Time Machine getting stuck on random hourly backups?? Please help!

I set up Time Machine the yesterday, it compleated it's initial backup fine, and performed about 10 or so hourly backups, then randomly on one of it's hourly backups it got stuck. It never actually started the backup. The preferences said it was backing up, but the progress bar wasn't moving, and there was no activity on the drive. I stopped the "backup", and from then on I could not get it to do another backup.
So last night I reformatted the external and decided to let TM start over. Once again it finished the initial backup fine, and I went to bed. While I was in bed it finished 3 more hourly backups, and I woke up this morning to find it stuck again, trying to do it's 2:05AM backup. The computer was awake all night, so it should have no problems. The preferences say it is backing up, but never makes any progress, and there is no drive activity.
Here is the relavent errors from my System log:
Nov 1 02:05:50 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Backup requested by automatic scheduler
Nov 1 02:05:50 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Starting standard backup
Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac KernelEventAgent[35]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (256)
*Nov 1 02:05:59 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume  Macintosh HD*
*Nov 1 02:05:59 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|*
Nov 1 02:09:45 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 14.57 GB requested (including padding), 132.30 GB available
Nov 1 02:09:46 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (909) > 0, waiting
Nov 1 02:10:16 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (906) > 0, waiting
Nov 1 02:10:46 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (906) > 0, waiting
I bolded the entries that I assume are the problem, but I don't know what it could be. Why does it randomly get stuck on hourly backups. BTW The "waiting" is just repeating over and over etc..... Help! Or it's back to CCC for me. Thanks
EDIT: Tried it a 3rd time, and this time it managed to do 25 hourly backups before getting stuck. does anyone have a clue here, I'd like to get this working. Every time it stops working I have to format the drive and start over to get it to backup again.
Message was edited by: tms2010
Message was edited by: tms2010
Message was edited by: tms2010

The deep traversal is being done because something in the TM data base is corrupted or not trusted. The deep traversal means the TM backupd process has to traverse your whole set of volumes being backed up. This is a very lengthy process.
No matter, it does seem you're hitting a snag of some kind. The best response I can give is for you to send the evidence to Apple feedback for the software engineers to review.
People on this forum are unlikely to know what the problem is nor have a fix for you.
When you formatted your TM backup Volume to you zero it out using Disk Utility. You could be running into an unrecoverable disk i/o error - a bad spot on the backup HD or even a bad spot on your internal HD.

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Time machine gets stuck on indexing

Since the last weeks my time machine will not backup anymore..
I have searched around but couldn't find out what will fix it..
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AJvanderLee wrote:
There was only one thing i could not do, i could not repair my backups, because they didn't appear in the disk utility..
What are you backing-up to? If you can see the +sparse bundle+ your backups are in via the Finder, use the instructions in #A5 for repairing the backups on a Time Capsule. If you can't see it, you can't repair them with DIsk Utility (or most 3rd-party disk repair apps). Check with the maker of the NAS for help.
Further, i thought it would be something with the message "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD"
That's normal after a failed/cancelled backup, and will be repeated each time until one completes successfully. See #A6 in Troubleshooting for details.
Besides, my spotlight is now indexing my harddisk and seems to get stuck on "calculating time for indexing"
This is because i excluded my harddisk from spotlight, restarted my mac and then included my harddisk again for spotlight. So it needed to reindex it, but i'm not sure that it will work, because it allready toke the whole day for it and is still saying the same thing..
That sounds like a problem with a file or the directory structure on your internal HD. Did you verify your internal HD, per #3 in the green box? If so, and if it says it's ok, exclude your internal HD from Spotlight indexing until you get your backups working; then you can figure out what's wrong with Spotlight.

Time Machine gets stuck at backing up 4 kb of 200.8 gb?

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Hmm. Why did you have to restore? If there was a problem with your installation of OSX, it (or part of it) may have been backed-up and restored.
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Time machine no longer backing up...please help!

I've scanned a lot of the posts already so I'm going to try to include as much information as I can:
*The last time TM performed a backup was on 3/15 of this year. (hmmm...now that I look at it...perhaps it was the Ides of March that botched it all?...i digress...) All of the sudden it was telling me that my backups were huge (can't remember specifically how big at the moment) and that it could not complete the back up.
*When I look in my backup volume (500GB WDMB) in the backups.backupdb folder under my computer, I see a file that is named 2009-03-15-145335.inprogress...no idea what that means but I thought I'd mention it.
*My HD shows 465GB capacity with 139GB available.
*To my knowledge, I do not run any programs like Parallels. (This was mentioned as a possible problem in other posts so I thought I'd include that info)
*I just downloaded the TM widget and attempted to do another backup, which also failed, the details of which I will post here:
+Starting standard backup+
+Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb+
+Starting pre-backup thinning: 18.07 GB requested (including padding), 4.32 GB available+
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+65 days since last backup+
Please advise! Thanks for any help!
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Pondini wrote:
CeciMami wrote:
Then either hold down the +Option +key while selecting the TM icon in your Menubar (or control-click/right-click the TM icon in your Dock) and take the +Browse Other Time Machine Disks+ option. Select your TM disk, then again note the oldest backup you see.
When I do that, I don't get a "Browse other TM disks" option.
Uh, you should. Are you sure you're on 10.5.6? Try this one again. What options do you see?
Ok, I'm a dork, just tried it again and got the option. Checked the date on the backup and it is the same, March 15th.
Do you often go several days (more than 10 or so) without a backup?
I have never gone that long without a backup. The only reason I stopped was because TM stopped doing them. About two weeks ago I got aggravated and just turned TM off because I was tired of getting those error messages...but I really want to resolve this issue since I have very important pictures/movies/stuff on here that I want to be safe and backed up!
That's the only other reason I can think of that would cause TM to do new, full backups, and perhaps start a new sequence.
If it does that, sometimes it thinks you have a new Mac. Then it won't delete the oldest backups from the old sequence to make room for new ones (because it thinks they're for a different Mac).
Very carefully, look at your TM disk again with the Finder (this is probably best in List mode (View > As List).
In the Backups.backupdb folder should be a single folder with your computer name (but I suspect there may be more).
There is only one folder, named after my computer.
In that folder should be folders named with dates and times, like the one you found (but without ".inProgress" at the end).
See if there are more than one with your computer name, and the range of dates in each one.
The only folder with a date (other than the .inprogress one) is listed as 2009-03-15-135352. When I look it there, there seems to be a happy backup inside.
Your earlier post said *My HD shows 465GB capacity with 139GB available.* I assume that's your internal HD? How big is your TM disk?
My TM disk is listed as having a capacity of 465.76GB with 4.32GB available.

Not sure if this a Time Machine issue or not... Please help!

So I updated my iMac to Snow Leopard. I went from about 186GB to about 205GB AFTER I installed SL.
Then I did my first back up in TM after the install and I noticed something funny...
The space of my Mac HD was getting smaller and smaller as the back up was going.
I have a 1TB external drive I designated for TM and this back up was there when it was finished.
Now, since doing that backup and I think one or two since, the space on my Mac HD is down to 190 or around 188.
I have NOT installed hundreds of pictures, movies. I didn't really change anything much.
I noticed this change while TM was doing its thing. I can't account for anything else that may have caused it.
I reset Safari, clear logs and caches using Terminal.
It seems like the space is still going down a little here and there even when I'm not really using Safari or anything. And I mean just a little.
But that first drop was significant! I want that space back!
Any suggestions?!
Thanks!
Robert

There's a possibility that your TM drive got disconnected at just the wrong time, and TM started putting your backups in the hidden /home directory of your internal disk.
Click here to download the +Tinker Tool+ app. It allows you to change the Finder to show hidden files (among many other things). Select the first option under Finder, then click +Relaunch Finder+ at the bottom. Reverse this when done.
Do not use any of the other options unless you know the possible consequences.
Open a Finder window to your internal HD. Look for the /Home directory. It should be zero kb, and have no contents.
If, however, it contains a folder named the same as your TM drive/partition, containing a Backups.backupdb folder, that's what's happened. Delete the folder named the same as your TM drive (it may contain many files and take a very long time).

Since upgrading to Mavericks, my Time Machine is stuck on "Preparing Backup".

Since upgrading to Mavericks, every time I attempt to run a Time Machine backup, I can only get it to go as far as "Preparing Backup". I've left it like that for hours just to see if it's slow. I've also stopped and restarted Time Machine multiple times to no avail....it just gets stuck at that point. Please help.

Since upgrading to Mavericks, every time I attempt to run a Time Machine backup, I can only get it to go as far as "Preparing Backup". I've left it like that for hours just to see if it's slow. I've also stopped and restarted Time Machine multiple times to no avail....it just gets stuck at that point. Please help.

What to do when time machine seems stuck on "Preparing Backup"

This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos. This means that the only backup will be for the system, profiles, and the app. I have been running this for a few months andhas been doing OK until up to now.
My problem is that my time machine seems to get stuck on "Preparing Backup". The latest backup was done last Nov 8, 2011, whcih is about 11 days from now. I am also aware that the time machine drive has only about 200 mb space left, but I am not worried at all because I've always TM to delete the oldest backup to free up space. My oldest backup was still Sept 8, and I'm ok if that will be deleted.
So I'd like to find out why it still stuck on "Preparing backup" ,and I am wondering if deleting a backup can solve it. Can it? what do I do to solve this?
Also, I use my computer alot , so it is basically running for about 18 hours a day, but still time machine didn't quite work well. I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.

Comments inline below.
Pondini wrote:
joshua raphael wrote:
This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos.
You may want to revisit that strategy:
A backup on the same drive isn't very secure -- when (not if) the HD fails, you risk losing everything.
In most cases, if there's a problem with OSX the best way to fix it is to just install a fresh version. But you can't do that from that backup.
Indeed!
Backing-up apps that way will also be useless in some cases. 3rd-party apps that came with their own installers put other files in other places (and sometimes "helper" apps as well). Unless you know what and where they all are, and restore them, too, the restored app won't work properly, if at all.
I think you're confusing each other with terminology. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are NOT "Libraries", which has a specific meaning when it comes to OS X. "Libraries", in OS X normally refers to /Libraries and ~/Libraries folders. This is not where iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored within ~/Music and ~/Pictures, respectively.
I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.
Disk Utility changed a bit in Lion. When you select an entire disk, it only repairs the partition map, not all the volumes. You must repair each one separately.
Wow, good to know. (What a stupid change to make, for backwards compatibility, if for no other reason!)
See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to figure out why the backups are hanging.
Whew. This editor makes it so hard to make comments inline. The key thing when time machine seems stuck is patience. Sometimes it needs to be left to run overnight. Unfortunately, it doesn't log or report it's progress very well.
Opening Time Machine settings in Preferences plus a command like this left running in Terminal.app is how I monitor progress. And even so, there is very little logging indicating progress.
sudo tail -f /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/My\ Computer/2012-07-11-133352.inProgress/.Backup.363731632.496216.log
The parts in italics will need to be adjusted. Tab completion makes this easy, e.g type
sudo tail -f /Volumes/
and hit tab, type the first few letters of the relevant volume name, hit tab...
Also, I have a hypothesis which needs testing.
I know that Time Machine gets confused if one deletes large files from a backup - specifically, Time Machine doesn't recognize that the size of the backup has changed.
I know because this made restoring a thinned out time machine backup ("thinned out" by deleting files from within the GUI while inside the Time Machine) to a small SSD harder than it should have been. I had to restore to a big disk and then clone that volume to the SSD - even though the SSD had enough space, Time Machine didn't think so; it didn't "understand" that it had been thinned.
My hypothesis is that Time Machine also gets confused if the Time Machine partition is resized. I shrunk a Time Machine partition (no it wasn't on my main disk!) and about that time, Time Machine stopped working. After thinning the volume, it started working again.

Why do I get "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on..."

Any idea why I keep getting 'Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on “MyBookLiveDuo”. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you." ? It's just started happening. Running 10.8.2 on two laptops. One is fine backing up the other keeps showing this error. Both versions of the OS are identical. Same wireless network, same Raid back-up, same tiem zone etc. Any ideas? It takes hours to wipe and start again, and really defeats the idea of Time Machine.

The disk images on which the backup data is stored are being corrupted. Backing up to a network device other than a Time Capsule or a Mac is unsupported by Apple. You're completely dependent on the device vendor if something goes wrong, and the vendor will blame Apple.
I suggest you start backing up to a locally-attached external hard drive, preferably more than one, or to a supported network device. If you don't want to do that, use a backup tool other than Time Machine.

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

Hi..
Thanks for the reply..
My original I Phone 5 was running IOS 6.12
My I phone 5S currently runs IOS 8..When I upgraded it, it had IOS 7 on it which made the I Photo app compatible with everything below IOS 8...( which the photo app is not compatible with ) so I just connected the I Phone 5S to my computer and thinking the new phone had IOS 7 on it that these was nothing to worry about..I thought all 900 + pictures in the photo stream would transfer but somewhere in the process, I Tunes decides to just go and install IOS 8 which requires that you run a " Photo Migration App" to transfer photos from IOS 7 & below. The problem was is that I didn't want IOS 8 on my new 5S so I thought I wouldn't have to do that part..
Anyway the phone emerged with IOS 8 on it and the only photos that remained were the ones that were actually on the phone..The 900 + I had in the stream didn't transfer because the Photos that works on IOS 7 and below isn't compatible with IOS 8..I guess you have to use the photo migration app that comes with IOS 8 & I phone 6..But I didn't ask to upgrade to IOS 8...It just did it on it's own!
I still have the I Phone 5 Back up that I did just before giving it back to Verizon but if I try to restore the I Phone 5S running IOS 8 those photos in the stream will not go back on the phone because IOS 8 isn't compatible with the I Photos" that ran on IOS 7 and below..
So I have an I Pad mini that runs IOS 7..should I try and erase it...and put that I Phone 5 backup on it and pray the photos that were in the stream come back on it so I can transfer them back to my computer...then erase the I pad mini again and restore it using it's original backup that I have on the computer and the in the cloud?
I know this sounds confusing but I'm at a loss as to what to do..This is what I found ...http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201386
but it doesn't help me..
Steve

HT201250 Is there any way to schedule backups on Time Machine? I hate it that backup happens every dang hour. I would like to have it back up at night.

Is there any way to schedule backups on Time Machine? I hate it that backup happens every dang hour. I would like to have it back up at night.

Richard Campbell2 wrote:
I hear you, I do. But the problem is that with my Mac, I have to stop and postpone whatever project I am working on while the backup occurs. It just slows down my computer.
Then something is wrong with your backups. Changing the interval will only deal with they symptoms, not the actual problem, and you won't be as well protected as with hourly backups.
If the backups are much larger than they ought to be, see #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If the sizes are reasonable, but it seems to take too long, see #D2 there.

Getting this error: Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.

I keep getting this error on my new Macbook Pro w/ Retina.
"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."
Connected to a wifi network and QNAP storage system. There are 5 computers on this network, and each backs up just fine. The issue is isolated to this one machine.
This error shows up every week or so.

A third-party NAS is unsuitable for use with Time Machine, especially if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want. I know Time Machine accepts the NAS as a backup destination. I know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and I also know that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
Apple has published a specification for network devices that work with Time Machine. None of the third-party NAS vendors, as far as I know, meets that specification. They all use the incomplete, obsolete Netatalk implementation of Apple Filing Protocol.
If you want network backup, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external storage device connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
Otherwise, don't use Time Machine at all. There are other ways to back up, though none of them is anywhere near as efficient or as well integrated with OS X. I don't have a specific recommendation.
If you're determined to keep using the NAS with Time Machine, your only recourse for any problems that result is to the manufacturer (which will blame Apple, or you, or anyone but itself.)

Time machine fails to complete/maintain a backup

Time machine is driving me nuts!:
The last successful backup was one month ago. Since that time it seems to have been stuck in a perpetual loop of trying but never successfully completing a backup, no matter what I try. Here is the history:
I bought a new iMac 6 months ago with OS X Lion (1Gb HDD). Set up Time Machine over wireless network with a 1Gb WD MyBookLive attached to a new BT Homehub 3 router (UK). Lion successfully backed up my system (total size approximately 159Gb) over a two day period, but every 4-6 weeks Time Machine would tell me it needed to create a new backup. Frustratingly, this meant that the backup history never stretched very far in the Time machine 'starfield window' but at least I had a backup of some sort.
I upgraded to Mountain Lion 3 months ago, in the hope that it would fix the error and, briefly, things were going well. Time Machine didn't need to create a new backup from scratch after upgrade, and continued to add to the existing backups & history for 2 months. Then i got the dreaded 'Time Machine needs to create a new backup' message and, 1 month later, it hasn't been able to finish the process yet!
After about 6 days it was about 30% complete (just over 50Gb) which didn't sound right given how long it previously took. I stopped the backup using the TM dialog box , reset my mac, router and MyBookLive and started again. Time machine automatically started again, and after several days of crawling I got the message that the 'sparsebundle was already in use'. I followed the suggested tips regarding unmounting the drive, reset everything and tried again. TimeMachine took about another 4 days to get to about 30Gb, then stopped itself with the message that the backup had failed. I tried deleting the preferences files for TM as several sources suggest, but this doesn't seem to have helped, TM just takes days to crawl along and then terminates saying either simply that the 'backup has failed' or that the sparsebundle is already in use. About 5 days ago I used the WD browser-based administration tools to create a new, separate, share for TM (presumably because this ensures that there can be no record of any previous backups on the backup device which TM sees) and set up TM from scratch. All seemed well, it took only 23 hours to back up 103Gb - then it failed, saying that the 'sparsebundle is already in use'. I set the backup away again overnight and it managed about 12Gb before the same message appeared. TM now estimates 5 days to backup the remaining 40Gb.
Somebody please tell me what is going wrong and how to get TM to actually complete a full backup then maintain it without constant intervention!!!
Some further points worth mentioning:
1) My iMac is located too far from my router to backup using ethernet cable.
2) I have used iStumbler to determine that the signal strength is 36% (surely strong enough?) with only 3% noise. (802.11n Gigabit Ethernet).
3) WD MyBookLive plugged into the GigE port on the router, and firmware is up to date.
4) I've searched Pondini's tips, from start to finish looking for a solution, as well as the Western Digital and BT forums, but none of the common solutions seem to work.
Help! and thanks.

Thanks, Linc, for your response. I will also seek advice from the manufacturers of the other devices, however, I fear that every party will foot the blame at the door of others.
I don't agree with your suggestion that this shouldn't be my only backup, given the marketing literature of both Apple and Western Digital. Apple state on their website:
"Connect the drive, assign it to Time Machine, and start enjoying some peace of mind. Time Machine automatically backs up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents."
Similarly, Western Digital state about their MyBook Live:
"Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple Time Machine backup software to protect their data."
So where, I wonder, does the fault lie? At the end of the day I am a home user and 'consumer' - just your average Joe looking for a robust home computing solution, not an IT boffin with an in-depth understanding of the nuts and bolts. I expect both products to do what they say on the box. Not surprisingly BT (the supplier of the router) state "The wireless 'N' technology in the BT Home Hub ensures you get a more reliable wireless connection throughout your home at all times."
To me, the advantage with my set up (should it ever work) is that, should the unthinkable happen and my computer is stolen, the likelihood of my backup device disappearing with it (as might be the case with a locally attached device) is greatly reduced because the NAS is hidden away elsewhere.

Is it possible to reinstall Mac OS X Lion on MacBook and then use Time Machine to restore to the previous backup I made before reinstalling Mac OS X Lion?

Is it possible to reinstall Mac OS X Lion on MacBook and then use Time Machine to restore to the previous backup I made before reinstalling Mac OS X Lion?

My MacBook was not normally booting up. It would turn on, make the Apple startup noise, and the bottom loading bar would progress just a little bit, then my MacBook would shut down. I tried rebooting it many times and the same thing would happen, it would just shut down. Then, I read that I can reset the PRAM (by holding Option+Command+P+R after the Apple startup noise comes). That worked, but now I get a screen that asks me to choose one of the 4 options (see: http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/07/lionrecoveryutilities-289404.j pg). I choose Restore From Time Machine Backup, but it progresses to 17.6% and gets stuck there forever. I tried doing it again, and it got stuck at 17.6% again. That is why I am asking if I should just reinstall Lion, then restore a previous backup on the fresh new Lion?

Time Machine getting stuck on random hourly backups?? Please help!

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