Time machine still backing up 4 days later...

My wife found that while working at home Time Machine was causing pauses which were hindering her productivity. So she disabled it, desciding to manually do backups every week (she dosn't need hourly backups, heck, who does?). Some time passed and she skipped a backup, so two weeks later she sets the backup to go and it's moving painfully slow.
After 48 hours 128megs of 64 gigs was copied. I checked Activity Monitor and the network traffic is moving at 30-50kb/sec output. We don't know whats going on, it's only been 2 weeks and she hasn't changed that much. She has no virus programs running, both the HD and Time Capsule are formatted Journled, Spotlight dosn't index the Time Machine (I've been reading through forum posts looking for answers) but none of these things have affected the backup speed.
At this rate it'll be backing up for a month or more. 4 Days in she's just several hundred megs backed up. Help!

* Set computer not to sleep for the initial backup and turn Spaces off while doing the initial full backup. Best to do this at the end of the day when you aren't using your computer and it's not competing for CPU.
* If you have antivirus software, turn off during initial backup and check it's setting for regular backups. Initially every file was being scanned by virus software before allowing Time Machine to copy making for extremely long times to backup. Some have updated for Leopard to exclude it on Time Machine.
* A corrupt file can cause Time Machine to fail. You have to exclude folders to find the culprit. Using Migrate can help identify the problem. Some reported even one .JPG corrupt file stopped Time Machine from completing.
* if it's an Intel based machine, the partition needs to be GUID
* Exclude VMWare Virtual Machines

Similar Messages

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again? After upgrading to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again?
After upgrading MBA to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.
I've searched and can not find a solution to the problem that's being encountered.

Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule

Time Machine STILL backs up while in sleep

Time Machine STILL backs up my drive to an external drive while in sleep, despite many Apple KB articles to the contrary and 2 conversations with Geniuses saying it shouldn't either. Why?
I have turned of "wake for network access" under energy settings as recommended, but that didn't help either.
But if I open the external drive's backup folder there's a new folder for every hour in the last 24 hours, even if the computer had been asleep the whole time.
IMac is now on Mountain Lion, but it did the same under Lion as well.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule

Will Time Machine Still Back Up if Macbook Pro is Closed?

I'm wondering if time machine wil still back up my files if I close the lid of my Macbook Pro? I've thought about getting a program called "Caffine", which keeps the screen running indefinitely in order to keep process running. I could just run that, and then dim the screen to conserve power. However, I'd like to avoid this if possible, as I'm sure in the long run it might be taxing on the backlight. So I want to know if I close the lid, will time machine still run? Or do processes stop when you close it?
I should mention I'm not backing up to an actual Time Machine, but rather to a 1 TB external HD.

Power Nap?
Yes. Power Nap did not exist two years ago, in early 2012, when this topic was last active. Now, hardware compatible with Power Nap will back up, among other things, while sleeping. See:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5394

If I move my iTunes media folder to an external hard drive, will Time Machine still back up that externally-located iTunes library?

To be precise, I've moved my iTunes Media Library to the same external hard drive where my TM backups are stored, although there's plenty of free space on that drive for both.
As I write that, however, it strikes me that if that external drive fails, I've lost my entire iTunes media directory AND my TM backup. So I suppose I should use a separate external HD for each, right?
But my main question is whether or not TM will still back up that iTunes media folder even if it's no longer located on the same boot drive as my main machine, which is a Mac Mini.
The whole reason I'm doing this is because my MM has a 250GB solid-state drive that is rapidly filling up because my iTunes library is 150+GB.

mende1 says:
I recommend you to store the library on another partition on the external disk and keep the first volume only for Time Machine backups.
and you say:
As I write that, however, it strikes me that if that external drive fails, I've lost my entire iTunes media directory AND my TM backup. So I suppose I should use a separate external HD for each, right?
From what people report here I'd say more people lose collections through whole drives failing and not just individual volumes becoming corrupt. A drive failing will take out all volumes on that drive.
Whatever the scenario, you will need multiple external drives. For convenience you could do as mende1 suggests and partition the TM drive. Keep TM on one part and your library on the other. This would be convenient because then you would only have one external connected to your Mac most of the time. However, then you should do as you observe and back up the partition used for iTunes to another external drive as often as you deem necessary. Basically you always want two copies of everything on two different drives, but they don't all have to be on the same two drives. Your TM drive acts as the backup for your computer and the primary for iTunes. Your computer acts as the primary for what's on TM and the second external acts as the backup for iTunes.

How to use Time machine to back up to a later date?

Recently got a new drive from apple cuz old drive died.
I could only use Time machine for a complete back-up on 8/22/12 but I can't copy or access the files from 11/21/12 in time machine..
Tried copying the specific file I needed and the computer as a whole but the files that show up are only the ones that are already there on 8/22/12.
Could this be because my newer file system is 10.8.2 and the old restore point is still 10.7.5? Please help.

I'm totally confused... sorry. What do you mean by "try to back up to 11/21/12"? Did you mean "restore from 11/21", or are you actually trying to backup new data on your Time Machine drive?
If you open Migration Assistant (located in the Applications/Utilities folder), and choose to restore from a Time Machine backup, the program will automatically pull the latest Time Machine backup and put all the data back where it was.
Alternatively, if you have your installation DVDs (if your computer came with one, or alternatively you can boot to the recovery partition) you can restore your entire system to your latest Time Machine backup. When you select the option to do so from the Utilities menu, you're given a choice of dates, which correspond to valid restore points in your backup drive. So, in this case, you would choose the one from 11/21. Hope this answers your question!

Time Machine stopped backing up. What do I do???

Time Machine stopped backing up 3 days ago. Even though the desktop Icon periodically revolves to show a backup is occurring, when I go into Time Machine I see the last time it backed up was 3 days ago. I have it backing up to a 1 Terrabyte drive and there are still close to 300 GB available. It has been working fine up until 3 days ago.
One suspicion I have: I installed a demo version of MacScan which erased all my cookies. I may have done this on the day Time Machine stopped working correctly. Does Time Machine depend on any cookies?
Help

shrink1 wrote:
Time Machine stopped backing up 3 days ago. Even though the desktop Icon periodically revolves to show a backup is occurring, when I go into Time Machine I see the last time it backed up was 3 days ago. I have it backing up to a 1 Terrabyte drive and there are still close to 300 GB available. It has been working fine up until 3 days ago.
One suspicion I have: I installed a demo version of MacScan which erased all my cookies. I may have done this on the day Time Machine stopped working correctly. Does Time Machine depend on any cookies?
Help!!!
Is it possible that MacScan went into your TM backup and corrupted it by removing files (cookies, etc.)? If you modify the contents of the TM backup improperly, you can totally hose the entire backup. In general only TM should be allowed to modify it's own contents via the TM app.

How do I reset Time Machine to back up weekly instead of daily

I have Time Machine backing up to an external Seagate Drive and it has been working fine for a couple of years.
I had it set to backup weekly and for some reason it is now doing a FULL backup every day! Way too often for me.
When I try to reset through System Preferences it looks for wireless Airport connection (which I don't have) and doesn't show the external drive, but obviously it is connected for Time Machine is backing up every day and I can see the data...
any ideas as to what I am doing wrong and how I can fix it ?
Thanks
Rose

Check thru Pondini's tips:
http://pondini.org/TM/13.html
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Or you can go in to TM preferences and turn it off, then turn it on and run it when you want. (it will take longer)

How to make Time Machine only back up once per day?

I really really don't need time machine to back up EVERY HOUR. It's overkill for me and with the level of computing I am forcing my computer to do most of the day its VERY irritating. Is there anyway to change the settings so it only backs up once every night?

Yeah, we tried using TimeMachineEditor on a friend's laptop. There will be 2 laptops backing up, and we wanted them both to backup overnight at different times when there would be no interruptions (for user or computer). It seemed to work OK (have to check w/ them), but how do you verify when backups were actually done?
I have a couple related question to this, though, that may also be helpful for folks:
- I'm guessing Time Machine cannot do a backup when the computer is asleep, correct? If a Time Machine backup starts while the computer is 'awake', will it keep the computer from sleeping so it can finish?
- If I set a schedule in the Energy Saver preferences to 'Wake Up' the computer at midnight (before scheduled backup), and 'Sleep' later on (say 4am), does this override the other preferences set for sleep in Energy Saver? (ie - if it's set to sleep after 30min., will the computer wake up at midnight only to go back to sleep 30min. later, or will it stay 'awake' until 4am?)
- Do you need to uncheck 'Put the hard drive to sleep when possible'?

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.
Thanks in advance for any help!

For all things Time Machine see Pondini's excellent information here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Start at Troubleshooting.

If I use time machine to back up my computer do I still need to backup my photos and videos separately?

If I use time machine to back up my computer do I still need to back up my photos and videos or is it already done?
Thx!

Time Machine backs up everything except the things you tell it to skip.
But what happens if there is a problem with your drive AND there is a different problem with Time Machine's drive?

I can not get Time Machine to back up an external WD Passport 2 TB drive! Has anyone else had this problem? The drive is new and I was running Snow Leopard and upgraded to Lion and it still won't do it. Time Machine backs up the internal drive fine.

I bought 2 2TB WD Passport Drives with the intention of housing my iTunes/iPhoto libraries off my older MacBook. I have successfully transferred the Libraries to one and am using the other one for Time Machine. In Snow Leopard I could back up my computer to Time Machine no problem but when I did not exclude the iTunes/iPhoto drive the back up fails. Both drives have been reformatted, permissions repaired and checked in Disk Utility and one was replaced. I have been to the Genius Bar now 5 times. I have tried using USB drive and FireWire. Both drives are recognized and are working properly otherwise regardless how they are connected. Finally yesterday the Apple store installed Lion to see if that fixed the issue and it did not. Time Machine successfully backed up a USB Flash drive, and today I will try an older external drive. Any ideas on what else to try??? Do I have to resort to third party software like Carbon Copy Cloned to get this done? Any ideas why this wont work? I am using a FireWire converter but as I said, both drives are working normally otherwise (libraries working, time machine working for the computer's hard drive. Any ideas would be appreciated!!?

Thanks so much but none of that helped. It was driving me crazy because it would back up another external drive. I just changed the name of the drive from iPhoto/iTunes Library to Media Libraries and IT WORKED!! I guess for some reason it didn't like the drive being called iPhoto or iTunes ???? I don't understand but I have tried so many solutions and exchanging things out but the name change did it????!!!
Thank you for your help and replying to this. Guess I made my own issue!

Time machine only backs up one internal drive

I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 running 10.8.5 with 3 internal drives. Time machine sucessfully backs up the 600GB boot drive but has stopped working with the all important 3TB Data drive (half full). The remaining 4TB drive is for Time machine backups. Only the boot drive now sucessfully gets backed up with Time machine backups but not the Data drive.
I have tried everything I can to try to get it to work again and here are some of my steps taken:
- Checked to see if the Data drive has not bee excluded from Time machine backup options. No it hasn't been excluded.
- Check Smart Status on all drives - all good.
- Use Disk Util to verify all my drives - all good, no errors.
- Stop Time machine, formatted the Time machine backup drive and restarted Time machine. Still not backing up my data drive.
- Reset Time machine by following http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html - Still no change.
- Remove the Data drive from Spotlight indexing with Spotlight - privacy settings and then re-add it to Spotlight indexing - Now it does a full backup, but no more incremental backups are created when files on the Data drive are changed. And the full backup of the Data drive disappears from the Time Machine backup a few days later!
The Time machine logs just shows - "Will copy (Zero KB) from Data".
I have tried to follow the troubleshooting hints on http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html but can't seem to find any other clues to help me with my problem.
Does anyone else see this before and have any suggestions?

I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, they may not work as described.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
{ diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list; } | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

HT201250 I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was?

I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was? I want to make sure I will still have various important files on my new computer, like my songs in iTunes, my photos in iPhoto, etc, etc. Thanks so much in advance!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
When you turn on the new iMac for the first time, Setup Assistant will ask you to restore a backup, so connect the external disk and follow steps to restore all your files to your new iMac. Your new Mac will have the same settings and programs as your old computer.
In other cases, I would recommend to restore the whole backup without using Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant, but a Late 2012 iMac uses a special OS X build, so the OS X version that you're using on your old Mac won't work on the new one. For more information, see > http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

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.

Time machine still backing up 4 days later...

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