Time Machine was working fine with external LaCie 500 USB drive. Since installing Mac updates on 11/5/07, when I open Time Machine--2 finder windows open and the whole computer freezes. Is this because Fire Vault was turned on during the software update??
I have a similar problem. Same drive as you. What I am finding is that I can't launch apps of any kind. Just sits there. Can't force quit anything but already running apps are fine. Turns out that if I eject the time machine drive (LaCie 500Gb), all the programs that were "frozen" now work and load as they should. Then when I remount the drive it is okay again.
I found another thread re: LaCie drives where someone from LaCie came on and said to make sure that the partition is not master boot record but Apple's own. I did that but it is still doing that.
Would be nice to get this little problem fixed. I am suspecting that it has something to do with the LaCie drive.
I have the same problem too. get bouncing dock icons; nothing will launch and i just get the pizza wheel mouse icon. time machine has got hold of the machine and will not let go!!!
I am having the same problem with a Seagate 500GB drive. It worked fine for a few days, until I installed several software updates. Since then, every time I try to attach the Seagate drive and allow time machine to run a back-up, the iMac freezes. I even erased the Seagate drive and started Time Machine from scratch. It froze during the initial back-up.
It happens to me on my iMac as well using Lacie Porsche 500Gb. Can't use Time Machine. Every time I try to launch TM it goes till a point where only the cursor is alive but nothing else. Sometime is half the way to the full screen in TM, sometime stars start to glow...and then the cold universe freeze.
But the problem I have now I had it before when I was using a 2nd partition on my iMac
Exactly same problem.
Freezing all the time using TM. I was afraid to have one of those iMac with freezing problem
but it never freezes any other time.
I guess using a Lacie is not the real problem. The problem is TM consuming probably too much memory. Spotlight doesn't remember I excluded TM disk from indexing and also Tm +Spotlight is deadly for Leopard.
Apple should do something and soon.
I feel I'm back at the time of classic, system 7: freezing and restarting, freezing and restarting . 😟
Howdy all, I have the exact same problem but I have a 120Gb Western Digital external (USB 2.0). I select a finder window, open Time Machine, and the current window resizes, a duplicate window opens but time machine then just hangs. I see none of the graphics for TM. If I close the window, Finder will restart. If I let it go, the entire machine hangs to the point I have to power it down manually. I would take a screenshot but I can't get that to work while TM is hanging..
I thought it was because my machine ***** but it looks like others with G5s are having the same problem...
Not solved for me. It was only AFTER I did the upgrade to 10.5.1 that I started having real problems. I finally got rid of iDisk and Time Machine and my Mac now runs like it should. No more freezes, no more slow startups, no more failed shutdowns/restarts.
I'm sorry to read there are still problems.
Check, with disk utility, to have the external disk formatted as a Guid partition table or Apple partition Map. Guid should be the optimum
I have no external disk - and never had one. But at about the same time that I got rid of Time Machine and iDisk I also unplugged a firewire connected to an iMac running Tiger. My machine is now running so smoothly that I am unwilling to experiment. BTW I have run the full hardware diagnostics test (> 1 hour) and it reported no problems.
Just to report as another victim of Time Machine freeze. Only the cursor moved around the screen. Clicking met with no response. At intervals, clicking met with responses to clicking.
I waited for one of these responsive periods & managed a keyboard command to restart.
I backup to a LaCie 250 GB external hard drive, but now wonder about the value of Time Machine until Apple comes up with a fix. The hard drive is formatted as GUID.
Sorry to say me too...but with slightly different behavior. When I click on the TM icon on the doc, the Time Travel Window opens, complete with the moving background. However, the application is completely unresponsive - clicking does nothing - I can't page through the backups shown (I have two months worth), I can't cancel, I can't use the arrows to navigate through the backups. The only way to exit is to force quit back to the desktop. However, if I right click the TM icon and select "Browse other Time Machine Disks" I see my backup drive, select it, and then TM starts working - at least I can browse though the backups and exit normally. It's strange that it thinks my (only) TM backup disk is "[an]other TM disk". Since 10.5.2 is reportedly coming very soon, I guess I'll wait and hope that fixes it. If not, I'll reformat and try again. I also use SuperDuper, and unfortunately, it is not Leopard ready yet.
I'm not sure why that would make any difference. Time Machine used to work fine, but stopped recently, and the computer name has not changed since I installed Leopard in December. I did check and there was a ' and ( and ) in the name, so I took them out, rebooted, and Time Machine still locks up. Perhaps something in other updates....
