Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion on both my Macs. It backs up fine when ever I connect to the USB drive but now seems to want to back up hourly when before weekly was OK. When it does not compleye an hourly backup it reports a delayed backup - failure on both machines. How do it revert back to it reminding me to do weekly backups?

I'm having the same issue with Time Machine on OS X Lion!
According to this webpage: http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/LionChanges.html
Backups (i.e., Time Machine, SD, CCC, etc.) will only save the current "Version" of files.
The above statement sounds like the issue @iJRB and myself are having after upgrading to Lion where Time Machine shows the following error message below within "System Preferences > Time Machine"
@iJRB: Is this the error message you are seeing?

Similar Messages

Since Lion, time machine says 'backup delayed' all the time??

Why, even after I have just completed a back up using time machine, is there an exclamation point and it says 'backup delayed'. It never did this before I upgraded to Lion and it doesn't show me the 'oldest backup' in preferences anymore..just a dash mark..almost like it's not been saving my backups? Anyone else experiencing this? Is it keeping track of my backups?

For those interested..I reported the bug to Apple and this was their reply. It is a known bug..so we just have to wait for the fix:
This is a follow up to Bug ID# 9975887. After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering. This issue has been filed in our bug database under the original Bug ID# 9411363. The original bug number being used to track this duplicate issue can be found in the State column, in this format: Duplicate/OrigBug#.
Thank you for submitting this bug report. We truly appreciate your assistance in helping us discover and isolate bugs.
Best Regards,
Developer Support
Apple Worldwide Developer Relations

Why is Time machine saying backup disk disconnected? Using MBP 17" Lion 10.7

Why is Time machine saying backup disk disconnected? Using MBP 17" Lion 10.7

Do you have an external drive connected?
If you do has it gone into sleep mode? There is a setting in the OS to put drives to sleep if they aren't being used. Energy Saver "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible".
Also most external drives have a built in sleep function that if they aren't being accessed for a period of time they go to sleep by themselves.

My Time Machine says backup drive is too small

After upgrading to Lion I created a new backup. My Time Capsule had 400Gb free, and the full backup is 270gb. However after a day or so time machine cant perform a backup because there isnt enough space on the drive. It says it needs another 270gb. The size of the backup hasnt changed since snow leopard so im not sure why this has happened. I feel it could be to do with File vault 2 which I enabled after upgrading to Lion. Also after I did the full backup it said on the TC that it was only 22mb in size, but this has now changed.
Many thanks

gooober wrote:
What is strange is that I had the exact same problem with Time machine after I moved my Time machine drive from being directly connected to my Macbook Pro to connecting it to our Airport Extreme.
After I moved the drive, I got an error message stating the same - yet there was plenty space left on the drive!
That's a different problem. Time Machine stores backups differently when done over a network. See the blue box in #E2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
And I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Time machine: now that I've upgraded to Lion, do I keep the backups or trash them?

Hi,
I wanted to get a sense on what to do with Time Machine now that I've upgrated to Lion. I just opened Time Machine and while the bar on the right seems to know there is data older from the date the back ups started with Lion, it doesn't seem to be able to open them. Is there a reason to keep the old back ups? Are you all deleing them or keeping the Time Machine backups from Snow Leopard and Leopard?
Thanks,

you would want to keep them because if something happens where you need to install snow leopard back onto your computer all your files backed up in lion will not be savageable so i would keep it unless you desperately need the space, although hard drives are dirt cheap nowadays, you can find a tb for around 60-80 bucks.

Time Machine shows Backup Delayed

My time capsule / time machine have been working perfectly
Totally hands off, hourly backups etc etc
Now I have the problem that every backup is delayed as the backup disk is not available
Once I select the backup disk manually the hourly backups resume as normal
When I re-start the problem is back.
So unless I remember to manually select the time machine disk I get no backups
This was working perfectly, before I restored some files from the time machine
Help

When did you start seeing this issue? Have you downloaded Mac OS X v10.6.8 and Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update? If you plan to upgrade to OS X Lion, you will need Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update but I must be honest with you:
Early adopters to OS X Lion, like myself, have found issues like the one you're having with Time Machine on OS X Lion. Backups are showing as "!" in the menu bar and error messages "Backup Delayed: Time Machine could not find backup disk" and Time Machine isn't keeping records of past backups. When I noticed this once installing OS X Lion at first run of using the new OS, I had to reformat and erase my external 500GB G-Drive Mobile FireWire 800 drive and the issue still hasn't been fixed.
If deleting the corrupt preference doesn't work, try submitting feedback on Apple's Support page for Time Machine by visiting the link provided:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
The nice thing about the transition between OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Lion is the OS installs itself over Snow Leopard without you losing any of your files unless you find a way to do a "clean install".

External drive, Time machine don't work after upgrade

On Wed, Feb. 1 I connected my external drive, did a back-up on Time Machine, everything was fine. Then I download the most recent update for my MacBook Pro, OS X Lion 10.7.3 On Saturday, Feb. 4, I again connected my external drive to back-up and the icon for the external drive never showed up on the desktop and Time Machine did not automatically start. This morning I put this question out there and it was suggested that I reinstall OS X Lion 10.7.3 (Client Combo), which is what I did tonight when I got home. It didn't work. The external drive is running, I clicked on Time Machine in the utilities and it says it is backing up now, but the external drive still is not on the desk top and I have at least two years of back up documents and thousands of photos stored there. The external drive holds 1 terrabyte and I am very sure it is not full. Time Machine is not reading all the other back-ups I have done over the past year or so.
Please any other suggestions?

Others here wouldnt recommend it, but on a new OS install, since I have a giant pile of HD, ...i just grab another HD and create a new fresh Time Machine backup
after its complete, I take the original HD with the OLD backup and format/erase it.
Im a tad too lazy to wait, as you yourself mentioned, 1 hour for TM just to PREPARE to backup. Nope, no,...not gonna do it.
I updated 4 Macs to Mavericks and id rather make a wholly NEW Time Machine backup on another HD and erase the original.
Since I keep about 12+ redundant archives of my important data, I have no worry on earth of ever losing data.
Time machine is a backup, NOT an archive for vital data.
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

Time Machine no longer opening after upgrade to 10.7

Hello All,
Quite a classic question, judging from the volume of posts regarding this topic, but could not find a step by step solution, so help would be very appreciated.
I am backing up my data using Time Machine on a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo.
It worked just fine as long as my Mac Pro was running 10.6.
While the backups still seem to happen when launched by Time Machine, i have lost the ability to open Time Machine (and get to the Star Wars interface to restaure older versions of some files) since I upgraded to 10.7.5
Time Machine works just fine for another Mac under 10.6 connected to the same Netgear NAS via the same home Ethernet switch.
I have checked that the NAS firmware is up to date (RAIDiator 4.1.12 is installed). I can see the NAS on the Netgear Frontview interface and on the finder. I can see the sparsebundle created on the NAS from the Finder.
Netgear support is unsure what to do as this looks in a way more an issue with Lion rather than a Netgear issue (it works fine with the mac running 10.6)
Any suggestion would be appreciated, I know i could always delete the non-functionning sparsebundle and try again, but that seems a bit drastic and deleting sparsebundles is not quite straightforward.

That's why I mentioned both. Sometimes installers muck up low-level settings.

Time Machine says backup disk is full

My Time Machine backup disk (FreeAgent GoFlex Drive: 1TB) says it's full. I thought Time Machine was supposed to delete old backups to make room for new backups on an on-going basis. I don't see a setting for it. I'm fairly new to Mac, so forgive me if this is supposed to be obvious. I did see some "expert" in this discussion tell someone to "buy a bigger drive." That's just arrogant and not helpful. Someone else bought a 4TB drive and it solved their problem -- duh! What happens when that's full? Don't need the arrogance, just would like to understand how it works. Thanks.

TM does thining, until you are left with only weekly backups. Then it deletes those backups from oldeset to newest.
However, it WON'T always delete a backup to make room, as this depends on a few particular details, and also it won't delete the only remaining backup.
Your 1TB isn't really that large anymore, so I can somewhat see why even an 'expert' would suggest a bigger drive. Most internal drives around 1 TB these days alone.

Time Machine says backup is larger then the actual disk

I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
I ran disk warrior on my main HD, ran disk utility to fix the disk and permissions. I formatted the TM drive and now I'm zeroing out the TM drive (hopefully that will work)
Anyone have any ideas why it would be reading the back up size wrong?
Thanks!
Message was edited by: zymosan

zymosan wrote:
I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
That's correct, as odd as it may seem.
Time Machine adds 20% to the estimated size of the backup, for workspace on the backup disk. That's usually not a problem, because a Time Machine disk should be much larger than the data it's backing-up; otherwise, there isn't enough room to keep old backups.
It varies greatly, of course, depending on how you use your Mac, but as a general rule, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
Short-term, you can "squeeze" a backup onto the disk by excluding something large (so the estimate is under about 410 GB) and run a backup. Then remove the exclusion and run another. Since the second backup will be much smaller, 20% of it will be much smaller, too, so it should fit.
Longer-term, you need a much larger HD; at least 1 TB.

Time machine will not work after upgrade

Since I upgraded to Mavericks on Oct. 22, Time Machine will not run properly, or at all for that matter. It tells me that it is 'Preparing Backup', but it was said that for over 4 days now. Suggestions?

I had a strange issue with Time Machine and Mavericks. Time machine wouldn't recognise the external USB drive I was using for backups. There was nothing in the logs, no errors, the time for the backup would come along and then it would skip to the next hour with no backup being done. What I was doing was removing the drive from Time Machine Preferences and re-adding it, TM would then start a manual backup and from that point it would run fine.
I ended up doing a Disc Verify on the drive (all ok, no issues) and shut the machine down. Today I booted up and staright away the TM Icon for the drive is correct and the TM is running as it used to.
I have three macs, all with external USB drives, the other two macs have no issues with TM, only my main one. Having a look at other issues, my external drive is a Western Digital unit so maybe that has something to do with it, though it can see the drive fine from Finder.
Anyway, if you are having similar issues, just run the Disc Verify Utility (and repair if there are errors) and hopefully it'll fix up that particular issue.

Time Machine says backup is too large for backup disk -- but it isn't...

I have a MacBook Pro with a 120GB drive and a 120GB external drive I use for Time Machine. Everything went fine for months until my laptop's drive got close to full (about 3GB of free space). Then Time Machine started saying it didn't have enough room to complete a backup: "needs 10GB but only 8.6GB is available"
So I told it to stop backing up my iTunes movies (about 7GB). Still didn't work -- same error message (the actual values may have changed some, I don't remember).
Next, I added another 10GB do the "do not back up" list. Still didn't work. Finally, I deleted (actually deleted, not just said "don't back up") about 5GB of files and emptied the Trash.
Now it says it needs 15.9GB of space to do a backup and only 8.6 is available... ??? I've restarted the machine several times, still doesn't work.
My solutions seem to be making it worse. Makes no sense to me.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Peter,
Unfortunately, Apple hasn't documented this very well. However, those of us who know how Time Machine works behind the scenes know this to be true. Of course, Time Machine can back up a given machine at least once with only slightly more space on the backup drive than needed, but subsequent backups will fail.
I have to disagree, though, that most people would fill a 250 GB hard drive. I have what I would consider a "just barely manageable" amount of data in my HOME folder, and my installation clocks in at about 100 GBs. Those "big ticket" items that would tend to bloat my HOME folder- iTunes videos, folders of huge images, etc.- I regularly place on some form of external storage when I no longer need them, removing them from my HOME folder. In fact, I have a partition on an external drive just for the storage of iTunes videos that have already been watched.
If your installation is filling a 250 GB hard drive, you might consider your file management, and just what is consuming so much disk space. It could be that you have some data that would be better stored externally.
Those that would benefit most from using a Time Capsule are those using portable computers, since these are the least convenient to connect directly to an external drive. Certainly, it doesn't make sense to have a portable connected directly to an external to allow hourly backups, which could occur easily when using a Time Capsule. And, I dare say that most portable computer users have internal drives smaller than 250 GBs. I know I certainly do.
All this said, your question is really whether or not a Time Capsule is right for you. If you are filling a 250 GB hard drive, the 500 GB model would do, but just barely. Adding a second machine, also using all of a 250 GB hard drive, wouldn't be possible. In this case, even the 1 TB model would be just barely enough, if that. Again, you might want to consider your file management, or just stick with directly-connected external drives for use with Time Machine. There are scenarios where a Time Capsule makes sense, and scenarios where directly-connected solutions are better.
Scott

Time Machine says "Backup volume could not be found"

Okay, I know what I did; now I need help in untangling an unintended consequence.
I surmise from the error message (and from some info from Time Machine Buddy widget) that the problem is the cookie doesn't match.
"Cookie file is not readable or does not exist at path: /Volumes/BigBackup/.000d9356b794
Volume at path /Volumes/BigBackup does not appear to be the correct backup volume for
this computer. (Cookies do not match)
Backup failed with error: 18"
I can guess why: I had some significant cosmetic damage to my G5 desktop a week or so back, and I moved all internal parts -- drives, RAM, even the added cards -- over from the "injured" G5 to an identical G5 that I had in reserve. Booted up and ran perfectly, no problems with identification from any outside sources and all software thinks it's still "home" and is running fine.
However, if the cookie left by Time Machine on the backup uses a device identifier for the computer beyond just the basic computer network name (a safe guess!) then I see how I've created a problem -- yes???
So, without destroying all of my previous backups or rendering them unreadable from this machine, HOW can I fool Time Machine, the G5, the cookie, and/or the backup volume into believing they've all been in love forever and ignoring the "oops, it's just a clone" problem? Can I doctor or hack the cookie or otherwise un-mess my mess? Thanks!

Steve Jolly wrote:
However, if the cookie left by Time Machine on the backup uses a device identifier for the computer beyond just the basic computer network name (a safe guess!) then I see how I've created a problem -- yes???
Yes. Time Machine knows it's a different Mac, via the address that's embedded in the hardware of the replacement Mac's logic board.
So, without destroying all of my previous backups or rendering them unreadable from this machine, HOW can I fool Time Machine, the G5, the cookie, and/or the backup volume into believing they've all been in love forever and ignoring the "oops, it's just a clone" problem? Can I doctor or hack the cookie or otherwise un-mess my mess? Thanks!
You might be able to use the procedure in #C8 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Capsule and Time Machine want backup, stops after 2-30GB

Bought 2 x 2GB Time Capsule yesterday to have for backup purpose. I have only used one of them yet (30 day return policy). I have an iMac with OSX 10.6.6 connected by LAN: I first tried to connect the TC to my ZyXEL P2602HWT, then directly to the iMac without any other network, and now i have set up ZyXEL as a bridge router and run TC with PPOE. All three connections provide the same miserable results. First backup starts quite normal and can backup everything from 2-30GB before Time Machine comes with a fault message "Time Machine Error This can be a transient problem. Try again later. If the problem persists, repair the backup disk using diskutility. I have tried everything rebooted TC, TC deleted, removed almost all the folders in the Time Machine except for documents, pictures and music folders but same result. Is there something wrong with my TC?

Kjetil Tomasgaard wrote:
Bought 2 x 2GB Time Capsule yesterday to have for backup purpose.
I'm wondering why you're using a Time Capsule for backups of an iMac; an external HD would be much faster and more reliable.
"Time Machine Error This can be a transient problem. Try again later. If the problem persists, repair the backup disk using diskutility.
It sounds like there's a problem with a file on your system; see #C3 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).

Time Machine has not worked since upgrade to Lion

Hello,
I've noticed that my Mac Mini's Time Machine will no longer perform a backup - I keep receiving a "could not create the backup folder" error message. This problem only started after I upgraded my Mac Mini (2010 Model) to Lion, Time Machine had worked perfectly when I use to use Snow Leopard. I have both formatted and partitioned my Time Machine drives (the first drive was a Seagate Barracuda 7,200 RPM 1TB drive, the 2nd drive is a 2TB Porsche Drive I bought at my local Apple Store). Both drives, when I was partitioning them, were set to use the GUID Partition Scheme. The Seagate Drive is an Internal Hard Drive that is sitting in a ThermalTake 2-Bay Drive Dock which is connected by a USB Cord, the Porsche drive is an External Drive that is connected via a USB cord. I have also tried unmounting/remounting each drive, deleting the Time Machine "plist" file from my Library folder and restarting, and finally re-installing Lion from the recovery drive I made using the instructions on support.apple.com. Unfortunately, nothing I've done so far has solved the issue.
I checked my Console log for Time Machine and this is what I found:
Initial Time Machine Backup
9/16/11 1:24:03.918 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
9/16/11 1:24:07.255 AM postfix/master: master exit time has arrived
9/16/11 1:24:07.277 AM postfix/master: daemon started -- version 2.8.3, configuration /etc/postfix
9/16/11 1:24:07.000 AM kernel: nstat_lookup_entry failed: 2
9/16/11 1:24:13.344 AM com.apple.backupd: 571.1 MB required (including padding), 1.70 TB available
9/16/11 1:24:19.677 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 1601 files (10.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
9/16/11 1:24:19.765 AM com.apple.backupd: 558.7 MB required (including padding), 1.70 TB available
9/16/11 1:24:20.346 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 100 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
9/16/11 1:24:20.413 AM mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
9/16/11 1:24:20.427 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
9/16/11 1:24:20.427 AM com.apple.backupd: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
9/16/11 1:24:20.442 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
Second Backup (1 Hour Later)
9/16/11 2:24:05.102 AM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Abraham size:37
9/16/11 2:24:08.685 AM postfix/master: master exit time has arrived
9/16/11 2:24:08.726 AM postfix/master: daemon started -- version 2.8.3, configuration /etc/postfix
9/16/11 2:24:09.000 AM kernel: nstat_lookup_entry failed: 2
9/16/11 2:24:15.143 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 2
Being a relatively new Mac User (I only knew about the above "fixes" after doing several Google Searches) I have no idea what the Console Log is trying to tell me or how to fix whatever is being referred to. I will be very grateful for any assistance that can be offerred.

I installed, and ran, the Time Machine Buddy Widgit and it displayed this message:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Abraham size:37
Backup failed with error: 2

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion

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