Time machine is unable to auto-backup....

Time machine is unable to auto-backup as it is unable to detect time capsule disk. However it will do a backup once the disk is manually located using 'select disk' option. This problem started when our house network was upgraded to fibre optic network. Earlier it was working prefectly fine on cable network. Would appreciate if someone can advise the solution to the problem.

Looks like a mounting issue perhaps? Often solved by power-cycling.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while ...

Hi,
I've looked all around the forums for the answer to this one and I'm still unable to get it. So I'm getting this error "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume". This started happening after I turned off and on FileVault. I was having a problem with it and turning it on an off got rid of that problem, but created this one. I've noticed that when I shut down the computer and filevault accesses the TM hard drive, it can back up.....but then when I'm logged on, or I want it to back up I get the error. I've tried fixing the drive, removing the in progress file and resetting the PRAM (i think that's what it was called). I'm starting to run out of options and have no other drive to back all this info on to reformat it.
I really don't want to loose all my stuff.
Please help!
Daria

nautical_stars wrote:
Hi,
I've looked all around the forums for the answer to this one and I'm still unable to get it. So I'm getting this error "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume". This started happening after I turned off and on FileVault.
Usually this message happens when you replace an external disk that was being backed-up by Time Machine with another one of the same name.
Since File Vault works by making a sparse image of your home folder, and it's treated as a volume just as a HD is, that's probably what's happening here: the new sparse image has the same name as the old one, but isn't the old one.
First, consider whether you really need File Vault. It doesn't work well with Time Machine: you can't see or restore individual items in your home folder, and it only gets backed-up when you log out.
If you have a lot of other things, say photos, videos, and/or music that don't need to be encrypted, perhaps there's an easier way to secure our sensitive data. You can create an encrypted disk image via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder), then copy the sensitive documents into it. Then the rest of your home folder is backed-up normally, and individual items can be viewed and restored in the usual fashion.
But if you do continue using FileVault, you may have to use TM to delete all backups of it, via the instructions in item #12 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum. That should then allow the new version of your encrypted home folder to be backed-up by TM.

Time Machine Error "Unable to complete backup"

I have not backed up my hard drive for about 30 days. When I plug my external hard drive in, Time Machine "prepares backup" for a while, then gives me the following message:
*Time Machine Error*
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
I tried unplugging and re-plugging, rebooting my computer, trashing the ".inprogress" backup file and restarting. It did not help. While it time machine is preparing the backup, my computer runs crazy slow, with the rainbow pinwheel spinning for about 5-10 seconds just about every time I click the mouse, in any program.
Per someone's suggestion, I put "sudo grep backupd /var/log/system.log" into terminal, and this is what came up:
"No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.98 GB requested (including padding), 70.16 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Indexing a file failed. Returned -12 for: /Applications/iChat.app, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb/My Computer (2)/2011-01-13-113417.inProgress/CB0D491E-EF04-48A0-9AE9-32AE43E9209C/Macintosh HD/Applications/iChat.app
Aborting backup because indexing a file failed.
Stopping backup."
This time, it was apparently iChat, but in each of the three times I've tried to backup and gotten this error message, a different file has been the culprit for the indexing error.
Any suggestions?

orchestr wrote:
Indexing a file failed. Returned -12
see [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/C3.html] user tip by Pondini.
JGG

Time machine error unable to complete backup. an error occured

Hi All,
I have a question: i try to set up timemachine. Everything seems to work. but i cant get the first backup, it gives me the follow error: time machine error unable to complete backup. an error occured while copying files to the backup volume
My setup: an internet wireless router with a ethernet connection. On the ethernet connection i have a FreeCom Network Drive.
The Freecom Network drive have fat32, i think i cant format the netwerk drive cause there is some software on it, that give me access to my network drive via lan.
I configure that i can have acces to my netwerk drive. I can setup it from Time Machine, and Time Machine starts to put data on my network drive. After a while (mostly between 500mb-1,2 GB) it gives me the follow error: time machine error unable to complete backup. an error occured while copying files to the backup volume.
What to do???

Hi Norm,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
(Repair both Drives)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

HT3275 what do I do when time machine says: Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder?

I am trying to back up my imac using an external storage: My passport Studio 1TB. Each time it trys to back up Time machine says: Unable to complete back up. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem? Thanks

Plowie,
Do a search in Discussions, "An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
Many of us are having this problem and no fix has been offered, that I could find.
Unless you call "eject the external HDD; turn off; turn back on" a fix. That's what I have to do every 2 or 3 days; I even have to "force eject", with the concomitant warning message that you could lose data, etc.

Time Machine Error: Unable to complete backup. An error ocurred while copy

Hi.
Everytime Time Machine tries to update my backup copy is gives me the same error: "Unable to complete backup. An error ocurred while copying files to the backup volume."
What's going on and how can I solve this?
Thanks.
Regards,
Telmo

I have had this problem and solved it. It began when I upgraded to Snow Leopard server after a hard drive failure under Leopard Server. My problem was caused by a number of bad files.
To locate the files that are stopping the backup, open the Console utility in the Utilities folder. On the top left, show the Log List, and select the ALL Messages. Then in the search box, top right, enter .backup , this will locate all the backup logs. Go to the bottom of the log and locate the log that reads "stopping backup." Then, look at the log directly after "stopping backup," this log should contain the error message. In my case the log had an error -41, and the file path and name were listed. After locating and removing the bad file, run your backup again. If you have this problem again, repeat this process.
I had about 15 files with this problem, and oddly they all came from either a very old Mac OS X backup or had been moved from a Window XP computer using file sharing.
Hope this helps.

Time Machine Failure - Unable to create backup directory

I've been using time machine for months with no problems. It seems like since I went to the 10.5.2 update I started having problems.
Time machine fails and says a problem occurred creating a backup directory. I'm running an external drive formated to the MAC Extended Journeled. I also set my computer share name with no punctuation and no spaces.
Today I got the failure and I ran repair disc in disk utility and it could not repair the disk. So I erased it, rebooted and reconfigured time machine.
Started running the backup and about 30 minutes into it stopped with the same error.
Any thing I can try?

Seems I have same problem, I came here for the answer, only to find there appears to be none!
I started off with a new 250Gb internal drive, 50 "Real" Gb to Boot Camp, rest to Mac. Re-installed from original Apple install disks to TIGER, then upgraded to LEOPARD with the Apple upgrade disk that came with the machine as an uninstalled upgrade. All firmware and software updates up to date.
First tried a Maxtor 4+ ext 750Gb Firewire drive for Time machine, 400Gb to Time Machine, other partition for other stuff. Every backup failed with Time Machine, same as the unfortunate gentleman in the pages above. Super-Duper backup to that same drive/partition worked perfectly.
So I bought a 250Gb 2.5" Western Digital drive, put it in a USB/Firewire case and tried that, but every time same problem. It would stall once 123.85Gb of 143.8Gb completed, and get no further. After a few days a reboot or forcequit was needed to stop the process, and on attempting to restart time machine later would only get to about 32kb and fail stating there was not enough space on the drive. (123Gb already backed up, only 19Gb to go, and 106Gb free on the backup drive)
I have re-formatted (Standard Mac extended/journalled format) the drive several times now, and always same result. I have checked the drive, repaired it, and written it over with Zeroes after formatting even, still same resuly, exactly 123.85Gb into the backup it stops and goes no further. I have tried with both the firewire, and the USB plugged into the drive, same result. Time Machine does not even have the courtesy to report which file it got stuck on, so that I could manually delete it if that was the problem. Anyone found the answer to this yet?

"Time Machine is unable to complete backup" error message

I've tried to run Time Machine 3 times since last night and each time it gets through about 85 GB with about 150 GB remaining. Then a message comes up that says "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." I checked the Support Troubleshooting section before the last attempt, and reformatted the disk as it suggested. (The disk is a new Western Digital 500 GB). Based on the response to a similar discussion posted recently, I went into my Console and copied the below. Obviously this is all Greek to me, so if anyone has any insight on how I can get Time Machine to work as it's intended, I'd sure appreciate it!
Emilie
5/11/08 12:40:23 PM Disk Utility[51268]
5/11/08 12:40:53 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 12:41:30 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 12:43:03 PM DYMO Label[51342] * -[NSConcreteTextStorage useTypingAttributesFontSize]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x167410
5/11/08 12:43:03 PM DYMO Label[51342] <NSATSTypesetter: 0x16ab30>: Exception * -[NSConcreteTextStorage useTypingAttributesFontSize]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x167410 raised during typesetting layout manager <NSLayoutManager: 0x169eb0>
1 containers, text backing has 0 characters
selected character range {0, 0} affinity: upstream granularity: character
marked character range {0, 0}
Currently holding 0 glyphs.
Glyph tree contents: 0 characters, 0 glyphs, 1 nodes, 32 node bytes, 0 storage bytes, 32 total bytes, 0.00 bytes per character, 0.00 bytes per glyph
Layout tree contents: 0 characters, 0 glyphs, 0 laid glyphs, 0 laid line fragments, 1 nodes, 32 node bytes, 0 storage bytes, 32 total bytes, 0.00 bytes per character, 0.00 bytes per glyph, 0.00 laid glyphs per laid line fragment, 0.00 bytes per laid line fragment
, glyph range {0 0}. Ignoring...
5/11/08 12:53:26 PM SpamSieve[51227] * -[NSCFNumber count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x313be0
5/11/08 12:53:26 PM SpamSieve[51227] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: '* -[NSCFNumber count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x313be0' invoked observer method: '* -[ABAddressBook databaseChangedExternally:]' observer: 0x4f75430 notification name: 'ABDatabaseChangedNotificationPriv'
5/11/08 12:53:58 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 12:55:11 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x6c66c6].com.apple.finder[40722]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:19 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x719719].com.apple.finder[51524]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:27 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71a71a].com.apple.finder[51527]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:35 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71b71b].com.apple.finder[51531]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:43 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71c71c].com.apple.finder[51533]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:51 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71d71d].com.apple.finder[51537]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:55:59 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71e71e].com.apple.finder[51539]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:07 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x71f71f].com.apple.finder[51543]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:15 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x720720].com.apple.finder[51546]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:23 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x721721].com.apple.finder[51549]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:32 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x722722].com.apple.finder[51553]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:41 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x723723].com.apple.finder[51557]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:49 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x724724].com.apple.finder[51559]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:56:58 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x725725].com.apple.finder[51563]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:57:08 PM com.apple.launchd[213] ([0x0-0x726726].com.apple.finder[51566]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
5/11/08 12:57:16 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 12:57:52 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 1:04:21 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 1:18:34 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 1:26:28 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 1:27:58 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[51425]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 1:28:07 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[52109]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 1:29:04 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[52113]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 1:29:11 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[52128]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 1:51:17 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 2:08:20 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 2:29:00 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 4:08:42 PM mdworker[51312] Cannot find function pointer MetadataImporterPluginFactory for factory 1674F1EB-76AA-4CAB-A44F-789AB49B4980 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x1434d0 </Applications/RealPlayer.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/RealMedia Metadata Importer.mdimporter> (bundle, loaded)
5/11/08 4:38:38 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 5:03:35 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 5:11:30 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 5:12:54 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[54826]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 5:13:03 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[55455]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 5:13:52 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[55457]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 5:14:00 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10a5a0.mdworker[55470]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault
5/11/08 5:26:11 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 5:33:57 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 6:53:34 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 7:02:55 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 7:03:27 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 7:03:41 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
5/11/08 8:10:45 PM mdworker[51312] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.

Well now I've got a whole new, much bigger problem. I did the renaming and then went through the indexing procedure for the 3 partitions of my main drive. So after that I did a restart. However, after the restart, there were (and are) no icons on my desktop. Nothing for my drives, files, etc. The only thing that shows is the dock at the bottom. If I open an application from the dock, it opens fine and then I've got the menu bar at the top. But the finder won't open. When this first happened, and I checked the Spotlight icon top right, it said was 'estimating index time" for both of my external hard drives (which I did not select when I was in the Privacy tab, etc.). One of those has my iPhoto library of 5,000+ photos and one is the empty back-up drive for Time Machine. Those "estimating indexing time" messages stayed for some time but have now gone away (without ever indicating that indexing was taking place), but still no change. I've restarted again and it's the same. Help!

HT3275 The error message I get with Time Machine is 'Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.' Any idea how I solve this problem?

I am a little perplexed. The Time Machine does seem to be backing up my data but I continually get the following message displayed on my screen 'Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.' I am using a WD My Passport for Mac portable hard disk drive.

Hi Peter,
http://pondini.org/TM/C10.html

Time Machine says, Unable to Complete Backup

There seem to be a lot of variants of my problem on this forum, but each one is different. After several months working well, about 3 weeks ago the Time Machine on my iMac quit doing its backups to my Time Capsule. I get the message, "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory."
Repairing permissions, restarting the computer, and unplugging/replugging the Time Capsule did not help. Manually requesting a backup doesn't work either.
My computer knowledge is rather rudimentary, so if you reply, please please use step-by-step explanations, define any acronyms, etc.
Another question: is there a way to connect the Time Capsule to my computer by cable, and use it as effectively just an external drive. e.g. backing up by manual copying?
Here is the system log from a failed backup:
Jan 4 13:55:09 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Backup requested by user
Jan 4 13:55:09 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Starting standard backup
Jan 4 13:55:09 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Backup destination alias resolved to path: /Volumes/Time Capsule
Jan 4 13:55:10 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/iMac_000d936fb4dc.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of iMac
Jan 4 13:55:10 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of iMac/Backups.backupdb
Jan 4 13:55:13 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Failed to create progress log file at path:/Volumes/Backup of iMac/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2008-12-15-175337.inProgress/.Backup.252798913.05373 3.log.
Jan 4 13:55:13 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: HARD DRIVE
Jan 4 13:55:13 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Error: (-36) Creating directory 6C565DE2-06A5-419E-8CE8-4C56AEA21C5B
Jan 4 13:55:13 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Failed to make snapshot.
Jan 4 13:55:18 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Backup failed with error: 2
Jan 4 13:55:27 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jan 4 13:55:28 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8456]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jan 4 13:59:57 iMac sudo[8483]: alexander : TTY=ttys000 ; PWD=/Users/alexander ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/grep backupd /var/log/system.log

Ken,
This thread may be of interest if you have not already read it.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8354256&#8354256
Did you interrupt a backup at some stage or did you not eject the Time Capsule at the conclusion of a previous backup before shutting down your Mac?
Is there sufficient free space on Time Capsule to cater for your backups? The backup volume needs to be about 3 times the size of your Mac HD used space.
Chris

Time Machine Error: Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

Hi,
I'm using time machine to do my backups but now is not working.
I'm getting the following error:
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.
Thanks for your help

See #C10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine Error-Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copyi

My son played the video game Spore on my iMac Saturday. An hour or two later I sat down at the computer and the Time Machine Error message box was in the middle of the screen:
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
I downloaded Time Machine Buddy and this is my error: Error (-36) No Copy/Users/iMac/Library/Application Support/Firefox Profiles

norauc wrote:
I am having the same issue, I got the latest security update and then Time Machine just gets stuck for hours and then says error, run Disk Utility, which I have and it says everything is fine. Run Time Machine again and same thing.
As posted above, see #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time machine is unable to complete backup

Three days ago my time machine stopped backing up my files with the error message, "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume."
Apple support took me through a partion of the the backup hard drive. I then used Utilities to make sure there was no problem with my harddrive, it's files and even the back up hard drive. Once again I received the failed message. I've done the partion process three times with no success in backing up my hard drive.
I've notice on line several people having time machine problems within last 5 days, this cluster raises an interesting red flag with time machine program.
What do I do now? Is there any way to reload the time machine program. My suspicion is the program has a flaw since every other fix has been tried.
HELP!!!

You may have to re-install the system to re-install time machine.
This error generally represents a problem communicating with the backup device ie. bad usb/firewire/wirelessconnection to the device. Do you have another external device you could try it with? sometimes the external device is at fault.

Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup... I haven't solved yet

I have an iomega ultramax 1TB HD (firewire) that this company has used to backup this computer for some time before I came here. It continued to backup this Mac (OS X 10.5.8) for about 8 months until it kept failing. We replaced the power cord and it seemed to work again but failed to complete any backups. I can copy files directly to the drive so it seems ok. It will run all the way through a backup, for example it will say it is copying xMB of 132.3MB and go until it reaches 132.3. Then it seems to try to restart but only to do the same thing. Then I get the error message "Latest backup: failed" and the message as in the title of this post. I tried starting some backups manually but that got the same result.
I installed the Time Machine Buddy widget and sometimes I don't get a complete error message but then I got one that said it had an error copying a specific file. I deleted that file and now just get incomplete error messages again but it keeps "failing" in the same way. The buddy does say it copied x number of files (one time ~1300 files, another time ~700 files) but I don't find any files or backup data on the external HD. There is plenty of space available. It almost seems as if it just can't finish the backups but I can't be 100% sure on that until I catch it in progress a few more times.
Does anyone have any ideas or just how I can take the next step in diagnosing the problem?

Start with the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Depending on what the messages are, you'll probably end up in #C3 there. As you'll see, lots of things can cause that, so you may have to try several fixes.
If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.
To eliminate some possible conflicts and problems, do all the things in #D2 there.

Time Machine Error - unable to complete backup. An error occurred wile copying files to the backup volume. What do I do?

Looking for help in how to get things up and running again. Time Machine has worked great since February 2010. Then two weeks ago, I stared getting this message and the backups are failing to take place as they had before. I have tried scanning for viruses and deleting a few files, but noting seems to be the trick. I would welcome some ideas, guidance or expertise.

Suggest that you start with Pondini's excellent Time Machine - Troubleshooting guide.
See # C3
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine is unable to auto-backup....

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