OS X Mountain Lion :: Time Machine Fails Cannot Make Backup Folder
Jun 20, 2014
For the past two weeks I've been having some major issues backing up my computer with Time Machine. It's become quite a process.Â
iMac 27", Mountain LionÂ
I am backing up to a brand new - well bought in February, '14 - 1TB external hard drive and there is NOTHING else in there except the TM backups.Â
For the past two weeks it's been failing the automatic backups. There is PLENTY of room on the drive.Â
The exact error message reads:"Time Machine ErrorUnable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folderLatest successful backup: [time and day entered here]"Â
To remedy this at first it was as easy as un-mounting the drive and then plugging it back in and it was fine.
Now I've got the disk utility open and constantly repairing the drive and this is only a temporary solution.Â
Below is a small sample of the report from the utility each one is dated.
How to fix this without having to purchase a new drive? In February the old external drive I had started to freak TM out and it just erased ALL my backups which I desperately needed due to the same error / failure. That drive had plenty of space as well but I lost all my stuff anyway.Â
I know the TM isn't for archiving and another question I have is, How can I transfer or even rename the backup folder that TM makes and move it to a 'free drive' to prevent overwriting? Right now I just keep buying new drives which is ridiculous.
I recently got a new MacBook (upgrading to 7.2 with lion) and put all my old data on it using a time machine backup from an external hard drive. Now, when I try to create a backup on time machine to the same external device I get an error message that says I don't have enough free space on the drive to complete the back-up. I've deleted some of the oldest back-ups from the external drive, but time machine doesn't seem to notice the newly available space.
Is the first backup on the new computer larger then normal? It says it requires 215gb but the external drive is 250gb so clearly I haven't needed that much space in the past as there are numerous back-ups from my old Macbook on this drive.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I had a system instability issue and needed to restore my system from a Time Machine backup.Â
I tired restoring from several backups of different dates, with OS X Version labeled 10.7.3 (11D50b). I did so by booting into Lion Recovery HD and following the menu. However, once the recovery finishes copying files to the boot HD and reboots, the computer got stuch forever on the screen with Apple logo with the spinning wheel.Â
Luckily my backup still contained a backup from about two months ago with a different OS X Version, labeled 10.7.2 (11C74). Restoring from this backup completed successfully.Â
At least I did not have to build the sytem from stratch, but I wonder why restoring the system from the latest backup did not work.
OK my Time Machine backup was working fine as of May 22. But then I was diagnosing some system-related problems and I wanted to find out if certain error messages in the console were being caused by Time Machine. So I toggled it "Off" in the System Preferences. But it did not stop the errors.While it was off, I ran some system maintainance utilities that clean out your caches, repair permissions on the home directory, etc. That seemed to stop the most of the error messages I was getting.
So then I toggled Time Machine to "On" in its System Preferences. It shows my "Latest Backup" as having been May 22. However it won't backup the computer, because it throws this error:
"This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 1.77 TB but only 703.30 GB are available.
Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files."even though the Time Machine drive is 4TB, and the only things on that drive are backups of the same volume that I'm trying to backup now!
[code]...
Info:Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), '09, 8x2.26, 285GTX, 12GB RAM, 10TB
MacBook Pro mid-2012, 8GB RAM, 750GB hard drive, Mac OS X 10.8.5
One Time Capsule at home
One Time Capsule in vacation homeÂ
MBP backs up everything on internal hard drive to Time Capsule at home, where we live during summer and spring. When moving to vacation home in fall and winter, MBP backs up everything to Time Capsule in vacation home.Â
During the 6 months at each residence, the backups work great to the Time Capsule at that particular house. However, after some time (maybe a week?), Time Machine displays an error in Notification Center: "Time Machine can't complete backup to Home Time Capsule" (when in vacation home) or "Time Machine can't complete backup to Vacation Time Capsule" (when at home).Â
It's obvious that this occurs because Time Machine was set to back up to 2 Time Capsules and expects both of them to be reachable. Is there a way to suppress these Time Machine errors for the time that we're away from one of the Time Capsules?
Time will start a new complete backup every week or two. No long term back up.This is the message I get; "Time machine completed a verification of your backup on "GoFlexHome". To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you"
I have port forwarded port 46 (TCP and UDP) to port 548 a Mac mini server running Mac OS X 10.6.8, and I have Time Machine backup disk on it set as a share point with Time Machine support enabled. On my Mac Pro running OS X 10.8.5, I am able to connect via AFP to my server with the address "afp://my-ip-address:46" and can read and write on the backup disk share point. I tested that, and it works. When I am on the same LAN as the server, I can use that disk for Time Machine and have been doing so for years. However, I cannot do a Time Machine backup to that share point over the WAN. When I open Time Machine preferences, I can select the share point as my backup disk, but once I start the backup, it says "Backup disk not available" and fails to start.
In case you're wondering, I forward port 46 to port 548 instead of port 548 to port 548 to minimize hacking attempts. Last time I used a default port, a computer in Taiwan started spamming SSH authentication failures.
Is there a way to make a backup of your Time Machine backup on a 2nd hard drive? I want to be doubly sure that my data is backed up!Right now I get an error saying that the second hard drive isn't authorized to copy my Time Machine data from the original hard drive I have set up as my Time Machine.
My 2008 iMac bit the dust but I did consistently back up using Time Machine to an external drive. I plan on replacing it but need to get some files off the backup soon. Is it possible to connect my external backup drive to a friends iMac and copy just the files I need?
I'm one of the unlucky owners of Macbook Retina 15" Mid 2012. I was very satisfied with this computer, everything was great, untill I installed OS X Mavericks. My computer started to have GPU Panics all the time under some "heavier" usage like watching long videos on YouTube. I googled this problem and then I saw that I wasn't the only one, many people had problems after upgrading to Mavericks. I also read that downgrading to Mountain Lion solves the problem, but after the Internet Recovery update, when you are restoring your mac, it restores as Mavericks. I read Apple instruction how to revert os x, but it requires Time Machine backup from Mountain Lion, I already downloaded ML Installer from AppStore but I don't know how to install it.Â
I can't copy a Time Machine backup file (Backups.backupb) from one external hard drive to another. Both hard drives are Seagate 1TB Backup Plus. The Backups.backupb file is about 275GB. When I try to drag and drop the Backups.backupb file from one drive to the other (which I've tried three times) it to begins copy but after about 3GBs are copied I get a message that says "The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)."Â
I formatted (erased) the new hard drive with Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Apple Support says I should format the new drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) "with a GUID partition," but I don't see the GUID partition as an option when I format the drive. Is this necessary, and if so, how do it do it? I'm using OS 10.8.6 on a 2012 MacBook Pro retna.Â
I also tried copying the backup files to another drive (a Maxtor HD) and got the same error message.
I excluded for one TM backup a sparse bundle disk image that I have been backing up regularly. I then immediately removed the sparse bundle disk image from the TM exclusions list, and now TM wants to back up the entire sparse bundle disk image, which contains an iPhoto Library (80GB). It seems that TM does not "see" the previous disk image backups.
Info: iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), 21.5-inch, Late 2009
My time machine backup isnt working for the last few months. The backup is located on a QNAP TS-670. Â
I can look for the TM and the iMac see the TM, but if I start the backup, a popup comes up. "The image of the backup-volume "/Volume/TMBackup/Danielas iMac.sparsebundle" cant be accessed. (Error -1)
Maybe it is not the exact error message in english, but I hope you know what I mean. Im working on a german system.Â
I can access the TM-Share through the finder (share: afp://[...]).Â
Here is the log I've got from the terminal:Â Danielas-iMac:~ danielawendling$ tail -f /var/log/system.log |grep backupJun 6 14:43:36 Danielas-iMac.local com.apple.backupd[323]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/TMBackup (FSVolumeRefNum: -105; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)
I have a 2TB Time Machine drive that has failed (directory errors). Disk Utility, Disk Warrior and Data Rescue 3 didn't work. DR3 showed the directory but can't restore it. Can I manually restore the backup folder (backups.backupdb) ?
Info: MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), 17 inch i7 Late 2011
I am backing up my data from my mac book pro for a second time. I plug in my external, and it says it doesn't have enough memory to back up my computer. I have 1 TB hard drive and used about 650 MB for the first back-up. Obviously I don't have enough to back up everything for a second time. I just want to back up the new stuff. When I go to exclude the current external from the new back up, it's grayed out. Do I have to delete the contents of the hard drive and re-back up the entire computer?
Ok... So, I have an extremely slow Time Machine backup. Many people do. I've gone through the motions and tried to resolve the issue by doing the suggested restart in Safe Mode. I even followed some of the other tips that are on this string: slow time machine backupÂ
Nothing has worked. I don't use Norton Symantec but I didn't the Norton Remove script through the Console already. I don't run any anti-virus software. Â
This started when I was backing up to at Time Capsule. I backed up to the TC for years before this started. I then moved to backing up (started fresh) to a external HD connected via USB.Â
I have a 2010 Mac Mini with OS X 10.9 (Latest Version)Â
I have a MacBook Air and a Time Capsule - both from november 2011.Using Time Machine is givning me som problems.It works fine for some days, an is backing up as planned.But at least 5 times since I got the Time Capsule, Time Machine is asking to make a full Backup, and when I look in Time Machine, it says that there is no "old backup". It has been runing since november 2011.When I start a new backup, as it ask for, it takes at least 24 hours to finish - some times even longer.Is this normal? If not, what do I do?
Have made many manual Time machine Back ups that calculated the differnce and adjusted the differnce in what was then saved. The very size of the external HD did not roll over. Yet the calculation states a entire new Back Up. Is this a permission changing issue? Or what?
I use Bootcamp occasionally for some software that is not available on a Mac as well as MS Office, but unfortunately, I had the partition set to 150 Gb when I set it up which is way too much. I don't want to reformat etc. to reduce the size so just recently, I decided to use that partition for my iTunes folder plus Gb's of work documents which suits me just fine.Â
I have Time Machine setup to backup my Mac and whereas before I had Bootcamp excluded, I am now trying to have the settings so that all of Bootcamp is excluded EXCEPT for 2 folders - iTunes and Personal. I can't see a way to do this because since I have Bootcamp excluded, the subfolders are non-selectable. I tried one way where instead of selecting all of Bootcamp, I did a CMD-A and selected all with an idea of deselecting folders, but even this way, I am unable to deselect the 2 folders because all folders are greyed out.Â
So the question is - Is it possible to exclude Bootcamp and at the same time to de-exclude the 2 folders? If not, I suppose my option would be to backup (well, actually copy!) the 2 folders to my TM drive.Â
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), ...
So I did a search here and found various Time Machine issues, but not this one inparticular. Yesterday time machine was running and I got the following error:
"Time Machine hasn't backed up your computer in 116 days..."
I go to the Time Machine preferences and I click the little info "i" next to the "Failed" status, and it says "Back up is too large for disk...requires 21.92 GB, but only 21.85 are available."
I have a 500GB FW400 hard disk as my Time Machine, and I've never seen this error before. I figured since TM deleted old backups when the disk got glose to full, that this issue shouldn't happen. I just tried to run a back up again and I got the same errors. It gets to the "cleaning up" stage of the back up, then craps out.
So I bought a brand new WD 1TB Elements (USB) to use with Time Machine. I've never used a Time Machine before. I have a MBP13 with a 250GB disk, using the latest Snow Leopard, all updates installed. Formatted the drive to Mac OS Journaled (extended) and set it to use with Time Machine. Works until about 15-17GBs is copied over, than it fails:
1. If I start over it fails very soon after, no matter how many times I retry 2. No matter how many times I reformat it, it always fails 3. I tried one trick I googled - deleting the "inprogress" file - does NOT help 4. SMART status is verified 5. There are no problems if I verify/repair the disk.
I'm trying to use Time Machine to backup 44G used to an External Hard Drive with 76.5G available. The backup process always fails. I thought I might have to use Disk Utility to "zero" out data on the external hard drive but the message pops up with an estimated 24 hours to "zero" out all data on the external Hard drive. I have an iMac G5 with 10.5.8
The following error message appears when I attempt backup using TM;
"You do not have appropriate access privileges to save file ".0019e33d49f6" in folder "Time Machine Backups".To view or change access privileges, select the item in Finder and choose File > Get Info."
Spotlight can't locate this file, I've ran disk utility to verify and repair the internal drive, verified the external, no problems on both counts. I even tried allowing read & write privileges temporarily to everyone on both drives, but no luck.
Just receovered from a disk crash. TM brings everything back on my new HD. The problem is that when I try to backup again, I get an error message saying to check TM's preferences. One problem may be that it seems that TM wants to back up the full HD rather than doing an incremental one.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.53 GHz, i5, 8GB, 500 GB
I recently had a external disk fail that was still under warrenty, so I dually went to the Apple store and got a replacement. After plugging it in I went into Time Machine and performed a restore (I was backing up the external disk to another external time machine managed disk). All worked perfectly so far. However, come the next backup I got "Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume"
Searching the forums I don't see any obvious solution. In the system log I also see 'Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: MyBigDisk' every time there is a backup.
So I just started using Time Machine (had been using CCC). A quick scan of my backup shows that it's not backing up my Outlook email database file. This missing file is very concerning to me. First of all, this is one of my most important files, needless to say. But also, it makes me wonder, what other important files might Time Machine be deciding to skip without my knowledge. I went into my Time Machine preferences and have no exclusions in there
i have a case where i have a large file (a sparse disk image) which at some point in the past seems to have become corrupt in the sense that there were problems reading it.eventually, i realized that attempts to clone the drive containing the bad file were failing (super duper reporting an error).an attempt to finder-copy the disk image also failed.i went to find backup copies of the file in question in my time machine backups and realized that the file did not exist in my backups.digging through system logs, i discovered that when time machine encountered an error when reading the file, it was failing silenty - that is, no error was reported via time machine - backups were seemingly completing successfully.so as a result, i went quite a long time with no backup of the failing file, nor any obvious warning that it was failing, even though time machine was encountering an error every time it tried to backup the file.
this seems like a major problem, perhaps even a design flaw in time machine.in fact, it is really the extreme opposite of the behavior i would consider "reasonable" for a reliable backup program.i somehow misinterpreting the data? any guess as to why time machine would not report when it tried to read a file during a backup, but failed?
