HardDrive / Time Machine Problems

[mjfarsi]

Hello,

I just purchased a 160GB Western Digital My Passport external HD to use with time machine.

Every time i attempt to back up I get the following message.

TIME MACHINE ERROR
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.

This always happens when the back up reaches 7.74 GB.

I have used the Disk utility repair feature on my hard drive and also re-formated the back up, but I am still having problems.

I took this back, and got a different brand hard drive, a Firewire.

Same problems:

TIME MACHINE ERROR
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.

This always happens when the back up reaches 7.74 GB.

Any suggestions to help?
Let me know- thanks!

 

[toolbox]

When you formatted the drive, what file system did you choose? You need to have it on Mac OS extended (journaled)

if it is formatted with the fat file system, there are size limits. if a file is over 4gb when copying to a fat file system it will fail. Might be what is happening to you?

 

[mjfarsi]

How would I see if there is a file over 4gb?

I formatted everything as you said.

 

[toolbox]

have a look at this program

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/


it will go through your machine and tell you what files are at a certain size. How ever if you have formatted the drive to the mac os extended (journaled) i am unsure why it is stopping on 7 +GB

**EDIT**

Do you have any copies of Vmware or parallels installed? have a look at this post on the apple support page

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1203637&tstart=60