Time Machine not working after lion upgrade

[Blondie :)]

Hello all, I just upgrade to lion, like everyone else in this forum. I searched for my problem, but couldn't find it. Anyways, upgrade worked fine, everything is running decently. However, Time Machine isn't working anymore. I can select all my options, and select the right backup disk, but when it comes to actually backing up, Time Machine gets stuck at the "preparing backup" stage. Anyone else having these problems?

 

[rye9]

Are you sure it's stuck? It was on that option for a very long time for me, but it eventually backed up. Especially after my first few backups after the upgrade.

I'd give it 10 minutes max, and if it still doesn't change status, then maybe there is an issue...

 

[Blondie :)]

Okay, I'll give that a shot then. I've been waiting for around 7 minutes is my guess. But I'll leave it sit for a half an hour. And if it doesn't work, I'll post back. Thanks

 

[zackboll]

Okay, I'll give that a shot then. I've been waiting for around 7 minutes is my guess. But I'll leave it sit for a half an hour. And if it doesn't work, I'll post back. Thanks

OP issues may be related to AFP being updated in Lion.


I am also having issue with time machine, but different than OP. My time machine backs up to NAS server, and I can see the image it creates... but when I enter the time machine, I cannot see any of the changes that have occurred (It only shows now, I cannot browse back in time). Just got my Mac Air tonight, tried doing a time machine backup to same NAS, worked just fine. Think it may be upgrade artifact from Snow Leopard to Lion.

 

[minifridge1138]

I use a separate hard drive for my Time Machine Backups.

I updated to Lion.

I can open Time Machine and see all of my past back ups from SL.

Time Machine shows 216 GB free of 1 TB (the 700+ GB are the old backups).

When it tries to backup, it fails because there isn't enough free space.

It seems that it is trying to use the free space as a new time machine, rather than incremental backups of the existing instance.

Anyone else have this problem?
Anyone have a solution?

 

[Synergie]

I had this issue... and no matter what I tried to do, myback up would not work at all. My Backup file had become corrupted the first time Lion tried to back up to it (my ongoing backup from SL). I left it go for several hours and it was still on 'preparing backup' - I ended up having to delete it and start a brand new backup from scratch... and in the process I lost the ability to downgrade back to SL oh well.... but anyway after I deleted the old backup and started brand new again, it took only minutes to 'prepare' and then went right to 'calculating size' and then the entire brand new backup (over WiFi no less) took less than 2 hours for about 70 GB of data. So something definitely happened to my old backup file when I upgraded to Lion.

 

[wackymacky]

I had this issue... and no matter what I tried to do, myback up would not work at all. My Backup file had become corrupted the first time Lion tried to back up to it (my ongoing backup from SL). I left it go for several hours and it was still on 'preparing backup' - I ended up having to delete it and start a brand new backup from scratch... and in the process I lost the ability to downgrade back to SL oh well.... but anyway after I deleted the old backup and started brand new again, it took only minutes to 'prepare' and then went right to 'calculating size' and then the entire brand new backup (over WiFi no less) took less than 2 hours for about 70 GB of data. So something definitely happened to my old backup file when I upgraded to Lion.

A way to avoid this, you could copy the last SL space bundle on to a separate drive before you attempt to install Lion, and then keep this as a separate entity for downgrading if the need arises. (I know that this seems like a additional step, but I'd say it's worth it)

 

[brwatson]

TM working, but old backups "inaccessible"

I don't know how else to describe this. I'm seeing similar issues as the rest of you, but I *think* all of my pre-Lion backups (SL) are still on the disk but I can't see/access them. The TM disk (USB attached) showed the same free space after upgrade, but now TM is only keeping the last 48 hours of backups for my system. I've tried using terminal, Finder, etc but simply can't see old backups. I know the data is still on the drive because it's a 1TB disk, and I now am only able to access 48 hours worth of backups (a 320M drive), so I know that the disk isn't entirely full with those 48 hours of backups.

It appears you can't reset/remove ACLs anymore (at least the CLI tool is gone)... any ideas? I hope I"m not missing something obvious but I've been trolling Google and forums for days and can't find anyone stating the same problem.

 

[cas85]

yes i had this issue also. as someone noted above, i had to format my time machine drive again which means you either lose your SL backup or just transfer it somewhere else. however, once i formatted, it went from "Preparing Backup" to actually backing up instantly. you are wasting time just waiting for it to change.

 

[spt]

You can get more information about the nature of the problem from your logs (open console, enter backupd in the search field). Maybe you can post the log information here.

I think this problem is related to Spotlight. The solution in that case is to turn off time machine, reset Spotlight for both the disks on your system and the Time Machine, and then turn Time Machine on again.

 

[MacRumoren]

I think this problem is related to Spotlight. The solution in that case is to turn off time machine, reset Spotlight for both the disks on your system and the Time Machine, and then turn Time Machine on again.

How to "reset" spotlight?

I also have the problem that TimeMachine "ejects the disk improperly" near the end of backup, and subsequent backups will fail even though I have more than enough disk space for TimeMachine, but it stills just keeps saying "not enough disk space"

 

[spt]

Resetting Spotlight can be done as follows. I don't know how recommended this is, but I don't think it's really dangerous and I've done it twice (last week after installing Lion, and a few years ago when all older backups had somehow become grayed out).

If someone else knows a solution that does not involve deleting the older backups, please feel free to provide it though.

(1) Go to "System Preferences" and then "Time Machine Preferences". Turn Time Machine off.

(2) Mount your Time Machine backup disk (I assume people know how to do this, e.g. by browsing to it over the network and double clicking the Sparsebundle file).

(3) Open Finder, in the Finder menu to to "Finder", "Preferences" and then to the tab "Sidebar". Make sure that under "Shares" "Connected Servers" are enabled, and under "Devices" "Hard Disks".

(4) Go to "System Preferences" and then "Spotlight". Go to the privacy tab. Click the "+", add your boot disk, and your Time Machine disk. They should be visible in the sidebar due to step 3 .

(5) Now open a terminal, browse to /Volumes/<Your boot disk>. If you run "ls -la" you should see a file called ".Spotlight-V100". Remove it by running "sudo rm -rf .Spotlight-V100". Then browse to /Volumes/Time Machine Backup, and also remove ".Spotlight-V100".

(6) Go back to the privacy tab in "System Preferences" and "Spotlight". Remove your boot disk and your Time Machine disk from the list of directories that are not indexed by Spotlight.

(7) Wait until reindexing has finished. This may take several hours to finish.

(8) Re-enable Time Machine.

I don't know about the problem with insufficient disk space, if you run "df -H" in a terminal you can see the system's opinion on how much space is left.

 

[xraydoc]

There is a known issue with certain Linux-based NAS devices when used for Time Machine on Lion. Your device may need a firmware update. Apple is using a new version of some protocol (don't have the details handy).

Drobo already has a new firmware out for their Drobo FS and DroboPro FS units. I use a Drobo FS and the new firmware is working quite well.

 

[OldDeveloper]

Rebuilding Indexes work

You guys are awesome!

I haven't been able to get a consistent backup since the 20th! Last night just before my last ditch option of deleting and starting again, I decided to try the deleting both indexes in Spotlight and letting them rebuild. BTW, I have the 500G version of the Time Capsule.

So I disconnect my WiFi and hooked up via 100M eithernet. I deleted, removed them from the exceptions, set the machine to never sleep and went to bed letting spotlight do it's thing.

This morning, I turn on Time Machine and boom, 4 gigs backed up, no issues at all and no 'waiting for' messages in the console!

Thanks for saving my 2 years of backups!

 

[Synergie]

A way to avoid this, you could copy the last SL space bundle on to a separate drive before you attempt to install Lion, and then keep this as a separate entity for downgrading if the need arises. (I know that this seems like a additional step, but I'd say it's worth it)

The file was actually corrupted.... saving it would have been of no use. Time Machine wouldn't even open it!

 

[hotlava]

]Resetting Spotlight can be done as follows. I don't know how recommended this is, but I don't think it's really dangerous and I've done it twice (last week after installing Lion, and a few years ago when all older backups had somehow become grayed out).

I just tried this out as a last ditch effort before resetting my Time Capsule to factory default and starting over again. It worked!

I suspected my Time Capsule was working properly, as I have a printer plugged into it, and was able to access both that and the contents of the back ups.

I bought this Time Capsule in February, and have had both hardware and software related issues. Not a ton, but enough to be frustrating. in the last 7 months, I've probably put in 12 hours of time actively trying to figure out WTF it wasn't working properly.

Has anyone purchased a new gen Time Capsule? I've heard about their significantly improved speeds, but how about the interaction between it and time machine? Anyone had a crash with one of the new gen?

 

[pasadian]

Time Machine not working in Lion

Ever since upgrading to Lion OS X 10.7.2, my time machine windows no longer expands to its original size - they stay at the same small rectangle size they where on time machine when I exit. Apple told me to buy a new external drive as well as erasing my current drive which I had since 2009 just incase mine is screwed up. It made no difference, thanks Apple.

 

[Mysteryrare]

Issue may be incompatibility

Hi I spent 8 days trying to work out TM was so slow (peaking at 4KB/sec -0.5Mb per hour) to and from my NAS (a Drobo FS). Any transfers even deleting files operated at the same speed - roughly 2000 hours per GB. I tried deleting the Spotlight file (suggested by Pondini) but that didn't work.

I eventually found out it was an incompatibility issue between Lion and the NAS. There was a firmware upgrade for the NAS but I had already upgraded so that wasn't enough. I ended up deleting the old backups and starting from scratch - it worked! TM backed up 108Gb in less than 4 hours.

Afterwards I found an article suggesting that I could have created the new Backup Share and TM'd to that and then moved the old files across. But I did not try that so I am not sure if it would have worked

 

[trobb49]

Deleting boot disk .Spotlight-V100 was enough!

Having upgraded to Lion, I discovered that my Time Machine disk wasn't accessible any more. I found the article below to be excellent advice, although I wasn't able to delete the .Spotlight-V100 directory on my Time Machine backup disk. I got a "read-only disk" error message despite the fact that I was logged in as root.

I couldn't rename it, move it, change the owners or anything so I finally gave up on it. I also ran Disk First Aid which reported that there was nothing wrong with the disk. Fortunately, though, when I tried to start up Time Machine again, it worked!

Resetting Spotlight can be done as follows. I don't know how recommended this is, but I don't think it's really dangerous and I've done it twice (last week after installing Lion, and a few years ago when all older backups had somehow become grayed out).

If someone else knows a solution that does not involve deleting the older backups, please feel free to provide it though.

(1) Go to "System Preferences" and then "Time Machine Preferences". Turn Time Machine off.

(2) Mount your Time Machine backup disk (I assume people know how to do this, e.g. by browsing to it over the network and double clicking the Sparsebundle file).

(3) Open Finder, in the Finder menu to to "Finder", "Preferences" and then to the tab "Sidebar". Make sure that under "Shares" "Connected Servers" are enabled, and under "Devices" "Hard Disks".

(4) Go to "System Preferences" and then "Spotlight". Go to the privacy tab. Click the "+", add your boot disk, and your Time Machine disk. They should be visible in the sidebar due to step 3 .

(5) Now open a terminal, browse to /Volumes/<Your boot disk>. If you run "ls -la" you should see a file called ".Spotlight-V100". Remove it by running "sudo rm -rf .Spotlight-V100". Then browse to /Volumes/Time Machine Backup, and also remove ".Spotlight-V100".

(6) Go back to the privacy tab in "System Preferences" and "Spotlight". Remove your boot disk and your Time Machine disk from the list of directories that are not indexed by Spotlight.

(7) Wait until reindexing has finished. This may take several hours to finish.

(8) Re-enable Time Machine.

I don't know about the problem with insufficient disk space, if you run "df -H" in a terminal you can see the system's opinion on how much space is left.

 

[francie]

Time machine not working in Lion

I had problems getting my time machine to take back ups after I installed Lion and thought I got it working. I assumed I would lose SL. Now after I need to go back to an earlier back up I find only the old backups before the lion install and it's so slow it's unusable. I don't understand how this can happen.