Time Machine silently skipping files with disk I/O error

Last week, my machine started periodically freezing for roughly 20-30 seconds at a time. I noticed corresponding "disk i/o error" entries in the system log and the problem seemed to be getting worse.
I bought a new hard drive, did a final Time Machine backup, swapped drives, restored from my Time Machine backup, and rebooted. Everything seems to be working fine, until I tried to open a VMware Fusion virutal machine (named Win7.vmwarevm). Fusion complained of a missing file. I check Fusion's log file and notice that it was failing to load one of the files inside the Win7.vmwarevm bundle that holds the VM's disk image (s009.vmdk). I did a "Show Package Contents" to peek inside and, sure enough, noticed that 2 files were missing from the sequence of 2GB files that make up the disk image (s009.vmdk and s010.vmdk).
I went back to my Time Machine backup and confirmed that the last backup of Win7.vmwarevm was indeed missing the 2 files in the bundle. I looked thru successively older backups and noticed the same phenomenon until I got to a backup made on December 20th, which included the 2 missing files. I restored Win7.vmwarevm from the Dec 20 backup and it worked fine. Unfortunately, I lost all my work between Dec 20 and Jan 5.
What concerns me is that in the 4 backups I'd done between Dec 20 and Jan 5, these 2 missing files failed to be backed up, yet Time Machine never complained. No warning, no error, nothing. This seems like a serious bug to me. Without an error message that says "[n] files failed to be backed up", you assume that your backup was successful, when, in fact, some files were skipped. This behavior seriously undermines my confidence in Time Machine. At this point, I have no idea how many of my original files have been recovered.
I poked around a bit and stumbled on this blog entry that seems to describe a similar problem:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080129063748614
Is this is a known issue? When will it be fixed?

peymano wrote:
I agree that it's best to backup each VM using backup software running within that VM, but the problem remains that *Time Machine appears to silently skip files when it encounters a disk i/o error*.
I don't think so. Usually what happens is, it sends a message about "indexing a file failed" or "an error occurred while copying files to the backup volume," and the backup fails, citing Error 11.
As I posted, I don't use any of these, but it's my understanding that the whole PC system is in a disk image -- to OSX, that's just one monster file; that's how Time Machine will back it up, too. I don't know how it could back up the files individually, since it doesn't understand the Windoze file system -- it cannot back up a Boot Camp partition, for example.

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Time Machine is skipping files

Hi,
I noticed today that Time Machine is skipping a few files during backup.
These files are not listed in the Exclusions.
Within Terminal, if I run
tmutil compare
Some of these files are listed with '+' and some with '!' meaning Time Machine must know they exists, but for some reason is overlooking them.
Can anybody suggest a way to resolve this? Perhaps reset the flags for these particular files?
Cheers

If you use the third-party application "Dropbox," you may see files in the Finder that are not present locally, but are actually on a network server. Those files won't be backed up and won't appear in Time Machine, even though they show in a Finder window. If the files in question are in a Dropbox folder, disable the software or refer to its developer for support.
Continue only if you've ruled out Dropbox or any similar product as a possible cause of the issue.
Open the Time Machine preference pane and unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Options button. If there is one particular folder with items that are not being backed up reliably, add it to the list of excluded items. If there are many such folders, add your home folder to the list, or add a whole volume (i.e., what Apple calls a "disk.") Save the changes.
Start a backup, or wait for one to happen automatically. When it's done, open the preference pane again and remove the exclusion(s) you made earlier. Back up again and see whether there's a change.

Is there any way to force time machine to keep retrying after disk i/o error?

a little background to my problem:
i've had a hard drive problem previously, and i managed get all the data off of my mac by trying and retrying to access the same files and also from my working time machine backup. after zeroing out and reformatting my drive and doing a clean install of Mavericks i had everything back up running no problems.
recently, my macbook pro would be stuck and slow in recently imported iphoto pics so i figured my hard drive is really failing this time around
i try to get a time machine backup to save what i can, but after a couple of tries time machine would just stop backing up and in console i would see a disk i/o error.
is there any way to force time machine to keep trying to backup through the disk i/o error so i can save what i can before getting a new drive?
edit: a little more info, i know i have a harddrive error from looking at the console, but when i do a verify disk in disk utility it comes up clean and even after doing a disk repair it comes up clean i still see disk i/o errors in the console.

See:
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved
Thee can also be a problem with the file(s) that store the extensions registry.
Delete the files extensions.* (extensions.sqlite, extensions.rdf, extensions.cache, extensions.ini) and compatibility.ini in the Firefox [[Profiles|profile folder]] to reset the extensions registry.<br />
New files will be created when required.
See "Corrupt extension files":
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_install_themes_or_extensions
If you see disabled, not compatible, extensions in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions" then click the Tools button at the left side of the Search Bar (or click the "Find Updates" button in older Firefox versions) to do a compatibility check or see if there is an update.

Itunes, Time machine and 4Gb files. Getting a FAT32 error.

Using Itunes to purchase a movie in 1080.
Something I have done many times before...
I have a remote itunes disk, it is a Apple 3Tb Time Capsule.
Now I get a can't download the file to a FAT32 file system error that stops me dead... the error I get is generated by itunes... I have many >4Gb files on the Time Capsule and they are no problem.
Any insight? Thanks
John

Hi Damballa,
Time Machine's backup folder can coexist together with other files, however it would most likely be better practice to partition the drive into 2 parts in disk utility. 1 part for time machine, the other for your audio files. That way, it keeps them separate from each other, which is always better imo, especially for time machine.
OR, since you have a Mac Pro, put those 4 HD slots to good use! Buy 2 HDs!
They are so affordable right now. I'm not sure your main drive size, but Western Digital 640GB drives are simply awesome: speed, price, size. $75 for what you get..is sick.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218
If I were you, use the WD 640s as your main drive, great boot times.

Time Machine will NOT work with Airport Disks!

It looks like Time Machine will not work with Airport Disks after all. All references to Airport have been removed from the Time Machine page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
It also specifically says: "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices."
Surely, they would have included the Airport Extreme Base Station in this list if it was supported.
I really hope there will be another firmware update for the AEBS which will bring compatibility with Time Machine, because Time Machine was the only reason for me to buy an AEBS. (I only use it as a small backup server, I don't even have wireless networking enabled. There were other solutions, e.g. from Synology, which are faster and more reliable than AEBS disk sharing, but Synology stated their network drives would not be compatible with Time Machine.)

Here's how you can potentially use your AirDisk with TimeMachine (beware that YMMV), but it should work as it works with every other "unsupported" device.
1) Mount your AirDisk so it appears on your Mac
2) Open Terminal.app
3) change directories to the AirDisk's root folder located in "/Volumes"
ie: cd "/Volumes/AirDisk Name"
4) execute this command to "bless" the drive to be used with time machine:
touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported
5) Start TimeMachine and if all went well, it should recognize your AirDisk drive and use it for TM.
This should also work on NFS shares, SMB shares, AFP shares, basically anything. It has worked up until the last developer seed, so unless they yanked this at the last minute, it should still work.
Now, the reason why Apple removed this feature may be due to the unreliability of the AirDisk, so be cautious.

All media files vanished. When time machine backup attempted it says disk full? Confused help.

I recently upgraded from osx leopard to snow leopard on my 2008 macbook to sync my new iphone data smoothly. After the installation it was v slow as anticipated and a time machine full restore was done successfully. Now however all my media files have vanished namely precious music videos and pictures. I tries reverting back in time machine but it says no disk space. Also i have 1000 new pictures last uploaded which gas also been backed up by time machine with the computer showing the rest of the files erased. How do i recover both sets of data the old and the new?

How much free space on your internal drive and how much free space on the Time Machine drive? You can use Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities to find free space. If Time Machine gets too full it could delete your backups. I suggest your turn off Time Machine in System Preferences until you get your files restored.
Rather than enter Time Machine using the Time Machine interface, go to the extrernal drive and drill down in the backups.backupdb folder. Go to a date when you know the files existed. Select Macintosh HD > Users > You > Pictures. Do you see the data. Check size? Do the same for Music.
You can drag from these folders to your Desktop as long as you have space on your internal drive.
I suspect you'll need to erase your Time Machine and start new or you'll need to purchase a larger drive. It's recommended that your Time Machine drive is 3X larger than internal drive.

HT201250 My 10.7.3 Time Machine won't work with external disks. Worked fine with Snow Leopard, and even Lion 10.7.1

My 10.7.3 Time Machine won't work with external disks. Worked fine with Snow Leopard, and even Lion 10.7.1
I have tried everything, even buy new external disk from different manufacture.
If I cant get a fix soon, I am downgrading back to SnowL.

Still no luck. I tried all the tricks, reconfiguring TM (remove selected disk option, and re-setting it, and trying different disks). Tried new combo updater, and the newer TM update after that. Tired two different disks too (one is my older firewire WD MyBook 1TB, and my brand new 3tb Seagate GoFlex USB... either one plugged into back of computer - no intermediary devices). I did get the TM buddy wiget and it produced the following log, from the last attempt, where I setup lots of exclusions so that backup quantity was small (under 10gb). Still it failed to complete. Here is that log, for what it is worth:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/TM-Disk/Backups.backupdb
9.56 GB required (including padding), 911.15 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 0 files (0 bytes) from volume Mac HD.
Backup canceled.
To prove a point, I will take these disks are run them on my other Tiger and Snow Leopard laptops to prove TM works fine on those with these disks. But I fear the only options are to either have my tech re-install LION... or just have him reinstall SL instead. Im at wits end.

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

Hi there,
I found that Time Machine in Mavericks will sort it all out for you. You shouldn't need to buy another backup drive, unless you have insufficient space left and can't afford to delete whats on there. It should just work fine.

Time machine fails backing up with a "backup disk not found" error after upgrade to Lion 10.7.2

Time machine fails backing up with a "backup disk not found" error after upgrade to Lion 10.7.2. I've erased and reformatted the drive; reconnected Time Machine(it saw it) and began a new backup. The backup starts again but fails before completing with backup drive not found error. I used the 10.7.2 combo update. Any help on how to fix this problem would be appreciated.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
After waiting since October for a fix, I have now upgraded the firmware on the Time Capsule and installed the new Airport Utility, released yesterday, and the situation is even worse.
Up until now, the Airport Utility had an option to disconnect all drives manually and the Time Capsule would then work until the next reboot – a temporary (?) work-around.
Now that option does not exist in the new-look Airport Utility. And the Airport Utility installation can’t be rolled back and the old utility won’t restore.
The sparesbundle is still not accessible. Anyone worked out a work-around in the new environment yet?
I have another Time Machine backup working fine to a trusty old Lacie Drive so erased the one on my Time Capsule to see if that works. I have renamed the Capsule and the Time Capsule Drive. But to build another full backup will take at least two days and I shall be away from tomorrow and am reluctant to leave the Capsule and computer up and running for a week. And I’ll bet the sparsbundle will still be nowhere to be found.
How can Apple screw up so badly when they are to become the richest company in the entire world and – soon – will have more cash in the bank than the entire United States? Can’t they afford someone who really can sort this out? Especially when a Firewire connected hard drive – my trusty and simple LaCie – works fine.
Words, almost, fail me.

HT3275 Can some HELP, I keep getting this error with my Time Machine Back up, "The backup disk image "/Volumes/JKPN Safe/JKPN IMAC.sparsebundle" is already in use.

Can some one HELP me , I keep getting this error with my Time Machine Back up, "The backup disk image “/Volumes/JKPN Safe/JKPN IMAC.sparsebundle” is already in use.

See > http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html

I had to put my computer by together without migration or time machine I NEED help with order of the files?

I had to put my computer by together without migration or time machine I NEED help with order of the files?

Hi, where are these other files exactly?

I am trying to get space on an external hard drive which has some old time machine back up files that I do not need but can not eliminate, even by going into the time machine, clicking on the backup file to be eliminated and using the drop down eliminate

I am trying to get space on an external hard drive which has some old time machine back up files that I do not need but can not eliminate, even by going into the time machine, clicking on the backup file to be eliminated and using the drop down menu with the gear box symbol to eliminate

I cannot find this 300GB "Backup" in the Finder, only in the Storage info when I check "About This Mac".
You are probably using Time Machine to backup your MacBook Pro, right? Then the additional 300 GB could be local Time Machine snapshots. Time Machine will write the hourly backups to the free space on your hard disk, if the backup drive is temporarily not connected. You do not see these local backups in the Finder, and MacOS will delete them, when you make a regular backup to Time Machine, or when you need the space for other data.
See Pondini's page for more explanation: What are Local Snapshots? http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I have restarted my computer, but the information remains the same. How do I reclaim the use of the 300GB? Why is it showing up as "Backups" when it used to indicate "Photos"? Are my photos safe on the external drive?
You have tested the library on the external drive, and so your photos are save there.
The local TimeMachine snapshot probably now contains a backup of the moved library. Try, if connecting your Time Machine drive will reduce the size of your local Time Machine snapshots.

HT1175 Time Machine wants to start with a new, full backup instead of using the existing one

Hi, my Time Machine wants to start a new, full backup, instead of continuing with the existing one on the time Capsule.
Looking a the Troubleshooting guide, I've found the following piece of info, which is, as 99% of the times with the troubleshooting guides, totally useless to resolve my problem...
Message: Time Machine starts a new, full backup instead of a smaller incremental backup
There are three reasons why this may occur:
You performed a full restore.
Your Computer Name (in Sharing preferences) was changed--when this happens, Time Machine will perform a full backup on its next scheduled backup time.
If you have had a hardware repair recently, contact the Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store that performed your repair. In the meantime, you can still browse and recover previous backups by right-clicking or Control-clicking the Time Machine Dock icon, and choosing "Browse Other Time Machine disks" from the contextual menu.
It should be noted (hence the uselessness of the guide) that:
-I haven't performed ANY full restore
- I havent changed my computer name
- My computer has not had ANY repair, much less a hardware repair. Neither recently, nor in the 9 months I've owned it.
Which puts me back to square one, with the marginal improvement that now I have a way of browsing my old backups.
In the event I decide to start all over again, will there be a way for me to "sew" the two backup files?
Or will I always have to go the silly way around?
Anybody has any idea?
Thank you for your time (machine/capsule, your choice;-)

Hi John,
no, that doesn't have anything to do with my problem.
Just look at the image below.
Time Machine thinks that the disk I've always used to do my backups has none of them.
If I open the disk with Finder, obviously they are where they should be.
It is even possible to navigate them as per the instruction reported above, but even following Pondini's advice #s B5 and B6 (which are more applicable to my problem) didn't solve the problem.
Actually, not being a coder, I'm always scared of doing more damage than good when I have a Terminal window open.
My question is: how is it possible that Apple hasn't thought of some kind of user command to tell the idiotic Time Machine software that a hard disk backup is a hard disk backup, no matter what?
Estremely frustrating and annoying: I'm wasting HOURS in trying to find a solution to a problem that should not have arisen in the first place...
Have a nice weekend
Antonio

I want to use my 1TB Seagate Hard drive for time machine and transferring files from Mac to PC.

For about a year I've been using my 1TB external hard drive for only time machine. To be honest, it wasn't until today that I tried to connect my hard drive to a PC and realize it isn't compatible. I read about partitioning the hard drive so that it can work both for time machine and transferring files between pc and mac. I'm not what you would call tech savvy, so I was wondering if I can get some advice on how to do this.
Thanks in advance.

To do it, you have to partition the hard disk, so you will have one partition for Time Machine and another one to store files and use them in a PC and Mac. To create the partition, follow these steps > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html
In order to read and write in the external disk on the PC, you have to select "MS-DOS (FAT)" as "Format". If you choose any other option, the PC won't be able to read your external disk. Apart from that, note that you can't use files bigger than 4 GB with FAT. If you want to use the external disk with files bigger than 4 GB, you have to format your new partition in exFAT, and you have to do it on a PC

Best approach for Time Machine / Entourage / FileVault / sparse bundle disk

I am looking to set up Time Machine belatedly on my G5 to provide hassle-free backup for me and my family. I use Entourage. I also want to provide a small amount of encrypted storage. I’ve scoured the obvious places which have plenty of ideas, but nothing which pulls it all together.
My thoughts so far have been:
1. Time Machine doesn’t work well with Entourage as Entourage uses a monolithic single file (which in my case is several GB big) – backing this up every hour will bring my machine to its knees, fill up the backup disk and will possibly give a corrupt backup as the file could be accessed by Entourage or the MS daemon process during the backup.
2. I thought of turning FileVault on which would automatically contain the Entourage file. This would mean:
a) the sparse bundle format (8 MB bands) of FileVault would limit the volume of changed Entourage data which would be backed up each time by Time Machine and
b) the backup would only occur during logout (which is fine with me) when Entourage and the MS daemon are not running so that the backup won’t be corrupt.
3. However I am not hearing good things about the reliability of FileVault (comments?) and don’t want all the data in my Home folders lost – I don’t need that much encryption anyway.
4. So I thought about setting up a couple of encrypted disk images made of sparse bundles – one for the Entourage data (symbolically linked to the right place for Entourage to pick the folder up) and the other for the other small number of files I need encrypted. This could be auto-mounted at login.
5. However I think that using disk images rather than FileVault loses the automatic backup by Time Machine at logout. Maybe there is a way to get Time Machine to automatically backup these disk images during logout.
6. Perhaps there is another way to get the disk images backed up at logout other than using Time Machine.
So my questions are:
A. What is the best overall approach to providing a low-maintenance reliable backup which deals appropriately with Entourage and provides a small amount of encrypted space?
B. Can Time Machine be made to backup disk images other than FileVault disk images at logout? (for example is there a particular location / filename format for FileVault images which I could emulate with the other disk images to fool Time Machine into backing them up?)
C. When Time Machine runs at logout, have MS Entourage and the daemon process already been shut down and the disks unmounted, to prevent corruption?
D. Is there another way of backing up the sparse image disks at logout?
C. Is this all going to get magically fixed in Snow Leopard?
D. Will MS come up with a sensible storage format for Entourage?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

I don't know if there is a complete solution, but here are some things you could consider.
1. TM does not run automatically at logout unless FileVault is enabled.
2. You can change the backup period using third-party utilities like TimeMachineEditor - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
3. You can exclude the Microsoft User Data folder from the TM backup and back it up separately using third-party backup software.
4. You can use third-party backup software instead of TM, such as:
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
11. Apple Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Third-party backup utilities can run backups on schedules you set up. Thus, you can schedule your backups to occur at a time when you do not use the machine such as early in the AM for example.

Time Machine silently skipping files with disk I/O error

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