Time Machine keeps "Backing Up", but doesn´t starts.

(am doing copy and paste of this question from other site which I posted, so to fix the issue, don´t get freaked out)
Hey everyone. I had my time machine in only wifi mode for like the last month or so, then I redicided to use the backing up feature and all kinds of weird things started happening.
At first, it just gave the message "Backing up" for hours, and it would just keep at that message. (I know that at some point it can take hours to actually start the backupafter it´s been of fo a while, but it´s not this case here) Then like yesterday it started backing up, but I turned down the computer as I thought it would be normal that my time capsule would work normally.
I unplugged it, and hited the reset switch several times, and nothing happened. It would not work. Am not a computer technician, I spend most of my time making music, so any help would be appreciated to keep my precious files safe. Cheers.

See my response to your other thread.

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Time Machine stopped backing up but doesn't give warning/error

Hi,
by chance I noticed, that Time Machine doesn't backup up any more, but still doesn't give errors. In Console I see the following for a now typical run:
21.04.15 09:58:11,493 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
21.04.15 09:58:12,043 com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/drosera-backup-02/Backups.backupdb
21.04.15 09:58:41,729 com.apple.backupd: 5.18 GB required (including padding), 96.84 GB available
21.04.15 09:58:55,149 com.apple.backupd: Copied 23 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
21.04.15 09:59:04,385 com.apple.backupd: Copied 36 files (93 bytes) from volume DATA.
21.04.15 09:59:06,100 mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
21.04.15 09:59:06,102 com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
21.04.15 09:59:07,668 com.apple.backupd: Deleted /Volumes/drosera-backup-02/Backups.backupdb/drosera/2015-04-20-183344 (24.0 KB)
21.04.15 09:59:07,668 com.apple.backupd: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
21.04.15 09:59:07,762 com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
The 5.18 GB are never backed up. The backup drive (drosera-backup-02) is attached by FireWire. I have checked the disk with First Aid, I have disconnected and reconnected it. I removed the backup disk from Time Machine, stopped TM and reconfigured. I stopped mds, ran backups and reenabled mds. All to no avail.
I am at a complete loss and I'd appreciate to get this running w/o having to remove all existing backups. Any ideas or pointers?
I'm running Mac OS X 10.7.5 on a Mac mini
Cheers
Frank

Thx. I had already tried the hints from mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume to no avail. Your tip to rebuild the Spotlight index would probably helped, too. But just before getting yout comment and after reading http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html and http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/69054/force-time-machine-to-perform-a-d eep-traversal I had simply removed /.fseventsd and reran a backup. That seems to have fixed the problem (at least for the time being).
Interesting side note: During the non-backup phase I created a new account on the Mac and ran TM. This triggered a one-time working backup of the whole system, but all subsequent backups again failed silently. Additionally the externally attached FireWire harddrive was always backed up correctly, only backups of the local drive failed.

My Time Machine keeps backing up and won't stop.

My Time Machine keeps backing up and won't stop. The problem started when it said I was out if space. It is supposed to delete the oldest backup. Now I cannot even backup at all. It just keep going and never stops, although it really does not work at all. I have used the disk utilities and iI have Zeroed out. The TC is a 1 TB and is about 13 months old. Right now it says "79.9 MB of 104.9 MB" and "backing up 961,837 items". I do not have the check mark in "Notify after old backups are deleted." It will stay stuck like this for hours and hours. The TC is plugged into a U-verse router and the 27" MAC is plugged into the TC.

So you already wiped the old backup and started again??
If that is the case it did a fresh full backup ok?
How much free space is on the TC now?
Do you happen to have multiple network links? Meaning do you have TC bridged to the U-verse router.. with both ethernet and wireless working at the same time. I discovered this one all by my loansome.. having multiple paths does not seem to worry most things on the computer.. but it totally kills TM.
I had the same sort of thing happening in testing a TC I am fixing. So I have multiple ethernet and wireless. The incremental backups became extremely slow.. by turning off wireless and one ethernet so there is only one route to the TC.. it flys again.

My Time Machine also runs "successfully" but doesn't back up anything.

I know on page 2 that this problem was already posted and solved, but it looked like the person didn't have Time Machine on or something like that. Can someone please give me a quick run down into why this is happening and how to fix it?
Thanks,
Chuck

Obviously I need help with why Time Machine is not backing anything up and not with why the Time Machine button doesn't work.
Thanks (again),
Chuck

Time machine says back up disk doesn't have enough room?

use to work no problem, now this... any help is appreciated.
macbook pro (late 2011, mavericks, 500gb HDD)
back up drive lacie and 500gb

I have had this problem with time machine on OS X Lion also.
About your only options are to Erase that drive then make a new TM backup or buy a new larger external drive.
Time machine is supposed to delete older backups to make room for new ones but in my experience that doesn't happen with the Lion TM system. Eraing the drive was what I had to do.

Yosemite: Time machine app backs up but won't launch

Since upgrading to Yosemite, my MacBook Air continues to run Time Machine backups (to a Synology NAS) but the actual Time Machine application fails to launch - the icon reacts to the clicked state but then nothing.
I'm running OSX 10.10.1 and my NAS is a DS211+ running DSM 5.1-5004 accessed via an Airport Extreme running 7.7.3
Any clues?

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

Time Machine keeps backing up to wrong external hard drive

I had TM working fine for several months with my LaCie external HD named "LaCie" via Firewire 800. I bought a larger LaCie HD, daisy chained to the open FW800 port on "LaCie", named it "LaCie 1TB" and moved the "Backups.backupdb" folder to it using the Disk Utility restore function per several posts found here. I changed TM preferences to point now to "LaCie 1TB" and everything worked.
Then I deleted the "Backups.backupdb" folder from "LaCie" and renamed the HD "LaCie 500". I moved my video files there and changed TM preferences to delete "LaCie 500" from the "do not backup" list. I reran TM and it again worked including backing up "LaCie 500".
Now the problem. Whenever I first turn on the external HD's, TM immediately begins making a new backup on "LaCie 500". I stop it. If I then select "Back Up Now" in TM, it correctly backups to "LaCie 1TB". I always delete the "Backups.backupdb" created on "LaCie 500". And it always repeats this at the next HD restart but always works correctly if the drives are already turned on when the next backup time is reached.
Is this a bug in TM or is there something I can do to stop it other than hooking up "LaCie 1TB" to a FW400 or USB port and making sure I turn it on first? I don't want to do that. Seems it should only backup to a drive named the same as the name selected in TM preferences. I have other drives to hook up too so it could get worse. Thanks.

Pondini wrote:
Just how did you do that? Did you erase the volume with Disk Utility, or use the Finder?
I just erased it with the finder.
So tonight I turned off TM and deleted the two preferences files. I turned TM back on and set it up again. It said the next backup was in a few minutes so I shut down the drives and waited a few minutes. I restarted them and nothing happened. I checked TM and it now said the next backup was in about an hour. I turned them off and on again and nothing happened. I also restarted the computer and the lock on the TM prefpane was unlocked again so that isn't fixed.
I then used some other tools I had and found a hidden file named ".001ff35b9356" on both drives. The file contents were:
V∞=„:ïA
Ç ıE…· ‰
I deleted this one on the first drive, "LaCie 500". I also noticed they both had a file called ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" on them but I left that alone.
I shut down and restarted both drives. Neither one mounted. So I shut them down again and this time they both mounted. TM did nothing. I had previously noticed that the icon for each of these drives changes to a time machine icon instead of the standard hard drive icon. For comparison I attached another old external drive I had and its icon stayed the standard hard drive icon. It also had the ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file on it but not the ".001ff35b9356" file on it.
I shut both drives down and waited for the next scheduled backup time to pass. I started them both up and again nothing happened and TM said the next backup was another hour out. I told it to back up now and it worked. So I'm not sure now what is happening. It isn't automatically backing up at all when I first turn on the drives. It seems just to push the next backup out an hour if they aren't attached when the times comes. I don't know how it's supposed to work. I thought it would start a backup immediately if it was overdue. When the drives are off TM says the next backup is "When disk is connected" but that isn't what it does now. I guess I'll use it for a while and see what happens next.
This shouldn't be this hard. Thanks for your help.

Time machine is backing up but can't go back in time.

I started using time machine this morning on my MB Pro. It has about 5 backups listed. Only problem is, when I click the time machine icon, it only shows the first screen and will not go back. The timeline on the right only shows now. It's not going back the few hours it has stored.

I had an issue which started very recently; I went into Time Machine to perform a small restore, I found that I couldn't move back in time and whats more the cancel button no longer worked; I had some difficulty getting out of the Time Machine interface.
After looking at settings, the machines Hostname, performing a restart - nothing cleared the issue.
As this was a recent change in operation I thought a little about the software changed in the last week; my Antivirus has upgraded.
Looking at the setting I explicitly excluded the Time Machine drive from any scans; now everything is fine!
So, if you are having issues, aside from the other checks, any Antivirus may be having a side effect and an impact on Time Machine.

Time machine not backing up new changes

Time machine was working perfectly fine until this past weekend. Now, it seems like it's not recognizing any new changed on my hard drive. The time machine still runs successfully, but it just repeats the same back up over and over again. I've checked the logs in console (see below)
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting standard backup
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Dec 15 00:35:33 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 424.6 MB requested (including padding), 281.50 GB available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Copied 5 files (33 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Adrian Ma’s MacBook Pro/2009-12-13-233455: 281.50 GB now available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backup completed successfully.
I've also downloaded Time Tracker and it says that things were fine till this weekend and then everything for the past couple of days have 0 bytes backed up. Any ideas what could be the problem? I haven't done anything special or changed anything besides install Google Chrome. The external hard drive I back up to may have been unplugged/plugged but not before it's unmounted or the computer is off. I don't think I unmounted while time machine was backing up, but if I did could this be the problem?

ecanza wrote:
Solved! Thanks for the swift replies! I didn't do a Verify Disk, but I did do a Verify Disk Permissions without restarting recently.
Are you sure? Because +Verify Permissions+ doesn't do it. Only +*Verify Disk,+* or altering any partition on your boot drive.
There are some 3rd-party disk repair/maintenance apps that use the same internal OSX routine as +*Repair Disk,+* so if you used one of them, you'd have the same problem.
And by the way, there's no point to running +Verify Permissions+ -- you might as well just run +Repair Permissions.+
I just restarted and Time Machine has in fact "caught up" with the most recent changes! Cheers Pondini.
Oh, well, whatever it was, I'm glad it's fixed! And thanks for the star.

I'm trying to set up time machine to back up on an external HD connected t my airport extreme, but the disk doesn't show as an option in the time machine selecting a disk, any suggestion anyone? My mac "sees" the airport extreme ??

I'm trying to set up time machine to back up on an external HD connected t my airport extreme, but the disk doesn't show as an option in the time machine selecting a disk, any suggestion anyone? My mac "sees" the airport extreme ??

The first important thing to consider here is that Apple does not support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port on the AirPort Extreme, so that may likely have something to do with your difficulties.
If you want to continue to try this, the drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and you almost always have to use a powered USB hub with a drive at the port of the Extreme...even if the hard drive has its own power supply....because the port on the Extreme is under powered.
Most users who try this unsupported method have corruption difficulties sooner or later, but we do hear from some users who seem to be able to make it work.
The bottom line is that there is no support from Apple on this if you have difficulties, so you may want to consider a secondary backup plan for your important data.

Time Machine Backs Up but doesn't retrieve

I use to have Time Machine back up to an external disk that was connected to a shared computer on my network. It worked great. It kept a disk image on the external disk which it mounted each time Time Machine would back up or when I entered Time Machine. Recently I have connected that external disk directly to my computer by USB. Time Machine is still backing up to this drive, it still knows that my oldest back up is from November 2007 and keeps track of it's latest backups. BUT, when I open Time Machine it no longer mounts that disk image and there is no backup history.
What have I done wrong? Do I need to delete my disk image and start over?

james a Leff wrote:
Thanks (though I've found that genius bar guys, if you hit the right one, are better than applecare guys; the latter follow scripts and flowcharts, but the former are freer to think on their feet, not assume you're a newbie, etc etc).
In most cases, that may be true. But the folks at the Apple Stores rarely know much about Time Machine, since they don't actually use it. It's worth a try (and cheaper if you don't have AppleCare), but we get many reports here of wrong advice from the Genius Bar about Time Machine.
I guess one option is to wipe the disk, wipe my time machine and finder plists, and start again.
I'd lose all previous backups, but I'm pretty sure (knock formica) I haven't suffered any data loss recently.
That's always an option. Do you have another drive? I always recommend secondary backups, on separate hardware, anyway, but especially if you're thinking of doing that. Once you hit Erase, you have no backups.
Just to be sure we're on the same plane......I'm talking about going to the TM icon in menu bar with option held down, and choosing "browse other time machine disks". I get no choices. But with the wording of "other", should I see my main TM disk there?
Yes. It should list all TM backups that OSX can find, for any Mac, including yours. The only exception is, if they've been marked as corrupted. See #E2 in Troubleshooting.

After upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?

after upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?
before the upgrade, i could open time machine without the need for having the back up disk plugged in.

Ok. I got it to work, sort of....
As I mentioned before I tried the "disk password" and the "Time capsule Password" options to see if I can start the back up again or start a new backup. Neither worked. So I tried the firmware down grade, but like you said that did not work. I then decided to try the "Account password" option and I have never used this option before becasue it states that if there is data on the drive it would not be acessable after creating an account. Since I wiped out the disk that was nno problem. When I created the new account and choose the drive it asked for the user name and password. I entered the info for the new account I just created(FYI this has nothing to do with your login username and password), bingo! It worked!
Now I have two partitions on the TC disk. The old one and now the new account. I am guessing this is to be used if I have multiple computers, which I don't.
I any case, I am going to wipe out everything again and try again to do a backup the way I had it before.

Time Machine keeps giving me an error message when I try to back up to my Lacie drive.

Time Machine keeps giving me an error message when I try to back up to my Lacie drive. It won't back up and I can't find where to fix it.

I was having the same problem with my LaCie hard drives, both of them had errors like that and wouldn't eject properly. They would be fine after turning off and then remounting and so on, but then it would start again after a while. So I looked on LaCie's web site for any software updates and I found a usb firmware update from last October and applied it to both drives and now they're perfect. Sorry, I can't find it on their web site right now, but you might want to remember this if it persists and apply the update if you haven't.

I would like to use time Machine to back up to a network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it

I currently have a mini server (OSX10.8.5, server 2.2.2) that I am using Time Machine to back up 4 external drives that are connected to the server via firewire 800. I would like to use Time Machine to back up to a windows network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it for use.
Can this be done
Thanks for any and all help

The supported targets for Time Machine backups are local (direct-connected) disks, and network targets include Time Capsule, a disk hanging off the current-generation AirPort (though not earlier AirPort devices), and OS X Server systems.
The Time Machine storage is based on the HFS+ file system, so I would not expect TM to work with SMB file services.
While there are hacks to allow Time Machine to access network drives, I would not consider those to be reliable. Skim the forum and the 'net for related details, and for previous discussions of setting this up and the related issues that can arise.
Remember to test the recovery with whatever you decide to use; whole point of backups is the ability to restore the data, after all.
If you want to learn more about Time Machine, Pondini is an excellent resource.

I am trying to update my time machine backup on time capsule, but time machine keeps trying to create an entirely new backup (evidenced by the 200GB backup size). How can I get time machine to modify my old backup rather than create a new one?

I am trying to update my time machine backup on time capsule, but time machine keeps trying to create an entirely new backup (evidenced by the 200GB backup size). How can I get time machine to modify my old backup rather than create a new one?

It must have found the old backup corrupt.. so you will more than likely have little choice. You can archive off the old backup if it is still useful.
You can also verify it. See A5 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
He also has some info on this problem. eg C13.

Time Machine keeps "Backing Up", but doesn´t starts.

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