What is causing Time Machine to momentary freeze my system?

Every 60 minutes when time machine starts its backup routine my entire system momentarily freezes. Audio stops, cursor freezes, then a few moments later the system is running as usual. I have disabled drive sleep, display sleep. The backup drive is an internal drive. Memory is usually between 45% and 65% capacity - not maxed out. CPU usage is minimal. Most of the time I am programming, so this is happening during basic text editing, not during cpu/memory intensive audio/video/3d processing. I'm on a late 2008 mac pro with 10gigs of ram, and a new radeon 5770 video card. It was also happening with the stock video card that died on the reboot after I updated to 10.8.3 :-{.
3/27/13 8:10:42.488 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Starting automatic backup
3/27/13 8:10:43.076 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Spruce/Backups.backupdb
3/27/13 8:11:00.900 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Using file event preflight for Pine
3/27/13 8:11:01.090 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Will copy (4.1 MB) from Pine
3/27/13 8:11:01.092 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Found 117 files (4.1 MB) needing backup
3/27/13 8:11:01.113 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: 1.04 GB required (including padding), 1.3 TB available
3/27/13 8:11:40.093 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Copied 4413 files (48.9 MB) from volume Pine.
3/27/13 8:11:40.119 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Using file event preflight for Pine
3/27/13 8:11:40.123 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Will copy (341 KB) from Pine
3/27/13 8:11:40.124 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Found 14 files (341 KB) needing backup
3/27/13 8:11:40.125 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: 1.03 GB required (including padding), 1.3 TB available
3/27/13 8:11:42.876 PM mdworker[25875]: Unable to talk to lsboxd
3/27/13 8:11:43.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(25876) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
3/27/13 8:11:44.725 PM sandboxd[25876]: ([25875]) mdworker(25875) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd
3/27/13 8:11:46.272 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Copied 709 files (3.1 MB) from volume Pine.
3/27/13 8:11:46.886 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Created new backup: 2013-03-27-201146
3/27/13 8:11:48.315 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Starting post-backup thinning
3/27/13 8:11:55.958 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Deleted /Volumes/Spruce/Backups.backupdb/Pine/2013-03-26-191143 (17.8 MB)
3/27/13 8:11:55.958 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
3/27/13 8:11:56.095 PM com.apple.backupd[25861]: Backup completed successfully.
I beleive this has started since the 10.8.1 update. It is happening every hour on the hour so to speak - exactly when time machine is starting. It has become very intrusive - just in the middle of some important coding and then I'm frozen. I'd prefer to set a timer to take a break instead of being forced to do so!

The log shows nothing unusual.
Some "eco" or "green" drives may spin down when idle regardless of the Energy Saver setting. The application "KeepDriveSpinning" from developer Jon Stovell may help in that case, or there may be a way to change the behavior in the drive's firmware settings.

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Time Machine back up freezes Finder, System Preferences and Time Machine

When I attempt to use time machine to back up to an external hard drive and come back to the computer I find that finder, time machine and system preferences are locked. I can open other software but those applications although "on" are not accessible.

That's quite strange.
Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to a backup where this happened, copy and post the messages here (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the small window).

TS3243 My time machine back up freezes at a partial backup. I keep cancelling and restarting a new back up and it will again freeze up at a slightly different point. Last freeze shows 485bytes of 246.16 GB. My last backup was Sept. 1 !!!!! Help!!!!

Repeat: My time machine back up freezes at a partial backup. I keep cancelling and restarting a new back up and it will again freeze up at a slightly different point. Last freeze shows 485bytes of 246.16 GB. My last backup was Sept. 1 !!!!! Help!!!!
Also: am running OSX 10.6.8 on an iMac8,1
TimeMachine had be working well on a 1TB WD MyBook Ext. H.D. .
QUESTION: ANY SUGGESTIONS OR SOLUTIONS?????

See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

What exactly does Time Machine back up?

May seem a basic question. I've always assumed my home folder which, at the moment, weighs 120 Gb, give or take a kb. So why does TM report that it cannot complete backup to a 180 Gb external drive as it now needs 220 Gb, despite having done so for a number of years without a hitch?

Time Machine backs up your entire system (except for some things like system work files, most caches, trash, etc.), unless you specifically exclude things.
It sounds like your TM drive is too small -- it usually needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing up, to keep a reasonable "depth" of old backups.
It may also be trying to do a new, full backup. Some possible reasons for that are listed in #D3 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
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Time Machine doesn't back up system disk but does complete second disk

I have set up Time Machine to back up my system disk and one additional internal drive. Two other internal drives are excluded. The backup disk is external. On the initial backup Time Machine gets only one file from the system drive even though it has recognized that there are 121.5 GB included on that drive, but it backs up all 133 GB from the second drive. BTW, I haven't excluded anything but the two other drives. Here's the log from TM Buddy:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Aeronomy1
Backup content size: 121.5 GB excluded items size: 3.5 MB for volume Macintosh HD
Backup content size: 133.6 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume Aeronomy1
No pre-backup thinning needed: 311.66 GB requested (including padding), 792.03 GB available
Copied 1 files (0 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copied 2411 files (133.4 GB) from volume Aeronomy1.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
I've double-checked that the drive and partition are properly formatted with a GUID partition table. The only thing I can't do is turn off the antivirus for the backup drive--the system administrator has eliminated the ability to modify the Symantec Antivirus app. But since it is working in general, it wouldn't seem that is an issue.
Any help is appreciated for getting my main drive backed up!

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Using Time Machine to back up two systems, OS10.8.3, and OS 10.6.8. Sometimes it backs them up, sometimes I receive this: Backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disc. The problem may be temporary...

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Hello,
Thanks to the great Pondini...
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Before downloading lion, i want to backup my computer with time machine and a G-DRIVE Slim. But how can i use time machine to only backup my system once?

Just wondering, how can i use time machine to only backup my system once? Just this once and not on a weekly basis?

Upgrade. My three year old Mac Pro and year old MacBook Pro have no problem. Both seem faster.
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What causes time machine to just "spin"

I have a client whose time machine will sometimes just sit there spinning for hours... and not doing the backup.

You may not get any actual error messages.
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Also take a look at items D1 and D2 there.

Time Machine crashes and freezes the OS, I fixed it!

Hello,
My MacBook Pro (OS X 10.8.2) has experienced this week troubles when backing up with Time Capsule, and I searched on the community and the web where is a lot of same cases, but I didn't found any solution that fit on my case.
The problem ?
Simply when I start a manual Time Machine backup to the Time Capsule it goes normal for several Gigs and crashes with no error massage and then the OS freezes when trying to stop or force close Time Machine.
Then ?
The only thing to do for resuming the OS is to hard restart the device.
I found some advices on this community and other forums, but no chance. I will list some:
Open Disk Utility, and select the device's hard drive then choose "Repair disk permissions". You may try this on the backup disk if you are using an external drive for Time Machine.
If you are on an incremential backup, try to delete the old backup file (if you use a Time Capsule) or format (erase) the external drive using Disk Utility. So you start the backup over, even if that should take a long time to finish it may solve problem.
I have tried those steps, and I used both Time Capsule and an external drive for my tests, but I came with no results other than hard resetting my mac every time after a couple Gigs of backup and starts over.
Solution?
The solution that fixed this error, is to open Option window on the Time Machine Preferences and to Add ( + button) your personal folders one at a time to the excluded items list, and try to backup, if it freezes try to Add another one and try over, until the backup succeeds, the last added folder should the one that causes the crash. you can remove the first added folder but keep the last one, and execute the backup again. For me, after adding System files and Applications folder, Music, Downloads, Pictures the last folder I added before the backup runs normal was the Movies folder. and then I removed all my folders keeping the Movies folder excluded I managed to backup my Mac to both external drive and Time Capsule smoothly again.
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Copying Mac App Store Apps may cause Time Machine to fail

Hey folks,
My Time Machine backups started failing the other day with the "error occurred while copying files" error (asking me to run Disk Utility). I ran DU and the drive checked out fine. I eventually checked the backupd logs (Console> filter "backupd") and found that TM was stopping with Error: (-41) SrcErr:No Copying /Path/to/a/file/inside/aMacAppStoreApp. Then saying the backup stopped with error:11.
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It's not copy protection issue since after I recopied the App (using drag/drop) the backup worked fine.
You are allowed to copy MAS Apps from one computer to another and run them as long as the target computer is either authorized for the same MAS account or you login to the account that purchased the App.

LaCie "Eco Mode" causing Time Machine problems

I just purchased a LaCie P'9231, which is advertised as an Apple Store Exclusive. I've been having problems with it and Time Machine and I'm starting to think its due to the Eco Mode feature. I'd rather have the HD on all the time and turn "Eco Mode" completely off and I've unchecked the "Put the Hard Disk to Sleep..." option in Energy Saver. Still I'm looking at it right in front of me in Eco Mode (so it didn't help). Any drivers to instal or are others experienceing this problem? Thank you so much!!!!

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What is causing Time Machine to momentary freeze my system?

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