Time machine slow - 470 days to backup 150GB

Just installed a brand new 2TB for use with my wife's Mac Air.  Time machine telling me it will take 470 days to backup...
I'm new to this, but that seems a little crazy.  Tried restarting computer, no luck.  CPU running 92% idle...
Any pointers where to start looking, what to try next?
Thanks

The backup file size is 1.67 TB.*
That's across the internal bus of a 2009 quad-core Mac Pro - which is pretty fast.
Copying an hour's worth of MPEG-2 HD takes about a minute.
I do a fresh backup from scratch about once a year, and the last time it finished over night.
This time the first Time Machine backup is only about 1/5 complete after many days, and Activity Monitor shows essentially no use of disk drives or of CPU.  And in the first note I pointed out what is gleaned by using Terminal to execute the UNIX ps command. The priority of the running Time Machine process looks incorrect to me. 
I could be wrong, but I think the problem is process priority, not file size.
I am unable to set priority to 0 or a negative number.  Can someone straighten me out on how to do that?
[*The machine has four 1.5 TB disk drives in it plus lots of memory.  Two of the physical drives are configured as one 3 TB backup drive (RAID concatanated).]

Similar Messages

  • My Macbook pro Early 2008 is randomly slow at starting up and when I am backing up to my time capsule I am receiving the following message 'Time machine could not complete the backup. '' ''The backup disk image ''/Volumes/name time capsule/ my name MacBoo

    My Macbook pro Early 2008 is randomly slow at starting up and when I am backing up to my time capsule I am receiving the following message 'Time machine could not complete the backup. '' ''The backup disk image ''/Volumes/name time capsule/ my name MacBook Pro (4).sparsebundle'' could not be accessed (error-1).
    Problem started after deleting parrell desktop and window7 ?
    Please help?

    Look at the more like this column on the right.. this is the most frequently asked question in this discussion area.
    Reboot the TC.. restart the whole network if the simple reboot did not work.. start in order. modem.. router/TC.. clients. 2min gap.
    Read C12 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

  • Time Machine Error "Unable to complete backup"

    I have not backed up my hard drive for about 30 days. When I plug my external hard drive in, Time Machine "prepares backup" for a while, then gives me the following message:
    *Time Machine Error*
    Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
    I tried unplugging and re-plugging, rebooting my computer, trashing the ".inprogress" backup file and restarting. It did not help. While it time machine is preparing the backup, my computer runs crazy slow, with the rainbow pinwheel spinning for about 5-10 seconds just about every time I click the mouse, in any program.
    Per someone's suggestion, I put "sudo grep backupd /var/log/system.log" into terminal, and this is what came up:
    "No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.98 GB requested (including padding), 70.16 GB available
    Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
    Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
    Indexing a file failed. Returned -12 for: /Applications/iChat.app, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb/My Computer (2)/2011-01-13-113417.inProgress/CB0D491E-EF04-48A0-9AE9-32AE43E9209C/Macintosh HD/Applications/iChat.app
    Aborting backup because indexing a file failed.
    Stopping backup."
    This time, it was apparently iChat, but in each of the three times I've tried to backup and gotten this error message, a different file has been the culprit for the indexing error.
    Any suggestions?

    orchestr wrote:
    Indexing a file failed. Returned -12
    see [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/C3.html] user tip by Pondini.
    JGG

  • My Time Capsule/Time Machine has been showing Preparing Backup for past 48 hours  continuously!

    My Time Capsule reported Full the other day.  I now have only 26.8MB of 497.96 GB available. Since then it seems to backing up continuously. The Time machine preferences window shows "Preparing Backup" andnothing else, and it has been doing so for at least past 48 hours.  Any ideas as to the problem?
    Stuartyboy

    Yes, the problem is the drive is full.
    If you have other files or TM back from other computers, TM on your computer having issues will not be able to delete enough to get sufficient space to backup.
    Read how to clean up and delete parts of backups.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
    Not a good idea though.
    Solution.
    1. Buy a new bigger TC.. cheaper (Than the original 500GB at least), faster and now the smallest is 2TB.
    2. Plug in a USB drive.. archive the TC.. then erase it and start a fresh set of backups.. April 1st great day to do it.
    3. Open up your old TC.. remove the 500GB drive and install a 2TB (if Gen1 a 3TB might even work). Google for how to do a hard disk upgrade.
    Problem.. old power supply could die the day after and then the total cost would approach 1. Better to backup, wipe the 500GB and sell it on ebay and buy a new TC with 2 or even 3TB (2TB is better value IMHO).
    4. Plug in a USB drive .. formatted to HFS+ and use that as the target.
    Very slow. much slower than the same drive plugged into your computer.

  • Time Machine doesn't acknowledge initial backup

    I purchased a Time Capsule and quickly and happily built a new 802.11n home wireless network with it. Yay. Then I hooked up my iMac to the Time Capsule via ethernet to do my initial Time Machine backup, knowing that it would take a LONG time (~400GB). Well, it took about 3 days to complete (which seems suspiciously slow...), but anyway, it finished sometime in the middle of the night. In the morning I looked at the Time Capsule and sure enough, there was the big-*** "sparse bundle" backup. Time Machine seemed to be in the middle of doing a relatively small backup, about 140MB, which I figured were the changes since I began the initial backup a few days before. However, I wished to unplug the ethernet and let it continue wirelessly, so I did so. However, Time Machine seemed to just hang there with the backup no longer progressing. Since I could simply have it redo the backup a little later without any real data loss, I just stopped the backup mid-progress. I unplugged the ethernet cable and the world seemed well. Then I clicked in Time Machine to begin a new backup.
    Of course, I expected this backup to be a rather small one, but I realized that Time Machine was about to begin another ~400GB backup! In fact, there was no information in the "Last Backup" field, so apparently Time Machine could not see the massive initial backup and was about to start all over again. Well, I am NOT about to wait another 3 days for it to do that, especially if the problem reoccurs, so I halted the backup and set Time Machine to "off."
    Now, what to do? Why can't Time Machine see the initial backup? Why is it trying to do another full backup (very little data changed on my system in the 3 days)? Did my stopping the "hourly" backup somehow "break" things?
    Advice? Thoughts?

    I'm not sure how the sparsebundle is identified by the computer, but if it is uniquely identified by the network connection used (ethernet, airport, firewire networking, etc.) then it could very well not identify the previous sparsebundle you made via Ethernet as being the one for your computer via Airport. I dont remember this being the case for me when I had my PowerBook backing up to my PowerMac via both Airport and/or Firewire networking, but I could be wrong...it was a while ago. Even though you seem to want to lean away from this, I'd recommend remaking it and just letting it go. You can use your computer in the mean time and allow the process to run in the background. It will pause and resume as the backup disk is available until the process is complete.

  • I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

    I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

    Hallo  Kieth ,
    I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
    Thanks for your interest and advice.
    regards  - Alan

  • Time Machine couldn't complete the backup due to a network problem

    Firstly apologies for the long post, I've been bottling these problems up and could now use some expert advice.
    I have a MacPro (10.6.3) with four internal drives (320GB system/apps. + 3x 750GB data, images etc) and a MacBook Pro (10.6.6) with a 320GB internal. With so much accumulated data (Mac user since SE FDHD) I wanted a reliable means to backup all my projects, books, papers, research, images etc. I had several bad experiences using Iomega drives (Ultramax and Storcentre) which were not very Mac compatible and shifted over to a 10TB LaCie 5Big Network 2 which is promoted as Time Machine compatible. Set up Time Machine (with a few hiccups) in Sept 2010 and it ran perfectly, backing up both main computers until March 2011. I have now experienced a string of problems backing up the MacPro, some of which have been resolved speaking to people, some by checking forums and some by using my own noddle to figure it out. The latest error message I am getting is "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup due to a network problem. Make sure your computer and the backup disc are on the same network, and that the backup disc is turned on. Then try again to back up."
    The circumstances of this are as follows: TM seems to be trying to completely back up everything already backed up from previous months so I am using the "exclude" option to do this in manageable chunks (5.54TB of 7.99TB is available so there is a lot of stuff on there, hence my reticence to erase and start again). I started a backup last night which said it was 242GB and when I came back hours later (I estimate 30GB and hour or 500MB a minute) it has failed with the error message above. I asked it to back up again and it said it now had 191GB to backup, at the next failure it was 142GB, dropping by approx 50GB a time (if there a maximum it can manage in one go?), the next time it was starting again with 242GB.
    I checked the disc it was backing up to, discovered it was now selecting Public-1, re-selected Public which houses the macpro.sparsebundle, dropped the backup size (Options) to 73GB and set it off again and it is backing up as I write. I am hoping it will complete and permit another chunk to be backup but the fact it looses network connection (seemingly) or has a maximum backup in one go, is annoying because it means you cannot leave it overnight and trust it to do the backups.
    The other problem seems to be a shut down by LaCie 5Big because several times (and once this morning) I have had this message "The file server "LaCie 5Big" has closed down, followed by a complete Lacie shut down and auto-reboot with all lights and whistles. Lacie think this could be a power supply problem and say they are sending me another power brick. They also say they do not support Time Machine (they should check their own literature) and suggest I use LaCie 5Big for 'drag and drop' backup. If I wanted to do that I could pick up a cheap and nasty HD from PCWorld, not this high end 10TB drive which cost over £1,000 !
    For a while y'day I could not even find the Lacie on the network but after changing the ethernet cable from Lacie to router (Linksys) it miraculously re-appeared so that problem may have been the original Lacie blue ethernet cable had developed a fault. Checking cables is an oft-overlooked option.
    A catalogue of errors, some solved, others still all pervading, so any words from the wise would be gratefully accepted.

    I verified the macpro.sparsebundle and Time Machine backups in Disk Utility and it said both appeared to be Okay in green type. So that did not solve the issue. I did a Disk Utility repair a day or so again (despite Verify saying everything was fine) and said there was nothing to repair. I suspect two problems, the power brick may be faulty producing intermittent power and maybe causing the drive to close down (hopefully Lacie will send me a replacement to try) and second, I am thinking the network connection is getting dropped causing crashed backups without the Lacie shutdown/reboot sequence. The 73GB back up failed, I started it again at 54GB and it failed again, just started it again at 45GB - this is no way to progress!
    Perhaps the relatively new (last year) Linksys router is the problem, I find my MBP says AirPort is active but it fails to appear in Go>Server unless I switch it off and on again and perhaps a similar problem drops the connnection to the Lacie.

  • "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not availab

    I have a Seagate 750 MB external disk connected to the USB port of my Airport Extreme Base Station. It worked fine with Time Machine under Leopard but it's not working the way it was under OS X 10.6.2. I'm hopeful someone can help me solve the problem.
    Let's say the name of my Airport Extreme Base Station is "Airport." If I remember correctly, under Leopard time machine would start a wireless backup not long after I turned on the Seagate drive. That no longer happens.
    I've erased and re-formatted the Seagate drive with 2 GUID partitions, one for my 24" iMac and one for my 17" MacBook Pro. Both computers are about 3 years old. In order to do the re-partitioning, I had to unplug the Seagate drive from the base station and plug it into one of the iMac's USB ports. If I didn't do this, nothing other than the iMac's drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility, although the name of my base station, i.e, "Airport" does appear in the Finder and PathFinder (a replacement for Finder that I use).
    In fact, Time Machine works under 10.6.2. as long as the Seagate drive is plugged into the iMac's USB port. As soon as I plug the Seagate drive into the USB port of the base station, Time Machine no longer works. The backup is "delayed." When I click on "Back Up Now" a few seconds go by and I get the following dialog box: "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
    In my Airport Extreme Base Station setup (Airport Utility version 5.4.2), the "Disks" pane sees both partitions on the Seagate drive. File sharing is enabled on the "File sharing" pane and "Secure Shared Disks:" is set to "With a disk password." "Airport Disks Guest Access:" is not allowed, nor is "Share disks over WAN."
    When the Seagate drive is plugged into the base station and I click on "Airport" in the Finder or PathFinder, I'm prompted for the password I mentioned above because the shared disks are secured with a password. Once the password is typed, both partitions on the Seagate drive appear in Finder and PathFinder. When I try a Time Machine backup at this point, I get the same error I described above, i.e., "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
    One last thing, I did an "Archive and Install" when I upgraded to Snow Leopard since I thought the changes were relatively minor as compared with past OS X upgrades. Normally, I do a clean install but didn't feel like it this time. I also tried deleting the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist to no avail and restarted my iMac to no avail.
    At this point I'm completely stumped. As I said, Time Machine works as long as the Seagate drive is plugged directly into one of the iMac's USB ports as opposed to the base station's USB port. But doesn't this defeat the purpose of having wireless backup? Once again, the wireless backup worked fine under 10.5.8.
    I hope my message is clear and a solution would be most welcome.
    Thank you,
    Richard

    I'm having the same problem. If my TimeMachine drive is not connected, I'll get the "Time machine could not complete the backup" "The backup disk is not available" warning a couple times a day. This is extremely problematic if I'm giving a presentation. I have tried changing my TimeMachine drive, removing that drive, repairing permissions, and have not been able to solve the problem.
    Please help!

  • Time Machine spends hours partially backing up and then fails with "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup due to a network problem."  Tried suggestions I've seen on the forum.

    Time Machine spends hours partially backing up and then fails with "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup due to a network problem."  I've tried various suggestions I've seen on the forum but nothing has worked.  TIme Machine worked fine for the last two years and just suddenly started having this problem every time.  The only thing that was a little different is that the computer was off for a week while on vacation and then I added a large amount (20 GB) of photos. Now the requested backup size is 82GB, which is large, and process proceeds very slowly for 2-3 hours before failing with the message mentioned.  I have more than enough available backup storage space for it.  Before failing, Time Machine has backed up no more than 12GB or so of the backup.  It fails during different files each time.
    I've turned off the computer sleep feature, and I've checked that the NAS is set to never automatically power down. I normally backup over Wi-Fi, but I've also tried connecting to Ethernet and it still has the same problem.  It's odd because I also have a MacBook Pro that is still backing up fine to the same NAS using the MacBook's Time Machine. 
    I am using an iMac with OS X 10.6.8 and an Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 NAS.
    I have system logs that I can share if helpful.  The logged messages vary a bit from run to run, but here are some messages that I've been seeing:
    I always get this message near the beginning of the backup:
    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    I've gotten this messsage a number of times:
    Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
    One Day
    Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!
    Another day
    1/7/12 10:44:20 AM
    mDNSResponder[18]
    PenaltyTimeForServer: PenaltyTime negative -112916, (server penaltyTime -1132397006, timenow -1132284090) resetting the penalty
    1/7/12 10:46:37 AM
    kernel
    ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0x1106be94
    1/7/12 10:46:37 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/TimeMachine prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1
    Another Day
    1/6/12 8:03:22 AM
    Google Chrome[164]
    Cannot find function pointer CMPluginInFactory for factory 3487BB5A-3E66-11D5-A64E-003065B300BC in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x16f99e20 </Users/smarmer/Library/Contextual Menu Items/Google Notifier Quick Add CM Plugin.plugin> (not loaded)
    1/6/12 8:04:02 AM
    com.apple.backupd[193]
    Copied 7.5 GB of 67.0 GB, 8866 of 8866 items
    1/6/12 8:06:58 AM
    /System/Library/CoreServices/CCacheServer.app/Contents/MacOS/CCacheServer[1013]
    No valid tickets, timing out
    1/6/12 8:29:44 AM
    mDNSResponder[19]
    PenaltyTimeForServer: PenaltyTime negative -148702, (server penaltyTime 2056822773, timenow 2056971475) resetting the penalty
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0xa5ac380
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/TimeMachine prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect:  doing reconnect on /Volumes/TimeMachine
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect:  soft mounted and hidden volume so do not notify KEA for /Volumes/TimeMachine
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect:  Max reconnect time: 30 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/TimeMachine
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect:  connect to the server /Volumes/TimeMachine
    1/6/12 8:59:22 AM
    kernel
    ASP_TCP asp_SetTCPQoS:  sock_settclassopt got error 57
    Another day
    1/5/12 3:48:55 PM
    mdworker[2128]
    CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
    1/5/12 4:24:54 PM
    mDNSResponder[19]
    PenaltyTimeForServer: PenaltyTime negative -42698, (server penaltyTime 1148718961, timenow 1148761659) resetting the penalty
    1/5/12 4:29:58 PM
    com.apple.backupd[2074]
    Copied 586.4 MB of 67.0 GB, 9891 of 9891 items
    1/5/12 4:39:00 PM
    kernel
    ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0xa1c0380

    bokon0n wrote:
    1/11/12 8:53:30 AM
    com.apple.backupd[1169]
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine does not support TM Lock Stealing
    1/11/12 8:53:30 AM
    com.apple.backupd[1169]
    Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine does not support Server Reply Cache
    Those indicate that your NAS is not fully compatible with Snow Leopard. 
    1/11/12 8:53:35 AM
    kernel
    jnl: disk2s2: replay_journal: from: 67182592 to: 78680064 (joffset 0xa7b8000)
    1/11/12 8:53:39 AM
    kernel
    jnl: disk2s2: examining extra transactions starting @ 78680064 / 0x4b09000
    1/11/12 8:53:39 AM
    kernel
    jnl: disk2s2: Extra txn replay stopped @ 79056896 / 0x4b65000
    1/11/12 8:53:49 AM
    kernel
    jnl: disk2s2: journal replay done.
    1/11/12 8:53:49 AM
    fseventsd[41]
    event logs in /Volumes/Time Machine/.fseventsd out of sync with volume.  destroying old logs. (253512 14 253512)
    1/11/12 8:53:50 AM
    kernel
    hfs: Removed 1 orphaned / unlinked files and 0 directories
    That looks like a problem was found with the file system (data) on the TM disk.  I don't know the details, but OSX tried to recover it from the journal, and found extra data on the drive.    Likely a result of the incompatibility mentioned above.
    1/11/12 9:47:40 AM
    com.apple.backupd[1169]
    Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
    That's a problem writing to the NAS drive.
    But the backup continued after all this.
    1/11/12 1:25:07 PM
    kernel
    ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0x9d00b44
    Something caused a disconnect.  Can't tell from the log what it was.
    I doubt it's a problem with something in OSX being damaged or corrupted, but reinstalling OSX isn't a major hassle, so might be worth a try.
    To be incompatible with Snow Leopard, this NAS must be at least a couple of years old.  It may be beginning to fail.
    Contact the maker.  See if there's an update to make it compatible with Snow Leopard.  If so, that might fix it.
    If not, or if that doesn't fix it, see if they have any diagnostics that will shed any light.

  • Time Machine Won't Continue Old Backup

    My computer was being repaired at Apple for a few weeks and I just got it back. No hard drive data was modified during the repair; the optical drive needed work. Anyway, I plugged in my external hard drive a few moments ago and it's backing up the whole system and won't let me return to the previous backups that I already have. I'm trying to recall a few files and Time Machine won't let me find them even though they're on the external drive. I did, however, accidentally rename the external hard drive when I was using it without Time Machine a few days ago.
    Is there a way for me to continue where I left off with my old Time Machine backups? I'd hate to lose them all and I don't want to re-install the entire system from a previous one from a month or so ago; I just need to look at a few old files. Thanks for any help!
    Greg

    So, here's what happened.
    Time Machine uses the xattr system to assign specific folders hidden attributes. Time Machine sets each folder up in its hierarchy with a xattr tag for the Ethernet MAC address of the machine it is backing up. This is all done invisibly. So, when I got a logic board, and a new MAC address, it wouldn't treat the old archive as concomitant with the new machine. So, here's how you fix this:
    - remove the ACLs from the Time Machine DB
    - use the xattr command at Terminal to put your new MAC address on the folder.
    Full details are available here:
    http://www.tombridge.com/rta/2008/01/after-the-apple.html

  • Time Machine Failure - Unable to  create backup directory

    I've been using time machine for months with no problems. It seems like since I went to the 10.5.2 update I started having problems.
    Time machine fails and says a problem occurred creating a backup directory. I'm running an external drive formated to the MAC Extended Journeled. I also set my computer share name with no punctuation and no spaces.
    Today I got the failure and I ran repair disc in disk utility and it could not repair the disk. So I erased it, rebooted and reconfigured time machine.
    Started running the backup and about 30 minutes into it stopped with the same error.
    Any thing I can try?

    Seems I have same problem, I came here for the answer, only to find there appears to be none!
    I started off with a new 250Gb internal drive, 50 "Real" Gb to Boot Camp, rest to Mac. Re-installed from original Apple install disks to TIGER, then upgraded to LEOPARD with the Apple upgrade disk that came with the machine as an uninstalled upgrade. All firmware and software updates up to date.
    First tried a Maxtor 4+ ext 750Gb Firewire drive for Time machine, 400Gb to Time Machine, other partition for other stuff. Every backup failed with Time Machine, same as the unfortunate gentleman in the pages above. Super-Duper backup to that same drive/partition worked perfectly.
    So I bought a 250Gb 2.5" Western Digital drive, put it in a USB/Firewire case and tried that, but every time same problem. It would stall once 123.85Gb of 143.8Gb completed, and get no further. After a few days a reboot or forcequit was needed to stop the process, and on attempting to restart time machine later would only get to about 32kb and fail stating there was not enough space on the drive. (123Gb already backed up, only 19Gb to go, and 106Gb free on the backup drive)
    I have re-formatted (Standard Mac extended/journalled format) the drive several times now, and always same result. I have checked the drive, repaired it, and written it over with Zeroes after formatting even, still same resuly, exactly 123.85Gb into the backup it stops and goes no further. I have tried with both the firewire, and the USB plugged into the drive, same result. Time Machine does not even have the courtesy to report which file it got stuck on, so that I could manually delete it if that was the problem. Anyone found the answer to this yet?

  • Time Machine slow to open

    Although there are lots of threads about Timemachine being slow, my problem is slightly different.  Timemachine appears to be backing up ok (though I've temporarily disabled backups now), but if I want to recover a file, it opens so slowly as to be almost useless.
    When I click on Timemachine it seems as though there is no response.  However, after a minute or two, I get a "Connecting to Timemachine" progress meter in Finder.  After much longer, say 5 minutes, I get "Do you still want to connect to Timemachine, Backup Volume is now available". 
    After a few more minutes I'm in Time Machine, but all the controls (forward back arrows, right side bar etc) are frozen.   After a very long time (not sure how long, as I gave up after 15 minutes and came back four hours later), the controls are now working, but oh so slowly.  Clicking back through archives takes about 30 seconds to a minute for each movement.  However, all the archives seem in place, and when I restore a file, though very slow to start (another minute or so with a progress meter) it actually uploads back to my machine quite quickly.
    The Timemachine volume is 500GB and there are 53GB spare (>10%).
    Okay - what have I done to fix this?
    I've tried repairing the Time Machine volume with Disk Utility.  I have three volumes on the one hard drive, Time Machine, a Super Dooper boot backup (I backup my docs in Timemachine and have a bootable backup without documents in Super Dooper) and another partition just spare.  The two other volumes can be repaired and verified.  When I repair the Time Machine volume I get the following:
    "Verify and Repair volume “Time Machine 2”
    Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.Error: Couldn’t unmount disk."
    And sure enough, if I try manually unmounting the disk, after an interminable wait (>10mins) it fails.  Not sure why this matters though?  I want it mounted to use it, don't I?  However, I infer from this that it's Time machine, not the Hard drive that is the issue, since the other volumes work.
    I searched in Console for errrors associated with Timemachine speed problems (backing up).  I found I had lots of these errors,
    sandboxd: mdworker deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd
    mdworker: Unable to talk to lsboxd
    which I removed, as recommended, by doing a safe boot. 
    However, now in console I have lots of these errrors:
    xx/xx/xxx xx:xx AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.sleepservicesd[6326]) Exited: Killed: 9
    In other discussions this seems to be associated with Screen and computer freezing, but mine is more glaciating than freezing, that is, it's frozen but it still works!  Also, it appears to be only Time machine.  However, the errors don't appear to correlate with opening or doing anything with Time machine - the errors are around all the time. 
    Any ideas?

    Yes, I agree, the disk, though no longer inaccessible to disk utility repair, still seems to have some problems.  It has now been shown to be slow across a range of actons, not just Timemachine.  Timemachine has improved slightly in its response when retrieving files.  It now takes 3 to 4 minutes to open and make files selectable, rather than the 7 to 10 before, and I'm not getting the progress meter and then "Do you still want to connect to Timemachine, Backup Volume is now available" message before this happens. 
    We've just bought a MBP, so I now need to get a backup solution for multiple machines, so I'll move to a Timecapsule or some other kind of shared backup. 
    Thanks again for your assistance.

  • Error Warning that Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to disk, an error occurred while copying files.

    I've been getting this warning on my MBA for the last week: "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “LaCie-2big-NAS.” an error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, us Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
    I have MBA and iMac, both running Maverick (10.9.4), backed up to LaCie NAS. However, when I go to Disk Utility on the MBA and the iMac, the LaCie does not appear and thus can't be selected to run repair. The iMac seems to be backing up to LaCie without problem. And even seems that MBA is backing up sometimes; when I check Time Machine, I can find files added in the last couple of days.
    Is this a real problem? What's fix?
    Thanks

    You can't repair a network volume in Disk Utility.
    Backing up to a third-party NAS with Time Machine is risky, and unacceptably risky if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want, and I also know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
    If you want network backup with Time Machine, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
    If you're determined to keep using the NAS for backup, your only recourse for any problems that result is to the manufacturer (which will blame Apple.)

  • "....To Improve Reliability, Time Machine Must Create a New Backup for You"

    I bought the new Apple 2 TB Time Capsule thinking it would be a great way to get a powerful wireless router and handle file backup for both me and my wife's iMacs.  She is running an up-to-date version of Snow Leopard and I am on the most recent update of Mountain Lion.  The Time Capsule was installed and running by the first of August and we had no problems until this monday (7 weeks later) when I got the message that "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability Time Machinge must create a new backup"  My wife's back up was still ok but I had to go though the 5-6 hour process of re-copying all my files(using an ethernet connection) to the device. All went smoothly for a few days until I got the same message again about creating a new backup.  Also my wife cannot enter her time machine files even though the computer is still being backed up. We have a stable internet service and both computers recieve a strong signal from the router. Is it possible that the Time Capsule Drive is defective? Is there any sort of maintenance such as zpping the PRAM that would help?  This is really frustrating as it looks like the timemachine backup is totally unreliable and not worth fooling with.  Is there any way to use the storage capability of the time capsule without going through time machine?
    Thanks,
    Reid McCallister

    hi
    rest assured you are not alone. i have the same problem and i hate it with a passion. in fact, i am the victim of this message as of 20 minutes ago and doing a full backup as I am typing this. I am so overly ****** that I actually posted here and will be calling or emailing apple next because I cannot take this anymore. the problem lies in time machine and unfortunately, there is no fix for that. time machine is the best idea of apple with the worst implementation ever. you have no obligation to use time capsule to benefit from time machine as this would not be legal anyway. i will give you 2 temporary solutions and let you decide which one works best for you:
    1) open time machine preferences and turn automatic backups off. create a new full backup from scratch and only backup manually whenever you remember, preferably every day. the automation process is the problem that lies within time machine. also make sure that your system does not go to standy or sleep whatever that may be called. Power nap, despite all claims, is not compatible with time machine. install CAFFEINE, an app that keeps your mac awake and prevents from going to sleep while back up is in progress. use it like this and pray it will all go fine for a long time. you may wish to duplicate the first full backup to save time in case this should happen again so you have a base to start on
    2) install CCC (carbon copy cleaner) I have not used it myself yet, but probably will be installing it after finishing this post. it is claimed to be better, yet it is yet to be seen by me personally.
    unless time machine can be trained without any addons to use a specific wifi only for backup, these issues will persist.

  • "TIme Machine could not complete the backup"

    My Time Machine has started giving this message. It says it needs 69 GB and only 60 GB are available -- but it is a 500GB drive. I thought it was supposed to delete old backups when it did not have space? That is what it has always done before. What do I need to do?
    Thanks
    Bob

    I kept getting that error message, too. And it was with Leopard 10.5, since my Superdrive failed to mount the SL DVD that was under warranty. Apple repair facility sent me a defective disk, so that didn´t help, either.
    Finally after foregoing backups for 3 months, I got the Superdrive replaced by a 3rd-party rapir facility and then installed SL. As I also had a new hard drive installed and the Apple repair facility threw away the old hard drive, I WAS REQUIRED TO USE MY 3-MONTH OLD BACKUP.
    This worked, so I now have a 640GB WD drive on my 2.6GHz MBP with SL 10.6. I Formatted a Western Digital MyBook in HFS+ and the GUID or whatever, according to Apple instructions for an external backupdrive.
    THis drive was working perfectly as a backup drive when connected via USB directly to my MBP.
    When connected via USB to my Airport Extreme 500GB Time Capsule, it also worked fine... ONLY THE FIRST TWO DAYS!
    Suddenly and for no apparent reason, I am suddenly getting the following error message when Time Machine ties to do a backup to the WD drive connected to the TC:
    Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk image "/Volumes/drive/baackupname.sparsebundle" could not be created (error 22).
    I have tried connecting both wirelessly and via ethernet from my MBP, but neither of these mattered. I access the internet just fine, and I can see the Time Capsule disk just fine. I also see other network share. Why does Apple seem to be so difficult once you peel the shiny facade away?

Maybe you are looking for