OS X V10.7 Lion :: Changed Time Machine Drives Now Stuck In "Preparing Backup..."
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
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?
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
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...
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?
I have two Western Digital drives for backup, one with pictures and one with other files. When I select the disc for backup on Time Machine how do I select both?
I have three Macs backing up via Time Machine. They are using an external hard drive connected to one of the machines. These back-ups take place on site every day, but I also want to use the same back-up system to back-up to a second hard drive which can then be stored off-site.I have initiated first back-ups OK using this system, but now when I look to change the back-up drive once a week the machines don’t seem to recognise the earlier back-up files on the external drive and start to make a new back-up each time. The back-ups are all large and I can’t afford the time this is taking. How can I make my drives recognize the earlier back-up files and just perform an incremental back-up rather than a complete new back-up each time.Â
I'm trying to do a favour for a friend. She has a 320Gb external WD hard drive which she used on her Macbook to backup with Time Machine. It is not partitioned and she keeps the "Backups.backupdb" folder with other personal folders she throws in there. Recently she sold her Macbook and all that was left was this hd. She now only has access to her work pc but it won't recognize her hd as she's apparently formatted it with option "Mac OSX Journaled". So she gave me her hd to backup and then format to FAT32.Â
I've been a Mac for a long time but have never used Time Machine, I simply copy my important files into an external hd as I feel it's cleaner and I've never really had HD problems with any Macs I owned. So basically I have no idea how this works. I managed to copy all of her personal folders into my hd as well as the one labeled "Latest" on the Backups.backupdb folder ("Latest" is actually an alias). But I can't seem to be able to copy the rest of the backup folders. I can copy them into my computer hard drive, but each folder (I'm talking about the ones labeled with dates, there are 35 of them) is around 70Gb. Now, of course that doesn't make any sense, as it would be impossible to have 35 folders of 70Gb each in a 320Gb hd. I can only assume they use aliases as well, but when I try to copy them individually or as a whole (enclosing folder) Finder says I have no space available for that (even though I have more than 320Gb available).Â
Now, in my mind it's completely idiotic to keep any folders other than the Latest one. She doesn't even own a Mac anymore. But she's freaking out that I'm going to lose her entire life (she's that kind of person). I don't want to open the Time Machine app because like I said I don't use it on my computer and these are not my files, so I do not in any way want to sync with this hard drive or backup to it. I'm on a 21" 500Gb iMac running 10.7.3.Â
I have a question regarding Time Machine functionality. Here's my situation. I have two hard drives in my Pro: one that operates as a Boot drive, and one for storage. Right now I have Time Machine set up to backup my storage drive, but I was wondering if it was possible to have plug in a second external drive and use it to back up the Boot drive. I searched for a similar thread, but couldn't really find anything. Has anybody successfully done this?
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. Â
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.Â
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..Â
I recently changed MBPs and restored from Time Machine. Now I want to continue using the backup disk with about 6 months worth of backups on, but it wants to start again saying that there's not enough space for the initial backup. I can't see any way around this in the TM help, but I don't want to start afresh and delete all those old backups. Surely there's a way of making Time Machine think the computer is the old one?
Then I logged out and then logged back in again to reload.
This is supposed to change the Time Machine backup interval from 1 hour to once every 24 hours.
Maybe it does, but I noticed something weird: every time I load up Time Machine Preferences from the menu bar, the time to "Next Backup" changes by subtracting 1 hour or so from its previous value just a few minutes ago when I checked.
If I check again immediately, it is the same (e.g. Today, 9:20pm) but if I wait awhile and load it again, it changes to something like "Today, 8:20pm"
Not sure what's going on here and can anyone offer any comments if I even executed this command correctly in the first place?
I'm sure this is answered somewhere, but does Time Machine backup any mounted drive when it does a backup, or only the internal drives, or only the boot?
I would like to maintain an off-site backup, and plan to rotate a hard drive on a monthly basis. I'm running 10.5.5 with Time Machine. I understand that I may need to initialize a new backup drive every time I switch drives? Any thoughts? Is Time Machine really the best way to go here?
So right now I have 2 external hard drives, a 2TB MyBook Mirror edition, set at RAID 0 so its a full 2TB, and a 1TB MyBook Home Edition. I also have three LaCie 1TB drives to back up the MyBook drives.
How I back up is basically copy the contents over to the backups once a month. The problem is, using USB (my only option) takes about 24 hours per TB. Backing up 3 days a month? Not fun.
Can Time Machine do this better? I still have Tiger, so can't test it yet but it seems tedious to do things my way. I would rather be able to plug them in and sync every few weeks and not have to replace every file, just the ones that changed or were added. Can this be done?
I don't keep the drives connected 24/7 so it would have to be manual, and also can Time Machine back up a 2TB drive to 2 1TB drives? The are stuck in enclosures so i have to connect the 2 separately through USB, can't use RAID.
If Time Machine is not the answer, is there some third party program the would not require me to re-copy every file? It would be great if I could save some time doing this.
Here is what I want to achieve: I have my MBP with a 500GB hard drive that I want backed up to an external 750GB drive (A). Then I have an external 1TB drive (B) that I also wanted backed up to an external 1TB drive (C). Or: Internal -> drive A Drive B -> drive C
Can Time Machine do this all for me or am I going to need a 3rd-party app to help. I know I can easily use TM for doing one of the backups, but will it handle both? If not, what's a good 3rd-party app that will help me accomplish this?
I have an external hard drive that I use with my MBP at work. I'd like to buy another external hard drive to keep at home an also use with Time Machine to backup when at home. Will this work with 10.5.6? What I mean is, will Time Machine work if I plug in another hard drive at home, and still work when I plug in my other drive at work?
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.
I have been trying to backup my computer for the longest time. It has been stuck on (53.4MB of 62.5MB) for about 45 minutes now. Any ideas? It is on an ethernet connection.
I am trying to create a backup of my hard drive with Time Machine, but every time I do it gets stalled. Sometimes it gets stalled during the backup, other times it just gets stuck during preparation. The reason I need this backup is because I want to update to Snow Leopard (so I can buy Mountain Lion when it is available) and I want to be sure I won't lose any data on my computer. I am using [URL] (2 TB). I have tried using Disk Utility to make a backup but that froze too.
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
my TC is always 'preparing backup' and never backs up, its only started doing this in the last few weeks.im also using my TC to store my movies on and i have 34gb space left out of the 500gb.
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.
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?