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.

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Time machine wont copy to new drive

I purchased a new external hard drive to use as a Time Machine backup. I've since reformatted said drive to OSX Extended (journaled) and have followed the Apple Support instructions for moving it over (Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support). However despite these instructions, an error message pops up saying "The operation cant be completed because backup items cant be modified."
I'm sure this is not an unique problem on these forums (though I cannot find a relevant article). Can anyone please recommend me a solution?

Although Apple documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
This technique will only work if the volume you're copying to is the same size, or larger than, the one you're copying from.
First, open the Time Machine preference pane and click the Select Disk... button. You may have to unlock the settings first by clicking the padlock icon in the lower left corner of the window. Authenticate as an administrator.
Delete the volume you're going to copy from the list of backup destinations. Then turn Time Machine OFF.
Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. All existing data on the destination volume will be erased. That shouldn't be a problem, because you don't want to mix backup and non-backup data on the same drive anyway.
If the volume you're copying was encrypted by Time Machine, you may have to unlock it first. Click the Unlock button in the toolbar of the Disk Utility window.
Turn Time Machine back ON and select the new volume as a backup destination. You can also continue to use the old volume, if you wish. The two will be alternated when both are available.
CAUTION: If the volume you're copying is corrupt, as shown by Repair Disk or Verify Disk in Disk Utility, then that corruption will be copied to the new drive. Don't copy data from a corrupt volume on a malfunctioning drive. Put the drive aside and don't use it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data. Then securely erase it and take it to a recycling center. Do the same if the Restore operation fails with "disk errors."

Transfer Time Machine backups to a new drive

Is there an automated or an easy way to transfer my current Time Machine back ups to the new Time Capsule (I am sure I will inevitably buy it]. Looks like a great system for notebook users but I wouldn't like to start again with time Machine I like having the security of back ups I have already accrued. My current drive is certainly not full and won't be for a while.

So far not very many people have had much success in copying their Time Machine backups to a new drive although the Restore option in Disk Utility ought to be able to do this. However, SuperDuper will support that capability when their new Leopard compatible version is released which should be in a week or so.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/

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

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 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>

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

HT5096 I need to transfer a time machine backup to a new drive. It keeps failing.

I have a 2TB Time Capsule that I was using for Time Machine for both a MacBook and an iMac. The iMac sparse bundle became corrupted earlier this spring and I was unable to delete it, so I need to reformat the TC. First, however, I need to move the TM sparse bundle for the MacBook to a new drive that I have set up just for TM for the MacBook. After reformatting, I plan to only use the TC for the iMac. I tried moving the sparse bundle tonight to the new drive, following directions listed in several places on this site and on Pondini's site. However, it failed. I am going to guess that it failed b/c I was not hooked up to the TC via ethernet. (I was on WIFI). The new backup drive is a 2TB external that was plugged directly to the MacBook. So, now I have connected them via ethernet. I am again reparing the TC volume using Disk Utility, just to make sure all permissions, etc, are ok before moving. Will I be able to move this file to the new drive easily, or should I plug the new drive directly to the Time Capsule and move it that way (while MacBook is connected via Ethernet).
Alternativey, is there a way to just archive that sparse bundle for the MacBook before I erase the drive?
FYI I am still running Snow Leopard on these machines, but trying to clean up the time machine backups today before installing Lion and moving to iCloud, so time is of the utmost importance here.
Thanks so much!
Kat

OK, this has now failed twice. I repaired the drive using DU and there were no problems (even though it took 2 hours to go thru everything to verify). Right now, the MacBook is connected via Ethernet to the TC. The new TM drive (WD 3TB external, USB 3.0/2.0) is attached to the MacBook via USB. I really need to keep this TM backup for the MacBook and also need to erase the TC. How can I accmplish both? I thought that there was a way to archive a TM sparse bundle?

Why isn't my time machine backup updating a new drive correctly?

I bought a new larger hard drive and I am trying to use time machine (lion) to restore the new one and copy all my files. I made a Lion startup disk and use the disk utility to erase the new drive and then choose restore from time machine backup. The process runs great and then after about 3 hours it finishes and restarts the computer. Then the white screen with the grey apple and little spinner below it pop up and the spinner just spins forever.
Does anybody know what I am doing wrong? Thanks

It looks like it tries to start loading safe mode and the loading bar appears under the spinning lines under the apple but then the bar gets almost half full and just dissapears. I'm left with just that grey apple screen and the spinning lines again.
The only other startup option that seemed to get me somewhere other than the grey screen is when I hold the "option" key and choose from the hard drive or the dvd drive to boot. I can run from the dvd OS X disk that I made. Is there anything I can do there?

Want to get SOME data from Time Machine to restore to NEW Drive.

1) System: Leopard.
2) HD configuration: 1TB Time Machine drive backs up internal 500GB AND an external 500GB (called "iMac Annex").
3) The 500GB iMac Annex died.
4) How can I get the iMac Annex Data on Time Machine to restore to a NEW external 500GB drive ("iMax Annex 2").
Migration assistant only seems to ask about the "System to Transfer," and only my internal drive shows up.
Question: Can I drag and drop the folders on Time Machine (from the latest backup set) to iMac Annex 2, then reconfigure Time Machine?

hebron,
I have done this little routine in the past, and Time Machine has carried on without the "hiccup" you seem to have had. Also, I was not asked for a destination folder.
However, Time Machine may have changed a bit in this regard in one of the intervening updates, or it could be that I named my "replacement" volume during a format, and the UNIX disk name and the OS X Finder disk name were reproduced exactly as they were prior to the erasure/replacement; in other words, our mileages may have varied.
Nevertheless, I see no real problem for you either way. I suspect that Time Machine is simply performing a "deep traversal" in preparation of a normal backup of what you have, and an entirely new backup will not be created. Let it run its course, and you tell us the outcome. Even if a new backup is made (and not just a large, but normal backup), you have all of your old files, and you have a backup of same. At some point, you can delete any old backup folders, if you end up starting a new one.
Scott

Time Machine not backing up new songs in iTunes to external HD

One day very early in November, about 70% of my songs and all of my playlists suddenly disappeared from iTunes (version 10.5.1 as of mid-November, but the previous version when it happened). Fortunately, I was able to locate the songs with the Finder on my MacBook (OS X 10.5.8) and restore them (although I had to reconstruct all of my playlists). But I realized today, about 3 weeks later, that since then my Time Machine has not been backing up any of my new songs--about 200 songs or 1 additional gig--to my external hard drive. (I periodically connect my external hard drive to my MacBook expressly for backup purposes and then disconnect it; I follow all the proper protocols when I disconnect.) TM, however, does seem to be backing up everything else it's supposed to. Any suggestions? I'm a bit of a Luddite, so I'd appreciate it if any advice were kept relatively simple. Thanks in advance.

Anyone else have non-backups under TM?
Don't use TM myself, instead I use Synchronize Pro, so can't check my self. But in general. creating a new folder in Bridge it appears on your system and then TM should be able to read it. Can you give some more details.
Did you use spaces or other characters like hyphens, commas and slashes (',/)
Where did you save the folder to, nested in another folder or as top of the list folder.
And you double checked the folder is not locked and you do have read and write permission to it (select the folder and choose get info, at the bottom shows the permissions for the user)

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.

Time Machine not copying all I want it to

OK, so this is odd... I have an external 250 GB fw drive from G Tech and an iMac G5 running 10.5.1 I started using time machine happily the other day having it back up to the fw drive. Well it was almost full so I deleted some other stuff off of the fw drive and I also deleted some of the oldest backups (which may have been a mistake, I am not sure). Anyway, now there is way more than enough room on the fw disk to back up the whole system, but it basically stops once it gets to the applications folder. I have tried deleting the time machine plist folder but that did not help. Any ideas?

First, run Disk Utility's Repair Disk on the TM volume to make sure its file system is OK. Do the same with Permissions Repair on your normal volume to make sure the apps installed via Apple's installer (those that leave receipts) don't have permissions problems that prevent their being copied. Then make sure none of the apps not being backed up appear in TM's system preference exclusions list.
If you have deleted some of the contents of old time-stamped backup folders via the Finder, you probably have not broken anything -- because each is really just a hard link to the file's actual location on the backup drive, all you are doing is deleting the reference to it in those backups. Assuming the file appears in later backups, you can still access it from within TM by going to any of them. (You cannot access any versions of the file older than the last backup date deleted because when the last hard link to it is removed, so is the file.)

Time machine not connecting with new time capsule

Will someone please help? I have just recently joined the MAC family and purchased a new Macbook along with a new time capsule. It took unbelievably long to get things running (ie wireless access with 2 other PC based desktops and a PC laptop and shared network printing with an USB connected printer to the time capsule)- I thought macs were supposed to be easy?! Anyways, the only thing that I cannot figure out is how to properly set up time machine. I follow the instructions and turn time machine on, choose my backup disc (which is the time capsule), but when I click "use for backup", I keep getting the "connection failed- server may not exist or it is not operational at this time. Check the server name or IP address and your network connection and try again" What am I supposed to do now? What is there to check when all of the other computers are able to access the internet (including the Macbook) and wirelessly print. The stupid timecapsule router function is working but the backup portion of it is not???!!!! Please help someone who is about to give the mac and the time capsule to the first person walking down the street - it has been a frustrating 2 days.

First, restart the Time Capsule by disconnecting the power adapter and reconnecting it. If other devices on the network can see it, you can skip this step.
From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Network
Click the lock icon in the lower left corner of the window and authenticate to unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Advanced button, then select the TCP/IP tab in the sheet that drops down. Click
Renew DHCP lease.
Try again to back up.
If you still can't, open the Time Machine preference pane and delete the TC from the list of backup destinations. You may have to unlock the settings by clicking the lock icon in order to do this. Then add it back.

Time machine not copying to new drive

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