Backup Failed Error: 25

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Level 1

71 points

Backup Failed Error: 25

I have just noticed that if one excludes all the drives, or all the folders, using the exclude list on the Time Machine Preferences pane (something that happened inadvertently to me) Time Machine gives a rather vague "Backup failed" error message. The clues are in the log messages: "Nothing to backup." and "Backup failed with error: 25"

As I could find no other information on this error, I am posting this here to help anyone else runs into this error.

iMAC 17", Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Dec 11, 2008 9:48 PM

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Answer 1

monster4

Level 1

0 points

Dec 25, 2008 2:35 PM in response to ericnepean

Hi ,
I have just the same problem. Do you have also a solution for this please ?

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Dec 25, 2008 3:09 PM in response to monster4

Two possibilities:

1. Turn TM off, since there's nothing for it to do.

2. Give it something to do by removing something from the "exclude" list.

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Answer 3

Jan 17, 2009 5:44 PM in response to Pondini

According to an old Classic application called MacErrors 2.0 Error 25 means that Time Machine; AKA; backupd literally ran out of memory before it was able to complete the backup run it had attempted. Just like in Classic you should be able to select Time Machine.app & press Apple/Command+I which is the keyboard shortcut for Get Info. From there you should be able to increase Time Machine.app's memory allocation by as much memory as it needs to avoid running out of memory again.

If it were me I would do it in approximately 5-10 MB increments & test it until the error goes away permanently until it occurs again in which case you just increase the memory allocation again.

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