Time Machine reported 'volume is read only' & rolled back to old state

I've been in love with Time Machine ever since Leopard arrived. This has all come crashing down over the last few days...
Firstly I got a new 1tb drive, so I mirrored my old TM drive (using SuperDuper), and all seemed to be fine – backups were chugging along for a week or so as normal on the new, bigger drive.
A few days ago I got a time machine error stating that "The backup volume is read only". I thought this was strange as the drive was working without issue for a week. I checked permissions, format, etc and all were set correctly. I restarted and Time Machine kicked back in and all seemed to work fine other the fact that there seemed to be no backups created for 6 hours before I got the error message. Then I made a scary realisation, somehow the files on my computer had been restored to a state from 6 hours prior, all the work I'd done for the morning was gone.
I put this down to a one off glitch (stupid, stupid, stupid). I've today got the same "backup volume is read only" message again, and this time around my files have been restored to a state from 3 days ago. Fortunately this time around Time Machine has a backup of the important stuff a few hours ago.
I am now very worried about using the same disk with Time Machine. I also have no idea if Time Machine is the culprit (but logic tells me with the rolling back of files it must be). What should I do? How can I figure out what is going on?

This may fix the "read only" problem:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Similar Messages

Time Machine - External Hard Drive Read only error

Just recently got a Iomega 1TB MiniMax FireWire 800 USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive and used Time Machine to backup my computer. This was my first time using Time Machine and it successfully backed up 350 GBs. It continued to do backups every hour. When I turned my computer off and then turned it on the next day Time Machine wouldn't allow me to do a backup because it said the hard drive was read only. When I checked info it said it was read/write. I used disc utility to verify disc it said it could not verify disc do a disc repair. Disc repair failed and it said reformat disc. I erased the hard drive tried again and I got the same error message. The hard drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I searched this forum and the trouble shooting links and couldn't find anything on how to correct this. Any help on this problem would be appreciated.

See the following:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Time Machine appears to be "read only"

My Time Machine suddenly turned into a Read Only device.
"Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be 'read only.'"
"you may need to repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open the TIme Machine Preferences to select a different backup disk."
My computer Hard Drive is still running fine. Can I save a backup of the TIME MACHINE backups and load them into a new Time Machine drive.

Why not first repair the drive using Disk Utility?
Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. After DU loads select the TM hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your TM volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU.
The problem of having a TM drive revert to read-only is not new. There is this past fix:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Time Machine Turns External Drive Read Only

Folks--
I went away on vacation in December 2010 and shut my mac osx 10.5.8 desktop computer off, and with it my lacie 1T external drive, partitioned into three volumes, one of which served as my Time Machine backup volume. When I returned from vacation in early January 2011, Time Machine said that the volume in question was no longer available. Somehow it had become "read only." When I tried to fix it using Disk Utility I was unable to even verify it. When I tried to copy the files from the volume to another drive so that I could reformat, I received error message 1426. I'm feeling a little stuck. It seems like the only option is to reformat the entire drive and lose all of the back ups (the other two volumes have older backups).
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

nicx wrote:
Is it really corrupted? I can still access all the data on the volume, I just can't copy it or get the volume out of the read-only status.
Yes. If OSX marked it "read-only," it's corrupted.
Time Machine backups are intricately linked together; anything corrupted means the whole set is suspect. You may be able to restore some things, you might even be able to do a full system restore from some backups; but somewhere, something is corrupted. OSX knows that, and won't let you resume backing-up to corrupted backups, or copy them (even if you could copy them, the copy would be corrupted, too).

Time Machine Sparsebundle is suddently Read Only

I've got four macs at home all running 10.5.2. One is set up as a server, with a lot of USB drives on it as backup media. The other machines are all laptops, using Time Machine to back up to a drive on the server. All of the machines are working fine, except for my main work laptop.
This one has stopped backing up because it insists that the backup volume is now Read Only. The shared volume the sparsebundle is on is not locked. When I try to mount the image manually, it starts verifying itself an doesn't seem to stop. If I cancel the verification, it mounts. I tried using Disk Utility to check the integrity of the sparsebundle, but it fails and says it cannot repair it.
Anyone have any suggestions? Or has this backup corrupted itself to pieces?
Doc

Yup. Corrupted beyond recovery. I deleted it and started over.
Doc

Time machine failure hard drive read only

Hi
I have a seagate 4tb hard drive backing up my 4tb of internal hard drives on my 2008 mac pro. It has worked perfectly for a couple of months.
A couple of weeks ago, for no reason whatsoever that I can discern, the time machine back up failed and the message is that it is read only and I should repair or erase the disk using disk utility. As the back up is over usb 2 only and takes about two days I dont want to do this particularly as I don't see how this will convert the disk back into a read and write disk.
The info on the disk, which I can't seem to change is
you can only read
system read and write
wheel (whatever that is) read and write
and everyone read only
I have tried just moving a file on to it but it is rejected as read only. I can't see any write protect button on the drive itself.
Could you please advise as to whether this is a known macos issue or is this a drive fault. It is strange that I can't seem to alter the permissions in get info.
Any help appreciated
thank you

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for details.

Time machine suddenly now says "read only"

Nothing else has changed except that I ejected the disc for time machine, then used the USB port to connect my camera. Then I reconnected the disc for time machine.
I at one point think there was a box that said disc utility is unable to repair time machine backups (or someting along those lines) and I xed out of that.
I'm afraid to reformat the disc because it will mean putting at risk theonly backups that currently exist.

Thanks. I'm sure you're right about that. I just wanted to keep life simpler.
I'll go get another external drive and start a new backup set.
multiple redundant systems, just like the military!

Time Machine Error -- Backup Volume is Read Only

I suddenly started getting this error today when Time Machine runs. I use a 1 TB WD My Book as my Time Machine drive. When I select get info on the backup folder on the WD drive and check sharing and Permissions tab, it states directly under this label that "you can only "read" even though I am the administrator and it shows me as having read and write access in the table below the "you can only read" message.
Any thoughts?

See the following:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Time Machine backup fails w/error: Backup Volume is Read Only

This is another Leopard Bug! My Time Machine has always "just worked," but tonight, backup failed. Looking at the error message, it says, "Backup Volume is Read Only." My Time Machine was set up correctly, and has been working fine for quite some time. Now what?

Update: The next scheduled backup succeeded. I didn't change anything. Doesn't exactly give you that feeling of confidence in your equipment. The whole point of Time Machine is it is supposed to work in the background. If I have to think about it, and check up on it, it is useless, and I may as well return to my old manual backup methods.

"Time Machine Error The backup volume is read only"

Lately, every time I try to backup to my Time Capsule using Time Machine it fails and I get a message saying "Time Machine Error The backup volume is read only. To select a different volume, open system preferences and choose Time Machine" So I do that and I see the Time capsule listed. I don't want to select anything but the Time Capsule, cuz what else do I have, right? Am I wrong in assuming the "backup volume" is the Time Capsule? Anyway, I have tried changing the permissions on the time capsule, but when I get the "get info" box for the time capsule, there is not an option to change those settings, they are grayed out. Every thing worked well for about a week and then this started. My backup volume must have been "Read & Write" at first, because I can see what was backed up when I open Time Machine. Anybody have a clue what's going on? How can I make the back up volume "Read & Write" again and why did it change to "Read Only?"

Nope, I am using the same passwords as ever, both users have the same password, BTW. The password I gave to the Time Capsule is different, tho, but that password is for the wireless aspect of the Time Capsule, so that wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it?
I also get a message box that says "Disk Repair The disk "Backup of XXX's Computer" was not repairable by this computer, it is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible." This box appears in conjunction with the appearance of the Norton's virus scan box scanning the time capsule.

TS1550 Back up to time machine failed. Error, "Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only". Back up has been working. drive is not read only. How do I fix this?

Back up to time machine failed. Error, "Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only". Back up has been working. drive is not read only. How do I fix this?

Hello,
http://pondini.org/TM/C6.html

"No such file or directory" errors on Time Machine backup volume

I remotely mounted the Time Machine backup volume onto another Mac and was looking around it in a Terminal window and discovered what appeared to be a funny problem. If I "cd" into some folders (but not all) and do a "ls -la" command, I get a lot of "No such file or directory" errors for all the subfolders, but all the files look fine. Yet if I go log onto the Mac that has the backup volume mounted as a local volume, these errors never appear for the exact same location. Even more weird is that if I do "ls -a" everything appears normal on both systems (no error messages anyway).
It appears to be the case that the folders that have the problem are folders that Time Machine has created as "hard links" to other folders which is something that Time Machine does and is only available as of Mac OS X 10.5 and is the secret behind how it avoids using up disk space for files that are the same in the different backups.
I moved the Time Machine disk to the second Mac and mounted the volume locally onto it (the second Mac that was showing the problems), so that now the volume is local to it instead of a remote mounted volume via AFP and the problem goes away, and if I do a remote mount on the first Mac of the Time Machine volume the problem appears on the first Mac system that was OK - so basically by switching the volume the problem switches also on who shows the "no such file or directory" errors.
Because of the way the problem occurs, ie only when the volume is remote mounted, it would appear to be an issue with AFP mounted volumes that contain these "hard links" to folders.
There is utility program written by Amit Singh, the fella who wrote the "Mac OS X Internals" book, called hfsdebug (you can get it from his website if you want - just do a web search for "Mac OS X Internals hfsdebug" if you want to find it ). If you use it to get a little bit more info on what's going on, it shows a lot of details about one of the problematic folders. Here is what things look like on the first Mac (mac1) with the Time Machine locally mounted:
mac1:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac1:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 48
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 12 me staff 442 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 104 me staff 7378 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 19 me staff 850 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac1:xxx me$ hfsdebug Documents/ | head
<Catalog B-Tree node = 12589 (sector 0x18837)>
path = MyBackups:/yyy/xxx/Documents
# Catalog File Record
type = file (alias, directory hard link)
indirect folder = MyBackups:/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135
file ID = 728505
flags = 0000000000100010
. File has a thread record in the catalog.
. File has hardlink chain.
reserved1 = 0 (first link ID)
mac1:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac1:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
total 17720
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
146 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 68 Feb 17 2009 .parallels-vm-directory
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
148 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 136 Aug 28 2009 ACPI
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
So you can see from the first few lines of the "ls -a" command, it shows some file/folders but you can't tell which yet. The next "ls -la" command shows which names are files and folders - that there are some folders (like ACPI) and some files (like A.txt and A9.txt) and all looks normal. And the "hfsdebug" info shows some details of what is really happening in the "Documents" folder, but more about that in a bit.
And here are what a "ls -a" and "ls -al" look like for the same locations on the second Mac (mac2) where the Time Machine volume is remote mounted:
mac2:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac2:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac2:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 56
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 13 me staff 398 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 217 me staff 7334 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 25 me staff 806 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac2:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac2:Documents me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac2:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
ls: .parallels-vm-directory: No such file or directory
ls: ACPI: No such file or directory
... many more "ls: ddd: No such file or directory" error messages appear - there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the "ddd" folders and the "no such file or directory" error messages
total 17912
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
If you look very close a hint as to what is going on is obvious - the inode for the Documents folder is 152 on the local mounted case (the first set of code above for mac1), and it's 728505 in the remote mounted case for mac2. So it appears that these "hard links" to folders have an extra level of folder that is hidden from you and that AFP fails to take into account, and that is what the "hfsdebug" shows even better as you can clearly see the REAL location of the Documents folder is in something called "/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135" that is not even visible to the shell. And if you look closely in the remote mac2 case, when I did the "cd Documents" I don't go into the inode 135, but into the inode 728505 (look close at the "." entry for the "ls -la" commands on both mac1 and mac2) which is the REAL problem, but have no idea how to get AFP to follow the extra level of indirection.
Anyone have any ideas how to fix this so that "ls -l" commands don't generate these "no such file or folder" messages?
I am guessing that the issue is really something to do with AFP (Apple File Protocol) mounted remote volumes. The TimeMachine example is something that I used as an example that anyone could verify the problem. The real problem for me has nothing to do with Time Machine, but has to do with some hard links to folders that I created on another file system totally separate from the Time Machine volume. They exhibit the same problem as these Time Machine created folders, so am pretty sure the problem has nothing to do with how I created hard links to folders which is not doable normally without writing a super simple little 10 line program using the link() system call - do a "man 2 link" if you are curious how it works.
I'm well aware of the issues and the conditions when they can and can't be used and the potential hazards. I have an issue in which they are the best way to solve a problem. And after the problem was solved, is when I noticed this issue that appears to be a by-product of using them.
Do not try these hard links to folders on your own without knowing what they're for and how to use them and not use them. They can cause real problems if not used correctly. So if you decide to try them out and you loose some files or your entire drive, don't say I didn't warn you first.
Thanks ...
-Bob

The problem is Mac to Mac - the volume that I'm having the issue with is not related in any way to Time Machine or to TimeCapsule. The reference to TIme Machine is just to illustrate the problem exists outside of my own personal work with hard links to folders on HFS Extended volumes (case-sensitive in this particular case in case that matters).
I'm not too excited about the idea of snooping AFP protocol to discover anything that might be learned there.
The most significant clue that I've seen so far has to do with the inode numbers for the two folders shown in the Terminal window snippets in the original post. The local mounted case uses the inode=728505 of the problematic folder which is in turn linked to the hidden original inode of 135 via the super-secret /.HFS+... folder that you can't see unless using something like the "hfsdebug" program I mentioned.
The remote mounted case uses the inode=728505 but does not make the additional jump to the inode=135 which is where lower level folders appear to be physically stored.
Hence the behavior that is seen - the local mounted case is happy and shows what would be expected and the remote mounted case shows only files contained in the problem folder but not lower-level folders or their contents.
From my little knowledge of how these inode entries really work, I think that they are some sort of linked list chain of values, so that you have to follow the entire chain to get at what you're looking for. If the chain is broken somewhere along the line or not followed correctly, things like this can happen. I think this is a case of things not being followed correctly, as if it were a broken chain problem then the local mounted case would have problems also.
But the information for this link in the chain is there (from 728505 to the magic-135) but for some reason AFP doesn't make this extra jump.
Yesterday I heard back from Apple tech support and they have confirmed this problem and say that it is a "implementation limitation" with the AFP client. I think it's a bug, but that will have to be up to Apple to decide now that it's been reported. I just finished reporting this as a bug via the Apple Bug Reporter web site -- it's bug id 8926401 if you want to keep track it.
Thanks for the insights...
-Bob

Time Machine reports issue backing up to Time Capsule

Ever since I have upgraded to 10.6.4, I have been unable to complete a Time Machine backup. My backup volume is contained on a 2TB Time Capsule. Paraphrasing the error message, "Time Machine reports that it is unable to backup due to a problem with the disk, this problem may be temporary, try again later."
Has anyone seen this? Any suggestions?

The exact error message reported:
The Backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk.
The problem 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 on the external disk, and also ended up just erasing the volume on this disk, and attempting a fresh backup. Still no go.
The Time Capsule is connected directly to the iMac via Ethernet.

The back up volume is read only?

Can anyone help me with this? When time machine tries to run a back-up I get two errors and it fails. The first says:
Time Machine Error
The back up volume is read only.
The second one says:
Disk Repair
The disk was not repairable by this computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible.

AndyPrior wrote:
The back up volume is read only.
see C6 in [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/Troubleshooting.html] user guide.
JGG

Error Backup volume is read only

Time machine is giving me an error message of backup volume is read only.
I am using a time capsule for the backup disk
How do I change from read only to read and write?

I erased my TC and started over. It seemed to work fine until I tried to see my backups, it crashed. I've switched to Déjà Vu: http://propagandaprod.com/
I've been using this back up software for years with out ever having problems, I switched to Time Machine because I liked the fact that you could replace one pictures from iPhoto or one Address instead of the hole library. But I can't risk my work, I was never a fan of using Disk Images as backup, they get corrupted to often. Déjà Vu Works perfect with TC so I'm going back to Old Reliable. Plus it doesn't hog up your Hard Drive space. It could Mirror your files, it has a safety net option where you could pick how many days to save, and it only backs up once a Day, Week or month. Which is better than every hour.

Time Machine reported 'volume is read only' & rolled back to old state

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