Time machine not automatically backing up to sparsebundle

Used TimeTamer to create sparsebundle.
Manual backups work fine.
Receive message that "time machine destination not resolvable" when automatic backups are tried.
Is this issue correctable?
Thank you

jjs01 wrote:
I am backing up to a 1st generation Drobo.
All I know about Drobos is what I read on their site and some threads here.
How is it connected? Network (Ethernet or WIFI) or direct (USB, Firewire, eSATA)?
The reason for doing so is to limit the amount of space my Time Machine backups will take up.
Depending on how you're connected, there may be a better way. Are you still running 10.6.8? Note that on some models, Drobo says not to use that with Leopard or Snow Leopard (http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/610/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzI 2NzcyMDg3L3NpZC9NZFN1TWtPaw%3D%3D).
According to this page: http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/609/~/how-do-i-make-time-machin e-work-with-drobo%3F, some models of Drobo allow you to create partitions. If yours will, that's the way to go.
Then let Time Machine create a Backups.backupdb folder at the top level of the volume if you're connected directly, or it's own sparse bundle if you're connected via network.
If not, and if you're connected via network, you may be able to let Time Machine create the sparse bundle, then limit the maximum size via #A8 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
hdiutil create -size 8192g -fs HFS+J -volname "TM-backup-of-****-*****-mac-pro" /Volumes/Drobo/****-*****-mac-pro_001f5b32e8e4.sparsebundle
Some possible problems with that (I can't tell since you substituted ***s):
Check the names (of all odd things) of your Mac, network, and Drobo per #C9 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. The names may be a problem even if you let Time Machine create the sparse bundle.
As I read the man page for hdiutil, that command will not create a sparse bundle disk image with a maximum size of 8 TB; it will create a fixed-size disk image of 8 TB.
Since 10.6.0, Time Machine no longer includes the source Mac's MAC address in the name of the sparse bundle. I don't know if having it there is a problem in your setup.
Have you used any other 3rd-party apps (such as Time Machine Editor, or Time Machine Scheduler) to alter Time Machine's default behavior?

Similar Messages

Time Machine NOT automatically backing up - Help

Running 10.5.2 on my MBP and MB. Have a TC 500 installed yesterday. Did the initial backup on both. Seems that Time Machine will not backup to TC unless I click on TC in my finder (to mount). If I restart or sleep the computer or switch networks (and come back to TC) TM doesn't backup. Been 3 hours since I've been back on the TC. Is there something I need to set up to get the computer to automatically back up without me having to tell the computer the TM designated disk is available. Thanks.
Sean

I hope this helps you...I just spent 3 hours on the phone with Apple Care and finally got the problem fixed. The problem was the NAME OF THE time capsule. I had used "Tony Ry*****'s Time Capsule" (I used xxxxx because I prefer not to use my whole last name on here). In any event, the name was too long! I changed it to "TimeCapsule" in Airport Utility. To do this, launch Airport Utility, click on "Manual Setup". Under the "Disks" section, you will see the name of your time capsule listed under "Time Capsule Disk" . Click on that, and to the right a white dialogue box will appear where you can change the name. Change it to something short with no spaces, or " ' " . After doing that you will need to go into the time machine preferences and select a new backup disk (since you changed the name). This worked perfect for me. Hope it helps you!

Time machine not working says MacBook Pro.sparsebundle in use

TIme machine has'nt backed up for over a year. Don't know why it was brougt to my attention by my laptop today. I've tried to restart it ,but it says that the "disk is already in use" or "Heidi’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" in use or" try to eject disk image" which I have no clue how to do. Any suggestions?

Did you try to restart the Time Capsule?
Pull the power cord from the back ot the Time Capsule
Wait a few seconds
Plug the power cord back into the back of the Time Capsule
Wait a few minutes and try a backup. If that does not do it, then look here for more information:
The Backup disk image ... sparsebundle ... is already in use.

Disk utility or time machine not discovering back up drives

Hi I'm new to Mac and before getting lost in all the benefits am looking to set up automatic back ups using my LaCie network space drives I previously used from my P/C. I have managed to discover the drive and copy required files in Finder. Next step was to re-format to Mac but Disk Utility does not discover the drive. Am using the same connection route as Finder. Have also tried finding via Time Machine without any luck. Your assistance appreciated

If I am correct on this, and I think I am, Disk Utility and Time Machine are all configured in OSX to find and communicate over only USB and Firewire, NOT ethernet. I talked to Apple Support once about employing a Buffalo Technology NAS over ethernet to backup my iMac using Time Machine and i was politely informed that this was NOT supported by Apple and likely not doable. So, we may not like it, but apparently those are the rules we must play by. As for Finder, it too primarily finds connections to devices using USB or Firewire. The exception to this is that you can connect using Finder over Wi-Fi or Ethernet to another computer, but this ability presumably involves Finder locating a device that has an IP address.
You just may be at the point where you need to consider obtaining a USB and/or Firewire based external drive. Keep us informed.
Hope this helps
Message was edited by: Radiation Mac

Time capsule as time machine to automatically back up my macbook pro?

I had been using an Airport Supreme router with a 2 Tb time capsule as an auxiliary port to the internet. Now the Airport Supreme is no longer available and I want to use only the Time Capsule. It works perfectly as a router but does not allow automatic time machine backups. There must be some switch somewhere to make it be the primary unit. Please give me a clue. Thank you, Tommy

The TC will need to be factory reset and redo the setup so it takes over the role of main router. You cannot just switch something..
The Factory Reset universal
Unplug your TC/AE. Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. The time is not important.. it is the front LED rapid flashing that indicates you are in factory mode.
Release reset.
If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have released reset at some point and try again.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
Depending on the kind of network you should have no problems with this.. it does not delete files.. just to repeat.. your TM backups will be fine.
I do strongly recommend in the new setup you use all SMB naming.. that is because Apple is now changing over from AFP as default protocol to SMB.. and it has tighter rules.. so don't worry if that makes no sense.. the rules are simple.
1. Short.. keep names below 20 characters.. 10 is good..
2. No spaces in names.
3. Pure alphanumeric.. no apostrophe.
Once you setup the TC then you can redo the setup of TM to find the TC.
Note also IPv6 is now essential to the operation of the network.. please ensure you set it to link-local only in the network client/s on the computer.
eg wireless.

Time machine not completely backing up certain folders

Has anyone run into a problem with their Time Machine continually neglecting to backup one or two of their folders? I know some people have problems with TM not backing up items on their desktop, but my desktop data is fine. There are just two folders (as far as I know) that TM refuses to back up (unless there are new items, then it will backup only those items). One is my 'documents' folder. And another folder I created called 'OS media'.
About my setup:
I recently set up Time Machine with my Macbook Pro (running Mavericks). TM is backing up the internal SSD along with an external hard drive that is always attached via USB. The drive they are being backed up onto is a Western Digital My Book Live via wifi--which I know is not advised as it is not officially approved by Apple, but I'm hoping that's not the cause of this particular problem. Because otherwise the MBL has been working pretty well.
More details:
Both of the problem folders happen to be from the external hard drive (not internal SSD), and in the first tier of folders. But the other folders on that tier (about five other folders) are fully entact in TM, so I don't think it's an issue with the external HD. And the missing files are not a certain file type, they are all the sub-folders and files under the problem folders.
I went into the Western Digital (Time Machine) drive itself via Finder and verified that the files are indeed missing, so it wasn't a lag issue. And I have nothing excluded from backups in TM preferences.
I noticed that within those two problem folders, if any file was modified or created within that folder since my initial TM full backup (about two weeks ago), even if it was just a modified .ds_store file, TM would begin to include that file in the backup. This make me guess the problem was something that happened during the initial TM backup. The folders were somehow missed, and subsequent TM incremental backups aren't able to detect that it's missing. So unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm just going to try to redo a full backup. I'm reluctant though, because it's going to take about two days to complete, and I really have no idea if it's even going to help.
And I don't know if this is related, but when I'm in Time Machine and I do a search for any of my files, I always get zero results.
Important sidenote:
While browsing my folders in Time Machine (Star Wars view), I found that clicking on an alias to a folder would open up that folder, but it didn't show the contents of the folder as they were in that particular backup version; instead, it showed the contents of that folder as they appeared in my computer currently. In other words, it appeared that I was looking at an old backup version of the folder, but it was actually the present time folder. This could easily mislead someone into thinking that their current data is backed up, when it is not.

oregonjoe wrote:
Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?
No, but you must understand that Time Machine does not support the configuration you are using.
The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected either to the source Mac, or a Mac on your local network.
That is all.
Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using third party NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless in the dire circumstances in which they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

Time Machine Not Automatically Running

This seemed to start a few days ago. My Time Machine works fine, but for some reason it's not automatically doing the hourly backups. I can manually run the backup, which I do several times a day, but it won't start automatically.
Haven't made any software changes. I've done the Software Update, restart, with no luck. I looked around in the Time Machine preferences but didn't see anything useful.
Anyone else ever experience this?

Hello Rob:
Anyone else ever experience this?
No, but that does not mean you do not have a problem.
I think the first thing I would try is trashing the preference file (com.apple.timemachine.plist) and then restarting.
Barry

How can I keep Time Machine from Automatically backing up any external drive connected

Problem: Whenever I have an external drive attached and TimeMachine starts, it tries to back-up the drive. Usually, this causes Time Machine to gut my TimeMachine back-ups to try and make room before saying, not enough space to complete the back-up. NOT Helpful! I maintain offline/offsite clones of my drives but I also receive drives with large amounts of data which I will want backed up AFTER I have copied it to my drives. Yes, I can go into TimeMachine and exclude the drive(s). If I forget to do that, then BYE BYE back-ups.
Ideally, I would like a prompt asking if I want to include the drive in theTimeMachine back-up after I connect it. Anyone know how to set this?
or
I would be fine with simply having TimeMachine treat all drives unknown to the backup as drives to be ignored.
Thoughts?

perranegra wrote:
It worked beautifully before and would update only when I plugged the firewire drive in and also if I left it over 10 days it would remind me to back up the computer.
Right, the behavior hasn't changed between SL and Lion.
I would have liked the option to set times / days when I wanted.
SL didn't have this, any more than Lion does.
Also now I have a greyed out icon with a warning sign and clicking on the preferences it helpfully tells me the last back up has failed.
Because it DID.
I am usually happy with the updates and tweaks but this is one I am not happy and would appreciate a solution or at least a work around.... and no I don't like having the default to Time Machine as off!
Time Machine hasn't significantly changed between SL and Lion. Well, other than the local HD backup sets when a portable device is away from the actual backup destination, which really seem to freak people out for some reason.

Time Machine not automaticaly backing up

I have googled and googled, and cannot find ANYTHING about this. My time machine is a 1TB HD from Costco. Was working wonderful. But now it won't back up on its own. I have to manually do it. I didn't realize this for a while, and went 2 weeks without a single back up.
I would just like my Time Machine to back up on its own. Thank you for your time.
-Matt

Try turning off TM in TM preferences, then re-enable it and re-select your backup drive.
BTW, since you purchased this drive at CostCo it may have been pre-formatted for Windows. Did you re-prep the drive for use with OS X? If not, then you need to do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Time Machine Not Auto Backing Up

Hey guys, I'm having some issues with my Time Machine. Its no longer auto backing up. It will backup fine if I manually start it but it won't do it on its own anymore, it hasn't for the past 2 days on 2 of my computers. I've tried repairing permissions and disable and re-enabling, **** even switch drives and then switch back. There are no error messages in console literally nothing happens. When it changes to the time its supposed to do a backup it will just jump ahead an hour without even preparing a backup without doing anything. One of my friends suggested I format the drive and start fresh and as much as that may work, it really defeats the purpose of having backups if I wipe them all out. I need them so can someone shed some light on this for me its driving me insane.
This all started to happen after the latest Time Machine update.

I think I might have solved it. When messing around in Terminal I noticed the permissions for the backups auto plist were different than the others. Repairing permissions with disk utility didn't do anything so I manually changed it with the Terminal command below. I'll post back later if I can confirm it worked. For anyone else with the same problem here are the commands you need to do in Terminal.
ls -la /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd*
Copy that entire line including the * at the end. That will give you the details on your backup plists, permissions and dates modified. They should all match, if they don't this next command will fix that.
sudo chown root:wheel /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist
After you copy and paste that, it will ask for your password. From there I suggest you reboot for safe measure and you can double check by running the first Terminal command again to make sure the permissions were actually changed. This should fix it for anyone else experiencing the same problems as I was.

Time Machine - not "fully" backing up?

OK, I know that I should know this, but...
I'm a bit confused as how Time Machine is working right now. Tonight I updated my version of OS X to the latest developer release, updated Xcode, etc. Should have been about an 8.5GB 'change' to my internal drive - which it was when I backed up two of my internal drive clones. However, my hourly TM backups (I have two) don't seem to be recognizing the changes to the OS X or Xcode files as they only backed up about 380MB each.
I know that I should know the answer to this - and I've scoured Pondoni's site looking for an answer, but I can't seem to find one.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? I know that I'm just stupid...
Thanks,
Clinton

Do you see the folders "Applications" and "System" at the top level of your snapshots?

Can i get the time capsule to automatically back up my file from my Mac Book Air but have certain files which are only stored on the time capsule and not the computer? Then can i access these files only on the time capsule without connecting it?

Can i get the time capsule to automatically back up my file from my Mac Book Air but have certain files which are only stored on the time capsule and not the computer? Then can i access these files only on the time capsule without connecting it?

igonneau wrote:
Can i get the time capsule to automatically back up my file from my Mac Book Air but have certain files which are only stored on the time capsule and not the computer?
You can, but how are you going to back up those other files? When (not if) your Time Capsule fails, you risk losing them. See #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for details.
Then can i access these files only on the time capsule without connecting it?
Not sure what you mean. You have to connect a computer, either via Ethernet cable or wirelessly, to read or write to the disk.

After installing Mountain Lion, my Time Machine won't back up ... says the sparsebundle is in use

After installing Mountain Lion, my Time Machine won't back up ... says the sparsebundle is in use

Standard problem in ML.. apple do not seem to want to recognise.
Reboot the TC .. if that fails restart the whole network in correct order.. modem.. router/TC... clients.. with 2min gap.
There are other suggestions like changing the password.. all they do is the same as reboot.
Read C12.. most quoted Q in pondini website history. This is asked 10 times a day.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Here is another way to get a useful utility in ML.. rather than toyland version.
How to load 5.6 into ML.
1. Download 5.6 for Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Click to open the dmg but do not attempt to install the pkg.. it won't work anyway.
2. Download and install unpkg.
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
Run unpkg on the desktop.. it is very simple.. drag the AirPortUtility56.pkg file over to unpkg.. and it will create a new directory of the same name on the desktop.. drill down.. applications utilities .. there lo and behold is Airport utility 5.6 .. drag it to your main utilities directory or just run it from current location.
You cannot uninstall 6.1 so don't try.. and you cannot or should not run them both at the same time.. so just ignore the toyland version.. the plastic hammer.. and start using 5.6.. a real tool.

"Time Machine can't back up - sparsebundle error 1" question

Hi,
I'm getting the "Time Machine can't back up - sparsebundle error #1" message, and am trying to see if the fix posted below is the answer:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2048
So, when I installed Time Capsule, I gave it a password ("network password").
Fairly recently, I renamed the Airport. Now the Airport disk password and Airport base station password are the same as the network password, and the Airport network password is different.
Is this what the Apple support message I referenced is getting at? Are these passwords supposed to be the same... ???
Thanks for any help,
reluctantuser

I'm not sure what you mean by "We also used the Time capsule as a hard drive for backing up." after you've already mentioned that you use Time Machine to back up three Macs to the Time Capsule.
Check this Web page for advice on the space issue.

Time machine not backing up as expected

Time machine is not backing up as expected. It is still backing up automatically and manually (i mean not giving any errors) but when I enter the time machine, the files that are shown are really old.
For example, just 5 min ago, I did a manual back up, but when entering time machine it shows very old files on the desktop (I did a clean up a week or so ago).
There are no folders excluded in the preferences.
Very frustrating.

I've had this happen twice now myself. Once earlier this year, then again this week. Time Machine seemed to be working properly, but when I went to look for a file, everything was very out of date. Backups that were supposed to be from today and yesterday were at least a week old.
I was out of town for a week, so of course Time Machine couldn't back up during that time. But I've been home for a few days now, and I've seen the icon spinning in the menu bar, and everything seemed to be fine. The latest backups were in folders dated today and yesterday—since I returned. I do all my backups wirelessly, to a Mac mini with a SmartStor DS4600 connected to it.
The same fix worked for me—I just restarted my computer.
Very frustrating! Pretty much the worst thing a backup program can do is fail silently for a long period of time.

Time machine not automatically backing up to sparsebundle

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