Time Machine not backing up full drive

On my macboook pro late 2009 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 time machine will not back up my full drive. I have 56gb use out of 250gb and only 8gb gets backup . How can i get time machine to back up the full 56gb on the first time of setup time machine? I am useing a hard drive connected to my airport extreme. I have the hard drive setup for one big parition. The size of the usb hard drive is 2tb. I have two users on my airport extreme that can access my usb hard drive. One for my macbook pro and one for my mac mini. My mac mini late 2011 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 useing time machine it can back up the full drive. On my mac mini i have 2.5gb used out of 500gb and time machine can back up 2.5gb on the first time i started time machine. But this is not the case for my macbook pro it will not back up the full used space on the first time i setup time machine. How can i fix this so that time machine will backup the full used space?

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. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
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. 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 (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
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 this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Similar Messages

Time Machine not backing up external drive

Recently set up TM using a WD 1TB Firewire 800 Drive. All works fine but...
Have a Lacie 500GB drive that had a power supply failure so had to wait for that to be replaced. That is now done so I put the Drive back into the system. Unfortunately, despite being able to see the drive (Two partitions actually) in the TM Finder window it only shows 'now' for the drive. I can see how to exclude these drives but I don't seem to be able to force them to be included. The Lacie drive was added two days ago so I would expect it to have some sort of back up image by now.
Guidance please.

Well, I've gone and done it now
I started again with the none TM drive and gave it the exact same name as before(changing the format to 'journalled" (it was just Mac OS extended before). I then restored the files onto it using the Clone function in Intego's backup X4 All okay so far and all the important files are now on a pristine 'new' disc. The problems started when TM started it's routine. I now get an error message:-
"*Time Machine Error*
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume."
I then excluded the drive from the TM Backup and TM was happy with next Backup so it must be the none TM drive that is failing. I reinstated the drive into the back up and I get the error again.
Is there a prefs file or something that I can dump to clear this or should I start again? i.e. Reformat both drives, reinstall the files onto the none TM drive then start TM again. Or just reformat the TM Drive then restart from the beginning letting it pick up all drives to back up?

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. 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.

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 not backing up system files on second hard drive

The system files are not being included in my time machine backups on my primary drive (an internal SSD) but they are for my secondary drive (an internal HDD). I want to revert the system back to a previous state because of a change I made to the Audio folder in Libraries that may have cause an issue. When I look at the backup on my backup disk, the folder isn't even included on the SSD (the drive I made changes to). Is it hidden or just left out? I checked the Time Machine preferences and there are no folders listed to be excluded.
1) Does this mean that I will not be able to do a full system restore from these Time Machine backups?
2) How can I include those files in future backups?
Thanks!
System information:
MacBook Pro Mid 2012
OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)
2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
240 GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD (Main Bay)
750 GB Apple HDD (Optical Bay)

I apologize, the title of this thread is misleading. I meant it to say "on primary hard drive", not "second hard drive". Sorry for any confusion.

Time Machine not backing up 2nd external drive, remove option grayed out

I have two external hard drives, 300gb (firewire) and 500gb (usb). Time Machine is backing up to the 300gb. In Time Machine's options, the 500gb is excluded from being backed up, and the remove option is grayed out.
The 300gb Time Machine Backup drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended. The 500gb drive is formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32).
I know the backup drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended, but will it not even back up other drives that are FAT32?

I am having a similar problem. I initially set it up 3 days ago and had it back up just the iMac to Time Capsule (about 120 GB) which it did no problem (I initially had my LaCie drive excluded). I then un-excluded my other drive, where all my photos and music reside (about 130 GB). Since then, it keeps trying to back up about 102 GB each time. Looking at the list of backups it does not appear that it has ever successfully backed up the LaCie. I am not aware of any error messages, but I have not been home much. I normally shut down the computer at night but I have been leaving it on trying to let Time Machine do its thing. All I can say is that every time I am at the computer TM is running and it always looks like it is in the middle of backing up 102 GB (usually seems to be near the beginning, never seem to see it more than halfway done). Looking at the TM panel it says the latest backup was 2 days ago. I'd appreciate any advice!

Time Machine not backing up both internal hard drives on 2011 iMac?

I have a 2011 iMac with two internal hard drives---a 2TB HDD and 256GB solid state.
I plugged in a 3TB FW800 external to use with Time Machine.
Based on adding up the used space from both drives as seen in disk utility (totalling 1537.36 GB), it doesn't appear that Time Machine is backing everything up (total backup of 1.49 TB).
Any ideas?
Thank you,
Taylor

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 page that opens.
Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
sudo tmutil compare
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Using Time Machine to Restore a Full Drive: Some Questions

I have a 24" iMac C2D with a 640GB drive that is 4GB away from being full. I have a Freenas NAS with another TB and two 1TB FW800 external. I have pretty much everything backed-up in one way or another, most of it a bit scatter-shot and hard to collate, so I want to reformat and reinstall OS X Snow Leopard to get a clean start and a freed-up drive.
Once of my 1TB I have dedicated to Time Machine and it's full. I get notices now and then that it's deleting some of the data to make room for more.
My question is this:
If I reformat and kill all the data on my iMac is the data fully replicated in Time Machine? Anything I should be worried about?
I don't just want to refill my Mac again, so I mostly just want all the email back and my music, but served off-drive. Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? I plan on going over more detailed instructions (any tips on the best tutorial?) before beginning.
JoeL

joeldm wrote:
I have a 24" iMac C2D with a 640GB drive that is 4GB away from being full. I have a Freenas NAS with another TB and two 1TB FW800 external. I have pretty much everything backed-up in one way or another, most of it a bit scatter-shot and hard to collate, so I want to reformat and reinstall OS X Snow Leopard to get a clean start and a freed-up drive.
Not the best idea. Recovering what you want will be even more scatter-shot.
MUCH better will be to delete what you don't need, and/or archive old stuff and delete it.
Especially if you have apps you want to "leave behind," the ones you want to recover will be a problem, unless you have all the original discs and serial numbers. Apps that are installed with their own installers put other files in other places, besides the app in Applications. If you don't know what and where all those files are, the app won't work properly, if at all, without them. Worse, you may not know that until much later, when you try to use a feature you haven't tested.
Ditto all the little things, like settings and preferences, plus bookmarks, browser history, etc.
You need to do some of that +*very soon.+* Your Mac will get slower and slower as the HD nears getting full. Soon apps will begin to fail, files will begin to get corrupted, eventually it will crash and not restart.
Most folks say you should keep a minimum of 10 GB or 10% of your OSX drive free (15% or 20% is much better), depending on how you use it.
Once of my 1TB I have dedicated to Time Machine and it's full. I get notices now and then that it's deleting some of the data to make room for more.
My question is this:
If I reformat and kill all the data on my iMac is the data fully replicated in Time Machine?
All the data that's now on your iMac (and any externals that are being backed-up) will be there. Things you've deleted may not be, depending on how long they were on your system, how often it was backed-up, and how old your oldest backup is. See #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
But if you really want to do this, I'd strongly suggest making a separate, independent backup, probably a "bootable clone," via CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. You can test it by booting up from it and using your apps to be sure everything's there and working; plus the instant you click erase on your internal HD, you no longer have backups -- you only have a single copy, and while it's rare, backup drives occasionally fail while doing a restore.
I don't just want to refill my Mac again, so I mostly just want all the email back and my music, but served off-drive.
Not sure what you mean by "served off-drive." Do you mean you want it on an external? If so, move it there first (and be sure the external is also backed-up by Time Machine).
For iTunes, see: Moving your iTunes Music folder
For iPhoto, see: Moving your iPhoto library
I don't think you can move Mail out of your home folder. Check in the Mail forum about that.

Time Machine Not Backing Up New Files

Time Machine is NOT backing up my recent files.
I recently noticed that Time Machine was backing up really quickly instead of taking several minutes as usual. I checked previous backups and discovered that NONE of my recent files were backed up.
I have a very basic setup. An external usb 1 tb drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) being used as the time machine backup drive. A new i5 mac mini with OS X 10.8.4. About 200 gigs of data with one user on the internal drive.
I have followed all of the Pondini troubleshooting steps. I have restarted into safe mode to force a deep traversal. I have repaired permissions and verified all disks with Disk Utility. I have deleted time machine preferences and followed instructions as per Pondini #A4. The backup seems to run but then finishes quickly but DOES NOT BACK UP any recent files.
I have run TMUTIL COMPARE, it showed that many files needed to be backed up.
I have run TMUTIL ISEXCLUDED on some of the files that were not being backed up. It showed that they were not flagged for exclusion.
I have run a manual backup after starting up in Safe Mode, which forced a deep event scan, but then exhibited the same behaviour..
I have acquired a new external hard drive, backed up the complete main drive (using Time Machine which appeared to be successful on the first time full backup), then run a manual backup on that new drive after adding new files and had THE SAME PROBLEM.
Here's the latest console output, which is typical since I have noticed this issue. There appear to be many megabytes of new files to be backed up, but then the operation completes within seconds and no files are backed up at all.
6/23/13 7:15:16.422 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting manual backup
6/23/13 7:15:16.966 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Omnius/Backups.backupdb
6/23/13 7:15:17.916 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.277 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (375.1 MB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 845 files (375.1 MB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:20.311 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.91 GB required (including padding), 747.18 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:29.264 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 400 files (1.4 MB) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:29.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.299 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (Zero KB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.300 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 5 files (Zero KB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:29.301 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.46 GB required (including padding), 747.17 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:30.439 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 140 files (33 bytes) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:30.511 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Created new backup: 2013-06-23-071530
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting post-backup thinning
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
6/23/13 7:15:30.689 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backup completed successfully.
Please help. Time Machine is currently useless as a backup solution.

Results (username obfuscated in exclusionpaths):
   -=-=-=-=-=--
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>sourcePaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/</string>
          </array>
          <key>standardExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups</string>
                    <string>/MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/.TemporaryItems</string>
                    <string>/.Trashes</string>
                    <string>/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist</string>
                    <string>/.fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/.hotfiles.btree</string>
                    <string>/Backups.backupdb</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DB</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DF</string>
                    <string>/Network/Servers</string>
                    <string>/Library/Updates</string>
                    <string>/Previous Systems</string>
                    <string>/Users/Shared/SC Info</string>
                    <string>/Users/Guest</string>
                    <string>/dev</string>
                    <string>/home</string>
                    <string>/net</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/com.apple.backupd.backupVerification</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/efw_cache</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/private/var/lib/postfix/greylist.db</string>
                    <string>/Volumes</string>
                    <string>/Network</string>
                    <string>/automount</string>
                    <string>/.vol</string>
                    <string>/tmp</string>
                    <string>/cores</string>
                    <string>/private/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/Network</string>
                    <string>/private/tftpboot</string>
                    <string>/private/var/automount</string>
                    <string>/private/var/folders</string>
                    <string>/private/var/run</string>
                    <string>/private/var/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/var/vm</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/dhcpclient</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/Library/Logs</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Extensions/Caches</string>
                    <string>/private/var/log</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/cups</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/fax</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/uucp</string>
          </array>
          <key>systemFilesExcluded</key>
          <false/>
          <key>userExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_in</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Epsilon</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Desktop</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_out</string>
          </array>
</dict>
</plist>

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

Time machine not backing up new changes

Time machine was working perfectly fine until this past weekend. Now, it seems like it's not recognizing any new changed on my hard drive. The time machine still runs successfully, but it just repeats the same back up over and over again. I've checked the logs in console (see below)
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting standard backup
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Dec 15 00:35:33 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 424.6 MB requested (including padding), 281.50 GB available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Copied 5 files (33 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Adrian Ma’s MacBook Pro/2009-12-13-233455: 281.50 GB now available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backup completed successfully.
I've also downloaded Time Tracker and it says that things were fine till this weekend and then everything for the past couple of days have 0 bytes backed up. Any ideas what could be the problem? I haven't done anything special or changed anything besides install Google Chrome. The external hard drive I back up to may have been unplugged/plugged but not before it's unmounted or the computer is off. I don't think I unmounted while time machine was backing up, but if I did could this be the problem?

ecanza wrote:
Solved! Thanks for the swift replies! I didn't do a Verify Disk, but I did do a Verify Disk Permissions without restarting recently.
Are you sure? Because +Verify Permissions+ doesn't do it. Only +*Verify Disk,+* or altering any partition on your boot drive.
There are some 3rd-party disk repair/maintenance apps that use the same internal OSX routine as +*Repair Disk,+* so if you used one of them, you'd have the same problem.
And by the way, there's no point to running +Verify Permissions+ -- you might as well just run +Repair Permissions.+
I just restarted and Time Machine has in fact "caught up" with the most recent changes! Cheers Pondini.
Oh, well, whatever it was, I'm glad it's fixed! And thanks for the star.

Time Machine not backing up iPhoto changes (Events, pictures, etc..)

So I finally decided to buy a external hard drive (WD) and backup some of my data to it using Time Machine. The initial backup went well with no problems but what I noticed is as I added events and pictures they were not appearing in Time Machine.
I could open time machine and view that my iPhoto had the current events when the date selected was "Today (now)", but as I went back in time the events that SHOULD of been there were not.
Browsing the folders on the backups showed the iPhoto database to be 13.5gb when actually the new size on my iMac was 19.5gb.
So why does Time Machine not detect these changes? For my backups I have excluded all folders except for the Users folder which contains the iPhoto library. Time Machine is not detecting the changes and backing it up. How can I fix this?

Yeah. At first I thought it was:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
Because I was doing that earlier. But then realized I did repair permissions, not disk. But anyways decided to reboot (because I haven't up to this point).
Once it came back up I tried doing another backup. Didn't see it. Opened iPhoto again and exited it (checked Force Quit to make sure it wasn't open). Told it to do a BACKUP NOW. This time it saw a difference of like 7mb.
After it was done, went to iPhoto -> File -> Browse Backups. Went back a couple minutes when I did the backup and my event now has a place holder within the Events but it is pure black. I double clicked the event and it opened up and saw there were 3 files in there. They had default icons and were not showing as pictures like they were. (even though they display fine in iPhoto).
Time Machine seems very flakey to me. My machine is fully updated also.

Time Machine defaulting back to old drive

I had set Time Machine to back up to a 2nd internal drive while I replaced a FireWire drive. Once the external was attached, I copied the internal/Time Machine drive to the external and set TM preferences to use the FireWire drive. Once that was seemed to be OK, I erased the internal TM volume.
Problem is this: if the FireWire TM drive is turned off, Time Machine insists on trying to use the previous drive (the internal)--it resets to the internal drive in the preference pane (there isn't enough room on the internal at this point, so backup simply fails). I turn the FireWire drive back on, choose it in the preference pane, and it backs up normally--until the external drive is not mounted.
How can I get TM to simply do nothing until the proper backup drive is available?

Scott_R wrote:
I had set Time Machine to back up to a 2nd internal drive while I replaced a FireWire drive. Once the external was attached, I copied the internal/Time Machine drive to the external
Do you mean you copied the internal TM drive to the new external? How did you do that? If you used drag and drop via the Finder, it's not going to work. You must use either the +Duplicate a Disk+ facility in Disk Utility, or a 3rd-party app like SuperDuper! Otherwise TM won't recognize it. And is it formatted properly?
and set TM preferences to use the FireWire drive. Once that was seemed to be OK, I erased the internal TM volume.
How did you erase it? Did you erase the entire disk via Disk Utility?
Problem is this: if the FireWire TM drive is turned off, Time Machine insists on trying to use the previous drive (the internal)--it resets to the internal drive in the preference pane (there isn't enough room on the internal at this point, so backup simply fails). I turn the FireWire drive back on, choose it in the preference pane, and it backs up normally--until the external drive is not mounted.
How can I get TM to simply do nothing until the proper backup drive is available?
If everything above was done correctly, you might get it's attention by turning TM off, selecting the "none" drive, note any exclusions in Other, and quitting System Preferences.
Then delete the file: /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist (NOT in your home folder).
Then go back to TM Preferences, re-select the correct drive, re-enter any exclusions.
Are you turning the F/W drive off while your Mac is running? If so, why, and are you stopping TM and ejecting the drive first?

Time machine not copying to new drive

running 10.6.8. I have two new hard drives and have them connected one at a time via USB cable to my MBP intel core i5.
I am using time machine to Backup my system drive. Time machine stopped the back up and displays an error. Here is the eventual error "The backup was not performed because an erorr occurred while copying files to the backup disk. The probem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
I used disk utility repair drive and the drive passes. I am not able to continue forward with time machine and receive the same error again.
Both drives experience this same behavior. Are both drives just bad and need to be replaced? Open to any suggestions on how to cure this issu.
Here is the log from disk utility:
--- snip ---
Verify and Repair volume “Untitled 1”
Verify and Repair volume “Untitled 1”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Untitled 1 appears to be OK.
Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
--- snip ----

Did you verify your MBP's HD, or the external HD's?
IMHO, Time Machine is great when it works, but it's not the most reliable backup. You may want to consider CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Time Machine not backing up full drive

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