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Lion upgrade. Time machine issue?

B

BoerdImac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 14, 2011
21
0
so today I just updated to lion everything has gone perfectly smooth except for... I went to go back up my hard drive after doing some work in lion. so as usual booted up my external HD and got ready to hit "Back Up Now" I did so then waited around for quite some time with it saying "preparing to backup" so I waited and nothing happened unfortunately.

so I tried later and same issue. so now I'm stuck with this problem....

my external HD had been backing up this mac for some time on osx snow leopard. now my issue is that it just doesn't seem to get past the "preparing to backup" phase. now is this normal for it is a new operating system and that it will just take some time on the initial backup?

or is there a problem? do I have to clear this HD and re partition it then set up a new time machine???
 
Take a look at this:

http://www.macworld.com/article/161421/2011/07/migrate_time_machine_backup_to_new_mac_in_lion.html

I think that Time Machine will only continue doing incremental backups on certain Lion installations; I know that if you did a clean install it doesn't seem to want to continue where it left off, but judging by the comments to this article it seems to be true for others as well. And the comments suggest that Time Capsule users get different choices.

I did a separate Time Machine backup for my Lion install, and keep my SL one, and use Back in Time to get old stuff, so I didn't miss this functionality as much, and I have room for more than one backup. But it would lag if you were forced to choose erasing your SL backup in order to start backing up Lion.

If you can't get it to work, then I'd suggest you use the humble Backup app that comes with OS X; at least then you can back up settings and some other critical stuff in the meantime, or until you're committed enough to Lion to drop your SL backup (assuming that's where you're headed).

Rob
 
yea I'm ready to drop my SL backup and move on from that. (lion seems secure and I haven't heard of any major issues yet) I just want to get back to "backing up" on my normal schedule without any issues.

so yea how do I "drop" my SL back up? do I just wipe that partition of my external HD? (it's on 2 partitions 1 for time machine and 1 for anything else that I see fit) and if so how do I go about wiping that partition?
 
My first backup under Lion took several hours, with about an hour of it at the 'Preparing for backup' stage, so just set it going overnight.
 
BoerdImac said:
yea I'm ready to drop my SL backup and move on from that. (lion seems secure and I haven't heard of any major issues yet) I just want to get back to "backing up" on my normal schedule without any issues.

so yea how do I "drop" my SL back up? do I just wipe that partition of my external HD? (it's on 2 partitions 1 for time machine and 1 for anything else that I see fit) and if so how do I go about wiping that partition?
Click to expand...

You can just delete Time Machine's sparse bundle from the partition you were using. You don't need to wipe the whole partition unless the filesystem itself has errors. Just delete the sparse bundle "file" you see, and point TM at the same partition again.

I did the same, and TM backups are working fine again. I did the same after moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Full OS upgrades seem to confused Time Machine.
 
how do I access this so called sparse bundle? through time machine? disk utillity? to do I just go into the disk and delete everything on it? like you said the "file" is see?
 
BoerdImac said:
to do I just go into the disk and delete everything on it? like you said the "file" is see?
Click to expand...

Yeah, just connect to the drive like you would any other drive. You'll see something that looks like a file and named something like "MyMacsName.sparsebundle." Just delete it.
 
@kuwisdelu when I plug in the drive boot it up and open the drive icon that appears on my desktop I see one file in there called "Backups.backupb" and if I open that I see a file called "MyNameHere MacBook Pro" then once I open that I just see all the dates I have ever backup'd on with all the stuff on my computer from those specific dates.

so the file I want to delete is "Backups.backupb"???

because once I open the partition my time machine is on thats the only file I see.

P.S keep in mind I'm opening it from the desktop.

@Tigers so what exactly do you mean?
 
BoerdImac said:
@kuwisdelu when I plug in the drive boot it up and open the drive icon that appears on my desktop I see one file in there called "Backups.backupb" and if I open that I see a file called "MyNameHere MacBook Pro" then once I open that I just see all the dates I have ever backup'd on with all the stuff on my computer from those specific dates.

so the file I want to delete is "Backups.backupb"???

because once I open the partition my time machine is on thats the only file I see.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I use Time Machine on a network drive, where it creates a sparse image, so I guess it acts differently with a drive directly connected. I'm not sure.
 
just tried tonight without even wiping the partition and it worked fine backup up all my files and everything not one issue.

dunno those first couple of tries must of just been some bugs from me just upgrading. well thanks for all the help! :D
 
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