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!

Similar Messages

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.

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 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.

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 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

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

Had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I rest

I had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I restarted the computer and tried again to run Photoshop and the same error message appeared. The message was followed by a message that stated that I needed to contact Adobe technical support and mention Error: 150.30. I need Adobe technical support to provide me a solution for my problem so I can continue using my Adobe products installed on my computer.

Unfortunately when Adobe products are restored from backup, especial CS4 and especially Mac, it breaks licensing.
There is a python script included in the license recovery kit that should work if you are familiar with Terminal.
If not, you must reinstall your CS4 suite. You don't need to delete your preferences, so it should be the same as before.
Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS
Gene

Time Machine problem: backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly

Hi all,
I'm having trouble with Time Machine. Each time it tries to do a backup, it errors out.
Here is the most recent log from TM Buddy:
Starting manual backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb
Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD
Will copy (740.5 MB) from Macintosh HD
Found 1702 files (741 MB) needing backup
2.43 GB required (including padding), 57.43 GB available
Stopping backup.
Error: (-34) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/Alan/Pictures/iPhoto Library (original)/Masters/2013/02/25/20130225-174952/IMG_1601.MOV to /Volumes/Time Machine Backup/Backups.backupdb/Alan’s iMac/2013-07-27-024450.inProgress/FE0FAB85-8482-43AF-B2D2-CB4804D0B0E9/Macintos h HD/Users/Alan/Pictures/iPhoto Library (original)/Masters/2013/02/25/20130225-174952
Copied 111323 files (57.29 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:28
Backup failed with error: 28
It usually errors out in the middle of trying to backup the very large "iPhoto Library (original)" file, so I went digging into this file back in time. About a month ago, I emptied the trash in iPhoto for the first time, and the size of the iPhoto Library file shrank from 87 GB down to just 1 GB. That seems rather extreme, and according to iPhoto, I still should have approximately 62 GB of photos remaining. The last completed backup that Time Machine was able to make had the library file at 800 MB. Even more strange, the current iPhoto Library file on my iMac is 83 GB. So I think this is the reason why TM is trying to make another complete backup of this file.
I'm guessing that if TM is able to completely backup the iPhoto Library file, the errors will go away. Does this seem like a reasonable hypothesis?
If so, then I'll need to delete files on the TM volume to make more room. At one point last year, I had tried splitting my monolithic iPhoto Library into 3 smaller libraries, and later merged them again under the current name "iPhoto Library (original)". These changes/instances of the libraries were all captured on TM. If I delete the original monolithic iPhoto Library file (named "iPhoto Library") on the TM volume, will I also lose my current iPhoto library (named "iPhoto Library (original)"? In other words, how does TM distinguish one file from another? By the file name? Or some other more permanent identifier?

The backup volume was full. That shouldn't happen, because TM is supposed to manage disk space by deleting snapshots as needed to make room for a new one, up to the last complete snapshot, which is never removed automatically. Normally, a snapshot won't be started if there isn't enough space for it.
First, I strongly suggest that you make a new backup (not necessarily with Time Machine) on another external drive. A single backup isn't enough to be safe.
One possibility is that you were writing other data to the volume during the backup. Apple recommends that no other data be stored on a backup volume.
If you've moved any files to the Trash on the backup volume, empty the Trash.
Sometimes a reboot will clear the error.
Otherwise, turn Time Machine OFF temporarily in its preference pane. Launch Disk Utility, select the backup volume, and run Repair Disk. That operation may take a few hours. If the volume is repaired successfully, or if no problems are found, try another backup.
If TM still isn't working right, boot into Recovery (command-R at startup) and repair the startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) Reboot as usual and try TM again.
As a last resort, put the backup drive aside and don't use it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data. Then erase it and start over. Do this only if you have at least one other backup device.

Time machine broken after 10.9.5 update

Time machine will not run after installing 10.9.5. TM was successful 10.9.4 20 minutes before I updated. When TM does a backup, the dialog says "711GB free of 1TB" and "backing up X of 6GB". After a while it says "time machine unexpectedly ran out of disk space" and quits. This happened twice. The third time TM tried to backup, it took 30 minutes to get to "backing up 90K of 6GB", so I gave up.
Anybody else having issues like this?

Hey northsidemike,
Thanks for the question and detailed information. I understand that you are experiencing issues creating a Time Machine backup after updating to OS X 10.9.5. The following resource includes multiple links for troubleshooting Time Machine issues. I’ve included a few that are related to your issue:
OS X Mavericks: Time Machine problems
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14187
Time Machine is slow or seems stuck
If your Time Machine backup disk runs out of space
If Time Machine is slow
If Time Machine remains in the “preparing” stage
Thanks,
Matt M.

Time Machine problems

My question is this: Is there any way to force Time Machine to make a complete backup of all files, not just the recently changed ones?
My story so far:
Installed Leopard yesterday. Detected brand-new (and newly Mac formatted Extended Journaled) Seagate 300GB hard drive and asked if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. Answered yes. Thought I was through with worrying about Time Machine- wrong! First backups went OK- so I thought. First one took several hours and seemed to back up the whole drive. Subsequent ones were shorter, which seemed to make sense. After a couple backups had been performed, decided to see if I could "go back in time". The only window to show up was the original backup (which I never bothered to check to see if it truly was complete). This morning I was greeted with an error that it couldn't do the backup because it couldn't complete the library.
So I come to this forum and read posts advising me to reformat my drive and name it with no spaces (it was previously "Backup Disk"). I did that, erasing all previous backups. Seemed to help, but...
Now, unfortunately, Time Machine doesn't realize that the backups are not there anymore and will not do a complete backup with my completely empty external drive. I even tried removing the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file from its place in the directory to see if that would force the program to build a new library. It didn't.
Not even sure that making a complete backup again will solve all my Time Machine problems but it's a start!

I had this same problem when I first started using my Time Machine on my MBP. I had a portable drive (Western Digital 160 gig passport drive).
I was advised by the tech to do the following before the first use of the drive:
1. Turn off the time machine
1. format the drive with your disk utility.
3. configure the time machine for the drive.
4. Turn on the time machine. Make sure your not backing up anything but your main hard drive. (Your shouldn't back up any other external hard drives). At least not the first time you run Time machine.
5. start the backup.
The first backup is always the longest, but it shouldn't take that long, especially if your doing the Macbook Air.
Hope this helps.

Restore some application from time machine problem.

Hi Everybody,
I just restored my MBP from Time Machine, everything went fine. But I feel my MBR start up much slower than before. So now I want to do a clean install Leopard.
I would like to ask you guys who experiences in Time Machine that after installing Leopard, I want to restore some applications from Time Machine such as MS office, Wow, Photoshop...Will they fully function if I restore from TM?
I acknowledge that some applications are like packages so after installing in Mac OS, they are actually located in different places in the system. Whereas others is like small application so we just copy and use. So if big applications as packages, I can not just copy from TM and put it in my new Leopard to use, can't I? If I can't, so is there any ways I can copy it back and use?
I am so confusing about this and I hope very much that somebody could help me out this problem, I would greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

+I just restored my MBP from Time Machine, everything went fine. But I feel my MBR start up much slower than before. So now I want to do a clean install Leopard.+
Wait on the erase and install. Launch Disk Utility which is in the Applications > Utilities folder and Verify your disk and repair permissions. If Verify shows any errors boot from the Leopard install DVD by holding the "c" key down until the spinning gear appears. Pick a language and choose Utilities > Disk and run Repair until no errors appear. Repair permissions.
If that doesn't work try resetting the PRAM which quite often fixes slow boot times.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
+Would like to ask you guys who experiences in Time Machine that after installing Leopard, I want to restore some applications from Time Machine such as MS office, Wow, Photoshop...Will they fully function if I restore from TM?+
I don't know about Wow but Photoshop and MS Office install too many files in too many places for it to be practical to restore them from Time Machine backups after doing an erase and install. You need to reinstall those from the original disks for those applications.

Help, I am about to pull my hair out, can't get into a locked drive and Time Machine problem

I've screwed everything up, I think. I had Time Machine doing backups to an external 500Gig drive and somehow it got locked. I went into Get Info to try and change the access but it won't allow me. On top of this problem, my original drive died and I can't get into Time Machine to restore. When I click "Enter Time Machine", nothing happens. I created an eDisk and a startup disk to another external drive that I'm using now, but since everything that's been backed up is on the other drive that I can't access. When I try accessing the drive it gives: "The folder “G-DRIVE ” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents." I'm not knowledgeable enough to work from the command line, so if I need to do that to access the drive, please walk me though it. As for the Time Machine problem, I have no idea how to recover anything since it won't even come up, it just sits there. Outside of blowing my brains out, I don't know what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I can't afford to take it to Apple to let them try and fix it.

Hello, not sure how this might affect a TM drive, or not, but...
Here is what i needed to do for my drive "320GB HD", the last command is just for clean up
Open Terminal and type these commands carefully with the spaces & change 320GB HD to the name of your drive.
sudo chflags 0 "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chown root "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chmod 1775 "/volumes/320GB HD"
sudo -k
That said, these should be sufficient to do the job:
sudo chflags 0 "/Volumes/320GB HD"
sudo chmod a+rx "/Volumes/320GB HD"

I just got a new MacBook Pro, and I tried to bring across my files from my last mac using time machine. After it was done copying I can't find my files anywhere but the space (about 130gb) has been used on my hard drive. Help please!!

I just got a new MacBook Pro, and I tried to bring across my files from my last mac using time machine. After it was done copying I can't find my files anywhere but the space (about 130gb) has been used on my hard drive. Does anyone know how I can get to them? I did change my user name from 'user' while it was copying, could this have something to do with it?

You don't want to do that by copying.
Your best bet, by far, is to use Setup Assistant. If your Mac is running Snow Leopard, see Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard.
If it came with Lion, it's a bit different: Using Setup Assistant on Lion

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

Time Machine problems after time away...

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