Time Machine hangs/stalls when restoring-2nd time trying, what to do?
My MB Pro had the dreaded blinking ?. I ended up having to erase and reinstall Snow Leopard-no problems with that. I've backed up my MBP on Time Machine. I am attempting for the 2nd time to restore. First time, it stalled at the beginning of Applications. I restarted the computer, but it was working VERY slowly, and then the desktop pic was half blue screen and half galaxy. It wouldn't let me open anything. I erased and reinstalled SL again, and then my 2nd time through (this is about 12 hrs at a time trying to restore), it got to almost the very end of the restore (restoring apps), and stalled again-went from 52 minutes to 11 hours! Dreaded pinwheel of death. Ideas? I'm thinking about just restoring one thing at a time (i.e. users; files & folders), and NOT restoring apps. Think this is a good idea?
I am assuming this is a software issue, since the SL erase and install goes smoothly, and gets past the apple logo screen when restarting.
HELP!
TIA
Where are your backups? If they're on a Time Capsule, connect to it via Ethernet, not WIFI. If they're on a USB disk connected to a Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, or a different Mac, connect it directly to your Mac.
Then Repair the backups, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Then do a full system restore, per #14 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).
Similar Messages
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Why does Time Machine Hang OSX when a USB drive does not respond?
I use USB drives to store photo data. When I back up the drives using Time Machine to a Time Capsule, If I have added a large amount of data to the USB drive, the backup will consistently fail with the drive hung. I can see the drive in finder, but I cannot see the directory structure. Often OSX hangs too and I cannot even get to finder, just the whirling colored wheel. Sometimes the system has entered sleep mode and it will not wake up. I if I am using the monitor, I can open the MAC Book Pro cover and the screen there shows alternately, a blue screen and the screen wallpaper, flipping back and forth but otherwise unresponsive. If I turn the USB drive off the OS recovers and Time Machine completes, usually indicating a backup failure (but not always). The drive is always very hot under these circumstances, indicating that the system is issuing repetitive operations to the drive. I should emphasize that I am not writing to the USB drives during backup, Time Machine is just reading the drive. So several questions:
1) How in the world can a non system drive hang the Operating System? This is a big no-no for a supposedly multi-tasking Operating System.
2) I use Aperture 2.1 to store data on the USB drives with no problems (at least so far). Why would Time Machine drive the USB drive so hard that it fails? I had the same problem using a USB drive with iTunes. It completely fried the drive by writing to it too intensively during one of the frequent software updates. Is there no throttle mechanism in OSX that limits the disc activity so that the throttle mechanism is not the failure of the drive itself?
3) Does Apple have a list of USB drives that it has validated to be able to work with it's system reliably?Are the USB drives powered from the computer or do they have their own power supplies.
There is a limit to how much power can be drawn from each USB port and also a total limit. If you exceed this, unexpected things can happen. -
Time capsule set up fine but time machine hangs up when accessed
hi,
i just bought my mac book pro this year. then, purchased 1TB Time capsule. i had set up the time cap after 2 days with the time machine. it worked well but i cannot print when the printer cable is attached to the time cap. then, i missed several scheduled back ups due to electricity interruptions and even resorted to deleting the sparsebundle to start anew. when i enter time machine, i can see the outerspace background but the finder window and everything else could not be accessed. it just freezes. i brought my time cap to istore (reseller store here in the phil) and fortunately, they facilitated to replace my time cap with a new one.
with the new time cap, i rushed to set it up. initial back up has been done. my problems are:
1. i can enter time machine, but i could not access anything. the time line freezes and so with the finder window. i even resorted to ctrl option esc to get out of time machine; and
2. i still could not print via time capsule.
please help me. the discussion portion of apple website is the only direct line of help available as i am located far from the apple reseller. i don't have the landline telephone so i could not directly call apple support.
help me please....
just_jeI had this problem with my Time Machine drive very recently. I wasn't using a Time Capsule but it sounds exactly like my problem.
Time Machine would backup to my external drive with no problems but every time I wanted to go into the program, it would freeze. It would be fine in the current time, (when you first enter Time Machine) but if I tried to go back in time, the animation would happen, but I wouldn't be able to click on anything in the finder Window. The only way to get out of it was, as you said, to press Apple, Option and Escape.
The way I solved this was to use Disk Utility on my external drive. I had tried before but when I clicked on verify or repair disk it just sat there for ages doing nothing. What you need to do is select the Time Capsule drive in Disk Utility and then do a repair on it.
Warning though, it will take about an hour to complete. It took probably about 20 minutes for mine to even start repairing. But it does work, I did it on mine and now Time Machine is fully working again.
Hope this helps
Chris -
I had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I restarted the computer and tried again to run Photoshop and the same error message appeared. The message was followed by a message that stated that I needed to contact Adobe technical support and mention Error: 150.30. I need Adobe technical support to provide me a solution for my problem so I can continue using my Adobe products installed on my computer.
Unfortunately when Adobe products are restored from backup, especial CS4 and especially Mac, it breaks licensing.
There is a python script included in the license recovery kit that should work if you are familiar with Terminal.
If not, you must reinstall your CS4 suite. You don't need to delete your preferences, so it should be the same as before.
Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS
Gene -
I updated my iMac to Mountain Lion. All the files were deleted. I have Time Machine backups. When I restart the mac pressing Command R to restore it from the backup it shows the previous OS X (Leopard) beside the date of the backup that I want to select. Will it go back to Leopard if I restore it from the backup?
No, it won't revert to the prior OS X but you you may have third party apps installed that were compatible with Lion that may not be compatible with Mountain Lion.
App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps - App compatibility and feature support for OS X & iOS
After you restore from TM, check HD > Incompatible Software -
when restoring a time machine backup to a new computer, does it affect the new operating system on the new computer?
That depends on how you do it.
By far the best, easiest, most reliable method is to use Setup Assistant when your shiny new Mac first starts up, to transfer your apps, users, data, etc. That doesn't disturb either the OS or basic Apple apps that came with the new Mac. See Using Setup Assistant on Mountain Lion or Lion.
There is a facility to restore an entire system from Time Machine backups, including the version of OSX on the backup, but that's for use when your internal HD has been erased or replaced only. It's not a good idea to restore the full backup of one Mac to a different one. Depending on the circumstances, the installer may not allow it. Even if it does, the Mac may not start up, or may kernel panic, or not work properly. -
I signed into icloud to find my iphone. icloud tried to upload my calendar, froze my desktop calendar and then erased it when I unchecked the box. I use time machine. Can I restore my desktop calendar and how do I keep everything but my phone locator and mail off? I do not want to sync my desktop with icloud except for mail.
This the Activation Lock. Read here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5818
The only way is to login to iCloud with your computer browser and wipe the iPhone.
If you can't then you have a brick, Apple won't help and AL cannot be bypass.
https://www.icloud.com -
Backups work, enter time machine "hangs"
I'm having an issue with Time Machine where the backups appear to be working fine, but if I open a folder in finder, and then "Enter Time Machine", Time Machine starts with that folder "visible" but hangs (no nav buttons work, cancel and restore don't work, and I can't "navigate folders).
The only way "out" in this case is to hit CMD-OPT-ESC, which weirdly doesn't bring up the terminate applications dialog, but simply exits Time Machine.
If I make sure that no finder windows are open when I enter Time Machine, it appears to be working fine.
To duplicate this, open your home folder, have Documents selected and enter time machine. Does your's hang at this point? (Hit CMD-OPT-ESC to leave Time Machine if it does hang).
TIA for any advice/confirmation.
SteveIt appears I may have "misspoken" a little. Time Machine hangs on entry with no default windows too, just "not as much". I can usually move around a little before it hang, but hang it does.
One side note (and this may cause this thread to be moved to a Leopard issue instead of time machine.
I recently upgraded to Leopard by buying a brand new drive, installing Leopard from scratch, and gradually adding back my applications as I find I need them (the previous drive had been through 10.1 -> 10.4.11 over a couple years, and had a lot of old apps, etc I just wanted to get rid of.)
With the new installation, it appears that occasionally (30% of the time?), when I mount/dismount .dmg images or sparseimage/sparsebundle images, the entire Mac will appear to "hang" for about 30-40 seconds, buffering input but otherwise appearing to "lock up". I have iTunes playing, and songs continue uninterrupted, but I can't do anything for this 30-40 seconds, including CMD-OPT-ESC.
I'm thinking this could be related to the Time Machine issue except for the fact that the OS always recovers and continues normally after 30+ seconds, but Time Machine NEVER comes back.
Thoughts? Advice?
Thanks,
Steve -
I just restored my 13" MBP i5 at the apple store to the newest version of Lion after issues with a previous Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard- this time I created a new account and just ported files and folders, and now MS Office doesn't work.
^^ that's the main problem. Here's the full history.
I bought a new 13" i5 MBP, early 2011 edition. I had an old white Macbook 2.14 ghz core2duo on Snow Leopard. I attempted to port over my time machine backup, but encountered problems in that my User was inaccessible from the new computer after the import finished, and I had to go in and change the root password, etc, and for some reason or another, I couldn't install any programs at all from that administrator's account. By "couldn't" I mean I could install them, but upon installation they would never boot. So, I took it to the apple store and did a clean install from the most up to date Lion OSX. Then, I created a brand new admin account, instead of trying to import the old one, and things seemed great. Then, I just imported my old files from the TM backup, but not any system settings, permissions, or user data. Just my Docs, pics, vids, apps, and itunes stuff.
Here's where things get weird again. I imported this stuff under the name "old", but all of these folders have a red negative sign on them, marking them as restricted. So, from my main admin account, I cannot even peruse these folders. Since I didn't import user data, I can't sign in to the "old" account to change permissions. I already tried to change the permissions from system preferences, but that didn't change anything. And now, for whatever reason, of all the apps that were imported then, MS Office is the only set of apps that does not work. When I click on it, it just says there was a problem and asks if I'd like to send a report to apple. I tried reinstalling it to no avail. I'm an English student, so i really need access to Word. Can anyone help? The Apple store is a major detour for me and would like to fix this issue myself.Most likely you have Office 2004 which are PPC-only applications and will not work in Lion. Upgrade to Office 2011. Other alternatives are:
Apple's iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.)
Open Office (Office 2007-like suite compatible with OS X.)
NeoOffice (similar to Open Office.)
LibreOffice (a new direction for the Open Office suite.) -
I had to change my hard drive in my MBP 15". I use Time Machine on a Time Capsule for backup. I am booting up my laptop with a bootable USB key. I have partitioned my new hard drive (bigger than the old one) and named it Macintosh HD (same as the old one). I select the option to restore from Time Machine Backup. I select one of my latest backup....select my destination drive...the restore process starts but stop within minutes with the following message. "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk" It then prompts me to restart....
I need your help...what can it be.
ThanksI've encountered this issue when the Time Machine was encrypted with FileVault.
Article: HT4718
Additional Information
Please note that OS X Recovery must be present on the computer's startup volume in order to use FileVault 2. Using RAID partitions or a non-standard Boot Camp partition on the startup disk may prevent OS X from installing a local Recovery system. See "OS X: Some features of Mac OS X are not supported for the disk (volume name)" for more information.
What seems to work, is reinstalling the OSX from the internet, and then using migration assistant to pull the user from the time machine backup external when logged into a temporary administrator user to move the original user back over.
Perhaps if you're stubborn, what would work is the following from the same article:
What to do if the installer warns that no Recovery System can be created
Some disk partition configurations may result in the OS X installer reporting that it could not create a Recovery System. In these situations, even if you are permitted to continue the install, you may want to quit the installation and create an external, bootable OS X hard drive with a Recovery System, first. You can continue your OS X upgrade on your computer's startup drive after creating an external Recovery System.
Your storage device must have at least 13 GB available (after formatting) to install OS X Lion or later and a Recovery partition.
These steps erase and reformat the storage device. This article instructs you on setting up a storage device to use the GUID partition scheme and the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, which are required to install OS X and a Recovery partition on your external storage device. You should back up any important files that are on the device to a different drive.
This procedure installs a version of OS X that is compatible with the Mac it was created with. Using this OS X system with a different Mac model may produce unpredictable results.
Your computer's serial number is sent to Apple as part of this process to help authenticate your request to download and install OS X Lion.
All of this information was collected by browsing through the public articles on the Apple Support website. -
Time Machine: Repeated errors when backing up for the first time using a new external firewire drive
My Iomega 500GB firewire external drive failed on me last week and I have just replaced it with an identical model. I used to use the old drive with Time Machine on my MacBook Pro running 10.5.8 with no issues, until the drive had a hardware failure and stopped spinning up, hence the replacement.
Two days ago I tried using Time Machine for the first time with the replacement external drive. The backup failed and each subsequent backup attempt has failed since then with a different error each time. The drive cannot be ejected using Finder (Finder says disk is in use and cannot be ejected even when no processes are running except for Finder and Time Machine has been disabled), by dragging it to the dock (hangs computer which can only be fixed by a hard reboot), in Disk Utilities (drive cannot be unmounted) or in Terminal ("no such file or directory").
The first backup attempt failed after 3 hours of "preparing" with the message "The backup was not performed because an error occured while creating backup directory".
I tried repairing the disk in Disk Utilities and Disk Utilities said the drive was OK ("the volume Time Machine Backups appears to be OK"). I tried ejecting the drive (hard reboot of computer and disconnecting the drive), plugging it back in again and trying again.
This time it started backing up, then failed after a few minutes with the message "an error occured while copying files to the backup volume". I had a look at the troubleshooting suggested on http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C3.html and followed instructions. It failed again, so I did a full reset as per http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html.
It failed again, so I tried reparing the drive again in Disk Utilities and again it said it was OK. I tried using different cables and ports (Firewire 400 instead of Firewire 800), and backups still fail.
I have turned off anti-virus scanning (Sophos). I have tried excluding it from Spotlight but this causes an error message from Spotlight. I have tried trashing the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file and rebooting. I have tried selecting deselecting the drive as the back up in Time Machine preferences, selecting "None", then "Stop Backing Up" then quitting preferences, rebooting, disconnecting the drive, reconnecting the drive and selecting the drive again as the backup disk in Time Machine preferences. I have tried erasing the drive completely, rebooting, and trying to back up again.
None of these have worked. This is a brand new drive and I do not want to have to replace it again if I do not have to.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.Hello, some possible clues...
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-ba c kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076
Or a different/better solution in my experiences...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html -
New unibody macbook pro time machine backup stalling/stalls
I have been using time machine to back up my Macbook Pro 17 (First Gen), I have 2 external Western Digital Drives connected via USB in a RAID (Striped) Configuration. Everything has worked fine for months and the backups are quite snappy...
I just changed to a NEW Unibody Macbook Pro 17 and formatted the drives, set up the RAID configuration again from fresh in disk utility and reset Time Machine and said OK when it requested to use the drive for backups.
The process gets some way into backing up... sometimes 7GB, 13GB, 17GB even 70GB and then just stops. The hard drives(at least one of them anyway i cant tell exactly) spin down and the file count in Time Machine window just stops. There is no error message and the window just stays there saying its backing up but there is no external HD activity. I have to cancel the backup (which sometimes - but not always - causes everything to stall until i unplug the drives by whipping the USB cable out). Everything then works fine i dont need to restart and it just brings up an error message saying that Time Machine failed to backup...
Any ideas??
I do have antivirus software installed (VirusScan) but i have had that on my previous machine aswell so it cant be that...I have a MacBook C2Duo (black 2008) customer who has upgraded to 10.5.7 with a new internal and external hard disk and a fresh install of the OS. After doing this, Time Machine constantly stalled at 12.55 GB when backing up to an external disk (USB2). After a lot of reading on the net, I think the problem marks the re-emergence of an old bug where the mdworker task used by Spotlight to index drives is crashing and starting to take up to 99% of the CPUs. At this point, TM simply does not have enough CPU time to work and crawls almost to a halt.
I messed around for a while with Activity Monitor watching the mdworker crash and it is very predictable. Time Machine buddy does not pick it up because of course TM is still working albeit at a snail's pace.
Since mdworker is very associated with Spotlight, I tried setting Spotlight to not index any folderssame problem.
Finally, I set the TM destination drive to be a Private drive in the Spotlight Preferences and it finished without an mdworker crash.
It might be a temporary workaround or it might be coincidence that TM worked this time, so YMMV and Apple should look at this too. -
Would like to verify Time Machine backup but when I enter TM and then open iPhoto, it only provides me a gray window telling me the size of the file. How do I make sure all iPhoto pictures have been backed up on Time Machine?
HaJo-aus-BS wrote:
Since Snow-Leo time machine offers an option to verify backups, but I have found that it does not work for external disks attached by USB or FireWire.
Yes, that's for network backups only.
What can I do to make sure that the backups are OK?
You can tell if the File System (the various directories, catalogs etc.) is ok by repairing your backup drive, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
You can "spot check" whether the Time Machine "Star Wars" display seems correct.
You can do a full system restore to another disk per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions, then start up from it and see if things are there and seem to work.
You can keep "secondary" backups (always a good idea). See #27 in the FAQ post for some suggestions. -
iMac crashed, trying to use Time Machine backup. In Restore From:it only offers Macintosh HD on ..... (grayed). There are backups listed below. When I click on a current backup and click on continue I get a "Select a Destination" with Searching for disk, but nothing comes up.
I am connected to my Passport if that helps, but I think that is where it is getting the backup list.
Any help on how to proceed?
Thanks,Thanks for your help on this. I was trying to restore from a new drive. The problem I have is that Time Machine will not let me do so, so far.
When I go into 'Restore from Time Machine Back up) I can access the Time Machine HD ok. But then when I go onto next page (Select a Back Up) the 'Restore From' option only has the greyed out name of my crashed HD (this seems wrong?). If I continue the process to erase starts and then stops, message says:
An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk.
it only seems to want me to back up to my crashed HD which I have no intention of using -
I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?
Do not worry about it.
Time Machine needs that your external drive is formatted in HFS+, or better known as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". This filesystem is used by Apple on Macs and Windows cannot read or write drives formatted with this filesystem, being this the reason why all your devices do not read the external drive except your Mac.
You can only use your external drive to make Time Machine drives. If you store anything different, you may damage the Time Machine structure, so it is better not to use it as a drive to store other data. Instead, get another external drive to do it or create a second partition on the external drive formatted in FAT32 by using Disk Utility > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html FAT32 can be read by Windows PCs
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