"Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files..."

Same here, that message comes up too. Yet, i will click on time machine then and do a back up now and after five minutes or so it works. So idk what to tell ya cause it will just come back again. I have done successful backups though. I am one the phone with Apple now so if anything comes of it I will post back.

P.S- Did anyone go on digg.com and read the article about editing your doc? I did that and I think that may be causing the issue but if everyone else is having the same issue then it might not be that. I am debating on doing an archive and install.

The evening of day I wrote about losing my existing Time Machine drive, I tried to shut down the mini - but after 45 minutes of a gray screen, I cut the power. Then I tried to reboot and got the dreaded "? folder" symbol. So all was gone, both the system drive and the TM drive, right? Wrong. Next morning, the system booted normally and the TM drive was back as well. Everything seems to be working fine now. Wonder for how long?

The "?" means that your system cannot find a bootable system folder. When this occurs you would typically start your machine from the Leopard Installation DVD (press and hold the "C" key while restarting starting, but the DVD has to be inserted first). Run Disk Utility and repair your internal drive.

Regards,

This worked for me with the same problem
Macintosh HD/Library/preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
I put com.apple.TimeMachine.plist in the trash but didn't empty it. Then TM worked but very slowly. Now with one complete backup done it backs up quickly.

We may have hit on a solution here. I was having the same problem and this procedure worked for me. However, I did (accidentally) empty the plist file from the trash and the solution still worked fine.

you pretty much HAVE to exclude VMWare or Parallels from Time Machine. They create giant Virtual Machine files that change every time you change one document in Windows, causing Time Machine to backup 4-32 gigs each time. sad but true. unfortunately, if you do, no way to get time machine to backup windows documents without manually copying them to Mac volume. See thread here:

http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=17850&page=2

I too found that trashing the preference file (.plist) fixed this annoying error. Does this invalidate my former backups, though?

TM worked for weeks, and then yesterday, I got the same message. Tried deleting the plist, but hat didn't work either.

Ditto. Since yesterday my Time Machine always begins a ~43 MB backup and fails to actually make any progress. No indication of what's causing the issue. Sage advice would be appreciated.

Putting the plist file in the trash also worked for me. The first backup was very slow, but subsequent backups were much faster.

Sorry for stupid question, how can you initiate a Time Machine backup?

Mt first backup worked fine, but like others here, no further automatic backups have worked. It auto backs up every 2 hours, but I want to test it now.
A previous comment talks about a right-hand menu - but I can't find any either in Time Machine, or through the TM System Pref's!

The right-click menu is if you have the Time Machine application in your dock, you can right-click it and choose "Back Up Now."

TM should be at work whenever the computer is awake and connected to the external drive. You can monitor it from a finder window, assuming your sidebar is showing external drives, or from the TM system preference pane, which should show you latest backup and a live update as it is actually backing up.

Kevin T.

Finally got my TM working (hope I haven't spoken too soon).

Simply because I had space in my Mac name. Strange given that it backed up fine the first time.

Time Machine ran fine for weeks on 10.5.1 but after installing 10.5.2 I now get the backup failed error message. I tried throwing away the preferences but still no luck. I have a La Cie 500GB external connected by Firewire to my PowerPC G4.

Simon_MrMac wrote:
Finally got my TM working (hope I haven't spoken too soon).

Simply because I had space in my Mac name. Strange given that it backed up fine the first time.

Apple has said before to not use spaces in the machine name.

A bit ironic as the default Mac name is " user name's Computer". 😀