Time Machine Backup Hangs at "Calculating Changes"

Pondini wrote:
That may be the problem. Some folks have made this work, others find that TM won't back-up to a sparse bundle it didn't create, or won't work well with it. A new one, made under Snow Leopard, might work better.

Let us know how you do.

Never had a problem before. As it turns out I think you are absolutely right on the fact that time machine is trying to make space for the new backup. Not sure why it is trying to make so much room. I do have 180GB on my hard drive. Maybe it is because of Snow Leopard. Anyways, I just checked my Spasebundle and it is now 271GB vs the 400GB I started with. I will go ahead and let it run it's course. I will post my results when it finishes.

Brant Weber wrote:

Never had a problem before.

Never before, or never before +on Snow Leopard?+

As it turns out I think you are absolutely right on the fact that time machine is trying to make space for the new backup. Not sure why it is trying to make so much room. I do have 180GB on my hard drive.

Sounds like it's trying to to do a full backup. When requesting space, it adds about 20% (the "padding" in the message) for workspace, apparently, so it's going to back up about 163 gb.

Maybe it is because of Snow Leopard. Anyways, I just checked my Spasebundle and it is now 271GB vs the 400GB I started with. I will go ahead and let it run it's course. I will post my results when it finishes.

Make a LARGE pot of coffee!

Pondini wrote:
Never before, or never before +on Snow Leopard?+

Never had a problem on Leopard. Have not had a successful backup on SL yet. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Make a LARGE pot of coffee!

Thanks, I will. It's already been going for 3 days. Although not continuous. I had it off for a while during some of that time. I expect another day.

Thanks for all your help!!

FYI - None of the solutions in this thread worked for me and rather than continue to waste time trying to figure it our, I started from scratch. My desktop is under Applecare and I spent time working with them, they escalated it to an Engineer and still couldn't address the problem before I gave in.

Since I started anew, both my laptop and my desktop have worked as expected with TM and TC.

I gave up also. Ran TM for 12 hours and the size of my old backup stayed the same. Started with a fresh backup and deleted the old one. I'm now almost completely backed up.

I created a custom .sparsebundle again for my Time Capsule. It seems that in Snow Leopard, it works differently that in Leopard. Not sure if my untested methods worked or not. Only time will tell. I have to wait until my 400GB disk image fills. Should take about a month or so.

You may need to go to the Apple Store and see what they can do.

OK, I'm having a similar experience.

Quite simply if I start a backup to a newly time-machine-prepared totally empty firewire 800 connected drive, the initial backup stalls and stays stalled at 1.24GB/77GB. If I then stop the backup by clicking the x on the TM status window, it does stop. If I then choose backup now from the icon at the top of the status bar (near the clock) it stalls almost immediately after starting at about 40k.

I followed all kinds of suggestions about way to fix Time Machine problems dating back to January 09 but nothing worked. Finally I had the idea that it was something physical at the beginning of the drive. (maybe a silly notion, but stay tuned)

I went into disk utility and repartitioned the 500gb drive so that it had two partitions. I made the first partition as small as possible by dragging the divider between the partitions in the disk utility all the way to the top thus creating a 52.88GB and a 446.76GB partition. When that was complete I had two drive icons on my desktop. Time machine promptly asked if I wanted to use "Unititled 2" (the bigger of the two partitions) for Time Machine Backups. I agree and away it went. Fingers crossed... 500mb, 1gb, 1.23gb, 1.24gb, 1.25 and I'm here to say that it completed without incident. Granted this is not optimal as I've lost 50+gb to that useless first partition, but it worked! So there's either something wrong with my drive or Time Machine is finicky about what drives it wants to work with. I have another similar system and it's always worked fine. My Fantom drive is one of those drive that is sold as a 500gb drive, but when you get it home and hear it spin up, you realize that it's two 250gb drives "raided" together I suppose. I don't know if that's what TM doesn't like... Apple?

I'm on a Unibody Macbook Pro 2.4GHZ running 10.6.1 with a 500gb Fantom External Firewire 800 drive.

Try DiskWarrior -- the directory may be damaged?

I cannot find where you are talking about???

There seems to be a problem with Time Machine in Snow Leopard. Both I and a friend here having Time Machine hang occasionally. The common thread for us is using firewire drives, mine 800 and his 400. It does not happen all the time, three times for me in the last week and twice for him. My system is a brand new iMac and his is 2006 iMac and he is running SL on it.

So far the only way to get it going again is to either turn the drive off and back on or do a restart. In my case if I don't catch it soon enough it will eventually take down the whole system. In my opinion the problem has to lie with the software rather than the hardware.

Protagonist wrote:
. . .
In my opinion the problem has to lie with the software rather than the hardware.

If that were true, many thousands of folks would be seeing it.

First, do a +*Repair Disk+* on your TM drive and a +*Verify Disk+* on your startup drive, per #A5 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

If no errors are found and/or the problem persists, try all the things in #D2 of the same Tip.

Pondini wrote:

Protagonist wrote:
. . .
In my opinion the problem has to lie with the software rather than the hardware.

If that were true, many thousands of folks would be seeing it.

That is not necessarily true. A software problem can effect anywhere from a limited number of people all the way up to a majority of people. And I have been around computers long enough to know how to verify my drives. the fact that a friend of mine here in a town of about 10K people is having almost the exact same problem as I am is also a very good indicator that there is a problem. And since we have very different HW it makes it even more unlikely to be a HW problem. The only common threads are that we are both backing up to external drives through firewire ports and we are both running SL.

And to be fair I did not have this problem using the same external drive attached to my PowerMac G5 running plain old Leopard. And when I attach the drive to the old computer Time Machine still runs just fine.

Protagonist wrote:
. . .
And I have been around computers long enough to know how to verify my drives.

Excuse me for not being able to assess your level of expertise from here.

the fact that a friend of mine here in a town of about 10K people is having almost the exact same problem as I am is also a very good indicator that there is a problem. And since we have very different HW it makes it even more unlikely to be a HW problem. The only common threads are that we are both backing up to external drives through firewire ports and we are both running SL.

Since your mind is made up, perhaps you should contact Apple.

And to be fair I did not have this problem using the same external drive attached to my PowerMac G5 running plain old Leopard. And when I attach the drive to the old computer Time Machine still runs just fine.

While you're on the phone waiting to talk with Apple, take a look at the things in #D2 referenced earlier, especially the last one, since your problems apparently started with Snow Leopard. I guess you don't want to hear that many HDs needed updated drivers and/or firmware to work properly with Snow Leopard.

I also have Time Machine actually locking up my machine in 10.6.2, but not 10.6.1 if I go back to it.

It seems to be software not hardware, but only specific hardware.

Protagonist, when your system does hang, I'd be interested in discussing your log files to see if they look similar to ours. Maybe contact me privately if you read this post...

I believe I clearly stated in my original post that this was my opinion. I appreciate your responding but you seem to have taken offense where none was intended. Could I be wrong in my assessment? Yes, but the facts as I stated them would seem to indicate I am not. I was merely posting because others seem to be having a similar problem. If enough people having the problem respond it might be possible to establish a common thread here.

Again, if you have taken offense where none was intended I apologize. I was merely trying to let you know I have been working with computers longer than most people have. (Think vacuum tubes). In my opinion I think this is some kind of a software glitch but that has not ruled out my pursuing the possibility of HW. It is just that at this point it seems to be more likely a software problem. I have a feeling that with one of the upcoming SL upgrades the problem will disappear. Anyway, thanks again for the initial response and have a nice day.