OS X :: Time Machine Just Keeps Saying - Preparing Back Up
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.
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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)
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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
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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
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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...
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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)
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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
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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.
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Sep 2, 2008
When I open Time machine in my system preferences it says "preparing" is this normal? Is it really backing up?
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Mar 26, 2012
I 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
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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)
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Mar 17, 2012
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
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Mar 4, 2012
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)
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Sep 8, 2009
I'm an idiot, pleased to meet you.I had 2 external drives connected to my Macbook Pro, both had time machine back ups on...I meant to delete one of these but deleted the wrong one, and dragged it into Trash. On realising my mistake I tried to drag it back out of Trash, as you would normally but after "preparing to copy" for four hours it told me the drive was full...It's a 500gb drive, and the Time Machine back up is the only thing on it, so presumably it's just trying to copy itself when the back up is still present on the drive, albeit in the Trash.
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Dec 11, 2009
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
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Jan 30, 2009
Is it possible to back-up the contents of a NAS drive to a FireWire or USB2 drive using a Mac and Time Machine?
I know there are methods to get TM to back-up TO a NAS but if, for example, someone had their iTunes library on a NAS for access over a network- could TM be used to copy that drive for safe-keeping?
The path of the back-up would, basically, go like this:
NAS --> ROUTER --> IMAC & TIME MACHINE --> USB2/FW DRIVE
Sorry if this seems a simple one but searching for an answer just yields dozens of results for backing-up TO a NAS drive, not copying/saving the NAS itself.
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Feb 15, 2010
Recently, I've figured out that when backing up, time machine only backs up some files, but not the entire thing... I see that this is a way to keep the size of the back up on a low level, true, but isn't it a bad way to back up your files?! Shouldn't it be full backups of the entire library?!
Second question; when I will set up my new mac machine I will buy this summer, is the integration really that easy and files do not get lost?! I am a bit skeptical as a few months ago I integrated data from my old computer to my mac (without using time machine, just regular back ups, manually) and some files were not being imported, god knows why.
Stupid question; when integrating the old files from time machine to a new mac, do they integrate system preferences / applications too? Cause I really have done lots of cool tweaking and it would suck to do all that stuff again...
Also, can I select the files I want to import or does it automatically import all the files from time machine to the new mac? A problem is that there is lots of (cookies, temp files etc.) stored on every mac and now, the quetsion is, does time machine import all these old/makingsystemslower/* little files too?!
What about the problem of leopard > snow leopard recovery?!
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Mar 14, 2010
If I do a time machine backup - does it back up everything on all accounts or just the one I'm currently logged in as?The reason I'm asking is, I just bought a (used) iMac with a 250GB drive, and I have ordered a 760GB WD green drive. Can I just back up using Time Machine and then restore via Time Machine? I have four accounts on here - I'd rather not have to go through the pains of reinstalling everything.
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Sep 15, 2010
I am new here and i have to say desperate. I need to do a system restore from time machine but the mac doesn't see the time machine back ups. I have tried to repair disk and all was ok.
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Dec 29, 2010
I have 2 seagate external hdds. one has manual backups and my photos, mp3s etc from my pc. the other one is brand new empty. this is my 1st mac.. so I was wondering what to use to back up time machine? or the memeo (comes with seagate) or any other backup software? I want to use the harddrives in both pcs and macs. mac reads my ntfs hdd but can't write it (I know there are some apps that can make the mac write on ntfs.) also I wanna back up my windows xp under parallels.
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Feb 11, 2009
In the audio world, bit per bit is important. When TM makes back-ups, are they bit per bit of the original?
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Oct 29, 2009
I was told today by an Apple retail employee that Time Machine will not back up from anything other than an internal drive and I wanted to confirm whether this was the case. For example I have an iMac with a 750GB internal and I also have a 750GB external drive. I want to keep my iTunes Music and iPhoto libraries on the internal but keep all my movies on the external drive for space reasons. I want to then use a 2TB external drive to work with Time Machine. I was told that if I want to back up the 750 "Movies" drive that I will need to manually copy it because Time Machine will only back up the path of those files and that drive can't be included in the backup. To me this seems to go against what TM is about, since I then have to manually manage that part of the backup, adding new items, rather than getting the benefits of TM's incremental backup. Can anyone confirm or deny this. Second question is regarding TM for multiple machines. Can a 2TB drive be used as the TM drive for both an iMac and a MacBook or will the drive need to be partitioned?
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Jan 25, 2010
I own a uMBP late 09 running 10.6.2. Recently, i bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go 320Gb to use as back-up for both Mac and Windows. I partitioned it into equal HFS+ and FAT32, the former exclusively for Time Machine (which i will be using for the first time), and the latter for Windows.
Initial back-up via TM was successful, as i was able to store about 80Gb of data from my Macintosh partition into the ext drive. The problem is this : After several days of backing-up data, Time Machine displays the same set of files as the initial one. During this time, i have made various additions to my iTunes library as well as movie clips and other documents. These changes/additions did not reflect on the subsequent back-ups made by TM. The initial size of the back-up data stayed the same, pegged at 80Gb.
Am i doing something wrong here? The ext drive does not remain connected to my notebook always, and i only do force back-ups via the TM icon. Also, i have not encountered a single error/failed message when backing-up. On the options menu, i excluded only the Download folder. No other settings were altered.
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Mar 16, 2012
I have a MacBook Pro with a 500gb HDD (early 2011) and a Freedom 2tb external drive for Time Machine. Running latest Lion software
As you can it has space, but only the last few weeks of backup. I've had time machine running for about one year.
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Apr 23, 2012
I've been backing up my mac book pro using a WD passport drive and time machine but recently it stopped backing up and says "back up failed" when I try to back up. I can still access data on the drive but can't save to it anymore.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), WD passport drive
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May 27, 2012
I know this is a common issue and I've read all the other posts and tried everything, but time machine still won't back up. I need help figuring out if there's anything I can do, or if I need a bigger back up disk. If so, how big?
I have deleted old backups, excluded unnecessary files, and cleaned out folders. It says 157.46GB available of 159.7GB; but when it backs up it says it requires 188.30GB but only 157.46GB are available.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 21, 2012
why won't my time machine back up? plenty of space. just keeps showing it's loading
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Oct 31, 2007
I have all my media stored on an external hard drive hooked up to my airport. Can Time Machine back up this drive and my iMac?
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May 29, 2008
Time Machine (external USB/SATA) on my 2-month old iMac had been working perfectly. I installed 10.5.3. Everything still works perfectly EXCEPT I get an occasional error with Time Machine's hourly backup saying it could not do the backup. I can do the backup manually and the subsequent automatic backup goes OK. It's happened twice since my installation of 10.5.3 last night. I did Repair of the external drive and no problems were found.
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Mar 3, 2009
im getting my 17" MBP next week. i got a question about time machine app.
do i have to leave the back up HD constantly on?
is it possible that i turn the external back up HD on lets say once a week, run the time machine and do a back up of all changes?
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