MacBook :: Time Machine Stopped Backing Up, "preparing"?
May 19, 2012
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)
View 1 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Aug 28, 2010
I had my time machine backed up to a NAS.
I used the hack of unsupported drives to make the NAS avalable.
The NAS is formatted as FAT32 (It came like that, and i use it with windows PCs, i dont know if i reformat it if it will stop working).
View 1 Replies
View Related
May 20, 2012
Time machine has stopped backing up. Under the 'Backing up' progress bar it says that it is scanning thousands of items followed by preparing thousands of items and then cleans up. However, after all of this the latest backup remains the same and no fresh backup is made. I think the problem started when I added a new user restored using time machine (my wife's computer was in for repair and she needed a temporary home!).
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 28, 2012
I have a Macbook with OS X 10.6.8 and a 500GB external hard drive, which still has 208.5GB available. For some reason, Time Machine has simply stopped backing up any new files (documents, music, movies--anything). No items are set to be excluded from backups in Time Machine options except for the external hard drive itself. Also, no error messages appear, Time Machine seems to run just fine, but when I enter Time Machine, or look through the files on the hard drive, new files just aren't there. I am not very tech savvy, so I was not able to understand some of the answers people gave to similar questions on here. I did go to Pondini's website and followed as many troubleshooting instructions as I could understand (for example I did manage to do a full reset of Time Machine) but nothing changed. Do I just need to erase the entire backup drive and sart all over? If so, what will prevent this from happening again later on?
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 5, 2009
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 Replies
View Related
Jun 21, 2012
None 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)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Mar 9, 2009
I'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.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jan 28, 2009
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
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 11, 2008
When 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 Related
May 14, 2012
Running 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)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Dec 6, 2014
Am 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
View 6 Replies
View Related
Aug 8, 2009
I 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 Related
Sep 18, 2010
So my MBP has some funky display issues so I'm going to bring it to the Apple Store this weekend. Before I go I want to make sure everything is backed up on time machine incase they need to replace the whole unit or keep it for a few days to repair it. If they lost my data or had to give me a replacement one would I just be able to hook up my USB HDD and let Time Machine bring the new MBP back to it's old condition?
Would all of my program and settings be just as I left them? Bookmarks in Chrome?
Would all my iTunes purchases still exist as they do now?
Would I need to authorize iTunes again (using up another one of the five allowed.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Apr 29, 2010
Am a Mac n00b here so just wana ask if i were to change the hdd and if i were to use time machine to backup the old hdd to my new hdd, would the bootcamp partition and all the files in windows be backed up too?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 4, 2012
i am having trouble backing up my data to the time machine. the log says the data cant be mounted.
Info:
MacBook
View 1 Replies
View Related
May 16, 2010
If I put an SSD in and use the OptiBay to replace the Superdrive with an HDD will Time Machine being able to deal with backing up the SSD and the HDD to a network backup using Time Machine?
View 17 Replies
View Related
Mar 20, 2012
I have a larger external harddrive that I purchased to use as a Time Machine backup drive, and I want it to back up not only the harddrive of my MacBook, but also a small external harddrive that I use as a "media drive" to hold all my iTunes and iPhoto content. If the small media drive is plugged into the MacBook while the Time Machine back up is ocurring on the larger external drive, will it back up both the MacBook harddrive and the media drive, or do I have to manually select this somewhere?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 31, 2012
It's not paranoia, it's just being a computer user long enough to see damaged drives. I'd like to backup my Time machine drive, but I can't. Neither using my backup software, Chronosync, nor simply manually, just drag and drop from the origin Tima machine to the destination (time machine backup). Time machine is a backup, so I'm doing a backup of a backup. I had my time machine drive failing once, so I want to have this extra protecion.
This is the error message I get when I want to drag and drop the "Backups.backupdb" folder, which is where all my Tima machine bbackups are:
"The backup can’t be copied because the backup volume doesn’t have ownership enabled." I'm the only user, in Admin level. When I get info from the folder it says "You can only read".
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 3 Replies
View Related
Mar 7, 2012
I noticed yesterday and today, after replacing my TimeMachine with a new one, that even though I had temporarily turned off the Time Machine backup in my system prefs because I didn't want it running while I was editing a video, it will still backing up. And backing up a huge amount of data. A Google search using "time machine backs up when turned off" as the search phrase led me to:[URL] in which I learned that TM is doing local backups to my laptops' hard drive. Don't want this, but as usual Apple is assuming most people would welcome this safety feature and so don't offer (a) information on it or (b) the option in system prefs to turn it off. Anyway, on that page there is a command for the Terminal which will turn off this feature:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
One could easily be fooled into thinking your computer had less disc space than you actually have due to this feature. Pretty well everytime there is a "smart" application within the ever expanding OS, there is a downside to it. If only there was an "I'm no dummy" mode which would allow users to tailor various features without mucking about in the Terminal, which I know little about and try to stay away from, except for the occasional "fsck -fy" command at startup.
Info:
MacBook Pro 13-inch, 2.26 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.3)
View 6 Replies
View Related
Mar 22, 2012
After what started out as a simple question...why won't my iChat stay connected now that i have installed OS Lion and spending over 2 hours with Apple Phone support and trying all the known trouble shoots, they told me the only thing I can now do is Back Up my MacBook Pro and do a HD erase and reinstall everything. So, this has me a little freaked out! I have never done this and am afraid of the results. In particular, my 3rd party applications such as all my Adobe Suite applications. I no longer have access to the initial start up and install Creative Suite CDs! At first apple support said Time Machine WOULD NOT back up 3rd party apps. Then I get an email and said they were mistaken and it WILL with a link to an article. Yet I see nothing about it with in the article I was sent. SO, has anyone successfully reinstalled their Mac from a Time Machine Backup along with any 3rd party apps?
I could just go back to Snow Leopard since I had no issues with iChat using that OS. I was told I would have to do the same erasing of my HD either way to reinstall that OS.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 15, 2012
Since installing Lion, time machine get stuck "preparing for backup" but never goes through with it.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 11, 2010
I currently have a wireless router with a functionality called ReadyShare and I also have a 320GB external USB HDD. I would like to be able to plug my HFS+ formatted HDD into my router and be able to use it as a wireless backup solution for Time Machine. The problem is that the router doesn't even detect the HDD so it is unable to share it throughout the network.
Another solution I had thought of was to connect the device to a Windows tower downstairs and then share it throughout the network. The problem here is that there is no free (read: FREE) software that I know of that allows Windows to detect HFS+ formatted drives in Windows Explorer in order to share them.I do know of software that lets Windows read them but there isn't anything that I know of that lets them be mounted in My Computer and treated like a normal drive.
This got me thinking... What if I install the Boot Camp drivers onto the machine downstairs. If I recall correctly, the Boot Camp drivers let Windows do exactly what I am trying to do. But I don't know if this is possible due to hardware differences, etc.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Oct 1, 2010
I have 2 macs in my house.. a macbook pro and a macbook air. I have an old dell desktop running windows 7 that has a terabyte external harddrive hoooked up to it. I want to be able to use it as a network time machine drive. Both laptops are running snow leopard. I was wondering is this possible and if so, how can I do it. Currently I am able to see the desktop and the external hardrive on my network from the macs, and I am able to drag and drop onto them, however I want to be able to use time machine.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Sep 8, 2010
I have tons of pics and music....so does time machine really back up ALL of it and keep the same quality???? I cant seem to retrieve or look at the files individually when Im browsing thru the time machine backup hard drive.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Sep 9, 2010
I needed some extra HD space, so I deleted the 1.5TB hard drive I've been using as my TM backup and thought I'd partition it and re-run TM in the partition.
I erased the drive and created two partitions: 1TB and 500GB. I transferred 250GB of files to the 500GB partition and then set-up the 1TB partition to be used as the TM backup. I ran TM and it told me that it had backed up 264GB...the problem is that my internal HD has 478GB of data on it...so...something's not being backed up.
My only thought at this point is to erase the HD again, re-partition it, and run TM first...and then transfer the data to the other partition.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Dec 1, 2008
I want to know when I can disconnect the external hard disc.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 28, 2008
I have a Time Capsule as my Time Machine backup, which backs up my MBP and the external drive I use to hold all my files. The initial backup was roughly 400GB--325GB of which is iTunes related.
The initial backup--which I have done numerous times now--went fine. However, the next time I have the external drive connected, when Time Machine starts up to do its hourly incremental backup--it shows XXGB of 365GB ... so it is trying to re-backup my entire iTunes library. Anybody have this problem and find a solution?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Oct 30, 2009
I've been using time machine to back up to my WD hard drive but I am looking for a way that I can store photos and movies on my hard drive instead of leaving them on my laptop as well as backing up the whole laptop - when I back up with time machine if I then delete photos off my laptop can I simply pull them up from time machine at a later date and look at them from there?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Dec 14, 2009
Time Machine has been backing up insane amounts of data, and every time it's been backing up it's been going up, It's backing up at the moment and it's currently on 21GB. Not only that but when it finishes backing up it's been getting stuck on "Finishing Backup..." and the process coreservicesd has been using 90%+ of my CPU, causing my fans to go insane.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 27, 2010
ihad my time machine in only wifi mode for like the last month or so, then I redicided to use the backing up feature and all kinds of weird things started happening.
At first, it just gave the message "Backing up" for hours, and it would just keep at that message. (I know that at some point it can take hours to actually start the backup but it�s not this case here) Then like yesterday it started backing up but I turned down the computer as I thought it would be normal that my time capsule would work normally.
I unplugged it, and hited the reset switch several times, and nothing happened. It would not work. Am not a computer technician, I spend most of my time making music.
View 4 Replies
View Related
