Time machine "stop backup now"?

I was researching on what would happen if i stopped the backup mid-backup. the help notes for time machine say that if you hit "stop backup now" it'll stop, but then if you hit "back up now" after that it'll pick up right where it left off...
i'm doing my intial backup and was at the 20GB mark and hit "stop back up now" to test it out. left it for 5 mins and then hit "back up now" and it restarted back at 0. all of this was done from the menu bar.
can anyone tell me if this is how it will be? have i set it up wrong?

This has been answered here so may times (especially by pondini, e.g. in this thread Time Machine stuck in repeating "preparing files" cycle), so please search this forum the next time before asking such a question.

Similar Messages

Time Machine stopped backup

Time Machine has stopped the backup procedure and claims that there is not sufficient space. The disk has 750 GB out of which 580 GB are used and 169 GB free. The error message claims 48,76 GB would be needed, but only 30,02 are available. I am really puzzled. Please help!
Thanks

Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget from: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window.
If you only have one user account, create another one temporarily, with normal privileges.
Then make some changes in your Home Folder and do a +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in the menubar.
Then log out. Wait for a few seconds, and log back in, as the other user.
Check the widget. If TM hasn't done another backup, do another +Back Up Now+ (from the non-FileVault user account) and check again.
If TM hasn't backed-up the main user's Home Folder, or you see something there that seems suspicious, copy and post the messages here (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the small window).
If you're not sure what it actually backed-up, you might want to download the TimeTracker app, from www.charlessoft.com.
It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). I'm not sure whether it will show the details of the encrypted home folder, or just a big disk image, but something should appear.

Time Machine stopped backup of FileVault account at logout

Suddenly TM stopped backup of my FileVault account. Usually the backup was initiated after logout, but for a couple of weeks nothing like that has happened. It could be a little bit correlated to the time of upgrade to 10.5.6, which I did...
Has anybody faced similar problem? Rgds, Artur
Remark: I use officially not supported configuration for TM - with external drive on network SMB drive.

Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget from: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window.
If you only have one user account, create another one temporarily, with normal privileges.
Then make some changes in your Home Folder and do a +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in the menubar.
Then log out. Wait for a few seconds, and log back in, as the other user.
Check the widget. If TM hasn't done another backup, do another +Back Up Now+ (from the non-FileVault user account) and check again.
If TM hasn't backed-up the main user's Home Folder, or you see something there that seems suspicious, copy and post the messages here (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the small window).
If you're not sure what it actually backed-up, you might want to download the TimeTracker app, from www.charlessoft.com.
It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). I'm not sure whether it will show the details of the encrypted home folder, or just a big disk image, but something should appear.

Time machine stops backup

Time machine reports that I do not have enough room on my backup disk. There is enough and it will not delete older items. I am using LIon.

First, are you running Leopard or Snow Leopard? You've posted in the Leopard forum, your first post says you're running +Snow Leopard,+ and your second doesn't specify anything. (Please click +My Settings+ at the right of this page and fill-in the info, so it will appear automatically on each post.)
So you saw "Copying xxx GB of yyy GB," and the "xxx" stopped changing? If so, see #D2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine stops backup before finished

Time Machine has stopped backing up automatically. On manual backups, it stops after backing up only part of my data. I have since reformatted my backup disk and reconfigured Time Machine, but it still does not complete the backup HELP!!!!

First, are you running Leopard or Snow Leopard? You've posted in the Leopard forum, your first post says you're running +Snow Leopard,+ and your second doesn't specify anything. (Please click +My Settings+ at the right of this page and fill-in the info, so it will appear automatically on each post.)
So you saw "Copying xxx GB of yyy GB," and the "xxx" stopped changing? If so, see #D2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine Stopped Backups

I have been using Time Machine on a 500 GB Time Capsule for several years. Recently I got error messages indicating that TM could no longer make backups because there is insufficent space on the hard drive. I switched to another backup drive, and it seems to be making backups again, but I wouldlike to have my backups only in one place (on the Time Capsule drive). I thought TM was supposed to continually delete older backups to make room for newer ones, so it would never run out of space. How do I get it to do that so I can swich back to the TC drive? Thanks!

A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. Locate the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here.
Also see #C4 there.

Slightly off topic - Force Time Machine to Backup Now

Hi All,
Being new to Macs and Logic, I have tried to organize my files, drives, etc. I use an external Glyph HD which has a root folder called Recordings. Under that, each project has it's own folder.
While using Logic, I turn off Time Machine and AirPort.
When I'm finished, I want to back up my projects to the time machine drive before I shutdown. I do Shutdown the iMac because I only use it for recording, and may not use it for days at a time.
Is there a way to force Time Machine to do a backup on demand? I have looked high and low and can't seem to do it.
In the PC world, I would just write a batchfile, or use a small utility to copy files that have changed since the last backup.
Having this backup utility built in, I was hoping to take advantage of it.
If this is not possible, can someone suggest a utility that will backup only files that have changed? Again, brand new MAC user here.
PS - I do have an external 500GB drive just for the backups.
Thanks in advance .... and Happy Holidays!
Peter

There are free apps, or shareware at least to give you complete control over when Timemachine backs up. Also if you're external is a LaCie they provide a very good free backup app called silver keeper.
There is also Carbon Copy Cloner, which I understand can be made to work in this way.

Time Machine thinks backup disk is full but its not

I just purchased a new 1 Terabyte hard drive for backup. In the past I backed up both my internal Mac harddrive (250 Gb with 8gb free) and an external iOmega archive drive (DRIVE H 320Gb with 41Gb free) to a 500Gb Lacie drive. I purchased an iOmega 1 Terabyte drive (DRIVE G) because the Lacie drive was full. I went into Time Machine and changed the backup drive to the G one terabyte drive and did a full backup of my internal hard drive. When I did this I did not have the external H archive drive attached so Time Machine didn't back that up. I did it that way because I wanted to first backup the internal drive then do some work and then go backup the external archive drive over night. I plugged the H archive drive in, so it show up in the finder and then told Time Machine to Backup Now. It started the back up but right after doing the initial computations when it actually started backing up I got the standard error message that "the backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly..." I've double checked that the backup disk is set correctly in Time Machine to the 1Tb G drive and when I do a Get Info on the G drive it shows Capacity: 1TB, Available: 713.54 GB.
Is it possible something is wrong with the new drive? Can I test that?

Its funny how sometimes asking a question can prompt your thinking. As soon as I finished posting this I thought "of course Disk Utility". I ran a check disk and got the following error message:
Unused node is not erased (node = 107)
I did a restore which corrected the error. Turned Time Machine back on and its backing up the rest of my data now.

My Time capsule/time machine stopped backing up and states no disk found-now I can't even get connected to time capsule

My Time capsule/time machine stopped backing up and states no disk found-now I can't even get connected to time capsule. When I go into sys pref and time machine nothing comes up and it just keeps stating rescan

Go to to your Users/Home/Library/Application Support/iWeb folder in the Finder and then enter Time Machine. Go back to the last backup that has the domain file, select it and use the Restore button.
OT

Time Machine stopped backing up now

Time machine was working well ( i think!) but now takes up an enormous amount of space 180gb. My external drives are too small at 160gb and I feel time machine has multiplied the amount of space it needs as my hard drive only contains 75gb of data.
Help! I have tried removing files and some applications from the back up volume, but it still wants more space than the apparent volume to back up.
Do I need a bigger external hard drive or will it keep multiplying as I suspect it will.
Thanks

Rob,
This might give you some ideas as to why it's filling up so fast.
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
If none of the above seem to apply to your case, then you may need to attempt to compress the disk image in question. We'll consider that if the above fails to explain your circumstance.
Let us know if this was helpful.
Cheers!

Hi there,I was using MacPro with older snow leopard just now i install OS X LION,before install i backup all deta to time machines about 70GB,now when i connect i dont know how can backup the old deta to OS X LION,but it just backup the recent deta to tim

Hi there,
I was using MacPro with older snow leopard just now i install OS X LION,before install i backup all deta to time machines about 70GB,now when i connect i dont know how can backup the old deta to OS X LION,but it just backup the recent deta to time machine,pls guide me how i can backup my old deta to my computer??
Will be much appreciated !!
Thanks.

>Step 1. Backup existing data using time machine.
Time Machine is nice, but you have very little in terms of ability to verify that your data is all backed up. I find Time Machine is better for the occasional recovery of previously written data at specific times. A good backup solution that survives an erase and install (there is no clean install in Mac OS X), is a clone, and preferably TWO clones. See my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Time Machine can work as good as a clone, and in fact I once had to rely on it because my hard drive died. Thankfully it did recover everything. But I had my clone just in case it didn't work. Now I feel more comfortable since clones allow you to boot themselves, and thus prove all the important system information got saved, and not just the user data.
Clones are also easier to import with the migration assistant.

I changed Time Machine drives. Now I'm stuck in "Preparing Backup..."

I was using a 1TB drive for Time Machine; I've now upped it to a 3TB drive.
The new drive is an exact copy of the old one. But when I try to do a Time Machine backup, it's been stuck in "Preparing Backup..." for over 12 hours. What could be wrong?
Thanks.

I forgot about that article. Still, 12 hours is too long, so I would erase/reformat the larger drive and try HT5096 again. Note that "Ignore ownership" is to be done on the new drive and not the old one (italics mine in the following quotation):
Open a new Finder window. In the Finder sidebar, click the icon of the new backup drive and choose Get Info from the File menu or press Command-I (⌘-I)
Make sure "Ignore ownership on this volume" at the bottom of the "Sharing & Permissions:" section is not checked.

HT4522 Time Machine's backup to Time Capsule has stopped working

TM reports "an error". The Time Capsule is visible in the "shared" tab of the Finder window, but is listed as "Not connected". It is visible and connected to another Mac on the net. Is there a solution short of using the Airport Utility to erase the drive?

Hi there Cinclus,
You may find the troubleshooting steps in the article below helpful.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
-Griff W.

Time Machine stopped backing up but doesn't give warning/error

Hi,
by chance I noticed, that Time Machine doesn't backup up any more, but still doesn't give errors. In Console I see the following for a now typical run:
21.04.15 09:58:11,493 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
21.04.15 09:58:12,043 com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/drosera-backup-02/Backups.backupdb
21.04.15 09:58:41,729 com.apple.backupd: 5.18 GB required (including padding), 96.84 GB available
21.04.15 09:58:55,149 com.apple.backupd: Copied 23 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
21.04.15 09:59:04,385 com.apple.backupd: Copied 36 files (93 bytes) from volume DATA.
21.04.15 09:59:06,100 mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
21.04.15 09:59:06,102 com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
21.04.15 09:59:07,668 com.apple.backupd: Deleted /Volumes/drosera-backup-02/Backups.backupdb/drosera/2015-04-20-183344 (24.0 KB)
21.04.15 09:59:07,668 com.apple.backupd: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
21.04.15 09:59:07,762 com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
The 5.18 GB are never backed up. The backup drive (drosera-backup-02) is attached by FireWire. I have checked the disk with First Aid, I have disconnected and reconnected it. I removed the backup disk from Time Machine, stopped TM and reconfigured. I stopped mds, ran backups and reenabled mds. All to no avail.
I am at a complete loss and I'd appreciate to get this running w/o having to remove all existing backups. Any ideas or pointers?
I'm running Mac OS X 10.7.5 on a Mac mini
Cheers
Frank

Thx. I had already tried the hints from mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume to no avail. Your tip to rebuild the Spotlight index would probably helped, too. But just before getting yout comment and after reading http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html and http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/69054/force-time-machine-to-perform-a-d eep-traversal I had simply removed /.fseventsd and reran a backup. That seems to have fixed the problem (at least for the time being).
Interesting side note: During the non-backup phase I created a new account on the Mac and ran TM. This triggered a one-time working backup of the whole system, but all subsequent backups again failed silently. Additionally the externally attached FireWire harddrive was always backed up correctly, only backups of the local drive failed.

Time Machine stopped backing up

I am using Time Machine on a 500 GB Time Capsule (which also serves as my Internet router). I have 3 Macs using Time Machine: 1) PowerMac G4, 2) PowerMac G5, 3) MacBook. The G4 is wired to the Time Capsule, the G5 and the MacBook are wireless. The G4 does not have a wireless card. From all machines, I can browse the Time Capsule and see the backup files contained there.
The PowerMac G5 and the MacBook still function normally and are being backed up regularly with Time Machine. The G4 had been working fine, being backed up regularly, then the backups suddenly stopped. I can look at the Time Machine Preferences and see when the last backup occurred (Sept 4) and see that the Time Capsule has 264.7 GB of 463.3 GB available. I have 3 volumes attached to my Mac (excluding the Time Capsule) and have excluded entirely 2 of those attached volumes. The only volume included (my boot volume) I have configured to exclude a large number of files (most applications, for instance). The total used space on that drive is 186 GB, so I know that the backup is not too big.
I do not get any error messages that I am aware of (can you tell me somewhere specifically to look?). My configuration shows Time Machine in the menu bar, and if I select "Back Up Now" from that menu, nothing appears to happen. If I open the Time Machine Preferences pane and edit the EXCLUDE list, it appears to queue a backup, as the preference pane indicates next backup in 119 seconds, 118 seconds, etc, counting down to 1 second, and then jumps to next backup at xx:xx. I can keep the preference pane open and watch it until that time (xx:xx) actually ticks by on the clock and the time for Next Backup in the preference pane jumps to the next hour, with no backup performed.

William,
A shot in the dark. I just posted this for someone with a similar but not identical issue. Try it for what it is worth. It at least might start getting us going in the right direction.
It can occur that Time Machine doesn’t recognize its’ own previous backups. In that case Time Machine will ignore these backups and attempt to start a full backup.
First try, Ctrl-click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and select “Browse Other Time machine disks…”
Now see if it will allow you to select the existing backups. Now can you go ‘back in time’ and see your previous data? Then it is indeed still there, it has just lost the link to it.
*Computer Name*
If that’s the case, the most likely culprit is you or something else has changed the name of your computer.
Go to System Preferences --> Sharing. If the “Computer Name” field is blank, Time Machine will have a difficult time maintaining consistent backups. Before adding or changing the computer name do the following:
In a Finder window open your Time Machine drive.
Open the folder labeled “Backups,backupdb”.
Inside is the folder containing the backups of the computer in question.
Note the name of the folder. It might be something like “Bills MacBook Pro”. That was your computers’ name when Time Machine performed its’ first full backup. If this name is missing or different in the Sharing “Computer Name” field then time Machine backups will fail.
Copy the name of the folder and paste it in the “Computer Name” field.
Next turn Sharing OFF and then back ON by unchecking and then rechecking the box on the left.
Close the backup folder and eject the Time Machine disk.
Now try resuming backups or launch Time Machine and try viewing your past data..
*Corrupt Backup Files*
If you were not able to access your previous backups via the “Browse Other Time machine disks…” function, then it is likely that the backup data is corrupt.
In that case you’ll want to erase the disk or partition that the old backups are on and begin Time Machine backups again.
To help prevent future instances of corruption, avoid storing other data files on the same partition that the Time Machine backups reside on. Rather create a separate partition for other files and folders to use.
Let us know if any of the above helped.

Time machine "stop backup now"?

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