Time Machine Error

I also did the Upgrade option when I installed Leopard initially. Last night I was finally able to get TM running by reinstalling Leopard and selecting the Archive and Install option. I also repartitioned my backup drive and gave it a new name (for some reason whenever I tried to use the name Time_Machine the Disk Manager would hang up when partitioning).

I've been running backups for 10 hours now without a problem.

I was having an enormous amount of problems till I made sure to turn Spaces off while doing the initial full backup.

Also noticed problems from applications that update constantly themselves, such as Mail and iTunes.

Message was edited by: michaelgc

Ok so... i havent been able to get it to work. So i did an archive and install. Did a repair permissions, lots of things. THen tried to repair disk. THe operation FAILED@@@##$@@. and Now when i try to reinstall leopard it says I have to format the drive?! ***?

I think it may come to an Archive and install for me eventually!! I tried using Pacifist just to install Time Machine again but that has not worked. It is still backing up correctly to the Firewire Hard Drive I named as "Time Machine Backup" - but I still get nothing but the today and now view when I launch the program.

I suspect this is a Firewire issue. I was running Time Machine with a OWC external firewire 400 hard drive with no problem for about 24 hours. Then I plugged in an iSight camera to another Firewire port. After that, Time Machine couldn't complete a backup and I was forced to erase the drive and start again.

Try renaming the backup drive to not include spaces (TimeMachineBackup). That has worked for some people on this thread.

I have an update to my TM problem. I had been using a Maxtor III Turbo Drive (1.4 TB). I tried everything including reformatting the drive, partitioning it to give TM its own partition (suggested by Apple support), zapping parameter RAM, updating the external drive driver, doing a little dance in front of the computer. Nothing worked. The window stating "preparing" would continue for hours (once it laster for 6 hours). Apple states it takes "some time" to do the first backup but doesn't say if this means 2 hours or 24 hours.
I purchased a LaCie "Big Disk Extreme +" (1TB) from my local Apple Store and connected it vial Firewire 800. The backup started instantly, continued for about 3 hours (200 GB) and completed successfully. The "preparing" window lasted for perhaps 1 minute and the rest of the time was spent copying the files (entire 200GB internal hard drive) to the LaCie hard drive.
Thus, using TM with four internal hard drives in RAID 5 array is possible using the LaCie hard drive.
Hope this helps. It seems that only certain drives work with TM.

I need to update my case too. It looks like I spoke too soon. TM is now hanging when it tries to do a backup. It only seems to work when there are no other apps running. sigh...

I have taken the plunge and installed Leopard on my intel imac. The first attempt failed in that I did an archive and install, but it didn't install all of itself (there was a folder left at the top level of the drive with a lot of odd files, I can't remember the full details of). Also it would use the existing user folder with all my stuff in it. Just said it couldn't. So having a full CCC of the internal drive, on my external drive connected with firewire, I took the decision to do a full reformat and install onto the internal drive. That seems to go okay. I then ask it to transfer all my stuff from the external. It did some (not anything in the Applications folder, and only bits of my user folder, and it also left three other folders at the top level of the external. I was able to manually transfer what the installer failed to do.

So far so good you may think. It didn't transfer my keychains and I had an awful job trying to set them up again. It kept saying it could find the keychain date file. There could be other files it didn't transfer and I guess Iwill come across those as I go along.

So, I have got most things going properly except that the external drive is now not seen when connected with firewire, but will work and mount connected usb.

Ihave bought the imac uptodate with the little update on Apple's Update server and that certainly didn't fix the firewire problem and I have no way of knowing what it did fix. The accompany doc didn't say anything..

I have taken the plunge and installed Leopard on my intel imac. The first attempt failed in that I did an archive and install, but it didn't install all of itself (there was a folder left at the top level of the drive with a lot of odd files, I can't remember the full details of). Also it would use the existing user folder with all my stuff in it. Just said it couldn't. So having a full CCC of the internal drive, on my external drive connected with firewire, I took the decision to do a full reformat and install onto the internal drive. That seems to go okay. I then ask it to transfer all my stuff from the external. It did some (not anything in the Applications folder, and only bits of my user folder, and it also left three other folders at the top level of the external. I was able to manually transfer what the installer failed to do. Finally the time machine is working fine via usb.

So far so good you may think. It didn't transfer my keychains and I had an awful job trying to set them up again. It kept saying it could find the keychain date file. There could be other files it didn't transfer and I guess Iwill come across those as I go along.

So, I have got most things going properly except that the external drive is now not seen when connected with firewire, but will work and mount connected usb.

Ihave bought the imac uptodate with the little update on Apple's Update server and that certainly didn't fix the firewire problem and I have no way of knowing what it did fix. The accompany doc didn't say anything..

Yea, I'm getting the same error message as everyone here.
FireWire drive. not a LaCie one. No strange characters in the drive name but does have spaces in the name.

I installed Leopard and then went out and got an external hard drive and connected it to the USB. I opened Time Machine and it recognized and formated the new drive but it does not do a backup. I read the help stuff and it says that once you have formated the disk TM will do everything for you. Is there a way to tell it to do a backup since it does not seem to want to do one on its own??

Time Machine will not back up after formatting. Any ideas?

click on TM in the dock. There is an option "back up now"

I click on the TM on the dock but there is not option for back up now. Can you give me more specific directions? TM opens but there are no backups.