Time machine seems stuck

During backup, the time machine tries for hours and never completes a backup-- The time machine logo just spins in the menubar. I finally have to force a close. This is for an incremental back up, not the initial back up, so in theory this should be quick. Volume should be light-- 5 music CDs and 25 photos.
How do I get unstuck?
The last successful back up was July 18th.

BavarianWheels wrote:
Thank you for your reply and help...I don't understand what I did, but I tried to do as you suggested and it SEEMED to work fine. The whole thing got backed up, but as this is a macbook pro, I don't want to keep the thing connected to the ext. drive 24/7. I assumed I should just click the 'stop' button and procede to eject the drive, but I rcvd an error message when it stopped that the backup failed...
Yes: if you interrupt a backup, it didn't complete. That's not a successful backup.
So how does one use this TM thing if it runs continually in the background and when you want to eject the backup drive, it fails?? Do I need to make an appt at the genius bar for explanations? It seems there is VERY LITTLE information or documentation on using TM. All I find is "Connect the drive and voila..." It's certainly NOT that easy.
Your first backup copies your entire system. That obviously takes a long time; more in your case because of whatever is/was wrong slowing it down.
But that's only the first one. Once you get a successful, completed backup, subsequent ones are "incremental" -- only what's changed. Ordinarily they should be very quick (especially if you've really solved whatever was slowing down the first one).
I understand that you don't want to be "tied" to the external drive all the time; but the more often you let TM run it's hourly backups, the better you'll be protected.
While it's not a good idea to interrupt a backup, TM will usually recover from it the next time. But until you get a normal completion, they're going to take a while. You'll see a long "preparing" phase in each attempt until then.
You might want to review this: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
and this: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
and perhaps this: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018

Similar Messages

  • What to do when time machine seems stuck on "Preparing Backup"

    This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos. This means that the only backup will be for the system, profiles, and the app. I have been running this for a few months andhas been doing OK until up to now.
    My problem is that my time machine seems to get stuck on "Preparing Backup". The latest backup was done last Nov 8, 2011, whcih is about 11 days from now. I am also aware that the time machine drive has only about 200 mb space left, but I am not worried at all because I've always TM to delete the oldest backup to free up space. My oldest backup was still Sept 8, and I'm ok if that will be deleted.
    So I'd like to find out why it still stuck on "Preparing backup" ,and I am wondering if deleting a backup can solve it. Can it? what do I do to solve this?
    Also, I use my computer alot , so it is basically running for about 18 hours a day, but still time machine didn't quite work well. I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help. 

    Comments inline below.
    Pondini wrote:
    joshua raphael wrote:
    This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos.
    You may want to revisit that strategy:
    A backup on the same drive isn't very secure -- when (not if) the HD fails, you risk losing everything.
    In most cases, if there's a problem with OSX the best way to fix it is to just install a fresh version.  But you can't do that from that backup.
    Indeed!
    Backing-up apps that way will also be useless in some cases.  3rd-party apps that came with their own installers put other files in other places (and sometimes "helper" apps as well).  Unless you know what and where they all are, and restore them, too, the restored app won't work properly, if at all.
    I think you're confusing each other with terminology.  iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are NOT "Libraries", which has a specific meaning when it comes to OS X.    "Libraries", in OS X normally refers to /Libraries and ~/Libraries folders.  This is not where iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored within ~/Music and ~/Pictures, respectively.
    I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.
    Disk Utility changed a bit in Lion.  When you select an entire disk, it only repairs the partition map, not all the volumes.  You must repair each one separately.
    Wow, good to know.  (What a stupid change to make, for backwards compatibility, if for no other reason!)
    See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to figure out why the backups are hanging.
    Whew.  This editor makes it so hard to make comments inline.  The key thing when time machine seems stuck is patience.  Sometimes it needs to be left to run overnight.  Unfortunately, it doesn't log or report it's progress very well.
    Opening Time Machine settings in Preferences plus a command like this left running in Terminal.app is how I monitor progress.  And even so, there is very little logging indicating progress. 
    sudo tail -f /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/My\ Computer/2012-07-11-133352.inProgress/.Backup.363731632.496216.log
    The parts in italics will need to be adjusted.  Tab completion makes this easy, e.g type
    sudo tail -f /Volumes/
    and hit tab, type the first few letters of the relevant volume name, hit tab...
    Also, I have a hypothesis which needs testing. 
    I know that Time Machine gets confused if one deletes large files from a backup - specifically, Time Machine doesn't recognize that the size of the backup has changed.
    I know because this made restoring a thinned out time machine backup ("thinned out" by deleting files from within the GUI while inside the Time Machine) to a small SSD harder than it should have been.  I had to restore to a big disk and then clone that volume to the SSD - even though the SSD had enough space, Time Machine didn't think so; it didn't "understand" that it had been thinned.
    My hypothesis is that Time Machine also gets confused if the Time Machine partition is resized. I shrunk a Time Machine partition (no it wasn't on my main disk!) and about that time, Time Machine stopped working.  After thinning the volume, it started working again.

  • Time Machine is stuck (blocked) since I migrated to OS X Lion / What are the tips ?

    Hi,
    Since I migrated from SL to Lion on yesterday, Time Machine is stuck (my last - and only one backup in Lion is blocked at 17 kB whereas there still remains more than 17 GB to backup !).
    I still can explore the backups by entering Time Machine but any new backup seems to be stuck.
    Should I reformat my Time-machine USB external disk ?
    Regards,
    Franz
    PS: OS X Lion is great...

    os-app92 wrote:
    Hi,
    Since I migrated from SL to Lion on yesterday, Time Machine is stuck (my last - and only one backup in Lion is blocked at 17 kB whereas there still remains more than 17 GB to backup !).
    I still can explore the backups by entering Time Machine but any new backup seems to be stuck.
    See #D2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

  • Time Machine is stuck in a Loop

    Time Machine seems to be stuck in a loop and hasn't backed up in 13 days. Here's the information:
    Name: Time Machine Backups
    Available: 6.33 GB of 319.73 GB
    Oldest BackUp: July 19, 2009
    Latest Backup: October 15, 2009
    _*Backing Up: ➊Calculating changes, ➋Cleaning up, ➌Making backup disk available*_
    The last line goes from 1 to 2 to 3 then starts over. The Backup never occurs. I checked and both my MBP and the external drive are connected to the Airport Extreme wirelessly. I can even see the drive in Finder. I disconnected everything and restarted both the Airport Extreme and the drive. I then re-connected and the same thing keeps happening. I have a MBP 15in 2.66 Early 2009 and running OS X 10.6.1. I bought the Airport Extreme when they were first sold. All software is up to date.
    Help!!

    *Ok I disconnected the TM drive from the Airport Extreme and connected it to my MBP. I ran Disk Utility on the TM using Repair Disk . It found errors and fixed them all. I re-connected the drive to the Airport Extreme and attempted another backup. Here is the log:*
    +Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Machine%20Backups+
    +Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Machine%20Backups+
    +Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro_002500ce290a.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro+
    +Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb+
    +Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD+
    +Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|+
    +Compacting storage: 21.73 GB requested (including padding), 5.87 GB available before compacting+
    +Stopping backup.+
    +Backup canceled.+
    +Ejected Time Machine disk image.+
    +Compacting backup disk image to recover free space+
    *Then it started over. Here is the long after it stared over:*
    Starting standard backup
    Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
    Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro_002500ce290a.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb
    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
    Starting pre-backup thinning: 21.73 GB requested (including padding), 5.87 GB available
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-27-052350
    Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-27-052350
    Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-27-052350: 5.87 GB now available
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-28-011547
    Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-28-011547
    Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-28-011547: 5.87 GB now available
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-07-29-002053
    Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-29-002053
    Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of JohnDoe’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb/JohnDoes MacBook Pro/2009-07-29-002053: 5.87 GB now available

  • In Lion, Time Machine seems to be perpetually running - and running slowly

    Up through Snow Leopard, Time Machine did its incremental backup every hour quickly and stopped.
    Since upgrading to Lion back in July, Time Machine seems be be running almost all the time - and very very very slowly. There doesn't seem to be any exessive Spotlight indexing going on anymore. That was long ago. So I don't think that's it.
    Preparing for backup takes a long time. It take hours to eke through the backup itself, even if there weren't many changes, and finishing backup takes a long time.
    I would say each backup, no matter how small, takes more than three hours.
    At these forums there seems to be lots of discussion threads about this, and help pages linked to, but the suggested solutions seem to be a jumble, with some people saying they worked and many saying it didn't.
    I did do a disk repair on the Time Machine volume just in case. And there is nothing else on that drive except for Time Machine backups. The drive is directly connected to my iMac (3.06 GHz Dual Core Duo, 12 GB RAM). While not vital, I'd rather not reformat the drive and lost all my old backups, which go back over a year. If I knew for sure that was the solution I'd do it. But in the discussions here there are people who seem to have tried that and reported back that it didn't help.
    Right now it says it's backing up 3.5 MB of 132.9 MB - and taking forever to do it.
    I know that since the last backup I haven't changed anywhere near 132.9 MB of data. Unless Lion is making massive behind-the-scene changes.
    Something definitely seems to be wrong with Time Machine in Lion.
    Have there been any additional thoughts on this? Is Time Machine just buggy in Lion?
    Thanks,
    doug

    I feel ya, dawg, as they say. Right now I'm running a backup that has taken 43 minutes thus far. On an idle machine, it backed up 29.8 MB (17,949 files) followed by 19.5 MB (17,256 files). 12 min. for the first batch, 11 min., for the second. 13 min. of "Finishing backup" until it transitioned to "Cleaning up," which just completed after 12 min. Each backup typically goes 70–90 minutes. So backups are running for 65% – 80% of the time, if I leave TM running. I don't; instead, I turn on backups before going to bed, and turn them off on the first happy occasion when I notice that TM is idle.
    TM backups have been behaving this way for about 2 months. Before that they were as speedy as Snow Leopard, for a couple of weeks. Before that they were taking 3 hours with the dreaded "Waiting for index to be ready" messge repeating for on hour or more. I fixed this latter problem by "trying everything" from http://pondini.org/TM/D2.html (a fine resource but, as you say, all over the map as all of the suggestions are).
    TM in Lion is hosed. It's as simple as that.

  • OSX Yosemite : time machine backup stuck in preparation stage

    Time Machine Backups on Hard Drive as well as on my Time Capsule seem to be stuck in preparation stage for the whole day. Any idea what i need to do to solve this issue ? Appreciate the assistance. Thank you.

    Look at this Trouble Shooting link, especially D2:
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    Ciao.

  • Time Machine getting stuck on random hourly backups?? Please help!

    I set up Time Machine the yesterday, it compleated it's initial backup fine, and performed about 10 or so hourly backups, then randomly on one of it's hourly backups it got stuck. It never actually started the backup. The preferences said it was backing up, but the progress bar wasn't moving, and there was no activity on the drive. I stopped the "backup", and from then on I could not get it to do another backup.
    So last night I reformatted the external and decided to let TM start over. Once again it finished the initial backup fine, and I went to bed. While I was in bed it finished 3 more hourly backups, and I woke up this morning to find it stuck again, trying to do it's 2:05AM backup. The computer was awake all night, so it should have no problems. The preferences say it is backing up, but never makes any progress, and there is no drive activity.
    Here is the relavent errors from my System log:
    Nov 1 02:05:50 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Backup requested by automatic scheduler
    Nov 1 02:05:50 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Starting standard backup
    Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
    Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
    Nov 1 02:05:57 todd-sullivans-imac KernelEventAgent[35]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (256)
    *Nov 1 02:05:59 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume  Macintosh HD*
    *Nov 1 02:05:59 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|*
    Nov 1 02:09:45 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 14.57 GB requested (including padding), 132.30 GB available
    Nov 1 02:09:46 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (909) > 0, waiting
    Nov 1 02:10:16 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (906) > 0, waiting
    Nov 1 02:10:46 todd-sullivans-imac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[304]: MDBackupBegin() returned result (906) > 0, waiting
    I bolded the entries that I assume are the problem, but I don't know what it could be. Why does it randomly get stuck on hourly backups. BTW The "waiting" is just repeating over and over etc..... Help! Or it's back to CCC for me. Thanks
    EDIT: Tried it a 3rd time, and this time it managed to do 25 hourly backups before getting stuck. does anyone have a clue here, I'd like to get this working. Every time it stops working I have to format the drive and start over to get it to backup again.
    Message was edited by: tms2010
    Message was edited by: tms2010
    Message was edited by: tms2010

    The deep traversal is being done because something in the TM data base is corrupted or not trusted. The deep traversal means the TM backupd process has to traverse your whole set of volumes being backed up. This is a very lengthy process.
    No matter, it does seem you're hitting a snag of some kind. The best response I can give is for you to send the evidence to Apple feedback for the software engineers to review.
    People on this forum are unlikely to know what the problem is nor have a fix for you.
    When you formatted your TM backup Volume to you zero it out using Disk Utility. You could be running into an unrecoverable disk i/o error - a bad spot on the backup HD or even a bad spot on your internal HD.

  • Time Machine Backup Stuck in a Loop?

    Since upgrading to ML I've noticed that my Time Machine backup icon seems to be in constant motion.  I've also noticed that it never seems to be backing up as it's been stuck at "427kb of 479mb" for the past hour.  I'm backing up to a Time Capsule and can access the time capsule just fine.

    Sly Park Mark wrote:
    After installing the new hard drive in my macbook, I once again booted up from the install disc and told it to restore my hard drive using my last time machine backup (which was created one day before the initial crash). Once again, the computer got stuck on the grey startup screen mentioned above.
    Two possible causes:
    You used a Leopard install disk, instead of a +Snow Leopard+ one. All you needed to do was install Snow Leopard over it; but since you've now done other things, your best bet is to just do it over, using a Snow Leopard disc.
    Whatever was going wrong with your internal HD damaged some things on your system, and that damage was backed-up, so is restored along with everything else. In that case, do it over, but select an earlier backup.

  • Time machine gets stuck on indexing

    Since the last weeks my time machine will not backup anymore..
    I have searched around but couldn't find out what will fix it..
    This is what the module had to say:
    Starting standard backup
    Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://admin@TM_Twan.local/MyShare
    Mounted network destination using URL: afp://admin@TM_Twan.local/MyShare
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/MyShare does not support TM Lock Stealing
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/MyShare does not support Server Reply Cache
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
    Disk image /Volumes/MyShare/MacBook Pro van Antoine van der Lee.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine-reservekopieën
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine-reservekopieën/Backups.backupdb
    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    I hope you guys can help me..
    Kind regards,
    Twan

    AJvanderLee wrote:
    There was only one thing i could not do, i could not repair my backups, because they didn't appear in the disk utility..
    What are you backing-up to? If you can see the +sparse bundle+ your backups are in via the Finder, use the instructions in #A5 for repairing the backups on a Time Capsule. If you can't see it, you can't repair them with DIsk Utility (or most 3rd-party disk repair apps). Check with the maker of the NAS for help.
    Further, i thought it would be something with the message "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD"
    That's normal after a failed/cancelled backup, and will be repeated each time until one completes successfully. See #A6 in Troubleshooting for details.
    Besides, my spotlight is now indexing my harddisk and seems to get stuck on "calculating time for indexing"
    This is because i excluded my harddisk from spotlight, restarted my mac and then included my harddisk again for spotlight. So it needed to reindex it, but i'm not sure that it will work, because it allready toke the whole day for it and is still saying the same thing..
    That sounds like a problem with a file or the directory structure on your internal HD. Did you verify your internal HD, per #3 in the green box? If so, and if it says it's ok, exclude your internal HD from Spotlight indexing until you get your backups working; then you can figure out what's wrong with Spotlight.

  • Initial Time Machine Backup Stuck on "Indexing Backup"

    I have Mac Mini running 10.7.2.  I just got an external hard drive and am trying to run an initial back up using Time Machine.  I am running my computer in Safe Mode as it won't start in regular mode.  I formatted the HD and began to run Time Machine back up.  HD is connected via USB 2.0 wire.
    It has now been 12 hours and is still on Indexing Backup...  Is this normal for initial back up?  I know it takes a long time for initial but this doesn't seem right.What do I do to correct if it isn't correct?  Should I stop and try again?

    Thank you very much.  With your info I gave up on the back up and ran Disk and Permission Repair for the 3rd or 4th time and crossed my fingers and restarted my machine and it WORKED!  I ran time Machine back up and when I woke up this morning it was all done!  Yeahhhh!
    I wasn't sure what was causing it not to start in regular mode and as I'm not too much of a techie I was scared that I was teetetering on the brink of losing everything.  The machine would run so I didn't think it was a hard drive issue, but not knowing for sure I was concerned and after losing everythign once before years ago, I was worried. I have it backed up on line but wanted a 2nd (local) version that wouldn't entail tying up bandwidth for days.  In the end it worked out!
    But the short answer is, Time Machine Backup does NOT work in Safe Mode...

  • Time Machine seems to be deleting files from the backup disk.

    My main disk has about 400 GB of data including nearly 300 GB of movie files. Since I started using Time Machine in February, the backup disk has had about 400 GB of data on it. This morning Time Machine has said on the System Preferences display that it is "finishing backup" and in the process the backup disk contains only 108 GB of something - hopefully some of my data. The file structure looks OK on the backup disk but I am not sure that the data is there.
    I turned Time Machine off and back on and for awhile it seemed to be moving data to the backup disk but then it went back to the "finishing backup" mode and the amount of data on the backup disk began to decrease again. This evening I turned Time Machine off and left it off but it turned itself back on. Somehow this does not seem right. This has happened a number of times.
    The net result is that I have about 400GB of data on the iMac system disk and about 108 GB on the backup disk. What can I do to get out of this trap and start getting valid backup?
    For starters I will dismount the backup drive and then disconnect the backup drive and at least I will have something left on the disk.
    Thanks for the help.

    Well, I can't really say what the problem is. You could try to repartition (not just erase) the HD and start Time Machine over again.
    Or you could check Time Machine's logs in Console.app, and maybe someone else can help you if it's putting out errors (not my area of expertise).
    Message was edited by: bcr88

  • Time Machine Backup stuck on Finishing Backup

    Hello
    I am backing up my macbook (on snowleopard) for the first time using Time Machine and the WD My Book for Mac external hard drive. The dialogue box shows that Time Machine has finished backing up 370KB of 370KB, but it is stuck on "Finishing backup". I've left it running overnight, but it is still stuck on this message. If I open Time Machine (to the star wars-looking section), it appears that the back up was successful (but of course I've only checked random files - not every single file). I can still use some applications on the macbook, but some things, like Safari, Mail and Preview are frozen.
    I've searched this forum and looked at http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html but have not been able to find a solution to this issue.
    Please can anyone assist?
    Many thanks in advance!

    Thanks so much for your prompt response!
    I ran Repair Disk on the TM volume - there were no problems.
    I then ran Verify Disk on the source volume and got the following message: "Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk." I've proceeded to insert the installation disc, but was not sure where to go from here. I've tried to follow the instructions on this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13107919&#13107919 however, the options that come up are not as per the instructions on the thread. Specifically, after inserting the disc and pressing 'Continue', the only option it gives me is to re-install the OS in its entirety. It does not give me the option, as anticipated in that thread, to select a language nor does any menu bar appear allowing me to select Disk Utility etc etc.
    Do I need to shut down the macbook and insert the installation disc only after it has rebooted? (Apologies in advance if this is an obvious question. I am hesitant to reboot unless this is what I am supposed to do as it often leads to all sorts of other issues).
    Many thanks!

  • Restoring time machine backup stuck at end

    Hello!
    I recently suffered a random filesystem failure and had to reinstall the OS. I was running 10.7, in fact, I turned on my MBP to install 10.7.1.
    After a lengthy download, the installer prompted me to restore from a Time Machine backup, which I'm keeping since my last hardware HD failure. I chose to restore, and the installer detected my Time Capsule, loaded the backup, and started restoring.
    I left it overnight and, come the following morning, the restore hadn't finished yet. Again, I left it while I was at work, and came back 8 hours later to find the screen in the exact same way I left it in the morning.
    After some tests trying to restore the backup (including a failed back-to-Snow Leopard attempted recovery, couldn't connect to my TC), I figured I would reinstall Lion from scratch and use Console.app to check the progress using the system log when restoring using Migration Assistant.
    My first surprise was when I tried to run Migration Assistant using the root user, which made Migration Assistant crash, so I had to create a second administrator user in order to restore my original administrator account.
    After leaving it run its course, I started noticing that the Migration Assistant was trying to restart opendirectoryd, and that it was failing to start, citing error 71 "profile could not be found" (or opened, instead of found, I really don't remember and don't have the log here with me).
    I then went into the terminal to check if the restored data was on disk, which it was, so, after a couple of attempts of launchd to restart opendirectoryd, I pulled the plug and shut the machine down cold (no shutdown process, just held the power button).
    When the computer started up again (I have verbose boot mode on), it stalled at macx_swapon (again, or something like that, I don't remember), and didn't move in the whole hour and a half I let it sit there.
    I tried booting single user mode, but the only thing I got to do was check if the restored data was there (which it was), and try to create my user (which I couldn't).
    I've had success restoring backups from that Time Capsule but for another Mac.
    Is there any way I can restore my computer back to the exact state of the Time Machine backup? FWIW, the TM backup is a data-only backup (i.e. doesn't have the OS with it), so a disk clone is not an option.
    I really would like to avoid going the "fake manual restore" option of creating the same user, moving the files manually and so on, it's a PITA
    Thanks in advance,
    Nico

    Sorry, can'thelp. But:
    I trust  TM only for rescuing individual files. I tried a full restoration of my Lion system, as a test, and everything was restored and seemed OK except half my Mail messages were missing. A few months ago, on OS 10.5.8, TM suddenly told me that it had deleted some files. The files deleted were all from Jan. 2010 to four weeks before! I know that it does this if the TM disc is getting full, but I had not created any large files in the preceding few hours. Also, the TM disc had loads of space left, yet when the message came, TM's GetInfo showed the disc nearly full!. I had to erase the disc and start again.
    I don't find TM reliable. I make my backups in the form of bootable clones, scheduled every day in Carbon Copy Cloner.

  • Since upgrading to Mavericks, my Time Machine is stuck on "Preparing Backup".

    Since upgrading to Mavericks, every time I attempt to run a Time Machine backup, I can only get it to go as far as "Preparing Backup".  I've left it like that for hours just to see if it's slow.  I've also stopped and restarted Time Machine multiple times to no avail....it just gets stuck at that point.  Please help.

    Since upgrading to Mavericks, every time I attempt to run a Time Machine backup, I can only get it to go as far as "Preparing Backup".  I've left it like that for hours just to see if it's slow.  I've also stopped and restarted Time Machine multiple times to no avail....it just gets stuck at that point.  Please help.

  • Time Machine gets stuck on cleaning up

    Hi, I can't complete a back up successfully with Time Machine. I get stuck on the 'cleaning up' phase and then it stays there forever. I actually went to work and when I came home it was still in the same state. Then I can't stop the back-up cleanly. I have to go in to Activity Monitor to force quit.
    Following the advice on pondini.org I have installed the Buddy widget. It tells me that....
    Starting standard backup
    Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data
    Failed to attach to image: /Volumes/Data/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
    Disk image /Volumes/Data/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap/Backups.backupdb
    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
    Node requires deep traversal:/Users/gemzap/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|found in deep scan|missed reservation|
    Following advice on here, I have also done a verify/repair disk on both my macbook and the time capsule external drive. Both reported to be ok.
    Any ideas? Any help would be much appreciated!
    Many thanks
    gemzap

    No luck I'm afraid.... I dismounted (then completely unplugged) the time capsule. Then reconnected, clicked in to the timecapsule drive to make sure it wasn't napping, and tried again. The messages on the time machine read as follows..
    22:25 Making back up disk available
               Calculating changes
    22:27 Scanning 800,713 items
                Preparing xxx items
    22:58 Cleaning up - for 8 hours.
    So at 7am this morning I clicked stop back up. But again that hasn't don't anything, so have just done a force quit in Activity Monitor.
    Time Machine buddy says...
    Starting standard backup
    Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Gemma%[email protected]/Data
    Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Gemma%[email protected]/Data
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
    Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of gemzap/Backups.backupdb
    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Node requires deep traversal:/Users/gemzap/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:must scan subdirs|missed reservation|
    Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
    I'm at a loss.
    Should I try deleting the gemzap_001f5bed6067.sparsebundle file? Could that help?
    Many thanks
    gemzap

Maybe you are looking for