Time Capsule - Backup Failed (error occurs when creating backup directory)

I have had the problem described here, failed Time Capsule backups. I Have had my TC for more than 4 months and incremental backups have failed with distressing frequency. Sometimes one of them will hang up in mid backup and the only way to get time machine back is to cancel the backup, eject the volume it was creating, and reboot my MB Pro. I have checked my sparsebundle with Disk Utility on several occasions and it is perfect. Backups have become so unreliable that I have turned off the periodic backup feature and do all backups manually now. Apple has a serious problem and until it is solved I can't recommend Time Capsule to anyone.

ThiS iS my problem exactLy..
Stuck in "Preparing..." for hours....

Since updating to Leopard 10.5.5 all of my Time Machine syncing issues with Time Capsule have been fixed. Has anyone else had this experience?

Updated yesterday and after you comment I tried to use TC again. No luck at all. Same symptoms. Thanks for hope for awhile.

Spent an hour on the phone with Apple Care today--I was able to update APU to 5.3.2 and re-set up the TC as a wireless router, but despite various attempts, the tech could not get me past "preparing backup" and gave me a case number to call back in case I got the same stupid "read-only" error message, as it was getting on after-hours. Sure enough, went out to dinner, and (once it was again too late to call back), I found the same "read-only" and "back up your disk" messages. GAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Nice to know I have the world's most expensive router.

Any ideas now? NONE of the fixes suggested on this site have worked (some aren't even possible to attempt).

In my opinion, a backup system should be flawless. What is the point of having a backup system that can fail at any moment. The main problem with the Time Capsule product is that it is too slow and the backup can not be scheduled. It seems that once a backup has been interrupted the system has to re-index. This process is too demanding.

Not being able to schedule a backup is just silly and a huge flaw (especially if you use laptops). I have very few disappointments with Apple's products - but this one failed to deliver. There are many owners who have struggled with this product and wasted hours to achieve some level of confidence.

When I posted about my profound disappointment in the TC's reliability to perform incremental backups I didn't mention its speed problems, which are severe. For awhile I used the TC as the backup drive for my Quicken backups. They were so excruciatingly slow when sent to the TC that I soon started to use a different network, a FireWire drive attached to another network computer. The difference in the speed of the backups has been like night and day. Apple really needs to fix the TC, I hope they can get it done.

Someone may have confirmed this already but there is a way to control backups much better than Apple does. TimeMachineEditor2.0.1 lets you pick exactly what frequency you want for backups. I've used it for 3 months and it appears to do exactly what it advertises and to not screw anything up. That and the ability to start tell TM to "start bu now" should take care of your needs. Note that the time of Next backup shown in Apple preference pane does not reflect the actual time TimeMachineEditor will start a b/u.

However, the bigger problems by far are TC's slowness and ability to screw up for the slightly reason AND not recover well at all.

You can only hope Apple knows about this forum AND cares a twit for the expense and effort expended by all here for NOTHING.

Wildbill

I have been having the same difficulty as many here where after a period of time Time Capsule simply would not work. It is there visible as Shared on the left of Finder windows but "Backup Failed" was all I could get.

After reading all the comments in this thread I made my best guess. I have both a Time Capsule and an external hard drive. I do not backup the external. What I had to do was very simple: dismount the external drive. Period. This might also be true of any disk images mounted.

So, if you have trouble with your Time Capsule backing up, dismount any external drives not concerned with the backup. After this one backup I expect to be able to remount the external drive and and have Time Capsule continue to work every hour. If this is not the case I will return and post that remounting caused continued problems.

Better yet, after dismounting my external hard drive (not dismounting Time Capsule), I successfully started the backup and then remounted the external drive during the backup. I expect everything to work well until I have to reboot for some reason. That reboot is always what puts the problem back.

Apple needs to fix this obvious bug.

I've had problems from the get go. TC starts a back up, then hangs early in the process (maybe has uploaded 3gb of data). Then I get "time machine error" suggesting that a network problem may have interrupted the connection between the computer and the back up volume. I have erased the TC files numerous times and tried to run time machine from scratch. Same problem. Really frustrating....

I'm having the same problems. First my roommate's time machine stopped backing up with all the symptoms described in this thread. He talked to Apple support and we reformatted the whole thing. I backed up my .sparsebundle to an external drive and then copied it back. Since then I'm having the same problems.

TM was "preparing" forever and then told me that the image was read-only. Mounting didn't work. (The logs tell me this: ...backupd[7725]: Failed to mount disk image /Volumes/nufo/simons powerbook_001124d28878.sparsebundle (DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 109)) I was checking the disk image with disk utility and it said that the problem was an "invalid index key". I'm now running the repair function which will take some time. I'm pessimistic.

I'm running 10.5.5 with all the latest updates and TC is running the latest 7.3.2 Firmware. This problem is real and still unsolved!

I've had a fair few problems with my backups to a MacMini and MBP both with Intel Duo's both on 10.5.5. I'm having work done on the house and I'm pretty sure I unplugged the TC while it was backing up the Mini. Also, following reading the discussions, both my machines had a 'space' in the name, were over 8 characters, one of which was also an '. The TC also had a space in name.

I therefore changed all the names so that they were compliant with ACSII, and altered the name of the sparsebundle files accordingly. I also deleted additional files I had archived onto the TC using it as a hard drive. The only 2 files I had left on the TC were the 2 sparsebundles. I then unmounted the TC, and through Airport Utility disconnected all users before restarting the TC. I then restarted both computers.

On the MBP, I then reselected the TC under its new name in the options, and the backup went onto work with the existing Sparsebundle file (I didn't need to delete the .inprogress file). That completed okay.

The MacMini on the other hand, I am convinced corrupted its Sparsebundle file. Disk utility couldn't fix it, and it wouldn't let me delete the .inprogress file. Given this isn't my main computer, and one we use at home for surfing, emails etc. I was happy to delete it. This was a simple process of chucking it in the waste basket.

I then restarted again, and backed up the MacMini over night using an ethernet cable. This worked okay and created a new sparsebundle.

I am no software genius, but worked round this problem. I think if I needed the data for the Mini I would have tried the Disk Warrior route. At the end of the day, no matter what hard disk, back up system you have - ALL hard disks can fail, and ALL software can crash, this first generation of TM and TC is obviously a little sensitive (to say the least).

I'm not impressed with the Apple bashing to be honest, this is an innovative unique product in the marketplace. Clearly there are some critical issues such as the ASCII naming, not using the TC as a hard disk without partitioning, and others that are not pointed out when you start out. Despite the problems (and I've had to put a few hours in) I think it is still a great product!

What would be useful, is if someone was able to collate all the helpful posts from people like Glen, and put them into a single topic without additional questions or replies so that there is a single point of reference for all the help you need...

I noticed your computer name is 'simonspowerbook' if you reference another post it does suggest that computer and TC name should be ASCII compliant, containing only numbers and letters only 8 characters long.

I would suggest changing your computer name in the sharing preferences, then change the name of the sparsebundle file to match (just the bit before the _ ). then unmount the TC. From Airport Utility restart the TC, then restart your computer. (also make sure your TC name adheres to the ASCII format).

Open TM preference and reselect the TC as the HD to back up to.

I had the same errors as you, but managed to get it working again. There is also other posted advice that suggests opening your sparsebundle through finder, skip the verification, and delete the .inprogress file, although this wasn't possible on my MacMini. If the sparse bundle is corrupt, disk warrior maybe a route to try.

Maybe I've missed something in the thread but what is the disk warrior method?

I'm familiar with DW but what approach/feature are you (and others) referring to?

My sparse image won't mount so I don't know how to delete the file mentioned.

Thanks.

wilbill2