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Time Machine backup always stops. What's wrong?

F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
884
113
Hi,

I have a Macbook Air and a Time Capsule (the one they did right before they redesigned it into that huge tower). I use Time machine to backup my Mac.

However, right now I have been attempting to backup my computer for like 5 days. When Time Machine is in the process of backing up I can see how many GB has been backed up and out of how many GB in total, so I can see the progress that way. But for some reason it always just STOPS at random points when everything seems to be going fine (slow as hell, but fine).

So most of the time I will click the Time Machine icon in the status bar on my Mac to see the status, and where it should normally say "X GB out of X GB backed up" it'll just say my last update was September 2014 (I don't have the automatic backups enabled).. So that means the backup has just stopped for some reason. One time I noticed that it went from having like 50GB backed up (which is my record out of a million attempts these last few days) to saying 2 GB backed up, so the damn thing just started over by itself for some reason.


I have lots of free space available on the Time Capsule so that shouldn't be the problem. I also have made it so the Mac will never go to sleep while it's plugged in, so it shouldn't be that either (I have the Power Nap thing enabled anyway). This is pretty frustrating. Any ideas to how I can solve this?
 
Now it just did it again. I had a few GB backed up since writing my 1st post. Came back to check now and it says 14 KB backed up. The piece of garbage has started over again... Has anyone else had this happen?
 
felixen said:
...
So most of the time I will click the Time Machine icon in the status bar on my Mac to see the status, and where it should normally say "X GB out of X GB backed up" it'll just say my last update was September 2014 (I don't have the automatic backups enabled).. So that means the backup has just stopped for some reason. One time I noticed that it went from having like 50GB backed up (which is my record out of a million attempts these last few days) to saying 2 GB backed up, so the damn thing just started over by itself for some reason.
...
Click to expand...

I don't use Time Machine so I'm not an expert. I have set up a few friends and family members with it so I have seen it work though.

I think you are likely interpreting this information wrong... it will say "X GB out of X GB backed up" as its backing up, but not after. After it's done, it switches to telling you when the last backup/update was.

So actually what you're seeing is that the backups are finishing, not that they're interrupted.

The fact that you sometimes see low values (like 2GB) being backed up is further evidence that previous backups finished... Time Machine backups are incremental... so if it only backs up 2GB, that means there was only 2GB to back up and everything else is current, meaning that previous backups did finish.

So I don't want to promise you that everything is working correctly but it sounds like it to me.
 
motrek said:
I don't use Time Machine so I'm not an expert. I have set up a few friends and family members with it so I have seen it work though.

I think you are likely interpreting this information wrong... it will say "X GB out of X GB backed up" as its backing up, but not after. After it's done, it switches to telling you when the last backup/update was.

So actually what you're seeing is that the backups are finishing, not that they're interrupted.

The fact that you sometimes see low values (like 2GB) being backed up is further evidence that previous backups finished... Time Machine backups are incremental... so if it only backs up 2GB, that means there was only 2GB to back up and everything else is current, meaning that previous backups did finish.

So I don't want to promise you that everything is working correctly but it sounds like it to me.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply man. I see what you are saying, but the thing is that when it isn't backing up it lists the date of the latest backup and this currently says "October 14 2014". So it doesn't look like it is working to me
 
felixen said:
when it isn't backing up it lists the date of the latest backup and this currently says "October 14 2014". So it doesn't look like it is working to me
Click to expand...

Yeah, something must be wrong. I have a time capsule. If I click on the Menubar icon, this is what I see…

tc.jpg



Have you seen this? You might want to erase the drive and start over. I wouldn't want to keep backing up to a disk I couldn't trust. :) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202174
 
Last edited:
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all was fine until el capo.
now it runs for 1/2 hour then just ejects time machine disc.
wish id waited to update to el.
 
felixen said:
Hi,

I have a Macbook Air and a Time Capsule (the one they did right before they redesigned it into that huge tower). I use Time machine to backup my Mac.

However, right now I have been attempting to backup my computer for like 5 days. When Time Machine is in the process of backing up I can see how many GB has been backed up and out of how many GB in total, so I can see the progress that way.
Click to expand...

Check the Time Capsule for the size of the sparse bundle. Probably a tad more than your current drive. It's backing up.
 
Time machine did the eject disk thing about five times.
I left it running overnight
and low and behold, it worked.
actually took about three hours say it was cleaning up
but the bottom line is, it worked.
all is forgiven
 
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