Time Machine Keeps Freezing???

Hello! My computer keeps freezing up about 10 minutes into Time Machine. I have an internal 320gb drive and I am attempting to back it up to the Maxtor OneTouch4 Mini 250gb external hard drive I was using previously to back up my PowerBook G4. Also is it possible to keep my G4 files on there and use it to back up my MacBook with Time Machine?

Hard to tell exactly what's going on here.
What's now on your external? TM backups from your G4? How is it formatted? How many partitions, and of what type?
Regardless, you do need to know that your backup drive is too small, unless most of your internal HD is free. Even if you erase your 250 gb external.
The "rule of thumb" is, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up. This is for one copy of everything on your HD, plus copies of many previous versions of changed files, plus some workspace.
In reality, though, it depends mostly on how you use your Mac. If you frequently update many large files, even 3 times may not be enough. But if you mostly change only small files, and not continually, 1.5 might be enough.
All that said, TM should send you a message if it doesn't have enough room.
If this happened the first time you tried to back up, here's an article that might help: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550?viewlocale=en_US
Otherwise, you might want to download the Time Machine Buddy widget. It will show TM's messages from one backup run at a time in a small window. You may have to refresh it, but it ought to indicate what's going on, at least until the freeze. Copy them (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the window) and post here.

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My time machine keeps freezing when I am backing up

I have recently purchased a seagate 1.5TB external hard drive and am trying to back up my computer using time machine.
My compute is 56GB large.
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What should I do?
It says it is compaitble with USB 2.0 and 3.0
My MBP is from late 2011 and I think it is 3.0 yet when it does backup a bit it doesnt do it particularly fast then it pauses.

If you have a late 2011 MBP, then you have USB 2.0 ports. Only the mid-2012 models came with USB 3.0 ports. Is your Seagate a USB 3.0 model? It should be backward compatible with your machine; you just won't acheive USB 3.0 speeds. How did you format your drive? To use with Time Machine, it must be formated as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
I'm suspecting (and rather hoping) that it's just a formatting problem. Try using Disk Utility to reformat the drive as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" in order to work with TM.
Good luck,
Clinton

Time Machine keeps quitting unexpectedly!

I have a time capsule and just recently, every time I open time machine it freezes for about 2-5 seconds then quits. There is no way I can keep it open. It will still backup, but I cannot access those files. I have tried restarting, but it did not help.
any ideas?

*Anti-Virus Software*
If you have anti-virus software running try disabling, launch Time Machine again, and see if you can access previously backed up data. Sometimes such programs scanning processes can interfere with Time Machine.
Cheers!

I'm using the migration assistant everything was OK until last night, the blue bar stop advancing and the time remaining keep freeze in 4hrs. What should I do?

I'm using the migration assistant everything was OK until last night, the blue bar stop advancing and the time remaining keep freeze in 4hrs. What should I do?

Were you migrating from a Time Machine backup or via WiFi, ethernet, or Firewire?
Here's a great site that should help you get it sorted out.
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

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?
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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.

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.

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?
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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.

Does Time Machine keep backups of my emails?

I was wondering if Time Machine keeps a backup of all my stored emails and the folders I created in Mail.
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Thanks

I gave up on TM as a worthwhile backup solution, but dee if the gree demo of BackInTime can help...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/backintime.html
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

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Try deleting your iPod Photo Cache folder. See:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1314

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Any body know how to change what older backups Time Machine keeps? I know how to change how frequently Time Machine backs up (sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int XXXX),
but what I want is for it to not save so many recent backups and keep more of the old ones. Right now it saves hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily for the last month, and weekly for each month until you run out of space. I don't need all the daily stuff, and would really like to keep more of the monthly. The older the info, the harder it is to recover by other means. What I'd like to do is keep older backups and lose more of the intermediate ones.
Any ideas?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an 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. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Time machine keeps losing backups

Time machine keeps losing backups on 10.8 machine.
I do Verify Backups or Enter Time Machine or Browse Other Time Machine Disks and all I can see is an older, concurrent machine.
While I can tell it to run a backup, and it will complete apparently successfully (and I'll be able to view it) the backups won't be there tomorrow. This makes Time Machine unusable at best.
What gives? Why are the backups vanishing?
WD MyBookLive
2010-mid MacBook Pro
This maching is also having trouble with scp, and other secure connections. But why would Time Machine report that it works, only to throw everything away?
Need help.
-Crissa

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil listbackups | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal 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. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

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.

After using Time Machine-Computer Freezes on startup and will not sleep.

I've narrowed down my iMac issues to Time Machine.
After I back up with Time Machine, my iMac freezes on start up ( I have to turn it off and turn it back on again for normal start up) every time I turn it on and it will not sleep.
I reset the SMC, startup in safe mode, and do all of the troubleshooting to get it back so it starts up without freezing (sometimes my troubleshooting works). I've even reinstalled SL a couple of times and that seems to have helped but...
...when I back up with Time Machine, the freezing issues and non-sleeping issue return.
I've just installed the 10.6.2 update and my iMac is now working perfectly, no freezing on start up and it sleeps.
I'm afraid to use Time Machine for fear of the problems returning.
Any ideas on why Time Machine would corrupt my system? Any thoughts on how I can remedy the situation?

Hello m:
The preference file (plist) tells OS X what default and/or user preferences to apply to a device or a program. They rarely become corrupt, but if they do they cause all sorts of odd behavior.
After you trash the preference file and restart, OS X will rebuild the missing file with default values. If you have some personal preferences, you would need to enter those.
Barry
P.S. The preference file I mentioned is located in Macintosh HD>library>preferences
Message was edited by: Barry Hemphill

Time capsule and time machine keep disconnecting

My Time Machine keeps losing connection to my Time Capsule and dropping it's wireless internet connection. The internet comes back, but when I click on the Time Machine settings and open Airport Utility, it shows the internet connection as Green, but it never finds the Time Capsule.
A. How do I get it to reconnect.
B. What is causing it to disconnect?
I have an iMac (Intel) with OS 10.7.5. I have Time Machine setup to backup my iMac wirelessly to a Time Capsule. I also have a cable modem providing wireless access. The Time Capsule is setup in Bridge Mode.
Thanks in advance!
John

Hi John, let's see if we can stop the disconnect.
Though all of these steps may or may not be needed, I'm including them all.
Make a New Location, Using network locations in Mac OS X ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2712
10.7 & 10.8…
System Preferences>Network, top of window>Locations>Edit Locations, little plus icon, give it a name.
10.5.x/10.6.x/10.7.x instructions...
System Preferences>Network, click on the little gear at the bottom next to the + & - icons, (unlock lock first if locked), choose Set Service Order.
The interface that connects to the Internet should be dragged to the top of the list.
10.4 instructions...
Is that Interface dragged to the top of Network>Show:>Network Port Configurations.
If using Wifi/Airport...
Instead of joining your Network from the list, click the WiFi icon at the top, and click join other network. Fill in everything as needed.
If that doesn't work try changing channels on your Router.

HT201250 time machine keeps shutting off

My time machine keeps shutting down.

Shutting off is a problem..
Certainly check the cord.. pull it out of the TC and inspect the pins in the TC and the contacts inside the cord end.. unplug it for safety .. you are looking for burn marks where the contact hasn't been good. If all is good I really doubt cords are a major issue.. Apple supply good quality ones and other than a pet chewing on it or the cord being bent and handled a lot, which is unlikely with a TC.. it should be fine.
The A1409 is gen 4 and you have an early model which is great.
You need to use the v5 utility so you can see the logs. I am not sure what OS you run, but if you are on Lion download the utility.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
If you are on ML tell us and I can give instructions to install it.. it will not install simply due to the out of date installer.. not incompatibility.
Once you can access the logs you can see a bit more detail of what is happening and track it .. if it keeps dying see if it has popped up temperature warnings or any kind of indication of trouble.
Apple used a WD green drive in them.. certainly I have seen more dead drives lately than on any of the early models. I don't know how apple has the cheek to call the cheapest green drive on a market server grade.. but they do. A dead or dying drive can have all kinds of effects.
If you have the skills open it and inspect it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/Apple_Time_Capsule

Time Machine Keeps Freezing???

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