Time Machine stops writing to drive at 380 of 390 GB

I'm using Time Machine to do a full backup of my computer for the first time. I have a WD MyBook Pro Edition II set as a striped 1T raid connected via FW800 with no other FW devices connected. After 4 hours the progress bar stopped at 380 of 390 GB and claims to be still backing up files. However it has been at that point for almost an extra hour now. Activity monitor shows no disk activity and I can't even see Time Machine listed as a process. I tried stopping TM by clicking on the "x" and it claimed it was stopping, but after a few minutes it reverted to "backing up XXXXX items with no increase in the number of bytes transfered. Force Quit does not list TM.
What do I do now?
Thanks in advance!

+I looked at my external disk and it looks like it is one partition and of the right format already. I verified the disk - everything appears fine. Could I be mislead by what I see in Disk Utility? Should I go through these gyrations anyhow?+
It wouldn't hurt but highly doubtful that it would help. Start a new topic explaining what specific problem you are having and what you have tried to do to fix it, if anything. There also might be a hint or two in Console about why Time Machine is not working properly for you. Launch Console which is in Applications > Utilities. Choose All Messages in the left pane of Console and type in "backupd" in the search window without the quotes to see the Time Machine log. Post any errors or complaints that show up in the log.
+By the way, can you copy a Time Machine backup database from one computer to another and back again after an erase and maintain its integrity?+
I'm not sure what you mean be copying from one computer to another. If you mean copying the Time Machine backups from one disk to another it's been a mixed bag using either Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner going by the posts from people who have tried it. One would expect that using the Restore function in Disk Utility ought to work.

Similar Messages

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 stops due to computer going into Sleep/Hibernation Mode

Time Machine stops due to computer going into Sleep/Hibernation Mode then restarts to try to start the Back up process again and again vicious cycle. I have made sure all settings are turned off. I have done one or two backups since the initial first backup. My HDD is almost full and I want it backed up before I try to clone/mirror the drive to upgrade it to a 1TB HDD. Thank you in advance.

Set the Energy Saver (in System Preferences) to Never. Then reset the NVRAM, as follows:
Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the third time.
Release the keys.

Replaced hard drive, but can't access Time Machine backups of old drive

My internal hard drive was failing so I replaced it. I told the people that replaced it that I could install the System myself and that I had backups of my data.
So, I got the machine home, booted up from the Snow Leopard Install DVD and selected Restore from Time Machine. I chose the last backup which was Mountain Lion 10.8.2. It crashed after several minutes.
So, I restarted. But I had my finger on the Control key rather than the Option key, so it booted to on-line recovery mode. When it asked me if I wanted to restore Lion I decided, "Sure. Why not? Since the restore from Time Machine doesn't work." That took about six hours.
Then I went to the App store and downloaded Mountain Lion. Another six hours and that is done.
Now I can't access the backups on Time Machine. They appear to be there. It shows backups to Feb 2011, which is when I installed Time Machine on an external drive. But I can only access databacked up from my new drive and Admin account.
Last night Browse Other Drives for Time Machine at least showed the old backups. After shutting down overnight only the new backups show.
I've run verify and repair on the external and it's okay.
Please tell me I can get that data back. There's over a decade of stuff there going back two other Macs. Photos, important documents, all my writing are there. I really need it back and I can't understand why I can't get back.
Thanks in advance.

Hi all... I had a very similar issue. I had a hard drive replaced by Apple on my iMac due to a total hard drive failure. I attempted to restore my last time machine back up through my time capsule but I get some type of sparse bundle package error. It appears that something is coming back from the back up as I only have about 180GB remaining space out of 1TB. Any advice? It appears that Apple had re-installed the latest version of Lion back to my hard drive. I'm completely distraught here as like Romantic Heretic, I have over a decade of information currently lost.
Any help with step by step directions would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks

After upgrading to OS X Mavericks Time machine stops working

After upgrading to OS X Mavericks Time machine stops backing up and sometimes hangs on ,,preparing,, for o days and sometimes stops inmediatly. Report says:
Backing up to /dev/disk1s2: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: '*** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 0 beyond bounds for empty array'

Is this a Firewire or Thunderbolt connected disk? There are know issues with that in Mavericks. If so try connecting the drive by USB as you continue.
Is it a WD drive? There appear to be issues with those drive on Mavericks.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
A4 - Full Reset of TIme Machine

Time Machine Stopped Working After Update

I updated the most recent OSX 10.6.3 and disk utility etc. then suddenly my time machine stopped backing up to external disk attached to Airport Extreme. I have a Seagate drive attached to the AE. I can see the drive and I can see the time machine folders. If i go to TM preferences I can select the drive. But when it goes to back up error message says "backup disk not available." Itunes library is also on same disk (partitioned) and works fine.
Any help would be very, very appreciated!

EnergyExec wrote:
I updated the most recent OSX 10.6.3 and disk utility etc. then suddenly my time machine stopped backing up to external disk attached to Airport Extreme.
As Jolly Giant says, this is +*not supported by Apple.+* It does work, sometimes, for some folks (including me), but is not especially reliable. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you keep secondary backups, probably to an external HD, via CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or the like. Also note that your iTunes library on that disk is not being backed-up by Time Machine.
It's possible your backups are corrupted (that happens on occasion via an Airport, and may be why Apple doesn't support it). Try repairing them, per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
If Disk Utility can't repair them, it's possible +Disk Warrior+ or a similar app can. DW costs about $100, and is probably a good investment for the future, but there's no guarantee.
Otherwise, your only choices are to delete the sparse bundle or erase the partition and start over, or back up to a directly-attached disk (a much better solution).

Time machine stop working suddenly

not sure if it's related 10.5.6 upgrade but recently, I realize that the Time Machine stops working. I'm using a USB hard disc the backup drive. It's been working perfectly for a few months. But in the past 1 or 2 weeks, it doesn't back up anything at all. It always show "Preparing Backup..."... and that's it
I don't even know how to trouble-shoot! any help?

Did you find this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1516
Assuming you did, how much of your HD is used, and how long did the initial TM backup take?
Since the initial backup succeeded, have you disconnected and reconnected your drive, or powered-down, or anything?
And how long has it said "preparing"?
Also, it's possible you might find something in the system log.
Use the Console app, in your Applications/Utilities folder. Click on Show Log List at the upper left, then navigate in the sidebar to your system.log (current) or system.log.0.bz2, etc (previous).
Most of what's in there is just info, and not intelligible to us mere mortals.
You're looking for messages from backupd, and/or backupd.helper. Copy anything suspicions and post them here. Maybe somebody can decipher them.

Time Machine stopped backing up certain files

Hi, I am running OS X Server 10.5.4. (Yes, upgrade is planned)
Time Machine has been running fine, backing up everything, etc.
However, at some point, Time Machine stopped backing up certain files regularly. The affected files are all Frontier databases (frontierkernel.org). They are 'open' files, and I wonder if this is the cause. However, I know that they used to be backed up regularly, without problems. So, maybe Time Machine was updated in 10.5.4 to change this behavior?
If I quit Frontier and then reopen it, Time Machine will back up the files. So, this tells me that TM can back up open files... sometimes. But, if I let the machine run for days, TM often skips these files, even though they have been updated on disk.
I've checked and these files are not set to be excluded from TM.
Any ideas? Thanks.

Bill Dennen wrote:
Waiting for index to be ready (-911 < 0)
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.</div>
These aren't the cause, but might indicate a problem with, or communicating with, your TM drive. Try the things in #D2 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Everything else looks normal (assuming the files in question are on the 06-0834 drive).
Since the same files are backed-up sometimes but not others, it's probably also not something corrupted (usually, corruption will cause the backup to fail, but rarely a whole folder won't get backed-up).
So we're back to your original suspicion that they weren't backed-up because they were open. Normally, an open file will be backed-up. In the case of large databases, that's often a problem, as the entire database is backed-up if only a single small change is made, often taking up a lot of time and disk space. There are a many threads here about that.
There does appear to be an extended attribute that will prevent TM from backing up a file. XCODE seems to set that on it's "build" folders, for example. Perhaps the Frontier package sets it while the files are open, and removes it when they're closed? If so, maybe there's an option somewhere to disable that?
Can you check with the Sourceforge folks about that?
Otherwise, sorry, but I'm out of ideas.

Time Machine stopped backing up files 2 years ago!

So... I recently tried to restore my Macbook to an earlier time and discovered that Time Machine stopped backing up my files (documents, music, photos, etc) years ago! When I select a time period (say Sept 24, 2013) the actually files included in the backup are from no later than 2010. Why did this happen? I thought Time Machine backed up everything. I did not exclude anything and it certainly backed them up at one point. I'm not sure if there is some way that I am missing to retrieve information that was "backed up" a week ago.

A backup was listed for a week ago, it's just that when I went into the files looking for what was missing (music, for example) there is nothing new since 2010. That's years worth of new files missing all the while thinking that Time Machine was backing them up. My external hard drive was connected and Time Machine was performing that backups as usual without any indication that something was going wrong. There are dozens of backup slots over that time frame that are missing the new files.

Time Machine stopped backing up to Time Capsule

Three weeks ago, my Time Machine stopped backing up to My Time Capsule. I get a Time Machine Error that says the backup disk is not available. When I go into Time Machine on my Systems Preferences and click Select Disk, I get None. If I then go to Set Up Time Capsule, Airport Utility finds my Time Capsule.
I click through where it asks whether I want to change some settings for this Time Capsule. I click all the way through, changing nothing. And of course, I haven't resolved the problem. I don't want to go back to factory settings because I have archived a lot of old home movies on the Time Capsule and am afraid I'll lose them.
The only changes I've made recently that may affect this have to do with a mobileme account. I've been using one mobileme account for work for several years. Three weeks before I started having problems with the Time Capsule, I started a MobileMe account for the family. Now, when I sync all of our machines, the system looks for a new local host, which I have created. About the time I started syncing my computers is about the time the Time Machine stopped backing up.
Can switching between the two local hosts be the source of my problem?
—

Turns out my Hard Drive went down. Not sure why.

Time machine stopped backing up due to not enough space. What to do?

On my MacBook time machine stopped backing up and the message said not enough space . What can I do?

Broadly speaking you can supply more space.. or delete the old backups to regain existing space.
You have posted in the TIme Capsule area.. but I am not sure if that is what you are using as people mix up Time Capsule (TC) and Time Machine (TM) on a regular basis. TC is hardware router with a disk in it for backups to be stored.. TM is the software on the Mac that does backups.
So TC is not exactly flexible.. but you can add a USB hard disk to it.
This is not always a great idea.. but can work for people using wireless which is slower even than USB.
The internal disk of the TC can be upgraded.. only do this if you accept the risk and most likely it is no longer under warranty.
You can buy a TC with a bigger hard disk and sell off the old one.. except you might already have 3TB one in which case you will need to run two.
You can use a local drive instead of a network drive.
So buy a USB drive and plug it into your computer.. this is a good solution for desktops.. less great for laptops which are carried around as you forget to backup.
OR
Wipe the current backups and start anew.. You can also archive the old backups wipe the existing disk and start over.
Tell us which you prefer and if it is more difficult than go and buy a new disk and plug it in tell us.

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.

HT201250 Time Machine stopped backing up system folders

A couple of months ago, Time Machine stopped backing up my System folder and my Library folder. What is going on?

ttimshell wrote:
i'm sorry, i don't understand. i went to "time machine preferences" and "options." under options are all my external hard drives, and that's it. you said, "if THEY'RE shown there, select them . . ." what is the "THEY" that you're talking about?
Your system folders. Some people don't want them (and/or other things) to be backed-up.
i don't see any option to change what time machine backs up and what it doesn't back up.
That's where you can tell it not to back up certain things, or to back up external HDs. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #10.
I don't recall seeing those folders not being backed-up unless they were specifically excluded. Is your Applications folder getting backed-up?
Perhaps the preferences file has been damaged. Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
EDIT: Note that when TM does back them up for the first time, it will be a fairly large backup, and seem pretty slow. That's because those folders contain many thousands of mostly small files.
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time machine stopping

Time machine stops and said error writing. How do you get it going again restarting backup does not appear to do it

Start with [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.

My iphoto library disappeared. i am trying to restore my library from time machine -- from an external drive -- but everytime it tries to copy my library it tells me it can't do it because i don't have access to my iphoto library??!!! help!!

My iphoto library inexplicably disappeared! i am panicked but i do back up by time machine to an external drive and also to JustCloud. I am trying to restore my iphoto library from a back up on feb 28, 2014 and it says it's copying but then gives me a message that it can't do it because i "don't have authorization to access iphoto library"?! what does this mean? i really want to get my library back on my mac. Also if anyone knows why this happened or where my photos might be on my computer, i'd appreciate help with that, too.

Thank you Terence for your help. I was able to restore my backup from my time machine ext drive to a new 1tb seagate ext drive. so i felt sort of ok. but yesterday that older ext drive i used for time machine wouldn't open! i called applecare and they trouble shooted with me and said it's probably a goner and data is probably corrupted. it's only a few years old and i'm very careful with it. my husband accidentally dropped my new drive last night -- i know, unbelievable, i was SO upset, poor guy -- but I'm so stressed with all of this. i have 10 years of photos and videos. so now i only have the one newer drive with a backup. i have to buy another one today to backup again so i at least have two backups. i tried to delete a ton of files last night to free up the 30 gb of space i need to get my full library back on my mac. i have 90gb free and deleted 7 years worth of photos i had on picasa that were in my "pictures" folder and also a ton or random photos and videos i had in that same pictures folder and thought that would give me the 30 gb but it hardly freed up any space at all! do you know why that is? all of this stuff is really a pain and really stressful. thank god i did have a backup in the first place but now i am panicked the one i have left will somehow crash. especially after my husband dropped the drive lastnight! it didn't fall far and fell onto a wood floor and seems fine, but after my older ext drive crashed yesterday -- and i lost my entire iphoto library a fewweeks ago off my mac -- i feel cursed. any answers you have would be great. thank you.

Time Machine stops writing to drive at 380 of 390 GB

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