?

Time Machine automatic backups don't work since 10.6.4

TM stopped doing automatic backups on my MacBook Pro, apparently when updated to 10.6.4 on 2010-06-16. Backup only runs when I initiate it manually, or when the machine reconnects to the home network, after time away or upon reboot.
Each time I enter System Preferences > Time Machine, the switch on the left says TM is OFF and the Next Backup time reads: Automatic backups off. I can turn the switch to ON (the word "ON" does not turn blue, as it should, and Next Backup does not change), but when I exit and re-enter, it shows OFF again.
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist when opened in Property List Editor says "AutoBackup, Boolean, checkmark." I have dragged this .plist out of its folder and restarted, letting TM recreate it -- it didn't change anything about the above behavior.
I looked in the backup set to see whether either /System/Library/PreferencePanes/TimeMachine.prefPane or /Applications/Time Machine.app had been updated at 10.6.4. Indeed, both had changed around the day of installing 10.6.4.
I replaced the directory /System/Library/PreferencePanes/TimeMachine.prefPane from a June 1 backup. After reboot -- nothing had changed.
I replaced the directory /Applications/Time Machine.app from a June 1 backup. After reboot -- nothing had changed.
Full details at http://recoveringphysicist.com/15/ . Thanks for any ideas.

Keith Dawson wrote:
TM auto-backup is now working again. I think the magic combination was (1) 10.6.4 combo update followed by (2) restoring /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist from a backup before I could possibly have messed with it.
Aha! Great!
My takeaway from this investigation is best summed up by Chuck Goolsbee
That's exaggerated. Time Machine is more complex, and does more for you, than most backup apps. Some of the messages are not helpful, and Apple's documentation is, well, inadequate.
But it does work well for most of us, and there are resources to figure out how to fix it when something does go wrong.
But, I've learned over the years (mostly the hard way, of course ), never to trust my backups to a single app or piece of hardware: no app is perfect, and all hardware fails, sooner or later.
So, like many here, I keep +secondary backups,+ in addition to Time Machine. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for details.

Time Machine not backup up anything, from the very start

Hello,
I have recently purchased a 1 TB external drive for use as a backup drive. I plugged it in, reformatted it as HFS+ and set up Time Machine to use it as a backup drive.
Time Machine has supposedly been running for almost a week now, but all of the backups are emtpy - they are simply backups of "Macintosh HD" as an empty folder. Clicking "Backup now" results in a half second backup, which is supposedly successful, but which is empty.
I've turned TM off, ejected the disk, deleted the Time Machine .plist and restarted the Mac Pro and then the process of setting up Time Machine, and yet the initial backup lasts mere moments and turns out to be empty.
I've verified the startup disk and the drive being used as a backup in Disk Utility. The disk is 1 TB, empty, verified, and working. Time Machine is for some reason not. Help?

Bizarre.
About the only other things I can think of are (loooong shots, of course):
Try the Terminal command in the yellow box of #11 [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If there's any extra space on your internal HD, make a very small partition on it temporarily, copy a handful of test files to it, and see if they get backed-up. If they do, then change some things and run a second backup. See #3 in [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Using Snow Leopard+ forum) if by chance you don't know how to do that.
Something may be corrupted/damaged in your installation of OSX. I'd suggest downloading and installing the "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_8_ComboUpdate Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards

Time Machine frequent backups

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