Time machine is not working properly

Time Machine can not find a file that I deleted just a few days ago, which is very annoying, because I can find the file just fine when I open my external hard drive (my Time Machine backup drive) with the Finder and navigate to the exact date and location where the file was located when I deleted it.
Why is Time machine not working like it is supposed to?

Abrasha Staszewski wrote:
It works for me (although it's often slow and balky).
I'm very happy for you, and I don't get how that response it supposed to help solve my issue?
The point is, it does work in some (probably most) situations -- so it's not a general problem, but something specific to yours.
If you're giving it enough time, and are certain you're spelling the name right, the index may be damaged.
Do you really think, that I am not capable of spelling the name of the file properly?
You'd be surprised, apparantly, how often that sort of thing does happen. A dash instead of an underline, one space instead of two, letter Oh instead of a zero, etc.
Try repairing your backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Didn't work.
What does that mean? Disk Utility said it "appears to be ok" but the problem persists? Or it found errors?
I give up.
That's your call, of course.
But there's another possiblity: the index is corrupted in a way Disk Utility can't find. That has happened more often on Lion, for some reason. So delete it (the next backup will, of course, be quite slow, as the index is rebuilt from scratch). See the pink box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Similar Messages

Time Machine does not work properly?

I have used Time Machine to back up my iMac computer to a LaCie external hard drive for over two years without any problems. The last few days I have noticed that when I mount the external hard drive on the desktop, Time Machine starts to backup my computer as usual, but continues to backup the computer and does not shut off. Usually it takes Time Machine less than a minute to backup the computer and than shut off. Now the Time Machine icon in the program bar continues to rotate and does not stop until I turn off the external hard drive. Something is not working properly. Has anyone had a similar problem or know how to get Time Machine to work properly. Need help!!
I should also mention that my hard drive is connected to my computer via a Bilkin power hub. I recently had a problem with my hard drive dismounting from my desktop when I would wake up the computer from the sleep mode. I thought that I had solved this problem by unplugging the drive's USB power cord from the power hub and inserting it into a different port. It seem to work fine for a few days and than this new problem popped up. Any assistance will help me sleep at night.

I have used Time Machine to back up my iMac computer to a LaCie external hard drive for over two years without any problems. The last few days I have noticed that when I mount the external hard drive on the desktop, Time Machine starts to backup my computer as usual, but continues to backup the computer and does not shut off. Usually it takes Time Machine less than a minute to backup the computer and than shut off. Now the Time Machine icon in the program bar continues to rotate and does not stop until I turn off the external hard drive. Something is not working properly. Has anyone had a similar problem or know how to get Time Machine to work properly. Need help!!
I should also mention that my hard drive is connected to my computer via a Bilkin power hub. I recently had a problem with my hard drive dismounting from my desktop when I would wake up the computer from the sleep mode. I thought that I had solved this problem by unplugging the drive's USB power cord from the power hub and inserting it into a different port. It seem to work fine for a few days and than this new problem popped up. Any assistance will help me sleep at night.

Time machine does not work properly in Lion

Hi,
I have upgraded from snow leopard to Lion but Time Machine seams to have a problem.
It continues to back up my files but I cannot enter the program to restore my files.

Follow these instructions, make a option bootable Snow clone and try Lion again. If Lion doesn't work again, then the Snow clone is just a option boot, drive erase and reverse clone away.
How can I uninstall OS X Lion and go back to Snow Leopard?
1: Copy your user file folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music, not Library) to a external blank Disk Utility formatted HFS drive (not TimeMachine) and disconnect all drives. Make a note of your username and hard drive name. Write down any essential information like passwords stored in keychains and product serial keys.
2: Stick the 10.6 installer disk into the machine and reboot holding the c key down. Second screen in choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
3: On the left select the hard drive makers name of your internal boot drive (important) then click Erase and Erase... button (if you want to wipe the drive of all lingering data then choose Security Option>Zero all data) when choosing a name for the drive, use the same drive name as before.
4: Quit and install 10.6, then go through setup, reboot and use the same user name as before. Software Update, install programs from fresh sources (enter any serial keys) Hold Option and click on Purchases in AppStore to redownload (not Lion of course) and then finally return user files to their respective folders on the Snow Leopard drive.
5: If you have issues with iPhoto, you can right click on the iPhoto Library and "Show Package contents" and in there is a folder with all your originals. Copy them out and delete the iPhoto Library and reboot, restart iPhoto and it should be recreated, which you can then import your copied originals again.
Note: using the same drive and user name as before, returning files exactly into their respective Music, Documents and Pictures folders like before matches any pathnames some files like iTunes has to the location of your files. If not done, then exclamation points will occur in iTunes when you click on a song. The iTunes Library will have to be opened in Text Edit and all the partial pathnames "find and replace" corrected to repair.
Optional, but recommended.
Ideally it's best to first Carbon Copy Cloner the 10.7 internal to another blank external HFS drive before doing the above steps 1-5 as that way you have a copy of everything in case you missed something or you need to hold option boot from the 10.7 clone. The clone can later be erased and used as a 10.6 clone. Or reversed cloned back onto the internal drive or as many external drives as needed. (don't use a clone on a different Mac)
Clones are hold option key bootable, TimeMachines drives are not.
Note: The above steps are ONLY for Mac's that didn't come with Lion preinstalled. For reverting a factory Lion to Snow Leopard requires other methods.

My time machine is not working and the disk utilities cant repair it and is asking me to format the drive again. How can I backup the files before formatting the drive so that I don't lose my files?

Hi
My time machine hard drive has stopped working after the latest update and the Disk Utilities says,:
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
How can I back up my files before reformatting when I can't even open the drive's folder?
Thanks for the help.

I think my time machine is not working correctly and I dont know how to get it back... I really need to get back my photos!!!!!
Exactly this was the way I USED to make restores of files and photos..
but know I CANT!!!!
When I am inside iPhoto y click on the Time Machine icon at the Dock and it goes to this...
at my right side there are the backups but when i click them nothing happens they are like NOT CLICKABLE...
PLEASEE!!! Help me!!

Time machine is not working. I get a message: You can't open the application "Time Machine" because it may be damaged or incomplete.

Time machine is not working under "Applications". I get this message: You can’t open the application “Time Machine” because it may be damaged or incomplete. What do I do?
Time machine under system preferences lets me setup time capsule. But backup fails because "Volume is in use" Help please!

It does sound like you have a corrupted install.
The volume in use error is something we see all the time.
Look at C12 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
But I suspect you have more serious issue.
I would run a disk verify on your local OS disk. A5 in the above reference has some info.

Why is Time machine backup not working after Mavericks upgrade?

Why is Time machine backup not working after Mavericks upgrade?

I had the same problem due to the Fire Wire port. Apple tested it told me it is OK!, I tried a new cable, and have tested both ports on my back up device. I find it strange that as soon as I installed Mavericks. The drive does work using USB. It could be a coincidence, I don't absolutely know at this point, my back up drive ports could stop working, but I doubt it!

Time machine was not working. I bought a new time machine and migrated time machine files to new time capsule; not recognized by yosemite

Time machine was not working after yosemite upgrade on new and old MacBooks in my house. I bought a new time machine and migrated time machine files to new time capsule. I changed the names of the older sparse bundles to the default values. Yosemite still does not recognize them.

I presume the bought a time machine means a time capsule.
How did you migrate the Time Machine files?
From where? A Time Capsule or external drive?
It is difficult to get TM working with Yosemite.. since it doesn't work after the upgrade on the old TM backup.. it will not work on the migrated files either.
You simply start a new backup and store the old backups for a few months until you are ready to dump them.
The instructions for inheriting old backups is B5 and B6 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
However it is just unlikely to work.. TM in Yosemite is very different. Broken even.
I also strongly recommend people to use Carbon Copy Cloner or some other 3rd party backup until Apple get the bugs fixed. And after several months.. they are still rampant.

Time machine will not work after upgrade

Since I upgraded to Mavericks on Oct. 22, Time Machine will not run properly, or at all for that matter. It tells me that it is 'Preparing Backup', but it was said that for over 4 days now. Suggestions?

I had a strange issue with Time Machine and Mavericks. Time machine wouldn't recognise the external USB drive I was using for backups. There was nothing in the logs, no errors, the time for the backup would come along and then it would skip to the next hour with no backup being done. What I was doing was removing the drive from Time Machine Preferences and re-adding it, TM would then start a manual backup and from that point it would run fine.
I ended up doing a Disc Verify on the drive (all ok, no issues) and shut the machine down. Today I booted up and staright away the TM Icon for the drive is correct and the TM is running as it used to.
I have three macs, all with external USB drives, the other two macs have no issues with TM, only my main one. Having a look at other issues, my external drive is a Western Digital unit so maybe that has something to do with it, though it can see the drive fine from Finder.
Anyway, if you are having similar issues, just run the Disc Verify Utility (and repair if there are errors) and hopefully it'll fix up that particular issue.

I have a 2013 macpro I upgraded to yosemite. Now I find time machine does not work, nor my old back up using a click free wireless back up. What is the status of time machine and yosemite?

What is the status of time machine not working with yosemite?
I upgraded mu mac pro to yosemite and since have found time machine does not work.
Also, my old backup via a clikfree wireless backup does not work any longer.
Is anyone working on this issue?
Is there anyway I can backup my information today and until time machine &
yosemite get fixed?

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time Machine will NOT work with Airport Disks!

It looks like Time Machine will not work with Airport Disks after all. All references to Airport have been removed from the Time Machine page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
It also specifically says: "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices."
Surely, they would have included the Airport Extreme Base Station in this list if it was supported.
I really hope there will be another firmware update for the AEBS which will bring compatibility with Time Machine, because Time Machine was the only reason for me to buy an AEBS. (I only use it as a small backup server, I don't even have wireless networking enabled. There were other solutions, e.g. from Synology, which are faster and more reliable than AEBS disk sharing, but Synology stated their network drives would not be compatible with Time Machine.)

Here's how you can potentially use your AirDisk with TimeMachine (beware that YMMV), but it should work as it works with every other "unsupported" device.
1) Mount your AirDisk so it appears on your Mac
2) Open Terminal.app
3) change directories to the AirDisk's root folder located in "/Volumes"
ie: cd "/Volumes/AirDisk Name"
4) execute this command to "bless" the drive to be used with time machine:
touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported
5) Start TimeMachine and if all went well, it should recognize your AirDisk drive and use it for TM.
This should also work on NFS shares, SMB shares, AFP shares, basically anything. It has worked up until the last developer seed, so unless they yanked this at the last minute, it should still work.
Now, the reason why Apple removed this feature may be due to the unreliability of the AirDisk, so be cautious.

Time machine is not working

I just got a new imac intel core i7 which is an upgrade from my power mac G4 MDD which I got in 2003. I transferred all the information from the power G4 using time machine and it worked fine. I then upgraded the OS to 10.6.4 given imac is intel core. All programs are working fine except I am unable to use time machine. It runs for a few gb and then the following error come on time machine buddy:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Backup content size: 237.9 GB excluded items size: 818.0 MB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 284.58 GB requested (including padding), 930.57 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Indexing a file failed. Returned 1 for: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/wx-2 .8-mac-unicode/wx/lib/floatcanvas/Utilities/_init_.py, /Volumes/Backups/Backups.backupdb/van (5)/2010-08-17-184416.inProgress/75B311E0-7C50-4BD3-B7AD-03E3A1B883B2/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/wx -2.8-mac-unicode/wx/lib/floatcanvas/Utilities/_init_.py
Aborting backup because indexing of file failed.
Stopping backup.
Copied 70375 files (17.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
Then when I try to verify and repair the disk, it does do it and keep on showing: " invalid node structure, invalid key length and invalid record count"
I have changed the external hard drive twice so I doubt that is the problem. Please help

Rajiv Jauhar wrote:
I excluded both files and it just worked. It seems to have backed up all the files.
That's a bit surprising (but good).
Is there a way to check?
If the backup completed normally, everything should be fine. If you want, you can browse your backups, and perhaps restore a few selected things to alternate locations (such as your desktop), and compare them, just to be sure. (If you're not sure how to do that, see #16 in the FAQ.)
Also are the files that I excluded important?
They're not critical, and reinstalling OSX would get fresh copies.
I did talk to AppleCare 4 days ago. The gentleman was very nice and helpful. He did not understand how to fix the problem so he was going to push it up to the next level but they have not responded. I must say that I am very disappointed. I have 3 IMAC computers, 1 power mac G4, a macbook pro laptop, an ipad, 2 iphones and several itouches and ipods. I love Apple but I am very disappointed with the service. I always get apple care when available and, fortunately, have never had to use it. Now I did and I really have not gotten the help that I wanted. Just my ranting. No matter, I am still going to stay with apple.
They will get back to you, sooner or later. Some of them don't seem to know a great deal about Time Machine, unfortunately, and this is not a common situation.
As long as you do have completed backups, you're probably ok. I'd suggest just keeping an eye on it for a while; if nothing else goes wrong, and you haven't heard from AppleCare, then decide if you want to go farther.
If you do, I'd suggest reinstalling OSX from your Install disc (that won't touch anything else). Then
download and install the 10.6.4 "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
That will get you a new, fresh copy of OSX. Try a backup to make sure everything's still ok, then remove the exclusions and see what happens. If it runs ok, then something in those two files was corrupted -- unusual, but as they say, "stuff happens."
Keep us posted.

After installing Yosemite Time machine does not work

Time machine no longer works after Yosemite installed. Can this be fixed?

Mine isn't working either. First time I've tried to backup an iMac and it is after 10.10.3 update. It won't complete the backup. File in finder ends in "in progress" - i have tried with two different drives, ran tests on both and on my startup disk. It is a brand new WD 2T My Passport for MAC and basically a brand new iMac (late 2014) - it will NOT complete a backup. I cannot find any answers on the support discussions - how can I get this working? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated - I'm concerned I don't have this machine backed up at all.
Here is what Time Machine is telling me (I tried disk utility on both of the external hard drives I have - and neither had an issue to fix):

Upgrade to lion and time machine does not work

I upgraded to Lion and my WD Live network drive that I always used for wireless time machine back ups no longer works. I get the following error:
Time Machine could not complete the backup.
The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features.
What can I do to fix this?

Your network drive isn't compatible with Lion. See #C16 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Once awake from sleep, time machine does not work via WIFI

I use my MacBookPro via WIFI and every time a put my MacBookPro asleep (with MAC OS 10.8.3), once I wake the machine back on, Time machine is not able to connect anymore to the backup NAS on the network.
I always have to turn OFF and ON again wifi to make it work.
What's wrong?
How can I solve this undesirable matter?
Thank you

Thanks,
But i do not have a WIFI problem in general on my Mac, it's just Time Machine that does not reconnect with the backub network drive unit.....
All the rest is working fine.
This is what I get:

Im using a network drive with time machine and im getting error 45. Time machine will not work now. Why?

I bought a seagate goflex home 2TB network drive. It worked with time machine for a couple of weeks than now it wont. It just says ERROR 45 now and will not back up. Why?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
According to several related Time Machine Error 45 threads in these forums, Time Machine is not well suited to backups on most non-Apple network drives.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/10744727#10744727
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15643759#15643759
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11929252#11929252
https://discussions.apple.com/message/13164522#13164522
One of the discussions provides an off-site link to these suggestions:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine is not working properly

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