It just says "Preparing Backup..." It stays like this forever until I stop it and I tried re-connecting the hard drive. Why won't this work? I tried re-starting....any ideas as to what causes this and how to fix?
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Time machine not working
- Thread starter cababah
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Well if its your first backup, then it make take a while to compile all your stuff and finally start dumping it on the external hard drive.
well, i have been using time machine for a good year and a half. YESTERDAY, i experienced the same problem that you have. i repaired the hard disk, only to get an error message saying that the disk could not be repaired. restarted my computer, still no luck. i decided that i would have to erase the drive and start all my backups over. i tried to transfer all my movies from my external hard drive to my laptop, and no luck ( i just kept on getting a beach ball) 
getting impatient, i decided to open up my drive. i looked inside, and saw that a plastic piece was out of place. after twenty minutes of deciding where the hell this plastic piece belonged, i saw that it held the actual hard drive in together. after reassembling my hard drive, i tried one more time. still, no luck. went online, obtained an RMA number from western digital, and i plan on shipping out my drive tomorrow. even though they do not cover lost data, hopefully i can get some sort of compensation (just dreaming btw). so if i were U, i would make sure u have the latest drivers, try to repair your disk, and restart your computer. *** also, when was the last time that you backed up. the last time you backed up, did u by any chance transfer a big file. transferring many files or waiting a long time in between backups makes time machine have to essentially "refind" everything. be patient and wait for a couple hours. good luck
getting impatient, i decided to open up my drive. i looked inside, and saw that a plastic piece was out of place. after twenty minutes of deciding where the hell this plastic piece belonged, i saw that it held the actual hard drive in together. after reassembling my hard drive, i tried one more time. still, no luck. went online, obtained an RMA number from western digital, and i plan on shipping out my drive tomorrow. even though they do not cover lost data, hopefully i can get some sort of compensation (just dreaming btw). so if i were U, i would make sure u have the latest drivers, try to repair your disk, and restart your computer. *** also, when was the last time that you backed up. the last time you backed up, did u by any chance transfer a big file. transferring many files or waiting a long time in between backups makes time machine have to essentially "refind" everything. be patient and wait for a couple hours. good luck
LMAO
On a serious note, that's one of the things that Apple needs to fix. Time Machine is too sensitive in a sense that one little thing can mess up the whole backup. You can repair disk and try again but if that doesn't work, you're looking at reformatting the whole drive and starting a new backup again.
Update: I left it sitting on "Preparing for Backup..." for about 30 minutes and it finally backed up. It only had 1GB to backup so I have no idea why it took so long..I hope it does not do this every time.
On another note...I need to watch out for the lybian nationalists, run for it Marty!
On another note...I need to watch out for the lybian nationalists, run for it Marty!