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gadgetgirl85

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 24, 2006
3,805
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For some reason my time capsule has stopped backing up - my last backup was the 27th of August. Now, every time I try to backup it gives me an error. I'm assuming the only option I have is to reformat the time capsule?
 
Not necessarily…….one thing you can try is to remove the drive as a backup destination in System Preferences. I would then restart the Mac and then go and add it back in as a Time Machine destination. This might refresh everything for you and allow you to continue with regular TM backups using your existing backup volume, without creating a fresh one.

I also found that simply rebooting the Time Capsule was enough to get things back on track (try this first).

Give the above a try and let us know how it works for you.

Hope it helps.
 
Not necessarily…….one thing you can try is to remove the drive as a backup destination in System Preferences. I would then restart the Mac and then go and add it back in as a Time Machine destination. This might refresh everything for you and allow you to continue with regular TM backups using your existing backup volume, without creating a fresh one.

I also found that simply rebooting the Time Capsule was enough to get things back on track (try this first).

Give the above a try and let us know how it works for you.

Hope it helps.

Thank you very much for your help. I tried doing that and it is still giving me an error. :(
[doublepost=1505102341][/doublepost]This is the error I get:

A network problem interrupted the backup. Make sure the computer and the backup disk are on the same network, and that the backup disk is turned on. Then try again to back up.
 
I did some searching and it seem’s that the error you reported is quite common and in many cases is resolved by performing the steps I suggested. For other people this did not work and they ended up erasing their Time Capsule and starting over. Still others reported a complete failure of their TC.

A couple of other things you can try. There is a Time Machine widget you can install that will give you quick access to what is going on with your backup, including error messages. It might provide more information than what you see in the Time Machine interface.

Here: https://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html

Sometimes a previous backup might have failed or hung up and it can leave behind an “inProgress” package that can cause future backups to fail. There is a procedure here that shows you how to look for and clean up such packages.

Here: http://pondini.org/TM/A10.html

You need to be careful if you try this as Time Machine Backups do not like to be “messed with”.

Outside of that I do not know what else to tell you. You could try sending a message to Weaselboy, he always has very good info to share.

From a personal standpoint I stopped using my TC a few years ago, I found the backups to it were very slow and I kept having to go in and fix things. I thought I had found the perfect solution when I moved to using a dedicated server, my TM backups ran great for two years and then I had problems that I could not fix and ended up formatting the drives in question. From what I have experienced TM backups to a locally attached (USB) drive seem to be more solid than those done over a network. I now have 2 x Time Machine destinations on my network, plus I also have 2 x bootable clone backups (Carbon Copy Cloner).

Good Luck !!
 
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