Time Machine

[kershawh]

I have been trying to do a backup with Time machine onto my external hard drive.
It starts backing up (it has managed 1GB out of 31GB) and then the message appears "Time Machine Error" - "Unable to complete backup. The backup volume may have been ejected or disconnected from your computer"
My hard drive icon then disappears from desktop, finder, and disc utility.

On the time machine window it says "Next backup - when disk is connected".
This has happened on several attempts and I have to shut everything down to enable me to try again.
Oh and sometimes I get another message flashing up telling me that the volume wasn't ejected correctly or something like that.
I have erased the external drive and have 149.0 GB available.
I have tried using different USB ports.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong. Forgot to mention I am using a MacBook Pro (10.5.8)

Many thanks in anticipation.

 

[satcomer]

Did you reformat the drive using the GUID partition? Apple's document Mac Basics: Time Machine will how you how to manually format the external correctly.

 

[BigHungry04]

I had the same problem on my 2008 MacBook Pro, it turns out that after three years with my external drive attached, the USB port failed. Try switching to another USB port if available. That might just fix it.

 

[ChrisA]

...
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong. Forgot to mention I am using a MacBook Pro (10.5.8)

Find another disk drive to use for Time Machine. The one you have seems to be failing.

ALWAYS use the newest and largest drive you own for Time Machine and don't put anything else on that drive.

If you have any trouble at all writing to the drive you may have trouble reading from it, just when you really need to read from it.

One other thing, Time Machine is only the fist line of backup. You need redundant backup if you have data you care about.

 

[kershawh]

I tried another hard drive -- same problem.

 

[kershawh]

Many thanks to all who replied to my post.
The problem was a faulty intermittent external hard drive which I have now replaced.
I have now successfully backed up with no problems.