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Time Machine keeps failing at 3.65 GB

boston04and07

boston04and07

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 13, 2008
1,852
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So, I just bought a new external hard drive today, a WD My Book Essential with 640 GB so that I could back up with Time Machine. I plugged it into the computer, which then asked me if I wanted to use it for TM, and I said yes, etc etc... everything seemed fine until the backup got to 3.65 GB large, where it failed. It gave me an error message saying, "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." So I went into Disk Utility, tried repairing the disk (where it told me that the disk appeared to be OK), and erased it to try again. Once again, the backup failed at 3.65 GB. Does anybody know if this is a problem with my new hard drive, or is this something I can fix myself??
 
KingYaba said:
Any clicking noises coming from the hard drive?
Click to expand...

Nah, not really... it sounds like it's making the same noises that any hard drive makes when it's writing to its disks. But nothing super loud or ominous sounding.
 
boston04and07 said:
Nah, not really... it sounds like it's making the same noises that any hard drive makes when it's writing to its disks. But nothing super loud or ominous sounding.
Click to expand...

Did you format it with HFS+ before you used it? I'm not sure if TM will use a FAT32 drive, but if it does you might be running into the 4GB file size limit
 
blodwyn said:
Did you format it with HFS+ before you used it? I'm not sure if TM will use a FAT32 drive, but if it does you might be running into the 4GB file size limit
Click to expand...

No, I didn't...how do you do that, and can I still??
 
boston04and07 said:
No, I didn't...how do you do that, and can I still??
Click to expand...

You can still do that, you will only lose all data on the disk. Open Disk Utility select the disk, chose "Erase". The "Volume Format" should be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", give it an apropriate name and click the "Erase..." button.
 
Under Erase the volume format is set as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), is this what you mean? I erased it again, made sure it was set at this volume format, and it's still failing at 3.65 GB. Should I just bring it into an Apple Store or something?
 
boston04and07 said:
Under Erase the volume format is set as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), is this what you mean? I erased it again, made sure it was set at this volume format, and it's still failing at 3.65 GB. Should I just bring it into an Apple Store or something?
Click to expand...

Bummer. In that case a trip to the Apple Store seems to be a good bet.
 
It happened... again!!

Hmm... I've never tried the console idea but I'll look into it when I get home!

So, I went back to the Apple Store, where they tried a number of things, and finally diagnosed my external HD as being DOA. By then, I really wasn't surprised, and was grateful that it wasn't my Macbook! So I returned the external to Best Buy, where I had bought it, got my money back and went back to the Apple Store to buy external #2. (The genius I spoke with recommended a Firewire WD external instead of the USB I had, which wasn't in stock at Best Buy. Besides, going to the Apple Store is more fun, anyways! :p) So I bought that, brought it home, set up time machine, and...

Instead of failing at 3.65 GB, it now constantly fails at 4.97 GB. Whattt??? I really don't know what i could possibly be doing wrong, since setting up Time Machine is supposed to be pretty simple, as far as I can tell! And it seemingly worked fine at the Apple Store. Is it possible for me to have had two faulty Western Digital hard drives in a row? I've used that company before and have never had any issues, and have been extremely delicate since I know how hard drives can be!

Either way, I'll just be making yet another trip to Boylston Street this week...

But I'll also try running it again and checking out the Console. Maybe that'll give me some insight. Thanks for the advice!!
 
Osarkon said:
Could it possibly be some corrupt data you have? Just a random stab in the dark.
Click to expand...

Uhhh..maybe? How could I ever even know? I have like, 130+ gigabyes of stuff on my hard drive, heheh. Like, how would one even go about fixing that?

Another thing is that third-party software has been crashing a lot on startup lately, which *never* happened before. If it doesn't crash, it just hangs there for a while and takes forever to load, freezing the dock, the menubar, other apps, everything. This has been happening a lot with Handbrake, Metax, Microsoft Word, my school's e-mail client, etc. Maybe it's all related? Meh, who knows, it could be one of a million things. :(
 
boston04and07 said:
Uhhh..maybe? How could I ever even know? I have like, 130+ gigabyes of stuff on my hard drive, heheh. Like, how would one even go about fixing that?

Another thing is that third-party software has been crashing a lot on startup lately, which *never* happened before. If it doesn't crash, it just hangs there for a while and takes forever to load, freezing the dock, the menubar, other apps, everything. This has been happening a lot with Handbrake, Metax, Microsoft Word, my school's e-mail client, etc. Maybe it's all related? Meh, who knows, it could be one of a million things. :(
Click to expand...

Hmm, not a clue. :eek:

My Time Machine tends to fail from time to time as well, though at other times it behaves just fine.

You said you ruled out the external as DOA the first time - did they check the internal hard drive as well? Judging by the symptoms it could be that the internal hard drive is going.
 
Osarkon said:
Hmm, not a clue. :eek:

My Time Machine tends to fail from time to time as well, though at other times it behaves just fine.

You said you ruled out the external as DOA the first time - did they check the internal hard drive as well? Judging by the symptoms it could be that the internal hard drive is going.
Click to expand...


Yeah, they checked it, and said it was fine. I've never had any problems up until now and it hasn't actually crashed or anything... hmm. Who knows? I guess another trip to the Apple Store will be happening soon! Thanks for all your help, though! :eek:
 
It may be a partition table problem. See
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550 and use the right partition table/map - post back if this solves the problem -- partition map is at a level higher than partition format. After you select the partition map to GUID/APM, make sure you use the partition format of HFS+ (that is, Mac OS Extended - Journaled).
 
BobZune said:
It may be a partition table problem. See
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550 and use the right partition table/map - post back if this solves the problem -- partition map is at a level higher than partition format. After you select the partition map to GUID/APM, make sure you use the partition format of HFS+ (that is, Mac OS Extended - Journaled).
Click to expand...

Hmm...interesting, I'll definitely try that when I get home! Thanks for the idea.
 
Well, I went back to the Apple Store (for the 3rd time, no less!) and as it turns out, it was my internal hard drive that was failing! So sad. It was an upgrade too, and the Macsales people were very nice over the phone and are going to replace it for me. A little inconvenience (there were several movies I'd ripped in the meantime) but at least I'd cloned it from my original drive, meaning I'm only losing 2 months worth of stuff (which isn't terribly much for me considering I've been at school for only 4 weeks now!). So, could be worse I guess!

But anyways, thanks everyone for your time and help! :)
 
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