It just says "Preparing Backup..." It stays like this forever until I stop it and I tried re-connecting the hard drive. Why won't this work? I tried re-starting...
View 6 RepliesI just updated to 10.5.8 and my Time Machine will not backup. It is stuck at "Preparing Backup". I tried rebooting and it did not work.
View 10 Replies View RelatedAm I understanding correctly (from reading some other discussions here) that there are issues with Time Machine back ups and Yosemite, and that it's not just me having these problems? Since I upgrade I am having major issues with wifi connection being dropped and my Time Machine hasn't performed a back up in 19 days. It looks as though it will but stalls at "preparing back up". When it finally stops I get an error message saying it can't find the disc. I've restored the Time Machine to factory settings and started over more than once but still get the same message. Am I doing something wrong or is this an Apple issue?
Info:
MacBook Pro
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.
Info:
Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.5 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
My new hard disk has used up some of it's capacity on unsuccesful back up attempts.
Info:
MacBook Pro
Well TM is acting up. I get an error that reads: "This backup is too large for the backup volume."
Both the internal boot disk and the external baclup drive are 1TB. The internal one has a two partitions, the OSX one that is 900GBs and a 32GB NTFS one for Boot Camp. The external drive is a single OSX Extended part. that is 932GBs.
Both the Time Machine disk, and the Boot Camp disk are excluded from the backup along with a "Crap" folder for temporary large files.
Time Machine says it needs 938GBs to backup only the OSX disk, which has 806GBs in use with the rest free. WTFFF?
This happened after moving a large folder (128GB in total) from the root of the OSX disk over to my Home Folder.
I have reformated the Time Machine drive and have no backups at all of my data and it refuses to backup!!
Why would it need 938GBs of space to backup if the disk has "only" 806 GBs in use??? Is there anyway to reset Time Machine completely???
Some quick screenshots:
whenever I run Time Machine on my PowerBook G4 (1.5 Ghz / 1Gb RAM / OSX 10.5.8) it will eat up GB's of hard disk space while 'preparing the backup'. After that it finishes the backup, but I don't get the space back. I'm talking about the internal HD, not the external target disk of course. Does Time Machine use the space to generate some temporary files? Any ideas how I can get my disk space back
my TC is always 'preparing backup' and never backs up, its only started doing this in the last few weeks.im also using my TC to store my movies on and i have 34gb space left out of the 500gb.
View 2 Replies View RelatedNone of the issues discussed in the apple support page on this issue seem to apply to me (except one below regarding not completing the 'prepare for backup'). It still takes way too much time (a night is not enough) to prepare for time machine backup, even though there was a backup recently, and it is not a one-time event but a recurring problem, and there are no big changes to my files or disks.And of course because most days it does not complete the backup before I have to leave to work, the condition on 'not interrupting the backup' cannot be respected. This looks like plain poor design.The only thing that helps is to connect my laptop directly to the Time Machine by Ethernet but it is very inconvenient.
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
i have got an Apple minimac 80gb 10.5.7 with leopard and i bought a small drive of i think it is 116gb and time machine seemed to work ok,but i kept getting msg saying full,i did an erase on small drive and in finder i can see a drive called untitled,but if i click on time machine there are no backup dates?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'm trying to do a back up in Time Machine. It's been going for like an hour and it still says "Preparing Backup."
I haven't changed my files around much and it really should only have a couple of kb worth of new data to back up.
My last successful backup was yesterday. It's done this a few times since then. I tried to stop the back up and restart it to no avail.
I also went into my backups folder and deleted the "in progress" backup then tried to backup again and it's still not working.
I'm in the midst of moving from a 2011 imac to a 2014 - I have/had 3 TM backups 1) before the 2011 crashed and was repaired - 2) from the interim 2014 imac that I restored and updated for the new computer and 3) a "carbon copy clone" of my current drive because the apple tech made me wipe the drive and start over and it failed.
My computer will be here next week and I wanted to prepare. However since the restore of the repaired 2011 NO TIME MACHINE will back up on ALL 3 drives the same error happened. It would start fine and say it needed 17-22 hours to "create new" or "inherit" and would start fine and then freeze somewhere around 15-20GB????? I left it more than 6-7 hours and the freeze remained.
Need a TM expert...... this HAS to be a Mavericks OSX issue and I do not want to wipe another drive.
Info:
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), iOS 7.1.2
I use Firewire 800, and my external has 80GB free on it. Both it and my iMac's drives are 320GB. What's with the extended period of preparation, going on 15 minutes now, maybe longer. Backup still didn't begin, this never used to happen me before. I only backed up 2 days ago?
Also, why when I click the Time Machine menubar item to open Time Machine prefs does the DVD (iLife '09) in my optical drive make a noise as if it's being accessed? It spins up a little too. Seems very odd, and it's not a coincidence, it happens exactly when I try to open Time Machine prefs from its menubar item. I could do it 5 times in succession and the optical drive would make the same accessing noise each time, on cue
I have been trying to backup my computer for the longest time. It has been stuck on (53.4MB of 62.5MB) for about 45 minutes now. Any ideas? It is on an ethernet connection.
View 3 Replies View RelatedWhen I backup Time Machine it's just stuck on Preparing. I've tried stopping it then starting again. I've also tried dismounting the drive then remounting then backing up
View 24 Replies View RelatedRunning the latest Lion software 10.7.4 ..Time machine is looping " preparing backup' ...using Time Capsule 500 gb storage...2 MBP back up to this system..one Snow Leopard and the one Lion.
Time machine is showing 30 MB available... problem appears to be that the old backups are not being deleted no storage is available and it fails to create any additional new backups.. Problem occured in March and I needed to erase the entire backup disk and start over to clear the issue.. It went successfully..now the same prob 3 months later.
My backup is about 181 gb the other is about 100 gb.. why this may be occurring? Obviously the root cause issue was not resolved by deleting the entire disk..
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
So I finally got around to getting a 1tb drive to hook up to my airport extreme to do TM backups. I have ~420gb to backup on my mbp's hard drive. To avoid an absurdly long backup, I did the initial backup via usb (took the better part of the day).
Just now I was excited because it finished - I hooked the drive up to the extreme, mounted the drive so that it would show up as an option in the TM pref pane for a backup disk, and thought I was good to go. However, when I tried to get TM to do a backup so I could see it work (by selecting Back Up Now from the menubar), it took a ridiculously long time "preparing" and I saw that it was trying to create a whole new TM backup on the drive based on my computer's network name. It even had the audacity to think that the previous backup file was ~2gb, which freaked me out because I thought it had deleted it. But sure enough when I canceled the new backup and hooked it up to my mbp again, the backup was the correct size.
I did a restore from a Time Machine backup. Now my iTunes Artwork screen saver isn't working. I'd try to do a reinstall from the Time Machine again to see if it still is a problematic, but I was an idiot and deleted it and backing up fresh. I've repaired permissions. I've gotten album artwork. My music folder reads like this. User/Music/iTunes. Inside are two folders. One "Album Artwork" the other "iTunes Media." Inside the "Album Artwork" folder is "Cache" and "Download."
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a mid-2008 (June) MBP 15". Just upgraded to SL last night. I am having a serious issue with time machine. I've been using it with the same external HD since I bought my mac last year. No issues up until I installed SL last night. This morning (my first backup since upgrading), time machine started backing up (~ 9Gb) but just stops at around 300Mb. The clock keeps spinning, but there is no change in the amount backed up.
I'm reading that other folks are having this issue as well. Has anyone figured something out?I've run disk repair (nothing found), restarted my mac & external HD (several times each), and cancelled and restarted the time machine backup (several times). Each time it freezes at a different amount (i.e. 34Mb, 284.2Mb, etc...).
I recently moved and backed up an imac I left behind as well as my macbook using Time Machine. Everything was fine until Feb 27 when I was hit by a car and spent the next several weeks away from the computer. When I did get the laptop back, I didn't have the backup drive. Until a few days ago. So I reconnect and the backup starts with no problem until it finally tells me that I am out of space on the drive. I decided that I should just dump the imac time machine folder since I had a duplicate on another drive. That was much more complicated than I expected but I finally reclaimed a lot of space. The problem is that now when I connect time machine, it just says preparing backup. I can enter time machine and see my last date before the accident, even going back into last year. But it won't back up any more.
I've looked at the forums and on one suggestion deleted the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file after disconnecting the drive and then reconnecting everything but to no avail. Here is the message on the Time Machine Widget buddy
Starting standard backup
Backup requested by user
Backing up to: /Volumes/2TB BB/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
My first thought would be that the backup I trashed was the one for the macbook and not the imac but the last saved dates would all be wrong and it wouldn't explain my ability to enter time machine and look back at my computer's history. Anyway, At this point I really want to just have a complete back up that I can use to wipe my drive and reinstall everything.
Info:
MacBook (13-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.5.8)
I have looked into this a lot already. It is to much that Time Machine backs up every single hour! It would be nice to set it to something like 3 or 5 hours. I have tried a 3rd party app to do this, but... If my computer was off or asleep when it was supposed to back up, it would get an error. It would not just do the backup when i turned it on or when it came out of sleep like stock Time Machine does. I have also seen a way to change the time incraments in the Terminal.(I am very good with it, not a noob) I have tried this and it screws up time machine completely. Maybe it does not work with the newest OS X. By the way... I have a 2010 MacBook Pro, got it 2 months ago.
Does anyone know a solid 3rd party app, that will work seamlessly. Or has anyone changed the time in Terminal and are currently using something different than 1 hour. There is a lot of examples online, but I would like the codeing that you literally used.
Just wanted to check if he problem was unique to my MBA (Rev B, HDD) or you notice it too ;
My Time Machine backup takes up to 6 hours to do a backup of about 30GB. And each backup size is 31.5GB everytime !!
I have the following Config - 80 GB for OSX (53GB Free) and 40 GB (10GB Free) for Win 7 on Bootcamp. Sometimes I wonder if TM making a backup of Win 7 also everytime. (Does it mean - In a way its good, that means I should be able to restore the entire hard disk from TM including Applications, Win 7 , bootcamp and all the programmes installed in Win 7 in case I have a problem ?)
But the speed should still be fast... 6 hours to do a 32GB backup is torturous specially because then I have to leave the machine alone and cannot use it.
I am getting the following error from Time Machine when doing my first backup. The startup disk being backed up, and the TM disk are both the same size.
Macintosh HD: 465.44 (total); 393.99 (free); 71.45 (free)
Time Machine: 465.44 (total); 465.29 (free)
The Time Machine error is: Quote:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 472.7 GB but only 465.3 GB are available." why would this be? Other disks are excluded from the backup, and Time Machine is telling me that it needs more space than it actually needs. What should I do?
There are 3 macs:
A: an old macbook (the white one)
B: a modern macbook pro (retina)
C: another modern macbook pro (TBD)
I am giving away B now; I expect to get C in 2 months time; I keep A with me all the time.
The goal is to migrate all of the data from B to C. I have Time Machine backups of B.
Since the transition is a long time (2 months), I need to keep working on my data during this period. For this I will use A. This will generate new files, modify old ones, ...
Since A's HDD is much smaller than B's backup, I can move only part of them.
By the way, I have totally erased A and used migration assistant to restore part of my old data from B. So, when I use A now, I do it with my same account as in B (and the same I will use in C).
How do I manage my backups in such a way that, when I will get C, I can safely move all of the data I had in B plus all of the changes and modifications that I have done during the 2 month transition?
Can I just continue to use Time Machine (on A) to update the old backups? I am afraid that some mess could be created because the computers are different (before the backups were taken on B, while now on A), even the present data are different (because now A only contains a subset of the original B data, which I do NOT want to lose), the good point is that the user is the same.
When I open Time machine in my system preferences it says "preparing" is this normal? Is it really backing up?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have been using Time Machine on a MacBook Pro for months to back up to a LaCie back up drive. All worked fine until January--since then, when TM is scheduled to back up, I get a "preparing" message that can run for hours, and eventually (though not always) I get an error message. I typically back up through a wireless network (TM creates a Sparsebundle) but I also tried connecting my laptop directly to the back up drive and that doesn't work either. As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with the laptop's hard drive--and there is plenty of room on the back up drive for all the content. MacBook is running OS X 10.5.8.
Info:iMac Intel duo 20-inch, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Also own iMac G5 1.33 Ghz and iBook G4 laptop
Just under a month ago my time capsule ran out of space. My understanding is that when that happens time machine starts deleting old backups, that is certainly what it has done in the past.This time it just has not deleted anything. I deleted several of the older backups via the time machine interface and still it isn't backing up The log is just full of
01/03/2012 23:14:53.613 com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Is there anyway to fix this problem without just wiping out all my backups,why time machine isn't automatically deleting older backups as it is suppose to?
Info:
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7)
I was a PC user who recently moved to mac. I have a macbook (intel 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD). When I was using PC, I backed up all my data to a network storage device (Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB connected to a 802.11g netgear router which is supplied by Sky) using a program called SmartSync Pro, which worked very well. Although I can connect to and mount the Share folder on this drive when the macbook is connected to the network, Time Machine will not back up to it. It wouldnt even recognise the disk on the network.
So I went onto the trusty internet, and found that you can get time machine to recognise the Share folder. (This was obtained from: http://blog.imulus.com/george/software/using-leopard-time-machine-to-backup-of-a-network/)See my comment on their page at the bottom, number 66.
It recommended entering the following in to the Terminal: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Before attempting backup I have to go into "Network" and select the Share folder by double clicking on it. This seems to mount the volume. After this, it can be seen in Time Machine as a potential backup destination.
However, this method does not work for me. Time Machine "prepares" for a while, then gives the following message: Time Machine error. The backup disk image could not be created.
More internet searching took me to macosxhints which suggests creating something called a sparsebundle image on my local system. (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137) Have not tried this yet as I thought it would be prudent to seek some help first.
Apple have deliberately disabled the ability for Time Machine to back up to network attached storage, (except of course to their proprietory Time Capsule):
Is this because time machine requires a network faster than 802.11g?
Is this because a time machine backup to a network attached storage device is unreliable and the data is corrupted?
I dont want to shell out more cash for a time capsule. I would prefer not to have to hardwire to an external drive (which I will also have to go out and buy). Any thoughts?
I just purchased a Seagate 3 TB USB 2.0/3.0 external drive to use as my time machine backup drive. I have a MacBook Pro that was purchased about 3-4 years ago. The MacBook Pro has a 120 GB hard drive and is currently running MAC OSx 10.6.8. I also have another WD 1 TB FireWire external drive that I use to store all of my media files.
After I followed the instructions for installing the new Seagate drive for use with the MAC OSx, I initiated a time machine backup. It very quickly determined that it needed to back up almost 900,000 files totaling just about 400 GB. It started the backup process at a rate of about 1 GB per minute. In a little less than an hour it reach 53 GB and remained there for an additional two hours before I decided to stop the backup.
Once I got the backup stopped, I deleted the backup and decided to look at my energy saving settings. I noticed that the "Put drives to sleep whenever possible" check box was checked, so I unchecked that option and restarted the MAC. I then initiated the time machine backup again. Like the first time it quickly determined that it needed to backup the same amount of data as before and started the backup process at a rate of about 1 GB per minute. Before going to bed at around 11 PM last night it was at about 60 GB so I thought I was out of the woods (having gotten further than the 53 GB earlier). When I woke up this morning at 5:30 AM it was sitting at 69 GB.
I am really frustrated at this point and don't know why the time machine back up would be failing on a brand new hard drive. PS - I was previously using a Seagate 1.5 TB USB drive as my time machine backup and never had any issues with it. I decided to use the 1.5 TB drive for a different purpose, which is why I have the new 3 TB drive to use as a backup. And I still have the full backup on the 1.5 TB drive just in case anything were to go awry.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I have a external HD which has always worked fine under snow leopard. Since upgrading to lion I keep getting the following message The identity of the backup disk has changed since the previous backup.The disk may have been replaced or erased, or someone may be trying to trick your computer into backing up to the wrong disk. And after this the drive disappears from the desktop appearing agian only after restart. What can I do do rectify this? Delete and re-intialise the drive?
Info:
MacProQuad2.6 4gbRam, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
