Time Machine network backup swapped to USB backup

Hi there,
I have a Time Machine Backup drive connected to my Airport Extreme network, which backups both my iMac and Macbook Pro which I love - it is totally no hassle and has been great.
However I have just moved house and will not be able to set up a network again for a few weeks - my question is can I plug my Time Machine drive directly into my MacBook Pro/iMac to back up as normal? I don't want to erase the backups already on the drive, I just want to add to it as it would do automatically on the network. Has anyone had any experience with this - I'm hesitant to try it out incase I lose my backups!
Thanks!

Hi. Don't know if you ever got yours working, but was having the same problem after many successful backups and nothing changed on my system. I shut down my computer and then unplugged the TC for a few minutes. Let it restart. Then restarted my computer and reselected the TC in Preferences>Time Machine>Options and now it's backing up normally. Of course I have no idea if this actually fixed the problem, but it is working.

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Time machine network backup really ***** (truly)

Ok I've said it..
Ok I've had enough..
Come on Guy's. Apple really has to take some flack here. No more excuses. You advertised timemachine backup to a network share would work easily. You advertise apple software works without a hitch (unlike MS windows)...but I've had nothing but hastles setting up time machine to backup to a mac server attached usb drive. I've BEEN a windows user before and I tell you this is just like going back to the dark side!
And another thing
No I'm not trying to use an airport extreme mount
No I'm not trying to use a NAS
No I'm not trying to back up a linux or PC volume
I'm being a good little customer. It's all using mac to mac. Yes, it's Leopard to Leopard...
Hastle one:
The drive mount. I've successfully done this for 3 networked macs. It took a while, was working a few days, but the mount is unreliable. If one of the macs goes down, time machine doesn't work anymore. I get the error "backup disc image could not be mounted". Apparently the problem is with the "sparseimage". One solution I've read is to delete the sparseimage then try again. Fine
Hastle two:
I can't work out how to delete the sparseimage! I get an error cannot do - "the item token is in use"
Apple needs to take a cold shower on time machine.
Where is the help on this? Where is the customer apologies? Where are the solutions?
Obviously there was not pre release testing. Wait a minute WE are the pre-release testing!
It is just plain unreliable as a backup solution for macs on a home ethernet network..even when all the gear is actually mac!
I give it a rating of 1 out of 10 on this.
Come on guys lift you game!
Message was edited by: sfsfsfs
Message was edited by: sfsfsfs

I have had nothing but problems with Time Machine. We are wasting our valuable time with a product that SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK. Apple needs to weigh in here. We are wasting our "TIME" on our "MACHINES" Now I see why Apple calls it TIME MACHINE!

Can't find my data from Time Machine network backup

Migration assistant shows inconsistent sizes for applications, computer settings and other files/folders, about 30GB when I had 270 GB only in pictures.
I did a clean Mavericks install.
How do I find my data from the TimeMachine network backup?
The size of the TimeMachine backup is consistent with what I had before ( >300 GB)...so how do I recover it?.
I'm using a new user account name in the clean installation.
Thanks

Read a few threads about this being a problem with account access, so I renamed the account in my new installation to the account name used to create the backup and found the old accounts....now when trying to proceed it told me there was a conflict with the account name and i had to use a different one!!.
Apple has stopped to be simple...
So how are we suppose to use the migration assistant if either way there is a problem? ( using same or different account name )...

Time Machine network backups?

Is this information still up to date? https://discussions.apple.com/message/7515914#7515914, i.e. can I still not use TM via WLAN (2 Macs connected via WLAN, TM drive (USB) attached to one of them; I'd like to use that disk for both Macs without having to carry the drive around the house every time.)
Thank you!
Peter

Sorry, but that is Not an available feature at this time. You can use two external hard drives with one Mac with Time Machine in ML, But you cannot use two Macs connected to one external drive with TM.
Hope this helps

Can Time Machine NOT backup USB exFAT drives?

Hi folks. So I partitioned my seagate freeagent drive using exFAT so I could swap it back and forth with Windows. I went to setup time machine and I see the drive is excluded and I cannot remove it from the exclude list. Can time machine not backup that partition type? If not, what can I use that will be usable with both windows and os x and allow me to back it up with Time Machine? Thanks.

For fat or ntfs, you have to use something like Winclone to clone those partitions as a backup, but I have not tested winclone in Lion to see if it still works

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

You are not alone. Thousands have this problem, on various models of Macs. Short answer, it has something to do with the disk going to sleep (possibly?). You can't do anything about it and Apple won't address the problem. Maybe you should buy a time capsule. Just keep giving them money and use their proprietary equipment.
For a more complete answer, see this thread (all 65+ pages of it with NO SOLUTION IN SIGHT... except for some 3rd party solutions that sometimes work, sometimes don't): Disk Drive ejecting itself

Can I use time machine to backup on my server HD?

I've mac Leapard with Time Machine but never made use of it because:
- I don't have and don't want to have an external HD.
- Don't have Time Capsule, and cannot afford it.
Yet I was wondering if it was somehow possible to use Time Machine, to backup directly to my server (online) for example.

-(.)^(.)- wrote:
Time Machine backups are NOT supported for NAS devices except Time Capsule or a USB HDD connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station. All other options are hacks.
I would add that even if a network drive were available, unless it was formatted HFS+ with either GUID or APM depending, it would not be acceptable anyway for TM.

Maverick and Time Machine and backup

I moved to maverick. My time machine indicator at the top right of my imac does not spin when it is backing up. It used to with Lion. Is this normal.
When adding Maverick. Is it normal my external hard drives seem to view the first back up and a new one, and is taking more than an hour to back up?
thanks,

Hi John et al,
Update: Finally...
At least for the Promise Pegasus R4... but I noticed on other threads that WD drives are also acting up too so this might work with them too.
I turned off Time Machine, and deleted that pesky .plist file, again. I unplugged the R4, power and thunderbolt, then played whack the gopher with the drives swapping them around randomly. I reintalled Mavericks from a fresh download, yet again, then set Time Machine to backup on a fast USB 3TB drive (which it did in 6 hours or so). Then I turned off Time Machine, deleleted that .plist file again, rebooted the iMac, plugged in the R4, reformatted it again with Disk Utility, then hooked it to Time Machine, said a few slightly heretic prayers to whatever demons came with Maverick, and 2 minutes later Time Machine started to backup and report 1 hour to complete... the hour isn't up yet, but I'm crossing everything I have 2 of...
I've noticed a few other 'didn't copy over or mesh well' things with Maverick, but that's a different thread and 2 updates from now once we all suffer through this extended beta-test by Apple.

Time Machine prepares backup but cancels without error message before starting backup

Hello.
I'm running OS 10.9.1 on a 2013 iMac. Time Machine has not backed up for a few weeks. Have tried verifying the backup with no problems reported. Can't mount 1TB Time Capsule or relevant sparsebundle in Disk Utility. Went to Console and copied the relevant logs:
1/12/14 8:25:06.310 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Starting manual backup
1/12/14 8:25:06.320 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data
1/12/14 8:25:29.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: mounted Time Machine Backups on device disk4s2
1/12/14 8:25:31.268 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Disk image /Volumes/Data/Macintosh.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
1/12/14 8:25:31.284 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Backing up to /dev/disk4s2: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
1/12/14 8:25:31.481 AM mds[65]: (Error) Volume: Root store set to FSOnly with matching create! (loaded:1)
1/12/14 8:26:00.273 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Deep event scan at path:/Users/[redacted]/Pictures/iPhoto Library cellphone/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|file event|
1/12/14 8:26:04.372 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Finished scan
1/12/14 8:26:04.376 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Not using file event preflight for Macintosh HD
1/12/14 8:26:44.000 AM kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xc005 (UNDEFINED).
1/12/14 8:26:51.000 AM kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
1/12/14 8:26:51.601 AM diskimages-helper[1470]: terminating disk4 - image is no longer available
[here follows various repeated disk4s2 undefined messages]
1/12/14 8:26:51.603 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
[here follows various repeated disk4s2 undefined messages]
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on Time Machine Backups, fsck will be forced on next mount.
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
[last two lines repeated about a dozen times]
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: cat_delete() failed to delete thread record id=81 on vol=Time Machine Backups
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on Time Machine Backups, fsck will be forced on next mount.
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
1/12/14 8:26:52.239 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Backup canceled.
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: BlockMarkFreeInternal() trying to free unallocated blocks on volume Time Machine Backups
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on Time Machine Backups, fsck will be forced on next mount.
1/12/14 8:26:52.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: unmount initiated on Time Machine Backups on device disk4s2
1/12/14 8:26:57.284 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/Data/Macintosh.sparsebundle
1/12/14 8:26:57.000 AM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_unmount: /Volumes/Data, flags 0, pid 1500
1/12/14 8:26:57.000 AM kernel[0]: ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0xffffff8054511530
1/12/14 8:26:57.000 AM kernel[0]: ASP_TCP Detach: Reply queue not empty?
1/12/14 8:26:57.759 AM com.apple.backupd[1456]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
This basic sequence seems to have happened every time I've tried to run backup lately. Pondini's A6 mentions the deep event scan related to iPhoto but not what to do about it. Help?

I decided, based on various clues from Pondini's page, that the hard drive in my Time Capsule was failing. I started a full backup on my second Time Capsule and am currenly only using the original as an internet router.

Using time machine to backup Logic Projects

Hi
I was wondering if it is possible to use time machine to backup my Logic Projects. I have a seperate internal drive that I use to keep all my user data on, like my Logic projects. I want to use time machine to back up these projects onto a external firewire drive.
Can timemachine only backup your systems drive and therefore I would need to have my Logic projects based stored on it?

Yes - time machine can back up any drive. I am using 3 drives: system drive, a USB2 drive for Time machine backups and a firewire 800 drive for Logic Studio projects, instruments, samples, audio, etc. TM backs up my system and FW drives to the USB drive.
Time machine options (in system preferences) allow you to exclude/include drives so you just need to set it to include your second internal drive.
The only thing I'm not sure of is whether this effects the loop browser. Oddly, when I was experimenting with using aliases for Apple loops, Logic actually found the TM backup files when it couldn't locate the original GB loops! After some file moving and index deleting I cleared all loops but now I have duplicate entries again in Logic - possibly due to TM, but I have not verified this.
-Scott

Time machine completes backup but does not actually backup any files

I have had this problem sporadically with time machine for a while now, most of the time it works great and everything is smooth sailing, but every now and then time machine will run and go through all of the steps but it skips actually backing up any files. For example, if I put a new word document on my desktop right now and tell time machine to back up, everything will go as it should and time machine will run and go through all of the stages (making back up disk available, calculating changes, cleaning up) except it doesn't actually transfer any files. When I go into to time machine the new word document won't appear in any of the backups. Restarting my computer does fix this but it is a very inconvenient way to fix the problem and it also leaves me having to manually go into time machine to make sure that it is in fact backing up files. And no I do not have some weird exclusion in the time machine preferences.
In the console my system log reads:
Jan 13 22:42:24 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Starting standard backup
Jan 13 22:42:24 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Brad%[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jan 13 22:42:30 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Brad%[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jan 13 22:42:31 brad-bargers-macbook-pro hdiejectd[8470]: running
Jan 13 22:42:33 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/Brad Barger’s MacBook Pro_002500a2b268.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of Brad Barger’s MacBook Pro
Jan 13 22:42:33 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of Brad Barger’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb
Jan 13 22:42:38 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 828.8 MB requested (including padding), 153.74 GB available
Jan 13 22:42:45 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Copied 6 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jan 13 22:42:46 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Starting post-backup thinning
Jan 13 22:42:46 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Jan 13 22:42:46 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Backup completed successfully.
Jan 13 22:42:48 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jan 13 22:42:48 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[8462]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jan 13 22:42:58 brad-bargers-macbook-pro hdiejectd[8470]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
Jan 13 22:43:30 brad-bargers-macbook-pro com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[8463]): Exited with exit code: 255
Sorry for the info dump and I hope my question makes sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

b_cubed wrote:
Thanks you for your response. I was wondering if it didn't have to do with disk utility in some way. Just to be clear what do you mean when you say "altering other volumes on the same drive"?
If you have more than one partition on a drive, and add, delete, or resize any of them, Disk Utility does a +*Verify Disk+* on the entire disk. So even if you didn't touch the boot volume, whatever DU does will cause what you've seen.
It is rather odd, that it only affects some of us. Those who have it, have it consistently. It happens on any number of hardware configurations, and I could always reproduce it with a fresh install of SL on an empty partition, so it's clearly nothing to do with any settings, preferences, 3rd-party anything, etc.
This was reported to Apple in October; on November 12 the TM engineers were able to reproduce it. They don't tell us any more than that; all we can do is hope it'll be fixed in a future update.

Time Machine "preparing backup" eternally upon wake from sleep

at a bit of a loss here...
iMac 24" (version which offered 7300GT as BTO option)
10.5.5 with all updates applied
LaCie 500 gig USB 2.0 drive directly attached.
Up until about two months ago, Time machine functioned fined. Then for some reason, the following started to happen. (no known reason, no software update related etc, that I know of)
scenario... Time Machine functions correctly EXCEPT when waking from sleep. If iMac wakes from sleep and attempts a backup immediately (e.g. more than one hour has passed), it gets stuck "preparing backup" forever. I've let it run overnight (actually as long as about 30 hours), it never stops. Finder and other programs become extremely non-responsive, machine is almost unusable. Literally, the only way out is to manually shut down external drive, with attendant warnings/errors.
What I've done:
1) deleted the time machine .plist file
2) erased, repartioned (as a single partition) external drive
3) started brand new time machine backup (takes about three hours)
At this point, time machine will backup up fine... I can force a successful backup, if I leave the machine running, at one hour it does a successful backup.
BUT, as soon as it goes to sleep, time machine is hosed.
The only workable method for using time machine is to turn the external drive and time machine off when not using it, and turn the whole shootin' match on to do what essentially becomes manual backups. These backup are fairly lengthy, as time machine also does lengthy "preparing backup", but they complete in about 30 minutes to one hour.
Given that time machine doesn't give mountable/cloneable backup, I'm probably going to go back to Carbon Copy Cloner. Still, I like the ease/regularity of Time Machine, and would use it if it works.
Any ideas?
thanks

It could be a number of things. There are lots of things that Time Machine does in order to "manage" backups -- apart from just copying data to the backup drive.
It has to manage the transition of hourly backups into daily backups and must also transition daily backups into weekly backups. Each time it does this it has to move a lot of data around. It also has to maintain indexes of everything so you can quickly find backups should you want to perform a restore.
I've also noticed that there are circumstances that can cause TM to question whether it can trust it's existing backup database... I've caught Time Machine saying that it needs to do a "deep traversal" of the backup (basically it wants to check and see what it really has) and this can take a very long time.
Still... 30 hours is an extremely long amount of time. I'm almost wondering if there's a problem with either your USB bus or your drive when they wake up such that you may be getting a huge number of retries on something that should have happened quickly.
I'd suggest you start the "Console" utility, select "All Messages" at the left, and then watch the messages being written to your log file. Not only does Time Machine log all of it's progress messages to the system.log (in more detail than you'd see in the Time Machine UI), but so do lots of other system processes. If you're getting USB bus problems the error messages would likely show up in the same log. I'm especially suspicious about non-TM related causes since you said you've already blown away your TM backups & preferences and started from scratch and you're still getting the problem.
Try re-creating your problem with the Console log messages being displayed and see if you can't see something in the log that would let you get a little closer to the root cause.
Regards,
Tim

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion on both my Macs. It backs up fine when ever I connect to the USB drive but now seems to want to back up hourly when before weekly was OK. When it does not compleye an hourly backup it reports a delayed backup - failure on both machines. How do it revert back to it reminding me to do weekly backups?

I'm having the same issue with Time Machine on OS X Lion!
According to this webpage: http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/LionChanges.html
Backups (i.e., Time Machine, SD, CCC, etc.) will only save the current "Version" of files.
The above statement sounds like the issue @iJRB and myself are having after upgrading to Lion where Time Machine shows the following error message below within "System Preferences > Time Machine"
@iJRB: Is this the error message you are seeing?

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

Has the backup been working ok??
If that is the case simply reboot the TC.. or if that fails, reboot the whole network, restarting in correct order..
modem.. wait 2min
TC.. wait 2min

Time Machine nuking backups, starting from scratch!

ok, i just received this warning:
and now i't doing a backup that is slated to take more than "several hours."
is this common? how often can i expect this?

Hello,
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-bac kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076

Time Machine network backup swapped to USB backup

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