Time Machine Problem after restore

I had a hard drive crash, and after repair, I restored from a time machine back. Everything seemed fine, although a few sets of photos were missing from iPhoto. After things seemed to be fine I have started doing time machine backups again.
My problem is that they take a very long time to complete. I expected the first one or two to take a long time, but not since then. I have given it weeks to make sure that it has had enough time.
Every single time the verifcation stage shows 10s of thousands of files. Even if I have not made any changes. In my console log I see:
6/7/12 11:17:34 AM
com.apple.backupd[61578]
Node requires deep traversal:/Users/dersh/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|
For every single backup. It seems like it is not actually fixing this. From googling around, I expect that this should take a long time the first time or two, but then should finish. It then says that it is backing up about 600 meg. The exect number seems to change with each backup, depending on what I am doing, and what changes I have made. But even if I do nothing, it still is in that range. It then appears to complete, although it takes a long time. I would guess that since it is doing the deep traverse it then has to match up a bunch of files, so doing the actual backup takes much longer then it should. For example it might sit for a good few minutes at "backing Up: 105.2 MB of 580.2 MB" Then it moves on to 107.6. Finally, the cleanup takes a very long time. So overall each backup is taking 10s of minutes. Even if I am not doing anything with the computer.
I am using a firewire drive directly connected to the computer. I have done a repair of the external time machine drive, and have done a verify of the internal drive, with no issues.
I see that I have plenty of space on the external drive.
So, it seems like what is happening is that it doesn't "know" that it has done a succesful backup of iPhoto, each time so it does a deep traverse and then backsup something like 600 meg of data from there. How can I get it to "understand" that it has done this? Can I force it to do it once correctly, so that it will take?
Any other suggestions?

UPDATE
Happen to have a QNAP NAS from work at the house which has Time Machine support and can select and initiate a backup there, no problem!
So, it's something about the Mac Mini or drive? I didn't do anything to the Mac Mini in the process other than removing the USB drive and plugging it back in.
As far as the drive, I dumped it and re-partitioned it with two partitions one for the Mini and one for the iMac. The Mac Mini is backing up to it locally, no problem.

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Time Machine problem after restoring to a new HD (after my original HD failed)

I am running Lion 10.7.5 on a MacBook Pro Late '11
My HD was getting SMART errors, so I did a complete back up using Time Machine using a WD My Passport 1TB external, and then sent my MBP to Apple for HD replacement (under my Applecare plan).
I collected it yesterday and restored my system using Time Machine (using the data from my external HD) and everything was restored perfectly, which was great,
However, I'm now encountering a problem after plugging my external HD back into my MBP on the new system. Rather than Time Machine doing a swift 'top up' back up, it appears that TM is attempting to do a full back up. (I have 300GB and it took nearly 24hours to backup on the faulty drive) Is this normal after installing a new HD? Bearing in mind the Time Machine data is still on my external drive?
It's also appearing to be taking FOREVER to do this entire back up again. It is stuck on 'preparing back up' and when I do get some movement, it's doing a couple of KB's at a time and with no genuine back up progress.
Fundamentally, I just want to just top up my Time Machine back up without having do a complete back up, again. (which doesn't actually seem possible, viable at the min)
Any help / support would be much appreciated

AFAIK, it'll do that since the HD has a different UUID and the old TM backup won't recognize it. See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Time Machine Bug after Restore

Hi all,
I've been learning Time Machine and will share two possible bugs if it is helpful. I am working on a 2011 MacBook Pro, upgraded to Mountain Lion some months back, with 50 GB data on SSD being backed up to and restored from a LaCie SSD 80 GB partition so the speed is very nice: 14 minutes for initial backup and 7 minutes for a Reboot + Command + R restore.
Bug #1. Both (initial) backup and restores begin with large 60 minute estimated times in Time Machine Prefs Progress Bar but, once it gets going, finishes in 14 and 7 minutes respectively. If symptom is due to some quadratic journal searching algorithm, it may explain why APL-CARE warned me about potential 16 hour restores and could be a bug. If it is due to Time Machine just counting what has been transferred so far, then maybe not a bug (but maybe a possible enhancement request).
Bug #2. It appears that the first time Time Machine runs after a Cmd+R restore, it tries to rebuild an entire journal or record of what it has and, if you interrupt this initial backup, you break Time Machine. The next time you try to backup, Time Machine thinks Everything needs to be backed up (even though your disk is identical to what it just restored), and it Fails in my case with message "Time Machine couldn't complete the back to [my LaCie drive because my 50 GB of data is already there and it thinks it needs a full 50 GB more]" in so many words. APL-CARE (and its expert advisor) tried to call this a feature and sent me to your article HT3275 but that seems like a different issue. Since I did not believe Time Machine was so stupid, I ran the sequence again and carefully avoided interrupting Time Machine during its initial backup following my Cmd+R restore and, indeed, it took about 8 minutes to backup 4.5 MB (and rebuild whatever it does that first time). So this feels like a straight-up bug, Time Machine should scare me with a popup if I interrupt it while it is rebuilding its critical list for the first time after a restore. If APL-CARE were correct, it would mean everyone loses all history after a restore, everyone needs to Erase their backup disk and start from scratch, and methinks that too would be a bug.
Hopefully this is helpful, Time Machine is otherwise very cool and I love the Star Trek GUI.
Regards,
Dave.

And this is an ERROR in time machine. I just did a test restore again, went quickly, then Time Machine is GONE, GONE, gone trying to restore 5MB, waiting over an hour when a fresh backup takes about 15 minutes.
So only solution is DESTROY all my backups, then start over. Really dumb, and this page has no option to change my post back to a question, also really dumb.
I am going to swear now: cr*p. OK. Fix your **** software please. I'll deal with workarounds till then.
-dave

Spotlight and Time Machine broken after restore/upgrade

I've found a few similar threads to this but none of those solutions has worked for me.
Two things happened at nearly the same time, so I don't exactly know the source of my problem:
I upgraded my old MacBook Pro (approx. Oct 2010, 2.66GHz I think, 300GB-ish HD) from Lion to Mountain Lion
The hard drive on my old MacBook Pro developed a terminal fault, so I had to buy a new one (8GB, 750GB HD) and restore a month-old Time Machine backup from my external drive.
I can't remember whether my last Time Machine backup to my external drive was before or after I upgraded to Mountain Lion.
Now I'm on OS X 10.8.2 on this new machine and I have two problems that seem to co-exist for a lot of other people too:
Spotlight won't index: this is f***ing infuriating, I love spotlight and I use it all the time. When I first restored from the TM backup I think the old index restored with the backup as I did get a decent number of search results (both in spotlight and in MS Outlook), but new files didn't seem to get recognised. I tried adding my hard drive to the exclusion list and removing it again in an attempt to get it to rebuild the index, but all that did was wipe the old index without building a new one, so now I get no spotlight results whatsoever. I tried this solution and sadly it hasn't worked either. Basically I can't search for anything. Even applications (which I like to launch from spotlight) don't appear. All I get is "estimating indexing time", and it never gets any further.
Time Machine won't back up: the first time I tried to backup my new machine it got a few hundred megabytes in before stalling; then a few hundred kilobytes in the next time I tried; and now it just doesn't get anywhere at all. The external drive I'm trying to backup to is recognised fine, I can see all the other files on it, and Time Machine seems to know that it's there, but the backup gets nowhere.
There are reports of this kinds of crap all over the Apple Support forums, but no definitive answer, especially for 10.8.2.
I could really do with some help on this. I need a backup before I screw another laptop, and I need spotlight to survive day-to-day life.
Thanks,
Craig

Hi Craig - I had the exact same problem - I'm using an old early 2009 MacBook Pro upgraded to 8 Gb Ram, 1 TB internal Hitachi HD, 10.8.2 - tried the fixes suggested - got it to work with these steps- everybodies mileage is different but hopefully it works for you as well.
a) I repaired disk permissions with Onyx (free utility) and then started up with Command-R using Disk Utility to repaired/check the Volume (harddisk checked out fine but the volume needed some minor repairs )- Onyx repair disk permission seems to go deeper -had to reinstall some apps - don't know if this solved it-seems to bring it back to the default state - you might get away with doing all from Disk Utility (but starting up with Command-R)
b) restart from my internal hd
c) downloaded the 10.8.2 combo update ( not the incremental shell update or whatever you call it which automatically gets installed with software update - combo update installs everything fresh from the .0 version)
d) with Onyx I deactivated spotlight and erased the spotlight index
d) restart
e) started TM backup - prep took pretty long 30 minutes but then 450 GB got backed up in 6 hours to my external HD which is fast enough for me
f) activated spotlight and 450 Gb were indexed in 9 hours or so
g) for 2 days everything runs fast and very responsive
best,
Franz

Time Machine problem after 10.6 upgrade

Hi Guys,
After I installed the snow leopard, I got a prompt regarding the time machine: "cancel backup" "create new backup" "replace backup". I clicked on "create new backup" but that seemed to have been the wrong choice. The time machine said that the last backup was November 28 2008, despite me backing up data every hour since November 28. My question is:
Have I lost all the data between now and Nov. 2008? Is there anyway to access it?
Second, can I resume backing up as before instead of the new back up I accidentally created?
Thanks.

valoo wrote:
I deleted the newly created sparsebundle. I also realized that the computer name had been changed and I changed it back to the original one. Here's the new problem. The TM says that I only have 127 GB and the amount of space needed to back up the disk is 140GB. I don't understand. It almost seems like it is trying to duplicate the entire backup. And this time around, I don't even see any new sparsebundle. I am stuck here.
Something caused TM to decide to start a new "sequence" of backups, as if you'd gotten a new Mac. That means a new, full backup to start with. The only thing that seems to have worked for some folks is a Restart. So if you haven't done one since the latest changes and failed backup attempt, it's worth a try.
If it still wants to do a full backup, you can't prevent it.
Depending on how much space you have on the TM drive/partition, your only choice may be to delete the "old" sparse bundle and let TM start over.
You may be able to delete some of the older backups to make room for the new, full backup, but that's tedious and time-consuming (see item #12 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip.)*
But that still leaves two problems: you'll have to manually "compact" the sparse bundle via Terminal to shrink it; and you'll have to continue to delete old backups this way (and manually compact them) to make room for new ones. Since TM is treating them as if they were from a different Mac, it won't delete them automatically, but will delete the oldest backups from the new set instead.

Time Machine error after restoring all data

Sorry, I've tried to run through various trouble shooting guides on Time Machine (notably here http://pondini.org/TM/C4.html etc) but haven't been able to work out a solution.
I just had my iMac harddrive replaced and earlier did a full restore of the harddrive from my Time Machine backup drive.
Time Machine, rather than deleting the old backups on the disk, is now giving me the error message
"This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 564.63 GB but only 521.89 GB are available."
I backed up to Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I just upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.8.3 because there were a couple of comments online that suggested that might help resolve the problem (unfortunately it didn't)
It seems from articles I've read that this is a known issue that occassonally happens when a full restore happens and Time Machine can't associate the new harddrive with the old backups.
One solution seems to be to use disk utility to reformat the external harddrive and start again, but that seems slightly like using a sledgehammer to smash a nut. Is there a less dramatic solution? Is there a easy way to just associate the two drives with one another again?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer, and apologies if I've missed a relevant/ helpful thread somewhere else on the board.

"Reconnecting" to your backups

Does Time Machine reset after restore?

Hello,
Suppose I have Time Machine backups for the last 6 months on an external hard drive. Suppose I restore my entire system to 3 months ago using TM. Will Time Machine still keep all the backups that were made AFTER that date, Or will TM treat that date that I restored to as the most "current" date, and delete all the backups created after it? What happens when TM starts to run again after restoring? I ask because I don't want to do anything that might cause any of my backups to be inadvertently deleted.
Best,
James

It will keep the more recent snapshots.

Time Machine Problem after Hard drive replacement

Hi all,
I am new at this so thanks in advance for any help or direction. I am running Mac OS X version 10.6.8 on an iMac and am having troubles with my Time Machine since having my 1 TB hard drive replaced under the Seagate recall. Specifically, the store somehow cloned my drive during the replacement process but now when Time Machine runs it doesn't recognize its prior backups as belonging to itself, starts to perform a full backup and then realizes it runs out of room as shown above.
I am backing up wirelessly to a 2012 dlink network attached storage device and it was working perfectly before having the hard drive replaced. The first time took ages but since was working fine. I have spent 3+ hours on the phone with apple support to no avail (trying to associate the old backups with TM and then just trying to delete them to start over..,) and have since been working through the Pondini pages of troubleshooting TM solutions.
Specifically, I have followed the instructions on http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html going through the green box steps 1-5 successfully first, but then I am unable to complete the process to inherit or associate the old backups (either pink or blue box) due to this error.
If I cannot associate the old backups with this 'new HD computer' then I think that I need to erase all prior backups so that I have room on the NAS to start TM backup from scratch. However, this is problematic as I cannot 'see' the old backups to try to delete them through Time Machine itself as the computer does not see itself as existing on the timeline prior to the HD replacement date. I therefore need a way of deleting the whole thing but clearly not through Finder or Terminal from problems mentioned by doing this in prior posts.
My NAS is partitioned so that all the Time Machine Backups were supposed to be just in one part of the NAS, separate from the stuff we were archiving from several other computers....(I cannot just reformat the entire NAS). From reading many of the Pondini troubleshooting posts I think that I need to do something to delete the whole sparsebundle? and think I have located it (see image below) (although I am not sure if it is the one from my prior successful backups prior to Nov 18 or from the more recent failed attempts).
I am carefully reading http://pondini.org/TM/12.html about deleting but at this point am a bit confused as to the best course of action.
Ideally, I would love to successfully tell TM that it has already backed itself up and that the Backups.backups folder belongs to it and not some other computer, so it can just proceed with updates.
Failing that, I think that I would try to delete all prior backups to free up the entire 1.87 TB that are designated and apple formatted for TM on the NAS and then restart TM from scratch.
Not sure if the Backups.backups folder that I have identified has all the info from before November 18th and then could be used to restore itself as I cannot see it through TM.
Thanks for the advice in advance. I would be grateful for any assistance and I am sure others having their hard drives replaced would also benefit.

Hi all,
I am a bit disappointed that nobody has offered me any help! Please? Pondini?
Thanks

Another Time Machine problem after 10.5.3 update

OK, I have another problem, that I haven't seen listed here. Time Machine will no longer back up my MacBook Pro after the 10.5.3 update. The error message I get in the Console log is:
6/1/08 3:44:42 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1395] Volume at path /Volumes/Dave's backup does not appear to be the correct backup volume for this computer. (Cookies do not match)
How do I change the cookies for my backup disk?
Thanks in advance.

I believe I have isolated the problem as a permissions issue which I have logged as bug 5990628:
Summary:
Unable to backup over network after upgrading to 10.5.3.
Steps to Reproduce:
Configure Time Machine to back up Leopard machine over AirPort to another Leopard machine (with external drive and .Mac account configured in this case)
Expected Results:
Backups complete as usual.
Actual Results:
Backups are 'Delayed' with errors like this in the console:
6/6/08 4:25:57 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[2334] Volume at path /Volumes/Time Machine-1 does not appear to be the correct backup volume for this computer. (Cookies do not match)
Regression:
Yes
Notes:
There are many threads on the subject:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1538633
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1543033
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1547134
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1546079
The problem appears to relate to being unable to read the cookie:
6/6/08 4:20:23 AM System Preferences[2315] Failed to create remote cookie file at path: /Volumes/Time Machine/.001b63abcdef
And this appears to be because the cookie was owned by a different user (likely due to it wanting to connect using a .Mac username instead of a local one), per my explanation below:
I only ever used Time Machine after upgrading to 10.5.3 so my first experience with it has been fairly ordinary, as the backups were constantly being 'Delayed' with this error in the Console:
6/6/08 4:25:57 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[2334] Volume at path /Volumes/Time Machine-1 does not appear to be the correct backup volume for this computer. (Cookies do not match)
The first thing I discovered from a blog post was that my .Mac 60 day trial was causing it to connect using my .mac username (which appeared in the username field in the UI as a string of hex characters); disconnecting and reconnecting using a local user seemed to work but the issue remained.
I then spotted this in the console:
6/6/08 4:20:23 AM System Preferences[2315] Failed to create remote cookie file at path: /Volumes/Time Machine/.001b63abcdef
The 'random' characters are your MAC address and the binary inside is likely this 'cookie' - a random value used to transparently and reliably link backups to machines. Curiously I couldn't modify this file over the network despite apparently owning it (in Terminal):
$ cd /Volumes/Time\ Machine
$ ls -la .00*
-r-------- 1 samj staff 16 Jun 6 04:33 .001b63abcdef
But when looking at it on the Mac Mini 'server' I saw that the owner was in fact another user:
-r-------- 1 otheruser staff 16 Jun 6 04:33 .001b63abcdef
So I ran these commands:
sudo chown samj .001b63abcdef
sudo chgrp staff .001b63abcdef
And sure enough I was able to configure Time Machine as expected and it is as we speak backing up my MacBook over Airport to a USB drive attached to my Mac Mini.
Cheers,
Sam
Sam Johnston
Australian Online Solutions
http://www.aos.net.au/

Time machine freezes after restore using migration assistant

after an erase/install done in an Apple Store, I restored my Mac Book from the Time Machine using the migration agent.
To do this I created a temporary admin account and performed the Restore of all users and contents in the backup.
Now logged in as my old user ID the time machine backup starts and identifies that the entire MacBook content needs to be backed up.
TM Backup runs through the prepairing stage and reaches the "Baccking up 'xxx' MB from 'yyy' GB" message.
Then it gets stuck after 120 MB has been backed up. I did run the backup for 2 entire nights in the 2nd night it got stuck after 0 kB had been backed up.
What to I need to do to get TM running again?

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 all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
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 problems after time away...

I have time machine set up on a hard drive hooked up to an airport extreme. For the past ~4 months it has worked perfectly. However, I was out of town for 2 weeks recently, and because I was getting sick of seeing the errors from time machine not being able to find the hard drive I turned time machine off.
Now that I am back I cannot get time machine to complete a backup. Most of the time it just hangs on "preparing backup" for hours. One time it did start a backup and said it was backing up like 3 gigs (which made sense because I installed a few new apps while away). I left it going unattended for 5+ hrs, and when I came back it was no longer backing up. However, time machine still says "latest backup: may 18", which is the day before I went out of town.
any suggestions on what I can do to get this working again?
p.s. a thought I just had... I installed 10.5.7 while I was away... in case that matters...

mbw234, yes it is possible to speed up the backup process of wireless backups. I stumbled upon this last year and it has worked several time after that. See my success at the following link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1717196
In the meantime here is the procedure in brief:
*Faster Initial Backup for Airport Connected Hard Drives (AirDisk)*
First, ensure that the external hard disk is properly partitioned & formatted for use as a Time Machine backup disk.
Attache the drive directly to your Mac (USB, or FireWire) and partition it using the procedure in the post here: (Scroll down to "Procedure")
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8432923#8432923
Once the partitioning/formatting is complete...
Disconnect it from the Mac and move the hard disk to the USB port of your Airport wireless device.
Open Time Machine Preferences.
Click "Options...".
Select the hard disk and click "Use for backup".
Leave the Time Machine Preferences open.
Now initiate a backup by selecting "Back Up Now" from the Time Machine menu.
Watch the progress bar in the Time Machine Preferences.
When "Preparing Backup..." disappears and data begins to be transferred, stop the backup by clicking the tiny "x" icon to the right.
When "Stopping Backup..." disappears, disconnect the hard disk from the Airport wireless device and move it back to your Mac.
Now resume the backup by selecting "Back Up Now" from the Time Machine menu.
This will take several hours, but it will be much shorter than allowing it to proceed wirelessly.
Once the backup is complete, disconnect the hard disk and move it back to the Airport wireless device.
Now, incremental backups should continue to be added to the existing backup set without created a new Full Backup.
As Pondini explained, the format Time Machine uses is different depending on whether you backup wirelessly, or directly attached to your Mac. The procedure above, gets the wireless format started by creating the necessary disk image (sparsebundle). Interestingly, Time Machine seems to respect this disk image once it has been moved and connected directly to the Mac. Unless something has changed with recent updates of the Mac OS, the above should work for you.
Let us know if this helped. Cheers!

Time Machine problem after clean install

I installed an SSD drive on my mac and did a clean install of OS X Lion.
Now, when I access my time machine backup disk I can only restore applications and not any files.
Is there anything I should do to be able to restore files etc.?

Erase Lion from the hold commnad r boot into Recovery, then reinstall it again.
Next when you setup Lion, have teh TM drive connected and use Setup Assistant to transfer from TM drive.
What I suspect happened is you have the same named account and it's conflicting.
Most commonly used backup methods explained

How can I access old Time Machine backups after restoring from Time Machine?

Just restored my iMac and I can only see "Now" when I enter Time Machine. How can I see all the backups and dates I had before I restored?

While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.

No permission to access my time machine backups after restoring.

I reinstalled osx mountain lion on my macbook pro and restored my computer from a time machine backup. Now when I try to access my old backups time machine tells me that I have no permission to access those files. How can I regain access to my old backups?

See Pondini's Tips, for starters.

Time machine full after restore

Hi all
I recently suffered the 'pleasure' of a HD failure in my 2008 24". An apple engineer replaced the drive and reinstated my data from time machine - all good so far. However, my mac doesnt want to relink with my existing backups and continue the save/delete old entries like before. I can still access my old backups, but It seems to want to create a new time machine on the very little space i have left on the drive for new backups.
Is there a way of relinking to the previous backup or is it a case of wipe/restart, which i'd like to avoid.
Ta.
Dezza.

Hllo:
Time machine will try to make a complete new backup as a result of the new drive.
I would (I am not you) erase and format the external drive and let Time Machine make the new backup.
Barry

Time Machine Problem after restore

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