OS X :: Unable To Backup Data Via Time Machine / Volume Cannot Be Mounted
Jan 1, 2009
I've spent a good deal of time over three days trying to do something that I think is both doable and shouldn't be all that hard. I have a 750gb external HD attached to a Mini, and I'd like to use that drive to do TM backups for the Mini, as well as three MacBooks.
But I can't seem to get access to the backup drive from the laptops to either get going in the first place, or to remain available for TM. I get "volume can't be mounted" errors, "image can't be mounted errors", etc. I find that I can't ever eject the backup drive from the Mini (always told an application is using it...even if I've just booted up the Mini). And with one of the MacBooks, even a direct FW connection to the drive doesn't result in the drive showing up in Finder.
Isn't this a pretty straightforward thing to do? Is there a step by step somewhere that might help me figure out what I'm doing wrong, or what I need to fix? Should I reformat the drive again and start over (there are no important backups on it yet)? By the way, the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
View 1 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Mar 14, 2009
I'm having trouble backing up with Time Machine. Here's the setup:
1. Three, 1TB external hard drives in a concatenated software RAID. This means that they are treated as one large drive. There is no mirroring, no increased data rate, blah blah blah. It's just three hard drives in the place of one. I am aware that this means my backup is three times as likely to fail with the hardware, but that's OK.
2. These three are connected to a USB hub.
3. This hub is connected to a G5 tower. The G5 tower can back up to the concatenated drives (I'll call them just a RAID from here on), and also all additional external hard drives that I connect to the G5 tower have been backing up to the RAID no problem. This is great.
Here's the problem:
I'm trying to get two more computers to back up to the RAID wirelessly. I read a lot online about how this didn't used to be a supported feature (backing up to an external hard drive over a network with time machine), but that Apple has recently upgraded Time Machine to support this functionality.
The first computer I started with to try to backup over the network was a Macbook Pro, trying to get it to backup to this RAID. It can see the RAID over the network, mount it, copy files to it/read it, but CANNOT time machine backup to it. I select the network RAID as the backup device, hit "back up now," then get this message:
"The external volume cannot be mounted."
This is really bizzare, considering that it is mounted, and that I can copy to it. Just for your information, I have an airport extreme wireless network that has been working beautifully, no Keychain access issues, no 3rd party firewall, nothing. I've run through Applecare on this issue: the MacBook Pro has never done ANY time machine backup on the RAID, not even a partial one, so there's no dangling sparse bundle or backup folder or anything like that. All network permissions check out, etc. I've tried repairing the RAID with disk utility, as well as repairing permissions (although I have not done either of these things to the MacBookPro).
The latest thing I tried was plugging the RAID directly into the Macbook Pro. Here's where I got the first clue (at least I think so)...Plugged DIRECTLY into the MacBook Pro, the RAID will mount, but the MacBook Pro WILL NOT backup to the RAID. It gives me the same message: the selected volume cannot be mounted. Again, this is strange considering that, just like when I am viewing the RAID over the network, plugged directly into the MacBook Pro the RAID will mount, I can read it, copy files to it, etc.
I have considered plugging the RAID into the Airport extreme directly, but first of all this would mean much slower transfer speeds with the G5 tower, which is a big issue considering the files I am backing up every day, and two, since it seems that the RAID won't be recognized by the MacBook Pro even when plugged in directly, I'm thinking that this is a more fundamental issue.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Oct 26, 2008
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?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jun 19, 2012
if i am running my new lion OS on drive #1 and i have a Raid1 array on drive #3 and #4 with all my DATA - can i back this up using Time Machine? i would like to place my OS's on a single drive and have my DATA in a raid array but if this means that i lose the ability to retain a Time Machine backup of my data i will simply upgrade to Lion and keep the data on this drive so it can continue to get backed up in time.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Nov 23, 2008
Any clues to this error... I've been getting it fairly frequently as of late. Probably every few days.
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Jun 13, 2012
For sharing my iPhoto Library among multiple users on a MacBook Pro running, currently 10.6.8, I have by a Apple Support guide created a disk image file, and mounted it for storing my pictures without permission issues.However, to account for future expansion, the disk image is made to be 100 GB, while current photo library size is approx 50 GB. Is there any way of getting Time Machine to backup the files within the mounted disk, rather than backing up the disk image file itself? So that the size of the backup at present would be the actual size of contents of the disk, rather than the whole disk image file itself? And furthermore, by copying a disk image file, will the actual files within also be backuped?
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 9, 2010
Once I turn on the guest network in the Airport Utility, the network is unavailable and I can't connect to the Time Machine with the Airport Utility. I have to reset the device and keep it disabled. As long as the guest network is disabled, everything works fine. The Time Machine is fully updated and working fine otherwise. Any ideas?
View 1 Replies
View Related
May 23, 2009
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:
View 4 Replies
View Related
Nov 15, 2007
Time Machine has been running fine for a week now. Suddenly, today, I get this error message:
The Machine Error
The backup volume is read only.
To select a different volume, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine.
I didn't change anything to make it read-only, and it's far from full.
View 24 Replies
View Related
Feb 20, 2009
I just got my Mac back from a repair at the Apple Store. I was very excited to have everything back. However, Time Machine cannot back up! The error given is that the backup volume "cannot be found."
I've tried rebooting, remounting the drive and doing checks on it. Everything checks out. I can even write and read to and from the backup volume just fine via Finder. The only issue is that Time Machine can't. What's the problem? How do I fix it?
Attached is a screenshot of my Finder window next to the Time Machine Sys Prefs window.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Mar 4, 2009
I have been backing up my computers to an external HD with Time Machine for some time, but I just bought a 1Tb Time Capsule today. Is there a way to move/copy my existing TM backups to the new drive (in the Time Capsule), rather than starting a whole new backup, so that I can preserve my existing TM 'history'? I could just start a new backup, but it would only back up the 'current state', and I would lose all the prior data.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 27, 2009
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?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 11, 2009
After a catastrophic HD crash I bought a small 250GB external hard-drive an started to use Time machine. Since my Mac was freshly formatted, I tend to keep it tidy and clean and keep good track of what comes in. I noticed my time machine backing up 15 GB of data which allegedly would have been added within two days. I could absolutely not trace this on my computer nor when I compared current folder contents with the most recent backup. Downloads, Apps., System are all excluded from my time-machine and couldn't represent such a dramatic data increase on my separate HD.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Oct 6, 2009
I'm doing an initial backup to a Time Capsule and I want to make sure all my data was copied successfully. Does Time Machine verify that the data was copied successfully or does it just send it and hope everything copied alright? I know this is the kind of question only the Apple developers would know for certain, but hey, sometimes folks on these forums are surprisingly knowledgeable so I figured I'd ask here.
View 5 Replies
View Related
May 1, 2008
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?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 13, 2009
I'm getting a new macbook. Currently I use time machine as a backup tool and was wondering if I should use it to transfer all my data to the new mac. One benefit of a new harddrive is the fresh install without all the junk that has built up over the years right? So wouldn't time machine just be transferring all the junk and stuff I want to the new mac? or is time machine smarter than this.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Oct 7, 2010
So I just successfully migrated all of my data and settings from my old iMac to my new 27 inch iMac using the Time machine backup on my Western Digital 1 TB external hard drive. Aside from the Time machine backup folder I also dragged a few other things over to the external hard drive because there was so much extra space on it. The drive is not partitioned.
So I'd like to start using Time machine with this new 27 inch iMac but the empty space that's left on the external hard drive is barely large enough to cover what I now have on the internal hard drive on my new 27 inch iMac. If I were to remove the Time machine backup from my old iMac there would be plenty of space again unless starting Time Machine on this new 27 inch iMac will just copy right over that backup file? Everything on this new iMac, the data and settings and so forth, is exactly the same. So is the user account. However the previous Mac was running Leopard while this new iMac is running Snow Leopard.
So if it doesn't copy over the old backup it will just create a new backup file? And if it does create a new backup file is there any point to keeping the old backup file since I no longer have the old iMac and wouldn't be able to access it again? Obviously if I didn't have to keep it I could erase it which would create plenty of extra space for me to start using Time machine again but with this new iMac.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Dec 6, 2010
We are a PC to Mac convert and still trying to understand some basics. We have an iMac 21.5 and expecting delivery of a external 1.5 TD drive. More than we'll even need, but dirt cheap. We also run Windows 7 64 bit through VMware Fusion. The only reason for that is the Windows version of Quicken is a better product the the Mac version.
We will back up pics, Videos, etc., on the iMac under MacOs with Time Machine. Can Time Machine also backup the quicken data files from the Windows 7 VM machine? I hoping we do not need to maintain separate backup drives to manage the different type of file formats between Windows and Mac. I hoping this can be managed through one place...Time Machine.
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 3, 2009
I have a 1tb external for time machine back up and have about 750 gb of stuff to back up. I was under the impression that when time machine backs up my stuff it will automatically delete the oldest backup to create room for the newer backup.
My problem is that i did a back up a couple weeks ago and then today i go to back up and it tells me back up failed only 718gb available for 740gb of stuff to back up
anyone have this problem? how can i fix it?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jan 8, 2011
I recently purchased a Mercury Elite-AL Pro from OWC and it included Prosoft Engineering Data Backup. Are there advantages in using Time Machine vs. Prosoft Engineering Data Backup or vice versa? Also, what about something different like Carbon Copy Cloner? I'm looking to do this right the first time.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 12, 2009
I have a linksys wrt610n wireless router that isn't set up yet. You can attach USB drives to the router to use as a nas. I can't find if time machine will use it or let me use a drive attached to the router for my backups.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Apr 14, 2009
I connected my windows removable disk to my colleague's mac to transfer some data. Accidentally her system started a time machine backup on my removable disk. Although we stopped it during middle of the process, now my disk is no longer recognizable in windows and all I can see under a mac system is her backup file.
The process took a very short time. I wonder if it has deleted everything. Is there any chance I can get the overwritten data back? They are very important to me.
Besides, is it a common problem of time machine backup? It is too dangerous for the removable disks.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 15, 2009
New to MAC and buying a OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro
1.0TB Quad Interface eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB 2.0 & 1.1 Storage Solution
Should I use Time Machine or is the included software, Prosoft Engineering Data Backup 3 a better option?
View 6 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2014
My MBA running ML has Pages '09. If I set up a refurb running ML will Pages '09 be on the second Mac if I set it up from Time Machine?
Info:
MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 26, 2009
Can I use time machine to back up my data without formatting the external hard drive .. If not please let me know if there is a way to back up to hard drive without using time machine.. Thank you
View 5 Replies
View Related
May 12, 2010
How long would it take to backup 900GB of data doing a full back-up using TimeMachine and my MacBook? My MacBook being a 2009 model with 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
I have:
1 x MacBook 160GB drive
1 x Imoega minimax 500GB drive (firewire or USB 2 connection possible)
1 x Seagate 320GB drive (USB 2 only connection)
I have a 400 firewire port in my MacBook in addition to 2 USB sockets, as well as fireWire hub with power supply, should I wish to run 2 or more firewire devices at once, into the 400 firewire port.
My current backup drive is a Samsung USB2 1TB drive but for reasons that will hopefully become obvious below, I will need to purchase a new drive. I think a 1.5TB or 2TB would be fine and I guess a 400 firewire port is still better than USB2, even though it's only 400. However I'm not sure about the time issue.................
View 6 Replies
View Related
Apr 4, 2012
How do i restore my hidden ical data from a Time Machine backup?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
View 1 Replies
View Related
Dec 2, 2014
I just got a new 256GB SSD drive for my mac, I want to import my data from time machine backup, but its larger than 256GB since it used to be on my old optical drive. How can I import my latest backup keeping out some big files on the external drive?
Info:
MacBook Pro, iOS 8.1.1
View 1 Replies
View Related
Feb 29, 2012
I am no longer able to Enter Time Machine. Therte are no changes in the software (or hardware). It continues to backup with no apparent problems.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 10, 2008
Recently I haven't been able to backup. Why this is? Not too sure. I don't remember changing any settings or anything recently but within the last 2 weeks or so I haven't been able to backup at all. When I start backing up it says "preparing backup" then an error message pops up that says "The backup disk image could not be mounted".
View 24 Replies
View Related
