Help, time machine fails repeatedly

[mleibowi]

I have a MB connected to a Lacie d2 Quadra 500Gb via firewire. When I run time machine it will back up only about 20Gb of 77Gb. I'll start time machine, it'll plug away, and when I come back, my computer logs off. When I log on, I see that time machine failed. I formatted my external HD, and tried running time machine again, and the same thing happens. Help, what is going?

 

[chscag]

How did you format the drive and what format did you use? Time Machine will only back up to a drive formatted to HFS+.

 

[mleibowi]

Yes, it is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).

 

[varmit]

I have a MB connected to a Lacie d2 Quadra 500Gb via firewire. When I run time machine it will back up only about 20Gb of 77Gb. I'll start time machine, it'll plug away, and when I come back, my computer logs off. When I log on, I see that time machine failed. I formatted my external HD, and tried running time machine again, and the same thing happens. Help, what is going?

Is your computer going to sleep, or is it just locking the screen, or is the computer shutting down? Check your Energy Saver under System Preferences, and see if you have the computer going to sleep or in the Schedule that its set to go to be turned off at a certain point. If it does go to sleep or shuts down, then the computer will stop backing up, which is essentially is a failure since it didn't finish. But I believe if you just start it again it will pick up were it left off.

 

[mleibowi]

My computer was set to sleep after x hours. Perhaps that was the problem. I'm going to try time machine again o/n.

thanks!

 

[Batt]

My computer was set to sleep after x hours. Perhaps that was the problem. I'm going to try time machine again o/n.

thanks!

I use a free app called "Caffeine". It sits in the menu bar and when you click the coffee cup, it prevents yor Mac from sleeping. You can even specify a time to resume the sleep function. Works great, and you don't have to screw around with energy saver prefs.

 

[mleibowi]

Thanks, Batt. I will give it a shot. Time machine finally worked for me!!!!