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

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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?

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 configured / won't open / but it runs?

I'd appreciate some assistance troubleshooting a Time Machine issue.
I recently purchased a 2TB Time Capsule and set it up on my home network. I have set Time Machine up using it to back up 2 out of 3 MacBook Pros with no issues.
On the third MacBook, the Time Machine setup appears to work just fine (I have selected the Time Capsule disk, it has done the first full backup and periodic incremental backups). However, I have the following problems:
I cannot open the Time Machine application. Clicking on the App causes absolutely nothing to happen. No error. No windows. Nothing.
The icon in the menu bar is greyed out and gives no indication of backups in progress (no spinning clock like the other macs). Clicking on it reveals the top, greyed out menu choice that says "Time Machine not configured". (I can open time machine preferences and observe status from within that window.)
I have searched this and other sites for solutions. I have done steps A4 and E4 from this site (repeatedly) with no success.

I'd appreciate some assistance troubleshooting a Time Machine issue.
I recently purchased a 2TB Time Capsule and set it up on my home network. I have set Time Machine up using it to back up 2 out of 3 MacBook Pros with no issues.
On the third MacBook, the Time Machine setup appears to work just fine (I have selected the Time Capsule disk, it has done the first full backup and periodic incremental backups). However, I have the following problems:
I cannot open the Time Machine application. Clicking on the App causes absolutely nothing to happen. No error. No windows. Nothing.
The icon in the menu bar is greyed out and gives no indication of backups in progress (no spinning clock like the other macs). Clicking on it reveals the top, greyed out menu choice that says "Time Machine not configured". (I can open time machine preferences and observe status from within that window.)
I have searched this and other sites for solutions. I have done steps A4 and E4 from this site (repeatedly) with no success.

How to use airport time capsule on a dell portable pc with windows 7 taking in consideration that Time machine doesn't run with Windows ?

how to use airport time capsule on a dell portable pc with windows 7 taking in consideration that time machine doesn't run with Windows ?

TM does not work like that.
If you want files to use later.. do not use TM.
Or do not use TM to the same location. Plug a USB drive into the computer and use that as the target for the permanent backup.
Read some details of how TM works so you understand what it will do.
http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html
Use a clone or different software for a permanent backup.
http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html
How to use TC
http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
This is helpful.. particularly Q3.
Why you don't want to use TM.
Q20 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

[OIM 9.1.0.2] Attestation Process scheduled is not automatically running

Hi Gurus,
IHAC that noticed that some attestation processes have not been triggered in the specified scheduled time, . So the Attestation tasks are not displayed into specified Reviewer's inbox (To-Do List).
There is a group responsible for creating the attestation processes and they have created a lot of processes. It seems that for some reason the attestation scheduled task is not automatically running for some cases.
For the attestation processes that were stopped, it is needed to run manually the scheduled task. With this action the attestation task flow runs.
Any tip on what could I check?
Thanks.

Hi,
I checked the Schedule task 'Initiate Attestation Processes'. It is Enabled, with frequency 30 min. Actual status: Inactive.
I got the follow error on the logs:
Something related to Memory.
I am investigating why when I use 'Run Now' option the attestation process work. Any tip?
<28/11/2012 03h32min51s BRST> <Info> <EJB> <BEA-010227> <EJB Exception occurred during invocation from home or business: [email protected]340a3f3 threw exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space>
<28/11/2012 03h32min51s BRST> <Notice> <Stdout> <BEA-000000> <ERROR,28 Nov 2012 03:32:51,518,[XELLERATE.SCHEDULER.TASK],Error while resubmitting the attestation process for delegation
Thor.API.Exceptions.tcAPIException: EJB Exception: ; nested exception is:
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at Thor.API.Operations.AttestationOperationsClient.updateResponses(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at Thor.API.Base.SecurityInvocationHandler$1.run(Unknown Source)
<28/11/2012 03h34min57s BRST> <Notice> <Stdout> <BEA-000000> <ERROR,28 Nov 2012 03:34:57,977,[XELLERATE.SCHEDULER.TASK],Error: Thor.API.Exceptions.AttestationProcessNotFoundException
Thor.API.Exceptions.AttestationProcessNotFoundException
at com.thortech.xl.ejb.beansimpl.AttestationOperationsBean.initiateAttestationProcess(Unknown Source)
at com.thortech.xl.ejb.beans.AttestationOperationsSession.initiateAttestationProcess(Unknown Source)
at com.thortech.xl.ejb.beans.AttestationOperations_yqqnsm_EOImpl.initiateAttestationProcess(AttestationOperations_yqqnsm_EOImpl.java:1033)
at Thor.API.Operations.AttestationOperationsClient.initiateAttestationProcess(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

How can Time Machine backup automatically when your external hard drive isn't connected?

Everywhere I search, it says that Time Machine will automatically backup every 24 hours and so on.
However, I was wondering - how can these automatic backups take place if you are backing up to an external hard drive which is not always connected?
Is this to say that if you do not connect your external hard drive for a day, no backups will be done that day?
Thank you

If the drive is not connected then TM pauses until the drive becomes available. Yes, if the drive isn't connected then there are no backups.
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Time Machine not recognizing full space available on NAS.

I recently purchsed and set up an Iomega Storcenter ix4-200d NAS with Time Machine support. The NAS has 8 TB storage total, with ~4.6 TB available.
I have TIme Machine support turned on in the Storcenter, assigned to a folder called "Time-Machine." In my OSX Time Machine preferences, I select the "Time-Machine" folder on my NAS as the back-up disk, and my Mac connects to it just fine.
The challenge is Time Machine returns an error saying there isn't enough space on the backup disk to complete the backup.
For some reason, Time Machine is only recognizing 536.36 GB of space available on the backup disk, even though there are ~4.6 TB available. I tried manually moving my iTunes media folder (~700 GB) to the "Time-Machine" folder on my NAS to see if the Iomega NAS was arbitrarily setting a max size to a Time Machine folder. I was able to manually move just under 1 TB of data to the same "Time-Machine" folder that Time Machine says only has 536.36 GB of space.
I tried deleting the Time-Machine store on my NAS, turning Time Machine support off, then turning it back off and creating a new "Time-Machine" folder. I did this several times and still get the same behavior.
I even tried running Time Machine piecemeal, excluding larger folders at first and running a back-up, to see if maybe Time Machine wasn't liking that large of an initial backup. This worked, and then I gradually removed some exclusions and ran back-ups again, so each back-up size was never more than 200 GBs or so. However, after several back-ups, I received the same error message saying there wasn't enough space on the backup disk when the total sparsbundle size reached 536.36 GBs.
Since I can manually move more than 536.36 GB of data to the backup disk, I'm guessing it must be something with Time Machine not recognizing the full space available on the NAS.
Any ideas? Has anyone seen this before?

Hello,
not that it helps, but I see the same on the exact same configuration. My message is also about not having enough space, ip-to exactly the same amount of room being available (only 536.36 GB available)?
I tried everything, including a full reset of the StorCenter, but to no avail. The timemachine backup used to work, however I thought that this was just because it didn't exceed the limit of one physical disk in the StorCenter (I've got 4 x 1 TB).
What is strange is that the original author has 2TB disks and still has the same problem? So it likely isn't related to the physical disk size. It seems like the maximum backup can only be 536.36 GB ??

Time Machine not backing up

Why is my Time Machine not backing up my documents, folders and files.
I have a Mac oss 10.5.4. 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1.5 GB. I have been trying to remove files as I'm running all my programs slow. I recently installed the recent ILife upgrade.
Often I would go in and turn off the hourly time machine backup because as I was working on memory intensive programs such as Photoshop I found it may have been linked to crashes. This is particularly concerning as the backups aren't accessible anyway.
Okay, this is the stupid part - on my part - I included my (House) folder in the files not to back up. I was mistaken as to this being a way not to have redundant back ups.
However; the only file now that is in the do not back up is the (time machine backups) and still nothing is saving - particularly concerning? iphoto file. see below.
Now this is concerning! I restored all photos from "March 13, 2008" - it's september. to IPHOTO from Time Machine. I don't know what changed since then(?) I thought it would add these folders into my i photo cache. This of course has involved a software upgrade since to iphoto. I was prompted for upgrade to the restore. So I said yes, to assure the photos added? where in a compatible format. However; instead it has erased all my photos SINCE. Are my photos irretrievably lost?
Why won't my files back-up for retrieval? Can I restore my settings from March 13, 2008 when my Time Machine back-up worked?
I find it horribly confusing that I no longer can access the photo cache, instead having the 'iphoto cache' icon.
This feels like PC headache. I am about to give up!

One thing you can check (using disk utility info button) is that the disk used for backing up must be in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, and must have Access Control Lists enabled. Permissions must be set so that you are allowed to use the disk, and the disk can’t be read-only. There must also be sufficient room on external disk for the entire TM backup. Since apple recommends just using TM on the disk, one thing to contemplate if having problems you can't resolve is to reformat as the above and start from scratch.

Time Machine program to run when you want it to???

Hey guys, I'm wondering what program i can download to chose when to run time machine. It runs ever hour and eats up a lot of ram i hear so i heard there are programs to chose when you want to run it. I just thought i would come here and ask before i go running and download something i shouldn't. Im also running it from an external HD.
I have a 27" iMac late 2013 and am running 10.10.1
3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7
8gb ram 1600

gconley wrote:
Hey guys, I'm wondering what program i can download to chose when to run time machine. It runs ever hour and eats up a lot of ram i hear so i heard there are programs to chose when you want to run it. I just thought i would come here and ask before i go running and download something i shouldn't. Im also running it from an external HD.
I have a 27" iMac late 2013 and am running 10.10.1
3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7
8gb ram 1600
You have heard incorrectly, TM does not use a lot of RAM and takes up a very small amount of time doing the hourly backups unless you have added extremely large files or made a dramatic change to your system. If you choose to not use Time Machine the most popular alternative is to create a bootable clone using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. On both cloning apps you can schedule backups however please remember they are completely different than Time Machine in that they do not create a "history" of a file. Many experienced users on these forums will use both Time Machine and a bootable clone application on separate EHDs. The reason is simple, when it comes to backup, redundancy is very wise because backups can fail too! You want them on separate EHDs because EHDs fail and you want a backup to your backup just in case.

Time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line

can anyone help
time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line
before 2013
information say in 2009 is not accessable to view this
i must select external drive from finder
the time machine icon not recognising

thanks for reply
when i open time machine the time line on right side of page
has date ranging from 2014 back to 2010 but only highlight date from 2014 back to 2013
anything before 2013 is greyed out and cannot not be selected
when i touch the pages they only rush towards me a limited amount then stops
also why it shows date as 2014 is strange

Time Machine not backing up music added to iTunes since the original backup

My girlfriend has a Macbook and I decided it was time for her to back up. I used Time Machine with my Lacie external HD. The original back up got all the music, documents, etc.
This morning was the first time I had hooked up the external HD since the original back up. I manually ran it and wanted to check if it added the new music and documents. My resume, which I updated last night, was there. But when I looked in the iTunes folder the new music I had added was missing.
Will the daily or weekly back up get the new music files? Is there something I did wrong with set up? Of course I could start over but I'd rather fix the issue and make sure everything is being backed up.
Your suggestions or comments are appreciated.

Erik Griffin wrote:
My girlfriend has a Macbook and I decided it was time for her to back up. I used Time Machine with my Lacie external HD. The original back up got all the music, documents, etc.
How long ago was this?
This morning was the first time I had hooked up the external HD since the original back up. I manually ran it and wanted to check if it added the new music and documents. My resume, which I updated last night, was there. But when I looked in the iTunes folder the new music I had added was missing.
How are you verifying whether they were backed-up? Use +Enter Time Machine,+ not the Finder.
Will the daily or weekly back up get the new music files?
The labels of hourly, daily, and weekly backups are just labels. The process is the same with each. The only thing that's different is how long TM will keep them. A TM backup is a TM Backup.
Is there something I did wrong with set up? Of course I could start over but I'd rather fix the issue and make sure everything is being backed up.
First, check TM Preferences > Options. Be sure nothing is listed there that would prevent any iTunes data from being backed-up.
If you still don't see them, download the TimeTracker app, from www.charlessoft.com.
It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). That should show what was actually backed-up.

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.
Thanks in advance for any help!

For all things Time Machine see Pondini's excellent information here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Start at Troubleshooting.

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

HT3275 Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

Unfortunately, when this happens, Time Machine cannot erase enough space to create room for the new backup. Your options now are:
1) Add a new Time Capsule or a hard drive to the USB port on the existing Time Capsule and continue with backups
2) Manually delete backups from Time Machine....which is a long and tedious process. After a few hours, not much space will be reclaimed and it will not be long before the Time Capsule is full again
3) Erase the Time Capsule....if you really do not need all the old backups from months ago....and start over with a new Time Machine backup and move forward again

Time Machine Not Automatically Running

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