Filed under: Troubleshooting, Leopard
Things that make Time Machine cranky
Hey there, Austin Powers, are you having trouble getting your Time Machine to be-have? Two Apple tech notes spotted by Macfixit.com point up a pair of issues that may prevent your backup mojo from working.
First, if Time Machine backs up about 10 gigabytes and then stalls out, you probably need to reformat your target drive with either GUID or APM partitioning (depending on whether you're backing up an Intel or a PPC machine; no word on what to do if you plan to back up a mixed environment to the same drive). Second, if your backup files don't show up in the Space: 1999 interface, chances are you've got non-alphanumeric characters in your computer name, and you'll have to change that before TM will work properly. If you've upgraded your computer, you need to give the new machine the same name as the old one.
It's not yet clear why the machine name is crucial to proper TM functionality -- perhaps the path names need to be "UNIX legal" to work with TM's linking scheme? In any case, try these two tips if your Time Machine is trapped in feudal Japan.
[via Macfixit]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Omer Nisar said 6:44PM on 11-07-2007
Actually, this is BS. Because I've done everything. Archive and Install. Reformat with GUID partition, Erase the Drive. etc etc etc. My time machine still craps out at anywhere from 10 to 26 gigs.
Ive tried a MyBook by WD via USB and a Lacie via firewire
No luck
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SteveP said 6:48PM on 11-07-2007
Really love that "intuitive" click-+-to-not-backup-this-drive interface.
And has anyone looked at the int'l Time config now? Wow - it needs its own manual.
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sergio.delagarza said 6:48PM on 11-07-2007
those ara good tips but this is the most hilarious post i have ever read here on tuaw, especially the Feudal Japan(heroes) part hehehe
btw, sorry for my english
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davidcsawyer said 7:09PM on 11-07-2007
Is GUID format the same as HFS+ (Mac OS Journaled)? My external hard drive is partitioned into a bootable Tiger clone and a generic "storage" partition. Both are HFS+ formatted. Are you telling me I need to reformat them into something else?
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Mystic said 7:09PM on 11-07-2007
Tip #1 doesn't work for me.
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Stephen Lang said 8:04PM on 11-07-2007
Oddly, I have non-alpha-numeric characters in my MacBook's name, and Time Machine has worked fine for me.
If I change my computer's name or hard drive name, does anyone know if it will confuse Time Machine? Or will I have to go back in time to change my name back? ;-)
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Derek said 8:16PM on 11-07-2007
Time machine blows. What are you supposed to do if you don't have enough room to back everything up? For example my itunes is on an external 500gig drive. And I have another 500 gig drive for time machine. But with itunes and all the content on my macbook i simply dont have enough room. I wish there was a way to divide up the time machine back up. I mean does this mean I need to go get a 1TB drive to back everything up wiht time machine?
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robogobo said 5:42AM on 12-06-2007
I think you answered your own question.
sjs said 9:55AM on 1-07-2008
You could always exclude your iTunes library from the TM backup. Otherwise, yes, you absolutely need a drive big enough to hold all your data. Kind of a no-brainer!
Ben the Dog said 9:05PM on 11-07-2007
I'll give it a go (didn't know about APM for PPCs), but the last few times I've tried, TM backs up at about 1 Gig every two hours.
Thankfully Super Duper (while not bootable) can still back up my files effectively
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Eric Taylor said 9:08PM on 11-07-2007
another glitch --
when TM is doing one of its backups, it becomes quite evident because the music playing in iTunes stutters periodically.
and my iMac is a 2.4ghz intel core duo with 4mb of ram
waaaaaaah! (that was supposed to be a crying baby :-)
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Todd Dominey said 9:15PM on 11-07-2007
Time Machine has yet to work correctly for me. It gets about halfway through, then the OS locks up and I have to force reboot my Mac Pro to do anything with it. Happens over and over. Clean install of Leopard, formatted hard drive. UGH.
Clearly Apple has their work cut out for them with 10.5.1.
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Stephen Lang said 10:44PM on 11-07-2007
@7- I'm not sure what you want it to do, create a rift in the time-space continuum so a smaller external HD can be used to store more backup data?
In your particular case, I'd recommend excluding your iTunes library from your Time Machine backup, and backing up your music collection manually to another hard drive.
I bet there are more sophisticated 3rd party options. But for 98% of the Mac user base, the single backup drive model for Time Machine is adequate (and simpler to manage.)
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Fritz Laurel said 1:46AM on 11-08-2007
What, was this programmed by Windows programmers? Seriously, these are stupid, BS type things that I used to see only from Windows programmers back when I used to manage programming teams. Mac programmers never did this kind of stuff.
Cheers
FL
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liam said 2:33AM on 11-08-2007
Or the easiest way, buy a decent external (i got a mybook premium II firewire) format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and point time machine to it.... works fine since.
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Rob said 9:04AM on 11-08-2007
#1 -- I have heard that the real problem might be with Disk Utility in leopard. When you change the filesystem from FAT32 to HFS+ on an external drive, the drive sometimes does not get formatted with the HFS+ format. Moreover, the partition table might NOT get updated to show that it is a HFS+ partition (even though Disk Utility may say it is a HFS+ partition). As a result, Time Machine treats it as a FAT32 partition. Since FAT32 has a 32 GB maximum size, Time Machine fails when it gets close to the 32 GB limit.
I have heard of one workaround. Create two partitions on the external drive. (WARNING This will destroy all data on the external drive). Then delete the second partition and create only one large HFS+ partition. This apparently will overwrite the partition table with the right info. Give it a try.
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farfisa said 9:47AM on 11-08-2007
I haven't had any problems with it's functionality except that I can always tell by my machine's performance when it's backing up. Every thing slows down a bit.
(G5 dual 2.0, 3.5 GB RAM, external firewire Seagate 750 GB backing up an internal 320 GB, all HFS extended & journaled)
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deslock said 5:22AM on 11-10-2007
I've had no problems with time machine here (backing up to a firewire HFS+ hdd).
> Time machine blows. What are you supposed to do if you don't have
> enough room to back everything up? For example my itunes is on an
> external 500gig drive. And I have another 500 gig drive for time machine.
I have a similar setup: 120 GB hdd in my laptop, 250 GB external 2.5" hdd for extra media, and a 500 GB external hdd for backing stuff up. I backup the lappy to the 500 GB hdd with time machine nightly. Once/week I also copy everything from the 250 GB hdd to the 500 GB hdd. Would be nice if time machine could backup external volumes but I don't see this as a big deal with freeware programs like Carbon Copy Cloner out there (which work fine for things like media files while Time Machine's search interface comes in handy for documents).
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deslock said 9:35PM on 11-11-2007
Forgot to mention that Carbon Copy Cloner is actually uncrippled donation ware. So if you try it and like it, be sure to kick some money their way.
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MicNation said 4:32PM on 12-02-2007
So, with regard to the mixed environment...
I have a ppc powerbook and my gf an intelbased macbook.
I also got a 1 tb external for backing up stuff with time machine (and without for stuff like music etc). I got both of them backing up on my Apple partition mapped drive without problems. I had the macbook first backup to a GUID formatted drive, then copied the backup folder over to the Apple Partition mapped drive, where I had backed up my powerbook on a separate partition. I suppose the partition scheme only plays a role in the initial backup where volumes of 10gb or more are created. on both machines I have several backups now. Works like a charm...
Also it works for the networked backup - (ie. with unsupported drives)
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/how-to-enable-time-machine-on-unsupported-volumes/
note that you need to open the drives under shared in finder to be able to direct time machine to them
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