Time machine working then suddenly not - says it's backing up but isn't.

so i've been running time machine sine i got my new macbook with 10.5 in december and it's pretty much been flawless. had one external drive die and loose all my backups but i got a new one and it's been solid.
however.
i went to retrieve a file and learned something disturbing:
despite being told "last backup today at X:XXxx" when i entered time machine the last backup was 19 april. i have since told time machine to 'backup now' and still the most recent backup is four days ago. i did notice that in recent days the 'backup disk image' has started to appear on my desktop and then disappear but...
any ideas?
i feel pretty naked without current backups!
any help would be appreciated.
thanks,
nick

thanks for the note - the drive was partitioned and formatted as GUID/HFS+/journaled before i started using it for time machine (i do this with all new drives for exactly the reason mentioned in the article).
i'm now scrubbing the drive with techtoolpro to see what's what - it seems everything is there but there is a problem with the directory structure.
hmm.
thanks,
nick

Similar Messages

I was backing up my iPhone and importing photos onto iPhoto at the same time , then suddenly it says no more space available (i had 48GB before i do this and now i have 18GB) i can't find the back up or the photo anywhere , how can i delete them ?

i was backing up my iPhone and importing photos onto iPhoto at the same time , then suddenly it says no more space available (i had 48GB before i do this and now i have 18GB) i can't find the back up or the photo anywhere , how can i delete them ? i dont need the pictures or the back ups , i want to delete them but they are not there

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown asBackups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Reboot and it should go away.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the built-in 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). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

When I restore my Mac with Time Machine and then want to partition my disk, Disk Utility always says incorrect number of extended attributes

When I need to restore my Mac from a time machine backup and then partition my hard disk (the disk inside the computer not the time machine disk), Disk Utility always says "Incorrect Number of Extended Attributes". I then boot into Recovery HD and run disk repair. The result? "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK". So then I reboot into normal OS and try the partition again, still Incorrect number of extended attributes. I have even tried /sbin/fsck -fy in single-user mode but it still says the volume is ok. I have tried partition my disk in the recovery HD and it still fails.
Can anyone please help me solve this problem?

Try something stronger, such as DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro.
iMac refurb (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

Migrating content from an encrypted Time Machine external disk (will not easily work)

I recently purchased an SSHD to upgrade my Mac. I preferred not to completely restore from Time Machine, but rather to install a new copy of Mavericks on the new disk and then migrate my TM content afterwards. At the end of installation, Mavericks proposed the option to migrate data from a TM backup, which I chose.
It turns out that the Migration Assistant did not recognize any disk, perhaps because it was encrypted, nor displayed any way to select the volume and unlock it by entering its password. Despite what Pondini says the Time Machine backups disk was not seen by the Mac: as workaround I had to create a fictitious user, log in, unlock the disk (that was immediately recognized by the system) and then run the Migration Assistant from there (by the way, after 4 hours I finally logged into my migrated account and found out that apps were not imported at all!)
I find all this quite not…applish! I could have preferred to unencrypt the TM disk rather than
Is there anyone facing this same experience? Hope that this, if it's a bug, will be fixed, otherwise I'll have to make a TM backup on a secondary disk (which I don't own so big).

Well a google search would appear that disk utility will show you the disk regardless if it's mounted or unmounted. you're best bet would be to unmount the disk in finder, shut down the computer completely, unplug it from a power source, and then unplug the firewire...
I think this is your safest bet but then again, I'm not that worried about ejecting my disks.
you get no error messages when you right click and eject the disk in in disk utilty? you said you have a my disk, do you mean My Book by western digital? I know that they load software onto the machine for encryption purposes. have you tried ejecting the disk from there? I uninstalled said software so I can't tell you if there is an option for that or not.

Time machine ethernet backup to time capsule works, wifi does not

Hi all.
I recently updated my old time capsule to one of the new tall ones ME182X/A with a 3GB drive. I transferred over the backup file of my Macbook Pro according to the Apple instructions (Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive) and whilst connected via an ethernet cable, time machine works fine with the new time capsule.
However, when I disconnect the ethernet cable and connect to the time capsule over wifi, time machine hangs on "preparing backup". I do not get to "xxMB of xxMB" or any error messages. I've tried the following:
reconnecting via ethernet after restarting my Macbook Pro (running 10.9.5) allows time machine to start and complete the backup.
I've tried deleting the ".inprogress" file, as per some websites, but this doesn't solve the problem
turning off spotlight, doesn't help
I have no anti-virus software running
restarting the computer, resetting SMC, restarting the time capsule - no help.
The wifi side of the TC is working perfectly otherwise. I can "see" it with Airport Utility, and mount the drive and explore it without any problems.
Any suggestions?
Thanks again,
John

Here are the steps I would use.. do not connect by ethernet at all whilst you do them.
Factory reset the TC.
The Factory Reset universal
Unplug your TC/AE. Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. The time is not important.. it is the front LED rapid flashing that indicates you are in factory mode.
Release reset.
If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have released reset at some point and try again.
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
Redo the setup with different names. Short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. eg TCgen5 as base station name. TCwifi for wireless name.
Make sure the password for disk and wireless etc.. are 8-20 characters pure alphanumeric mix of case and numbers.
Reset TM then to the new drive location.
See A4 pondini for a full reset.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Strongly recommend you also verify the backup and install the Widget.. A5 and A1. The log you get from the widget is a big help to see what is going wrong.
Ensure the ipv6 is set to link-local only in wireless.
I would do the whole lot but you can test at each step if you want.. I just had it happen to me.. first time in 12months and regular posting in this area. Doing the above got me going again.. although it takes a bit of patience to work through the lot.

I just fix my macbook air because it was kernel panic. They changed the hard drive. I could not back up with Time Machine, because it did not work and I had over Adobe creative suite 5 design premium student. But I finished my studies last year and I'd li

I just fix my macbook air because it was kernel panic. They changed the hard drive. I could not back up with Time Machine, because it did not work and I had over Adobe creative suite 5 design premium student. But I finished my studies last year and I'd like to know how to get the serial number for me to reinstall Adobe creative suite 5 design premium when I am no longer study because I would still like the used? It is not fair if I do anymore because I really need.

You can download Creative Suite 5 here:
Other downloads
To deal with the issue of the serial number and using it again, you'll have to use Web Chat. Here's a link:
Adobe ID, sign in, and account help
See the bottom of the page for a link

I have my complete computer using Lion backed up on the time machine. Then I installed Mountain lion. I do not like it at all. Is there a way I can remove ML and put my old Lion system back pin my computer?

I have my complete computer using Lion backed up on the time machine. Then I installed Mountain lion. I do not like it at all. Is there a way I can remove ML and put my old Lion system back pin my computer?

If you have got a backup, press Command and R keys in boot and restore an old backup. You can install Snow Leopard and upgrade to Lion if you haven't got the backup

My document.numbers can not be opened how can i recover the version from yesterday i was not using time machine and it was not in icloud. is there an app i can buy that might help

my document.numbers can not be opened how can i recover the version from yesterday? i was not using time machine and it was not in icloud. is there an app i can buy that might help

Thanks Andy,
I wish I could have told my sister about this as she could not open my homepage back before my new iWeb site. She now can open my site without the yet in case denial window does appear = I thank you.
I think my iWeb site works as Noone has said otherwise from any platform etc...
Alex L
I do agree that should not have to be a consideration for any users so i agree that it would be great if Apple could allow simplicity to run seemlessly.
I have had this problem since Homepage, and here is
what has worked for me. I send out the link, and
then for PC users I send the link with "<" after the address (without quotation
marks. e.g., <http://site.com>).
I also put a note that if that doesn't work, to just
copy and paste the link into a browser. With that I
have only had 1 person say they still can't open.
Everyone else gets it to work.
It's a lot to do and seems like a hassle, but you get
used to it.
Hope this helps!
Andy Martini
PS - APPLE! When are you going to fix this??! It
seems like such a small thing yet you guys have been
stumped for YEARS on this!

Why won't time machine work? =[

So I wanted to show my buddy how time machine works. And so I downloaded a picture, titled it and backed up my computer (the picture was located on my desktop). I then proceeded to delete the picture. I went into finder to locate the file and it was not there, because I deleted it. So I opened up time machine and searched for the file with the name I titled it with. I could not find the file! Where did this file go? Did I do something wrong or is time machine still having glitches and problems?
Thanks in advance!
-Cookietrog
Edited: just realized something, are my hourly backups supposed to be larger then just backing up 1kb? Cause thats like all my computer backs up per hourly back up, or whenever I hit Backup Now!
Message was edited by: CookieTroglodyte

It's virtually filled with bugs and, in my opinion, was no where near being ready to ship. Lowered my regard for Apple by a fair amount, not that they care.
If your serious about data backup/recovery I'd look elsewhere at the moment.
Bugs I noticed up until it became apparent that it was unusable.
1) Very difficult to install on certain configurations. I succeeded after switching one of my externals to USB and using the other external as my boot drive... less than ideal.
2) System is not able to understand what TM is doing. Tried to restore the iPhoto folder as an experiment. System reported 200+ terrabytes of information to be copied -- 10,000 hours to complete. lol In actuality 10 gigs of which it recovered approximately 2GB in much less time than 10,000 hours, I'd say around 3 minutes --- overall unsuccessful.
3) Corruption of the backup drive's file system to the point of being unmountable or fixable with Disk Utility. Others have recovered with disk warrior -- I just simply plugged it into a PC and reformatted the drive with NTFS then back to the Mac where it was again recognizable. This was the deal breaker.
At anyrate just a glance at these forums should indicate that it is not a good situation. Great idea, just not ready .. how it made it out the door is beyond me... indicating that marketing has superseded the import of at least semi-functional software .. not good.
I've recommended to all the folks I know that use OSX that haven't already upgraded to Leopard to wait... as one of the primary attractions is broken.

How do I Restore my iPhoto library from my time machine if it does not give me the restore option?

How do I Restore my iPhoto library from my time machine if it does not give me the restore option?
When I go into my backups and click on the iPhoto library it does not come up with an option to restore it just says open and of course then won't let me open it because it is a back up in time machine? I need these photo very important.

Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support
For detailes TM support post in the forum for your OS rather than the iphoto forum
LN

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
BTW, I did try a "restore from Time Machine" option the first thing I had my "new computer" (old hardware, 2009 iMac) up and running, using Migration Assistant, and it ran for many hours and then failed in the wee hours - what that has to do with anything I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

Time Machine ,,,,,sparse bundle could not be accessed (error -1)

Time Machine on my iMac (2.66 i5) is failing with the message:
Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup image "/Volumes/Time Machine/Shaggylane iMac.sparsbundle" could not be accessed (error -1).
This error appears when the backup is started......it spends a bit of time "Looking for backup drive", then displays the message.
The directory "/Volumes/Time Machine" has the following permissions:
drwx------ 13 root wheel 398 24 Aug 13:15 Time Machine
I was able to login as root and go into that directory. I didn't see any broken links or anything that stood out.
I was also able to go into Time Machine from the desktop and flip through the backup history. It seemed to be responding normally.
Time Machine has been working fine for 2+ years. I suspect it got buggered-up when I accidentally rebooted while it was doing a backup October 12th. Lion was installed in the spring. On the 12th, I installed a Lion patch bringing it up to 10.7.2.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Doug

I have not found a long-term solution (fix), but in my case the volume where the Time Machine backup should occur usually is mounted on the desktop but not as a shared volume (incidated as a drive with the people holding hands superimposed over the drive icon). If I drag the drive to the trash (unmount it), the next time Time Machine is scheduled to run, it completes successfully.

Problem with Time Machine Backup or Maybe Not Time Machine

The problem manifests after a Time Machine backup.
I have an iMac 24-inch, Early 2008. iMac 8,1
Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM.
Last week I purchased two 4-Terabyte G-technology G-Drives. Each drive is equip with FireWire 800 and USB 3.0/2.0. In general use they seem to work fine on the iMac.
I designated one drive as a Time Machine Volume. This is where the problem happens.
Time Machine will do the initial backup just fine. Then it runs once per hour with no problem. Intermittently however, Time Machine will fail and report :
“Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “hard disk name”.
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.”
Interestingly enough if I try to open a folder on the Time Machine volume using the Finder I get:
“The operation can’t be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -50).
If I try to eject the volume I get the irksome “Cannot eject volume because it’s currently in use by one or more programs.”
To resolve this I’ve tried everything, from the banal verifying permissions, to swapping the two G-Drives around, swapping out all the cables, etc.. When the error occurs I go into the shell and check with lsof and always find no software apparently holding or using that volume.
Very frustrating
I can force eject the volume, then remount the volume and things are back to normal. Same with restarting.
This happened under OS X Mountain Lion and is now happening under a clean install of Mavericks.
I thought that even though I don’t see any MDS related processes using the drive, it might be spotlight, so I told spotlight not to index the volume. Problem still happens.
I’ve found that one person had almost this exact same problem at:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4756742
His solution turned out to be replacing the G-Drive with another brand new G-Drive.
Unfortunately, I cannot return the drives to the Apple store because the boxes were tossed out. I also don’t relish trying to explain that the drives work just fine until some glitch that occurs either just before or just after a Time Machine backup.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

You can also contact G-Drive while the drives are under warranty (one year I believe).
I have the same problem using Time Machine with the 2T G-Drive and my MacBook Pro. G-Tech emailed me a Firmware Update Utility app and, when that didn't solve the error message problem, they sent me a replacement drive and new cables, twice. The problem persisted; I get one or two backups each day and then the error message. I also can't copy anything to the drive and have to force eject it, so G-Tech suggested I see how well it worked with the USB cable.
Time Machine works flawlessly with the USB cable and the G-Drive, so G-Tech suggested it is a problem with my Firewire 800 port. I worked with Apple Care over the phone, doing all the tests suggested in Eric's post - testing with Disk Utility, Time Machines interface with my User Accounts, the Operating System, then resetting Time Machine, etc. and then I took it to the Genius Bar so they could run the tests themselves. All looked like it should be fine (but they were using a 1T G-Drive and all testing was done within 30 minutes)...when I got home, after two good backups, I got the error message again.
Apple Care finally suggested I make a Genius Bar appointment and sit at the store working with my MacBook, the G-Drive and Time Machine running until I got the error message, to prove the only thing left that could possibly be the cause of the problem, is the port. I did this last Wednesday.
It is 9 days later and I got my computer back this afternoon...the logic board was replaced because the Firewire 800 port is attached to it...I got my first Time Machine back up at 5:34pm...and the error message again at 7:34pm.
The only solution, it seems, is to use the USB cable instead of Firewire. USB and Thunderbolt seem to be the direction Apple is taking, which is why so many people have been posting about this problem, here and elsewhere, with no real solutions from Apple. See this article: http://www.infoworld.com/t/mac-laptop/how-cope-the-end-of-firewire-205957
I hope the USB works for you too.

How does the time machine work

how does the time machine work....I need to find an older version of a document...

Hi mogburn,
Time Machine is part of the System software, not a feature of the word processing and page layout application, Pages, the topic in this community.
That said, Time Machine is pretty easy to get into.
In the Finder, open the folder containing the current version of the file.
Select the file, then click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and choose Enter Time machine.
The folder window will move to the center of the screen, and two arrows will appear near the lower right corner of the window.
Click the one pointing back to go back in time, and the one pointing toward the front (of the computer) to return to the present. The display will stop at each saved version of the file along the way.
Need more details? Try asking in the Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard community.
Regards,
Barry

Can time machine work without going wireless?

i have time machine but not airborne (wireless). Will time machine work through a direct cable line to my backup drive?

As long as your backup drive is connected to your router by Ethernet cable and the drive is mounted then Time Machine will backup to it.

Time machine working then suddenly not - says it's backing up but isn't.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for