Time machine will not restore full machine. Sticks at "Searching for disks"

So, this is what I did. I started with a machine with the main HDD partitioned in two, but I wanted to use Bootcamp wich doesn't like multiple partitions (annoyance #1) so I decided to repartition the disk and reload from my Time Machine backup. So...
Rebooted the machine to the install disk.
Used the disk utility to repartition to a single drive
Selected restore from Time Machine.
Time Machine backups are visible but it stops at the page "Searching for Disks".
It can't see my newly parititioned hard drive for some reason. I'm currently restoring a new copy of Leopard and I'll see what happens next. If, as I suspect may be the case, that Time Machine is looking for "exactly" the same drives to restore to then this is a "feature" that should be made very clear.
Any thoughts or information appreciated.

Try reformatting the drive. The partition type should be GUID and the formatting should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If that doesn't do the trick try zeroing out the drive using the security button. That will take quite some time but will map out any bad sectors on the disk.
Time Machine will restore to a new hard drive and even to a different Mac.

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I am not sure of your problem, you have either a recovery mode loop problem...or ...your iPhone failed a Restore and you are trying to get into Recovery Mode again.
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Time Machine will not let me restore from recent backups. I can see them on the external drive but will not restore sooner that June of 2013! Any suggestions?

Time Machine will not let me restore from recent backups. I can see them on the external drive but will not restore sooner that June of 2013! Any suggestions?

All I can suggest is that you open that file on the MBA and save it as a new file, then see if you can open the new one on the iMac.

HT4718 Installed new hard drive, click on restore from time machine, get to 'select a destination' but just keeps searching for disks.. any help please?

Installed new hard drive and want to restore from time machine.
Get as far as 'select a destination' then it goes no further - just keeps 'searching for disks'
Help anyone please?

1. Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
2. If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
3. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
4. Launch Disk Utility.
5. Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.
6. Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.
7. From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
9. Click the Erase button.
Make Sure that you choose the correct drive

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

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

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

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I have received an error message today - Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine Backups". The backup disk is not available.
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Hi Yaann,
Thank you for your reply. Yes I did try that, but no luck.
After several hours of calls to a very unhelpful WD and further calls to Applecare, there was nothing anyone could do. Out of frustration when holding the WD 1.5TB hard drive, I smacked it (NOT recommended). Well, to my surprise the WD reappeared on my devices list. Let me tell you, I pulled my files off as fast as I could on to my MacBook Pro. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I confirmed that everything transferred back to the MacBook Pro fine. I spoke with the Applecare tech and he talked me through the set up on a new Lacie hard drive.
What I can say is that after further research into external hard drives and now personal experience - Lacie is the top of the line and you get what you pay for. I would NEVER ever recommend a WD to anyone. Given one, I would still through it away.
I was LUCKY.
I must say the support and understanding I received from Applecare was outstanding!! I would never own a apple product without applecare and from long term experience it is worth every penny.
All the best,

Time Machine Backup error - The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1).

I am getting a Time Machine backup error "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)."
Then a Finder window pops up with the backup directory in it. When I open it I see all the backups that were completed successfully and then the one there is simply always shows the data and .inProgress. I thought that maybe if I could delete the one that is perpetually in progress it would start a new one and run fine, but I won't let me delete it.

Reboot the TC.. or go to the 5.6 utility.. and disconnect all users.. to force it to reconnect.
C17 in troubleshooting.. to give more specifics to Kappy's comment.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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Sorry... But...
The discussion of Jailbroken Devices is against the Terms of Use of this Forum.
You will need to look elsewhere.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3743

HT3275 time machine error says: The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Apple 's iMac G5.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1).

While backing up to Time Machine, I receive this message: time machine error says: The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Apple ’s iMac G5.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1).

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
That message is caused by several reasons. Read the Pondini's site to fix the problem > http://pondini.org/TM/C17.html

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

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

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

Time machine doesn't see possible disks

Hi there,
Have several Macs in house and they are all Tiger. Now we have also few month old MacBook and that one is only one with Leopard. I am trying to setup automatic backups with Time Machine and it stops in second screen where it suppose to see possible hard drives used for backup.
we have Airport Extreme with big USB hard drive connected to it.
All Macs including this one see and communicate with that shared USB hard drive but it doesn't show up on the list of available drives for Time Machine. I expected to see iDisk and that HD but nothing.
Any suggestions?? thank you in advance,
Zack

Zack,
It's likely that the USB Hard disk is not partitioned correctly. Even though you may have reformated it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) long ago, It may still not be partitioned correctly. See the following:
*_How Should a Time Machine Hard Disk be Prepared?_*
For Time Machine to work properly, the hard disk must be formatted “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and its’ Partition Scheme should be either GUID or Apple Partition Map.
Time Machine is incompatible with disks partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR). Unfortunately, this describes nearly every hard drive you can buy because MBR is a Windows partition scheme. (Naturally, this DOES NOT apply to Apples’ Time Capsule.)
For some, Time Machine begins to perform as expected with a new external hard disk. But then the initial full backup or subsequent incremental backups fail. The user only later discovers the hard disk was still partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR).
One article on Time Machine made this observation: “Virtually everybody will have to open Disk Utility and repartition the disk as APM or GUID. It doesn't really matter which one because the Time Machine disk will not be bootable anyway. APM allows a disk to boot a PowerPC, GUID allows the disk to boot an Intel processor but both are easily digestible by Time Machine on either kind of processor.” [http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html]
It’s been recommended by many here that your reserve +at least+ double the size of your primary hard disk, that way Time Machine backups have room to grow as the size of your data grows. Additionally, the more space you give Time Machine the more history it can preserve. The less space you reserve for Time Machine the sooner older backups & deleted items will disappear.
One poster recommended this regarding multiple partitions: “If you do create multiple partitions (half and half would be a good place to start), make sure you use the first partition for Time Machine, and the second for your own stuff (the first one will be on top in the graphical representation shown in Disk Utility; you'll understand when you see the partition tab). This way, you can expand the Time Machine volume at any later time by deleting the second partition. Disk Utility allows this dynamic re-sizing of volumes, but volumes can only be expanded toward the end of the drive, when a volume that comes after is deleted to create the room.” [http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1712437&tstart=0]
Procedure
Connect the hard disk you wish to use for Time Machine backups.
Launch Disk Utility.
It will appear twice in the pane on the left. (Make sure you recognize that it is different from the 2 icons that represent your Macs' internal drive.) The upper entry represent the device as a whole, including the controller inside. The lower entry represents the hard disk contained within the device.
Click on the upper icon of the external hard disk.
Select the "Partition" tab.
For "Volume Scheme" choose "1 partition". (Choose 2 partitions if you intend on storing other data on the disk besides your Time Machine backups. Ensure that the two partitions have different names.)
Name the disk.
Format should be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Click "Options".
Select either GUID or Apple Partition Map. (See above for significance)
Click "OK".
Click "Apply". Then click “Partition”.
Once the external hard disk is repartitioned, select it again in Time Machine preferences and use it for your backups. If you chose to create 2 partitions, then select the first partition for Time Machine backups, and the second for additional files/folders.
Let us know if this was helpful.
Cheers!

Time Capsule will not spin down

I have read some similar posts regarding this issue, but none could I find that is similar to my issue. I have an older Time Capsule (model #1254) which I recently upgraded from 500 GB to a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 rpm 64 MB cache SATA 6.0 GB/s drive. Old drive was full. Since doing so the Time Capsule will not stop spinning, even when both of my computers are asleep or even shut down. The outside of the TC case is warm to the touch and I can feel and hear the drive spinning. The previous 500 GB Seagate drive did not have any of these issues.
Last night, while at home, I tried downgrading the firmware several times, but no luck. I have since read on the discussions to try renaming the TC and also, resetting the TC. I was hoping that someone else has had similar issues with a similar setup and has stumpled upon a solution. Obviously, I'm worried about the heat eventually killing my TC!
I decided on the 2 TB Seagate drive after reading other forums and discussions, but maybe I choose poorly?
Thanks all!

Hi, after some tests i went to a new situation, which allows me to spin down the disk, in certain circumstances. It took me a week, so I want to share this experience in case it would be of any help.
I executed the following operations using a MacBook Pro with a new installation of OS X 10.6 from an external disk. This is not necessary, but I wanted to exclude the possibility of some app or hidden process in my system, or even some unknown (to me) new feature of OS X 10.9 using the TC disk without my awareness. During all the test, no other device was connected to the TC network.
First, I copied the Time Machine spare disk volume from the TC to an external USB drive, via the USB port at the back of the TC.
Then I formatted the TC disk to all zeros and reset the TC configuration to factory default.
At this point, restarting the TC, the disk was spinning for hours like before, no change. But now I can exclude it was the OS X Spotlight indexing the files: with the disk formatted to zero, there was nothing to index. So, Spotlight is not guilty to for this buggy behavior of the TC.
Now what happened is that I mounted the TC with Finder, and, 5 minutes later, the disk stopped from spinning. I can't say if this would happen even if I wouldn't format the disk, as I don't remember the last time I mounted the TC as a remote disk. If someone has this problem, I believe this is the first thing to try, keep the TC mounted and see if the disk spins down.
Then I went back to my Mavericks installation, copied the Time Machine spare disk volume, perviously backed up to the external disk, back into the TC. And finally reconfigured Time Machine to keep on using the old backup volume.
Now Time Machine regularly backs up every hour, and 5 minutes later the disk spins down. But this only works when the TC is mounted as remote disk. Whenever I unmount it, and then backup, the disk keeps his old behavior and doesn't spin down.
I think it is out of discussion that the spin down command always comes from the TC and not from the Mac, because the default spin down time of OS X Mavericks is set to 10 minutes (and so is mine), while my TC now spins down after 5 minutes, according to his settings. So, the TC is able to spin down my non-original disk, but only when he likes. This means that if I disconnect my Mac from the TC network, and someone else connects his Mac to the same network, without mounting the TC drive, it will start spinning endlessly. This is definitively crazy.

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Time machine will not restore full machine. Sticks at "Searching for disks"

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