Time Machine keeps re-creating backups

I'm having an issue with Time Machine on SL and wondered if theres a solution?
I'm running SL and use Time Machine to back up to a Western Digital NAS. All seems good and the backups seems to be fine, however every couple of days I get a message from time machine saying:
Time Machine completed a verification of
your backups. To improve reliability, Time
Machine must create a new backup for you.
Click "Start New Backup" to create a new backup. This will
remove your existing backup history. This could take
several hours.
Click "Back Up Later" to be reminded tomorrow. Time
Machine won't perform backups during this time.
I've checked the Apple support pages and it just says that this is an identified issue, but doesn't give a solution..
Has anyone else got any suggestions how to stop this? Obviously if I say 'Backup later', I don't get any more backups? As i'm am writing this, Time Machine is deleting a 310Gb backup file which is perfectly good, only to re-create it again and render me without a backup until the new one is created..

According to this Web page, what you're doing "may work as a destination for Time Machine backups, but it’s not recommended."

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Time Machine error while creating backup folder

Several times today I have gotten a popup message. "Time Machine error while creating backup folder". I click OK, and then the message appears again after a hour or so. I am using a WD My Book external drive as my backup media. I looked at the drive in Finder and the older (yesterday and beyond) backup folders are there.

always a pleasure doing business with you, dear sir
JGG

My time machine keeps saying the backup disk cannot be mounted. how do I fix it?

my time machine keeps saying that the backup disk cannot be mounted. we cannot figure out why this is happening. We have a 500GB time capsule /wireless router and using a Macbook . any ideas?

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

Time machine keeps duplicating my backup

I tried searching the forum for this topic but didn't have any luck...
I've got my time machine backing up to a 1TB hard drive connected to my airport extreme. This seems to work just fine, but every couple days time machine will start entirely backing up my system again adding a "1" in front of the backup file. I'm not sure why it keeps doing this, as there is already a backup file on the hard drive, not to mention it re-backs up over 150 gb of stuff again, which takes forever and is using unnecessary space on my external drive. Anyone know why time machine is doing this, and more importantly how do I get it to stop?

Stereo..Sympathy wrote:
I tried searching the forum for this topic but didn't have any luck...
I've got my time machine backing up to a 1TB hard drive connected to my airport extreme.
You need to know, that's "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple+* See Using Time Machine with a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
This seems to work just fine, but every couple days time machine will start entirely backing up my system again adding a "1" in front of the backup file. I'm not sure why it keeps doing this, as there is already a backup file on the hard drive, not to mention it re-backs up over 150 gb of stuff again, which takes forever and is using unnecessary space on my external drive. Anyone know why time machine is doing this, and more importantly how do I get it to stop?
Usually the problem with backing-up via an Airport is, the sparse bundle will occasionally be corrupted, often beyond repair. You may be having a similar problem, or it may be something else.
A clue may be lurking in your logs. Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to one of the backups where it made a new sparse bundle, then copy and post all the messages for that run here.

Time machine keep last N backups

is there a way to configure time machine to only keep the last, lets say, 5 backups instead of every backup ever done?

zeroelink wrote:
is there a way to configure time machine to only keep the last, lets say, 5 backups instead of every backup ever done?
TM does not keep every backup ever done.
Your very first backup, and the first of that same day of every week, is kept as long as there's room on your TM disk/partition.
The first backup of all other days is kept for a month.
All other backups are kept for 24 hours.
If you want to limit the amount of space TM uses, you can partition the drive, so TM has it's own, exclusive space. See items 3 and 6 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.

Time Machine can't create backup on Synology NAS DiskStation (Error 17)

My first time trying to use Time Machine.
Configuration iMac: OS X vers. 10.7.3, 2.5 GHz, 4 GB Memory, 500 GB Disk
Destination of Backup: Synology NAS DiskStation DS212j, Mac File Service for Time Machine activated, user for Time Machine created
Log reports:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TimeMachine
Creating disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine/JoeiMac.sparsebundle
Error 17 creating backup disk image
Failed to create disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine/JoeiMac.sparsebundle, status: 17
Backup failed with error: 20
What means "Error 17"?
Any idea what went wrong?
Hope you can help.

That's the problem with using a 3d-party NAS with Time Machine; it has it's own software that's supposed to interact with OSX, and when something goes wrong, it can be very hard to sort out just what and where the problem is.
First, make sure that model is fully compatible with Time Machine on Lion (some are, some aren't), and install any software/firmware updates Synology has for it.
Second, make sure the names (of all odd things) of your Mac and network aren't too long and don't contain any special characters, per #C9 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Third, make sure you're following Synology's instructions exactly.

Time machine keeps performing full backup to my new time capsule

After years of perfect time machine function to a local usb drive, I bought a time capsule and reconfigured time machine to backup there for my wife's macbook air and my macbook pro.
The macbook air time machine is running perfectly. However after a week or so the time machine on my macbook pro has repeatedly performed a full backup and lost all the backup history. I clearly cannot keep on like this and find it very worrying that this piece of technology, even if it loses connection for some reason, is not robust enough to recover the incremental backup?
Is this a weakness of time machine design? or is there something obvious I need to check?

try if this user tip helps.

Time machine keeps trying to backup

I recently installed Yosemite on my Macbook Pro. I have Time Machine set to off, because it keeps trying to do backups, even though it's turned off.
I removed Time Machine Editor because I kept getting a conflict notification. But now I keep getting notifications that say, "Time Machine couldn't back up to Seagate Backup Plus Drive".
Is this a Yosemite problem? I haven't had this happen before.

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. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
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 "could not create backup folder" error

I recently changed to a new Time Machine drive (external LaCie Porsche 1TB) connected via USB to my early 2009 iMac running Lion. I set up the drive with a single GUID partition, MacOS Extended (Journaled ) format, and copied my old Time Machine backups over from an older drive via the disk utility restore function. The disk worked fine for a while, then after several backups I get recurring Time machine errors that tell me it cannot create a backup folder. When I run Disk Utility to repair (after turning off Time Machine), it cannot unmount the disk. After a force eject (required because I am told the disk is in use when trying to eject after a Time machine fail), the disk mounts, no problems are found by disk utility, and Time Machine works for awhile. Then more of the same "cannot create backup folder" error. The backups work fine a few times, whether the iMac is put to sleep or not, then the error occurs again. Any suggestions on how to make this work without error and without constantly unmounting/remounting the disk? I had previously used a different, smaller LaCie drive via firewire 800 without any problems ever.
Thanks

I have been wrestling with the same problem for a few weeks.
I eventially solved the problem after determining that the problem is not in the Time Machine program.
It does not seem to exist in Snow Leopard but in Lion and Mountain Lion.
I have several drives on my system: firewire and USB 3.
I observed that one or more of my USB 3 drives become read only after some time even when the Time Machine is off. Firewire and USB flash drives are allright.
I am now running all three USB 3 drives off a Targus USB 3 hub. I got mine from Office Depot.
The power supply for this hub is rated at 4 amperes. Maybe the USB 3 drives need more power.
Some other steps I went through may be of interest:
I updated the firmware on my Wester Digital 1TB drive for the Mac form downloads fron WD sites. I also downloaded the WD Smartware.
However, I found an article that recommended partitioning the drive as journaled case sensitive.
Prior to doing this, the Time Machine would sometimes backup as much as 40 GB even when nothing had been added to my computer. Now backups without activity by me add only a few megabytes.
I noticed that under system profile beginning with 10.7 that the drive storage is shown by category with the sizes listed. This goes on in background all the time. It is possible he USB 2 ports and hubs may not be able to handle this activity.
I have had my computer, a late 2007 iMac with 4 GB of ram, checked by Apple.
This worked for me,
Ken Lipman

HT201250 My time machine keeps failing to backup due to space not available.

I have a 500 gb external that I use for backups, but for some reason there is only 208gb available for backup. When I open up my time machine, I have deleted all of my old backups. For some reason, I can not get at the other available space. Everytime I open up time machine, there is nothing there now. I don't know how to access the other space. Where did the other space go & how do I get it back?
I did recently take this machine in to have a new hard drive installed & they used the time machine to back up all of my files. Now I don't know how to access that other space. Any thoughts?

I'm not certain that I fully understand you situation.
I surmise that you have deleted all of the files from the external HDD that you use for Time Machine. If that is the case, I would I would erase and reformat the Time Machine Disk in Disk Utility and reinstall it as your Time Machine disk.
Ciao.

Time Machine keeps deleting the backup

I was having stability issues with Safari after updating to 6.0.2, so it looked like the only remedy was going back to 6.0.1. Following the complete system restore using recovery mode Time Machine has continued to delete the backup on a daily basis and then start again from scratch, so last night I took the step of completely formatting the drive and starting fresh but I've just looked and yet again Time Machine has just deleted the existing backup to start from the beginning. Does anybody know how to fix this? I'm running 10.8.2.
Thanks
Ashley

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 saying "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Phillip Haines's Time Capsu/Phillip Haines iMac.sparsebundle" is already in use."

How do I get the time machine to work again. It's been dong this for 3 days, over and over again.

This is stock standard issue.. report 5-10 times a day here.
Solution is good old.. "Did you turn it off and on again??"
Unplug the TC.. count to 10.. plug the TC power back in again.
This fixes 98% of problems.. and shows the advancement in Mac OS and Apple firmware.. to be just like that other OS we love to hate.
If you cannot get satisfaction.. reboot the whole network.. never a bad idea.. Everything off and start in correct order. Modem.. wait 2min.. TC.. wait 2min.. Clients.
Tell us if you still have issues or read the master wizard of all things TM/TC
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
C12

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.

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.
Anyone know about this?
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

I have 2 auxillary disk drives for my MacBokk Pro. Time Machine uses one for backup and I use the other for storage, but I am unable to create a new folder or drag and drop files or folders to the aux drive.

I am unable to create a new folder on either of my auxillary disk drives. I can access the files and folders that were there when I transferred one of the drives from a PC. Time machine uses one for backup and I want to use the other to store photos which are large files. An help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. If I reformat the drive will I be able to access the files on it from the MAC. I do not share the drive with a PC. The files were originally created on a PC which I no longer use. I do want to continue to access the files put there by the PC. I would like to not have to copy them over to the MAC hard drive just to use them. The second aux drive is new and works fine because it was formatted by the MAC. I can drag and drop files there and work with just as if they were on the internal drive.

Time Machine keeps re-creating backups

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