Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Time Machine Backups Failing since update to Mavericks

!

TM is broken, I have several reports from friends. An imac I have that I bravely updated to Maverisks (tm) as a test, sticks on a backup as the disk is full.

A bit of digging revealed that the disk was indeed full as the durn install had created a new 209MB EFI partition on the disk as soon as I mounted it... OS refused to delete to make room. Even wiped the partition, deleted plist.

With that and the WD, Lacie and other drive data loss issues mean I will not be updating critical machines for a good while yet.

I've been an Apple Fanboy since 1976, this is nearly the most problematic release I have experienced, if it wasn't for OS 8 ... Oh the agony :eek: .
 
Weaselboy said:
Like you discovered the exclusions are in the plist, but I wonder how in the heck those non-standard folders got on the list? :confused:

The problem you had with the plist reappearing is because Mavericks caches plist files, so if you make a change you need to reboot or the cached copy will reappear.
Click to expand...

I think you guys have saved me. :) I discovered the hard way that my "applications" folder and others were not being backed up. Migration assistant was also reporting that the Mavericks TM Backup was invalid and could not be used.
I deleted Plist and rebooted as described and now I am backing up about 205 Meg where before TM was backing up about 170Meg.
This is a really bad bug and invisible until you need to recover when it is all too late. I did not do an erase and install of Mavericks, but I think next time I will.
Also during the confusions I have lost all my old backups.
 
I had this problem also.
Wake from sleep, failure message. try to run it manually same message.
I could still see the files on the disk..

What I did was eject the disk, it wouldn't eject in disk utility although it was gone in finder.

I unplugged the drive, got the error message about doing that.. :roll eyes:
Plugged drive back in, TM works.

Prior to doing this a restart fixed it also. Could be one of the finder bugs imo.
 
Anyone have any luck fixing this?
Or anyone with the 10.9.1 beta notice if this is fixed?

It's happening about every other day now.. getting real annoying.
 
Time Machine Failed

I keep getting the error saying TIme Machine couldn't complete the backup.
The backup disk need 60.80 PB for the backup, but only 2.18 TB are available.

I had to look up what PB is, and it stands for PetaByte! That's an ungodly large number! What gives? My hard drive is only 1 TB and my backup drive is 3 TB. Is my system trying to back up the whole Eastern Seaboard of the Internet?!?!

This happened after installing Mavericks about a week ago. Also, I noticed a couple of files on my Dropbox with Chinese characters. Could this be a virus? Speaking of which, I tried to exclude Dropbox from backup. but the Exclude button greys out when I select the Dropbox folder on my machine.
 
^ I don't have any odd stuff in my dropbox folder.

Time Machine still is failing to backup in 10.9.1, but not as bad as it did before.
Someone said to try repairing permissions, didn't seem to do anything.

One thing i have not tried, delete the TM drive, turn TM off completely and start a new TM setup with the drive. Some said that worked on Apple discussions..

I still think it has something to do with Finder. Cause when TM fails.. Finder crashes as well. I normally use the Mac for a while before trying to restart it though.. And then it hangs on reboot. :mad:
 
jerryvdbrink said:
On the system prompt I went to the "preference" directory.
"cd //Library/Preferences" and deleted the file "com.apple.TimeMachine.plist".
(had to be superuser first....)

Hi!
OK, so how do I delete the plist-file correctly through the system prompt?

I'm really not used to the Terminal, System or other advanced 'settings'.

My story is this:

Last summer I first discovered that my TM wasn't backing up a few of my main folders (Applications, System, Library). After some serious research and help from Mr 'Pondini' (author of the pondini.org TM trouble shooting site, who I just recently heard has passed away a few months ago!?) I managed to get back on track eventually.

The other week I once again discovered that my TM wasn't backing up these folders. This time I realized (after checking the dates for my last complete backup and the first 'corrupted' backup) that it started a few days after my upgrade form Mountain Lion to Mavericks (upgraded to Mavericks on Oct 26th and my TM failed to make complete backups starting Nov 2nd).

Unfortunately I cannot recall exactly what I did to get it working properly again last summer, but I thought it was the deletion of the plist-file that did the trick, so I did that again the other day. This time it didn't help, so I've been googling like crazy to find out a solution until I stumbled upon this thread.

So, could you help me to understand how to delete the plist-file through the 'System prompt'?
Click to expand...
 
Koamuseal said:
Unfortunately I cannot recall exactly what I did to get it working properly again last summer, but I thought it was the deletion of the plist-file that did the trick, so I did that again the other day. This time it didn't help, so I've been googling like crazy to find out a solution until I stumbled upon this thread.
Click to expand...

What has changed is Mavs not caches plist files, so if you make a change or delete a plist, the cached version will replace it. So what you need to do is got through the plist delete TM reset like you did before, but this time after your delete the plist, reboot Mavs... then turn Time Machine back on.
 
Weaselboy said:
What has changed is Mavs not caches plist files, so if you make a change or delete a plist, the cached version will replace it. So what you need to do is got through the plist delete TM reset like you did before, but this time after your delete the plist, reboot Mavs... then turn Time Machine back on.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying though, so could you please just clarify these parts for me:

'What has changed is Mavs not caches plist files'
Do you mean that this is an error that has occured for me or are you saying that Mavericks doesn't cache plist-files as opposed to Mountain Lion?

'so if you make a change or delete a plist, the cached version will replace it'
This doesn't actually comply with what you just said, does it? Or am I misunderstanding you somehow?

I didn't mention it in my last post, but after deleting the plist I did actually reboot Mavericks before I turned on TM again. So I might already have tried what you are suggesting...?
 
Koamuseal said:
Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying though, so could you please just clarify these parts for me:

'What has changed is Mavs not caches plist files'
Do you mean that this is an error that has occured for me or are you saying that Mavericks doesn't cache plist-files as opposed to Mountain Lion?

'so if you make a change or delete a plist, the cached version will replace it'
This doesn't actually comply with what you just said, does it? Or am I misunderstanding you somehow?

I didn't mention it in my last post, but after deleting the plist I did actually reboot Mavericks before I turned on TM again. So I might already have tried what you are suggesting...?
Click to expand...

Yeah... sorry... I have fat fingers and can't type worth a damn. :eek:

That should have said Mavericks now caches plists. So if you make a change/delete a plist the plist will get replaced by the cached copy unless you restart first.
 
Maverick time machine and a 2TerraByte external hard drive

I called Apple Customer Care to ask them why is my Time Machine not backing up to my Seagate external drive. After trying may command options ,they recommended I should FORMAT. I said NO. I ended the call and on my own was able to make Maverick see my Seagate HD and then TimeMachine re-started it's backup process. Easy-peasy.!!!
mortfe said:
Using a G-Tech drive for TM. Appx 650gb and took almost 17hrs. Before Mavericks , 6 1/2 hrs. Mavericks s***s. This is Apple's Windows Vista.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back