OS X :: Time Machine - Brand New Disk And First Time Backup Fails
Dec 6, 2010
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 won't be doing this for a very long time, but I am wondering what the advantages and disadvantages are of getting a brand new Mac and either:
a.) Restoring to a Time Machine backup from a four year-old Mac that is showing its age.
OR
b.) Setting it up as a new Mac and manually transferring over all media, data, and applications.
If I restore it to a Time Machine backup, will it perform about as well as the four year-old Mac I'll be restoring it to (not including hardware advantages)? Or would it just be better to set it up as a new Mac and manually transfer everything over?
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.
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
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?
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 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.
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 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?
my TM wil not back up! It states that this backup is too large for the backup disk. The back up disk requires 573.50 GB but only 225.23 GB are available. The TM needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Upen TM perferences to select a LARGER backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding file.Â
Okay I;m sorry but obvioulsy I dont get this. I've never called Apple for help! I have every product they sell practically including Protection Plans I never used and no one will help me with this. My MAC is starting to have black or white screens and i can hear it running but it will not do anything so i have to reboot it, it screws up Enturage and then I have to rebuild that ( 5 times this year) anyway... I would like to back everything up- can I delete everything on the Time Capsule or Time Machine; god I dont even know what it is called Im so MAD... help if you can please. I'm going to have to take this to the genius people at the store and probably buy another computer but like before they will not save my files.
I've bought a 1 TB iomega ego mac edition II external fire wire drive. Once connected it asked whether i want to create a password and whether i want my data encrypted, to which i answered yes. Then a time machine backup started and failed after backing up 5.25 GB out of 39 GB of my data with the following error: "The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. Time Machine will try to make more space available by removing expired backups during the next scheduled backup". When i look at time machine it shows there is 994.29 GB available on iomega ego drive. The drive then went into: "Encrypting Backup Disk" message and it takes forever.
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I want to use Time Machine, but I don't want to have all my data sitting in the open on an external drive that someone can just carry away. Can I make an encrypted disk image, and have Time Machine use that as the backup volume?
I'm interested in replacing my 250GB HDD for a 80GB SSD. I want to use the old drive as a USB backup disk for Time Machine, but is 5400 RPM fast enough for this?
I keep getting message "time machine is read only".....I check "get info" for time machine disk and it is set to "read-write"..Can't backup any files....even though there is 71gb free on disk..
I just bought MacBook Air yesterday (the 80GB version), and love it! It makes a nice companion to my MacBook Pro. I have now one problem. How do I get my Time Machine backup from my Firewire disk to the MacBook since MBA does not have a Firewire port?
I just got a message that my Time Machine external backup disk is full. I have another external drive I can use, but buying drives every few months is going to get expensive.
I was wondering what others are doing in this situation.
Is anybody archiving the Time Machine backup? If so, what software are you using and where are you storing your backup?
What kind of backup plans are you using with Time Machine?
I'm no newbie but this one has me stumped. I can put file onto a Time machine backup disk that I don't use as a backup anymore but I can't take them off. The Disk still has some backups on it that I would like to keep. But I would like to use the extra space for regular file storage. What gives. When putting a file on the disk it asks for the password but moving them to the trash it will delete everything in the folder but it won't actually delete the root folder. So my question is
1. Can I use the disk and keep the backups on it? 2. How do I get permission to read and write to the disk
I have the new Time Capsule and am able to access it remotely just fine. However, because I'm stuck at school all day, I rarely get the chance to back up my Macbook Pro. Does anyone know of a way to have Time Machine backup to a remote disk, such as my Time Capsule? (I'm a Mobile Me subscriber, by the way)
I had to give up my Macbook Pro and am now going back to my Macbook. I have everything loaded on a Time Machine backup, but am having trouble getting to my Macbook. I bought a Leopard Install DVD back when they were released, but when I pulled it out I saw it is now scratched. Can I use a Macbook Pro Leopard install disk to restore my Time Machine backup to a Macbook? If not, is there any way to completely restore a computer from a Time Machine backup without an install disk?
The problem is that full Os backup should be about 155 GB, but it tries to backup whole disk 1 TB. It works fine for first full backup 155 GB (I have exclude list) after that it wants to backup whole disk no matter what. No such problem with 10.6.2 just with 10.6.3. Image so we are clear. I'm new to Mac OS X.
running OS X 10.5.6 on a macbook. I have been backing up using time machine to my Time Capsule, but would like to start backing up to a firewire drive. When I open up the Time Machine preferences and click change disk, nothing happens.
My IMac keeps freezing on time machine finding backup disk, it selects it fine and authenticates, the ready nas pro drive works fine other than this nothing shown in logs and firmware up to date, used to work fine.
