Time Machine is (kind of) stuck...

Time Machine has been working more or less flawlessly for me up until a few days ago.
I have my Time Machine backup on an external USB drive and I am running my Mac on a Standard account. Now, every time it is backing up, it is stuck at a certain percentage for hours and hours without continuing to back up. For example, it it stuck now at "5.8 MB of 258.2 MB", and the Time Machine menu bar icon is spinning but nothing is happening. I waited for at least 10 hours...
Interestingly, Time Machine does not seem to be completely out of whack since I can stop the backup without problems. I click "Stop backing up" and it does so without problems. Also, I can access old backups easily.
Even more peculiar, I find, is the fact that Time Machine works without problems when I log into my Admin account.
I tried repairing permissions and to 'reset' time machine by deleting the plist file, but none of those worked.
Any ideas why that could be and what to do to fix it?
Thanks!

Well, it is fixed now. Somehow, this problem had to do with Spotlight. For a different reason, I had to reset Spotlight by adding my internal hard drive as well as the USB drives attached to my Mac (including the one with the Time Machine backups) to the excluded list in the Spotlight Privacy Systems Preferences pane, and immediately removing them again. This forces the Mac to reindex for Spotlight. As soon as I did this, Time Machine finished the stuck backup happily and it works now without problems.
Maybe this helps someone else out.

Similar Messages

Time Machine backup file is stuck in my trash, taking forever to empty.

I understand I did this wrong, should have gone to the gear icon in TM to delete. Threw it in the trash and started to empty it. Let it run overnight and it's still only a fraction done. Tried to put it back in the TM drive to delete it properly, but it's now stuck in my trash. How do I get rid of it??

As Thomas says, your best bet is to erase the drive; that will take a few seconds at most.
Or, you could try to force-empty the trash folder on the drive:
Open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be *very careful* with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.
In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: user-xxxxxx:~ <your name>$
(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor (unless it's been changed via Terminal > Preferences).
Type the following exactly as shown, placing the name of your Time Machine partition between the quotes, and be sure to place spaces where shown:
cd /Volumes/"Time Machine Backups"/
and press Return. The prompt should then change to include the name of your Time Machine drive. Then copy or type:
sudo rm -rf .Trashes
and press Return. It should then ask for your Admin password (which won't be displayed). Press Return.
If there were many items involved, this may take quite a long time. Unless there are problems, once the deletion is complete, you'll see another prompt (there's no completion message).

I wanted to trash a time machine backup but got stuck !

Hi i wanted to put my original 1tb My Passport time machine backup drive to an alternative use, it was nearly full up as it was !, i got the very large file in my Trash Can, this was my first mistake !, I then tried to Empty my TRASH which took simply hours, nearly days as it happens, my second mistake !, When Empty Trash had finished, it wasnt EMPTY !!!!!
It has a few LOCKED files that are named BOOT.EFI that i cannot delete !!.
Can someone Please advise
PS. i now know i should have simply Re-Formatted the drive !!!!. that WAS my biggest MISTAKE !!
Tim

Well Done tbirdvet
Thanks i didnt know that option was there
Tim

Time Machine backup problem. Stuck indexing 101. Any suggestions?

Hi
I am having trouble with my Time Machine backup and would be grateful for your help.
I have downloaded the widget and copied the script below.
Time Machine has been operating without issue since bought, around a year ago.
The last backup was 18th May. Nothing comes to mind that may have triggered a change on that date.
I placed the "My Book" backup volume in the private folder for Spotlight.
The indexing process has been running without interruption for over 24 hours.
The backup drive is connected via USB
I have changed the USB port to ensure the connection is sound, which it appears to be
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Mac HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 12.19 GB requested (including padding), 592.88 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
I am hoping that the script may help you direct me toward where I should concentrate my efforts.
Many thanks
M

woodwam wrote:
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Mac HD
start with A6 (blue box) in this user tip, also D1.

Time Machine Star Wars Gets Stuck

I am having a very odd Time Machine problem. I'll start by saying I believe I have followed all things Ponzi and this is something else. I don't think it's the backups, somehow TM itself is hosed.
The backups were created on a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme, but the problem persists even if I connect the drive directly to my iMac. My MacBook Pro has no issues. I can access the iMac backups from my MacBook Pro without issue wirelessly. I can also access the backups on my iMac indirectly by navigating the drive directly.
When I click Time Machine in the dock on my iMac with no Finder windows open, the drive mounts, and a window pops up, then TM stops and never scrolls up the Star Wars display. Clicking around with my mouse does nothing, unless I click the close icon (the red circle) on the window. Then, briefly, the bottom of the Star Wars display shows (the Restore on one side and the Cancel on the other) and TM "comes back" and it is as if I Canceled from the Star Wars display.
I've followed the steps in the Ponzi note under Star Wars, no change.
This is a very old setup that has worked for years. Still, I deleted the TM backups and redid them, and so they are a few days old and only 3 backups have been performed. But, again, all is well on my MacBook Pro with the iMac backups, so I don't see how that can be the problem.
Thoughts? I'm stumped.

NewYorkYogi wrote:
(2) deleted the sparse bundle for the iMac (left the one for the MBP there).
(3) partitioned the drive.
(5) repaired the drive.
You still need to repair the sparse bundle. Repairing the partition it's on doesn't do the disk image.
I used the retail family pack Snow Leopard disk I purchased.
That is also the way I repaired the internal disk (no errors) and repaired permissions.
Have you verified your internal HD? Yes, no errors.
If so, are you sure your internal HD has the GUID partition map scheme? It's Mac OS Extended Journaled and I've never reformatted it or partitioned it.
Very odd why you're getting the " can't install because OS X can't boot from the internal drive" message. Something is wrong somewhere. I don't know if it relates to the other problems, but it sure is suspicious.
Three screenshots. It seems the combo buttons don't work (I hear the sound but no file/clipboard) and so these were taken with my iPhone.
That's odd, too. They should go wherever your screenshots normally go.
#1 When TM is "running" and I right click on a file. The background is just my wallpaper
Ok, now I see what you mean. The display isn't getting cleared, the "star field" and timeline aren't getting displayed.
OK, I used Address Book as you requested, and the behavior is exactly the same. "Nothing" happens except TM is actually running, and when I click Close I get "Cancel.... Today (Now).... Restore" on the bottom of the screen for a second or two.
Ah, that's what we need to know. It's not just the Finder.
This looks like your installation of OSX is damaged, but could be a hardware problem. Since you can't reinstall OSX, try running the Apple Hardware Test.
If you have an Intel Mac, see: Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test.
If you have a PPC Mac, the AHT should be on one of the discs that came with it. The disc should have Apple Hardware Test and instructions for running it printed in very tiny type.
In either case, run the Extended tests (that may take an hour or more, depending on how much RAM you have). Write down any error code(s) it shows.

Time machine backup preparing is stuck!

Time machine backup preparing is extremely slow if working at all? Could it have something to do with me having just replaced my hdd with an ssd? I restored my time machine backup to the ssd with no problems (didn't seem to be that slow). I also have some files which I manually move to the external hard drive instead of using time machine and they were very quickly transferred. I did an smc reset. I did a full indexing of spotlight. Nothing seems to work. Please help!

Hi there corneliusgdahling,
are you using an Apple Time Capsule or just an external drive for backup? Have you tried removing deactivating Time Machine on System Preferences and re-enabling it?
Sorry for bad English

Time Machine gets stuck on cleaning up

Hi, I can't complete a back up successfully with Time Machine. I get stuck on the 'cleaning up' phase and then it stays there forever. I actually went to work and when I came home it was still in the same state. Then I can't stop the back-up cleanly. I have to go in to Activity Monitor to force quit.
Following the advice on pondini.org I have installed the Buddy widget. It tells me that....
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data
Failed to attach to image: /Volumes/Data/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Disk image /Volumes/Data/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Node requires deep traversal:/Users/gemzap/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|found in deep scan|missed reservation|
Following advice on here, I have also done a verify/repair disk on both my macbook and the time capsule external drive. Both reported to be ok.
Any ideas? Any help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks
gemzap

No luck I'm afraid.... I dismounted (then completely unplugged) the time capsule. Then reconnected, clicked in to the timecapsule drive to make sure it wasn't napping, and tried again. The messages on the time machine read as follows..
22:25 Making back up disk available
Calculating changes
22:27 Scanning 800,713 items
Preparing xxx items
22:58 Cleaning up - for 8 hours.
So at 7am this morning I clicked stop back up. But again that hasn't don't anything, so have just done a force quit in Activity Monitor.
Time Machine buddy says...
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Gemma%[email protected]/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Gemma%[email protected]/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/Users/gemzap/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:must scan subdirs|missed reservation|
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
I'm at a loss.
Should I try deleting the gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle file? Could that help?
Many thanks
gemzap

Time Machine is stuck in a Loop

Time Machine seems to be stuck in a loop and hasn't backed up in 13 days. Here's the information:
Name: Time Machine Backups
Available: 6.33 GB of 319.73 GB
Oldest BackUp: July 19, 2009
Latest Backup: October 15, 2009
_*Backing Up: ➊Calculating changes, ➋Cleaning up, ➌Making backup disk available*_
The last line goes from 1 to 2 to 3 then starts over. The Backup never occurs. I checked and both my MBP and the external drive are connected to the Airport Extreme wirelessly. I can even see the drive in Finder. I disconnected everything and restarted both the Airport Extreme and the drive. I then re-connected and the same thing keeps happening. I have a MBP 15in 2.66 Early 2009 and running OS X 10.6.1. I bought the Airport Extreme when they were first sold. All software is up to date.
Help!!

*Ok I disconnected the TM drive from the Airport Extreme and connected it to my MBP. I ran Disk Utility on the TM using Repair Disk . It found errors and fixed them all. I re-connected the drive to the Airport Extreme and attempted another backup. Here is the log:*
+Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Machine%20Backups+
+Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Machine%20Backups+
+Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro_002500ce290a.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro+
+Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb+
+Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD+
+Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|+
+Compacting storage: 21.73 GB requested (including padding), 5.87 GB available before compacting+
+Stopping backup.+
+Backup canceled.+
+Ejected Time Machine disk image.+
+Compacting backup disk image to recover free space+
*Then it started over. Here is the long after it stared over:*
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro_002500ce290a.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Starting pre-backup thinning: 21.73 GB requested (including padding), 5.87 GB available
Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-27-052350
Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-27-052350
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-27-052350: 5.87 GB now available
Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-28-011547
Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-28-011547
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-28-011547: 5.87 GB now available
Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-29-002053
Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-29-002053
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-29-002053: 5.87 GB now available

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.

Time Machine stuck "32Kb of 397 GB"

Time machine seesm to be stuck on a file. It just gives the above message for a long time. I just re-installed the system, so it is unlikely to be a corrupt file, but it does seem that my boot process is taking forever (which is why I re-installed)
Any suggestions?

So, are you saying that you did not update the software after reinsallation?
The first one you would want to install is the following:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
In Safari Preferences, General tab, set "Save downloaded files to: select Desktop. (if desktop is not in te dropdown menu select "other" the selct Desktop from the column on the left) This will then download this very important update as a stand alone installer, after the download completes open the installer package and follow the prompts. This update is not on any disk, and if your B/U was using this when it was written, it won't be able to deal with it.
After the DL1399 install, run software update then try again.
Also carefully read thru the Pondini link I sent, it has almost everything about TM in it.

Time Machine stuck on "preparing backup" and "Indexing Backup" after forced restart and install from Lion

Hello!
I have been using Time Machine on the Time Capsule for over a month now and no problems. However when I was installing Lion it had to restart. I did not see that Time Machine was going at the time when I pushed restart until it was too late.
Now Time Machine seems to be stuck on "Preparing Backup" and "Indexing Backups". It has been nearly 20-30 minutes for Indexing and I wonder if I corrupted something or something else. If there a way I can solve this problem? Thanks!

I had this same problem, this is going to sound ridiculous but this is what I finally did. I wiped my backup, crazy right?
It's there for when your hard drive crashes, so it's not like you are going to miss much if you wipe it. Tell it to stop backing up, go to disk utility, click your external and then erase it. Go back to time machine settings and reselect it as your backup drive. It will do an initial back up again and you are good to go.
Hope this helps.

Advice on Carbon Copy Cloner vs. Time Machine

I have been stuck with a crappy all in one router/modem from the cable company for the last year. Yesterday, I bought an Asus RT N56U. It works great and I get great range. I almost went with an Airport Extreme, but went $40 cheaper. Then, while I was there I decided to get a hard drive for backups since I really need to be better about this with all of the pictures we have of our young children. My wife and I also have Macbooks from 2006-2007 era. Mine's 1,1 with an upgraded memory to 2GB and a new 500GB HD. My wife also has a new HD and the same specs. Anyway, I was tired of hooking them up for time machine backups, so, I tried to format my new Toshiba 3TB hard drive with 3 partitions, all MacOS Extended. One Partition for each of us for time machine and one for random other storage. I wanted a box where I could access this stuff from my iphone if I wanted, just because I thought it was cool to use aicloud (asus).
Anyway, I backed up my computer and hers using time machine with a direct connection to each computer. Then, I tried to hook the hard drive up to the router and can't find it. Come to find out the router only supports FAT and NFTS and one or two other formats. It does not support Mac OS.
So, now I've tried to figure out a way around this. Carbon Copy Cloner says that it will support non Mac OS formats for the hard drive, but not for a bootable copy. So, I could theoretically use CCC to copy things to the HD through WiFi if it is formatted non MacOS, just I wouldn't get a bootable copy. Maybe, I could just copy things like pictures and what not and not all the crap that ends up on my computer after 6 years.
Or even could CrashPlan do a local back up through Wifi?
I basically want something similar to the functionality of Time Capsule with or without Time Machine, but kind of like saving a few bucks, getting 3TB, and a pretty solid router.
Seem reasonable to anyone?
Sometimes I think I should have just gotten a time capsul ... Need to double check Best Buy's Return policy.
Thanks!

Sometimes I think I should have just gotten a time capsul ...
So do I.
Time Machine supports two and only two backup devices: a locally connected volume (like your Toshiba HD) and Time Capsule. If you are fond of the pictures you have of your young children, then use a supported backup method.
You can exclude specific volumes or folders from Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Why anyone would buy anything from Best Buy is one of the great mysteries of life. Good luck returning it.

Can Time Machine freeze the system?

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

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

Advice needed for 4TB Time Machine Backups

I run a recording studio based around Logic Pro.
I typically have about 7-8 drives online at any given time with around 5TB, but would like to be able to keep more of it active longer. Most of these drives are backed up by Time Machine. But even with 4TB drives I find I quickly run out of space, and have to either delete old TM backups or buy new drives to keep a running TM archive.
While I periodically archive my stuff to optical, and have Backblaze and Dropbox for server space and insurance purposes, neither of those really address the immediacy and convenience of Time Machine for archival retrieval over the course of months or years. And it doesn't help really with boot drive history that doesn't make it to optical archives and isn't kept on backblaze anyway.
So, I have been considering some kind of Raid device, not necessarily for speed or NAS capability (although those might be nice), but mainly to break the 4TB limit and be able to keep my Time Machine growing as a resource for recalling older projects, etc.
It is likely that this will only be used for TM, although I could see potentially partitioning a bit for something else, depending on how big it is. Not sure.
Things which are important:
•Ease of use. Hook up a FW, USB, ethernet, etc. cable, format some drives, and go. I'm not an IT tech.
•$500 or less is preferred
•4 bays would give me room to expand to greater storage, which I think is the only thing that makes sense. might not be enough additional space to justify bothering with a 2-bay, since reliability is at a premium, I'll probably use the most data redundant RAID settings.
•Reliable -- goes without saying
•Hot Swap and Ability to use mixed types of drives - It's not a big deal to keep a spare 3-4TB WD Red on hand, but it would be nice to be able to use whatever I might have handy lying around in case of a failure.
I have heard mixed reviews of Drobo, and better reviews of Synology products, but again, I'm not sure that I really need a NAS--just something simple and reliable--or as simple as something like this can be.
I welcome any advice on what products and brands people prefer for an application like this. Thank you.

Thanks everyone.
These are some good directions to follow.
The issue I think is defining where in the spectum of backup to archival my needs fit.
The thing is, as soon as you go to an array of drives, both the risk and the cost goes up. To my mind, Time Machine is kind of a middle ground between archival and backup. I can make a manual backup quite easily, but TM automates this process elegantly, and gives you date-specific archival up to the point where storage has to recycle. I can also create fixed archives like optical backups of projects and boot clones, which I do every few months. I see those as true archives. But as a result I've accumulated some 3 dozen cheap green HDDs. Many of them archived TM drives. This is a nice safety feature, but it also gets expensive. Being able to go out to double-digit TB in theory with data redundant raids out to 10TB or more by my estimate would give me 2-3 years of instantaneous TM backup. And I've never been able to get more than about 3-4 months of erffective TM for a while now. Meaning I'm buying a new 4TB drive every few weeks to keep up with this.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but having all of my main drives fed into one TM backup is awfully convenient. I don't have to think too much about backups in the heat of my crazy deadlines, libraries and project data constantly changing and being updated, etc.
A Jbod device and a virtual raid as Grant suggested would fill the bill to solve the problem but it makes me nervous, because the possibility of drive failure will be multiplied by the number of drives in use.
What doesn't appeal to me about any multi-drive scenario is that it's putting all the eggs in one basket and making the TM vulnuerable to corruption or being fried because if it gets hosed, I won't have any archived versions other than the array and my sporadic manual archives. I won't be able to go find the single TM archive on the shelf and pop it in anymore to go backwards. Once I become dependent on multiple drive arrays, there is no easy way to rotate backups, and I will have to do other forms of archival more frequently. It's all a risk-benefit equation and there is no such thing as a free lunch, as we know.
The Drobo 5D is beginning to appeal to me because it at least has dual drive failure redundancy and can rebuild even with the loss of 2 drives. I just wish it had more universal approval in the reviews department. Some people love is, some hate it. I would have to really commit to this thing, and fill it to capacity to amortize its cost over a long period of time.
Thanks again for the responses.

CS3 locks up when time machine backs up

When I'm working in Adobe CS3, namely Photoshop, illustrator and After Effects, the program locks up if time machine tries to make a back up. Time machine seems to get stuck too, appearing to make a backup forever until I force quite from the CS3 app.

Where are your backups going, to an external disk, Time Capsule, or ??
Where is the data for those apps, on your internal HD, an external, or ??
Try the things in #D2 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If still no help, copy and post the +TM Buddy+ messages (per #D2) for one of these backups here.

Time Machine is (kind of) stuck...

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