Time machine gone wonky since Snow leopard ... stalling, huge backups, etc

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Level 1

141 points

Time machine gone wonky since Snow leopard ... stalling, huge backups, etc

Ever since I upgraded to snow leopard, Time Machine has freaked out just about every time it tries to do a backup.

1) It will stall part way through the process regularly. The icon at the top will spin and spin like it's doing a backup, but nothing happens. I've seen it do that for a day and a half, all trying to back up the same 1.8 Mb of data. According to the rather useless little widget you're supposed to download, there is usually no error code, and it lists an error 256 and/or error -36.

While this is stalled, any application that I try to use the "save as," "open," "open recent," or any other command that brings up the dialog box to select a file/location gets the spinning beachball of death and also hangs. The only way to fix this is to turn off or unplug the backup drive, which stops Time Machine, and then turn the drive back on/reconnect it.

The stalling/hanging happens at random times, it seems -- sometimes during the first backup after turning the drive off and on, sometimes on the 4th or 5th but it's happening every day. Disk Utility shows no errors with either the internal drive on my computer or the back-up drive.

The disk still has more than 30 gigs of space, to it is not a "your hard drive is full" thing. Even if it was, Time Machine used to delete old backups to make room for new ones, as needed (at least it did in Leopard).

2) There are unbelievably and unnecessarily large backups almost every day. Even when all I've been doing is editing 1 Excel document, backups sometimes exceed 2.5 Gigs, and they usually stall out part way through (with progress stuck at some portion of the size listed).

I almost wonder if it's not trying to back up swap files or virtual memory space being taken up on the hard drive.

Anywho, that's my latest bugs/problems with snow leopard. I'm about to pull a Vista and downgrade back to 10.5, which was a perfectly fine operating system.

imac 2.4 gh intel core 2 duo, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Sep 25, 2009 5:22 AM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Sep 25, 2009 9:01 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan Mccoy wrote:
Ever since I upgraded to snow leopard, Time Machine has freaked out just about every time it tries to do a backup.

Have you done a Restart since this began? If not, do so. That's solved a number of problems with the first backup after installing SL.

1) It will stall part way through the process regularly. The icon at the top will spin and spin like it's doing a backup, but nothing happens. I've seen it do that for a day and a half, all trying to back up the same 1.8 Mb of data. According to the rather useless little widget you're supposed to download, there is usually no error code, and it lists an error 256 and/or error -36.

The "useless" widget should provide the actual messages, and, using them, the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* will likely show you how to fix the problem.

While this is stalled, any application that I try to use the "save as," "open," "open recent," or any other command that brings up the dialog box to select a file/location gets the spinning beachball of death and also hangs. The only way to fix this is to turn off or unplug the backup drive, which stops Time Machine, and then turn the drive back on/reconnect it.

That's likely at least one cause of the problem. Improperly disconnecting a drive means OSX can't "close it out" properly, possibly corrupting it's directory system. You need to do a +*Repair Disk+* (not permissions) on it via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Because of this, the useless widget will probably contain a message about TM doing a "deep traversal," which takes a lot of time and CPU.

The stalling/hanging happens at random times, it seems -- sometimes during the first backup after turning the drive off and on,

Why are you turning the drive off and on? It's usually best to just leave it on if you can.

2) There are unbelievably and unnecessarily large backups almost every day. Even when all I've been doing is editing 1 Excel document, backups sometimes exceed 2.5 Gigs, and they usually stall out part way through (with progress stuck at some portion of the size listed).

Click here to download the TimeTracker app. It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). That should make very clear just what's being backed-up. If there are things there you don't recognize, post their names and locations here; somebody can probably figure out what they are. It will only work on a completed backup, however.

I almost wonder if it's not trying to back up swap files or virtual memory space being taken up on the hard drive.

No, TM automatically excludes system work files, most caches, logs, trash, etc.

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Answer 2

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 25, 2009 1:26 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for the thought, but you seemed to have missed a couple things in my post. Either that or I wasn't clear enough.

When I said Disk Utility didn't find any errors on either the back-up drive or the internal drive, that means that I have run Disk Utility on both. Since it is not a bootable drive, I don't have a "repair permissions" option on the back-up drive. It also means I know where Disk Utility is.

My computer has not been left on without a reboot. It has been rebooted several times, actually.

Turning the drive off did not cause the problem. As my original post stated, the back-ups hang/stall, and the only way to stop/cancel the back-up is to turn the drive off. Clicking "stop backup" does nothing, since the process is hung somewhere. Trying or "shut down" from the apple menu doesn't work, either...half an hour later (after I had eaten), the computer was still turned on, though the Finder seemed to have tried to quit. Since I can't "open," "save as," "open recent" etc., from any program when the backing up is stalled (as my initial post indicates), my computer become pretty much useless unless at that point. Turning off the drive is the only thing I've found that makes the stalled back-up stop so that I can do work in excel, word, text edit, finale, et al.

I have also tried trashing my time machine and finder preferences, though I forgot to put that in the first post.

And I called the widget relatively useless because, as my initial post indicated, it often does not provide any messages when the backup is stalled. If it did so consistently, I wouldn't consider it relatively useless. Time Machine is not doing an indexing, deep traversal, etc....it just seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to be doing something.

I'll take that third-party app you mentioned under advisement, but since it's in pre-release (sounds like an alpha release from the way the webpage describes it ) and is not indicated to be Snow Leopard compatible, I hope you'll forgive me for not installing it.

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Sep 25, 2009 1:40 PM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan Mccoy wrote:
Thanks for the thought, but you seemed to have missed a couple things in my post. Either that or I wasn't clear enough.

Pardon me for not being certain that you didn't mean "permissions." Any number of folks make that mistake. I guess my mind-reading abilities are slipping.

When I said Disk Utility didn't find any errors on either the back-up drive or the internal drive, that means that I have run Disk Utility on both. Since it is not a bootable drive, I don't have a "repair permissions" option on the back-up drive. It also means I know where Disk Utility is.

Good for you. Please accept my abject, total, most humble apologies for typing something for the tenth or so time today that happened to be unnecessary in your case. Shoot me, please.

I'll take that third-party app you mentioned under advisement, but since it's in pre-release (sounds like an alpha release from the way the webpage describes it ) and is not indicated to be Snow Leopard compatible, I hope you'll forgive me for not installing it.

As you wish. It does work on SL, or I wouldn't have recommended it. But again, only on a completed backup. Since you didn't actually say any had completed, again please accept my abject apologies for thinking some may have completed and this might help.

Is there anything else in your logs at that time that might provide a clue? (I won't insult you by telling you where or how to look for them.)

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Answer 4

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 25, 2009 2:05 PM in response to Pondini

Here is a sampling of some of the errors in the system.log-- though remember that I don't get errors every time that the back-up hangs:

Sep 25 07:33:44 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[18540]: Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException: * -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Result too large

Sep 25 07:33:44 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[18540]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Keyboard Layouts to /Volumes/300 GB Homemade/Backups.backupdb/Bryan McCoy’s new Computer /2009-09-24-235434.inProgress/5D180E53-477B-4C1D-ABBD-F5E70FA492A5/Macintosh HD/Library

(note: the two above are often -- but not always found together, and there are several different paths referenced in the second message)

Sep 20 10:52:41 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[89763]: Error: (-1407) Creating directory Bryan McCoy’s new Computer 512 (This was the 512th version of this same message. That backup had started at 8:16:29 -- 2.5 hours before.)

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Sep 25, 2009 3:43 PM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan Mccoy wrote:
Here is a sampling of some of the errors in the system.log-- though remember that I don't get errors every time that the back-up hangs:

Sep 25 07:33:44 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[18540]: Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException: * -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Result too large

Sep 25 07:33:44 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[18540]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Keyboard Layouts to /Volumes/300 GB Homemade/Backups.backupdb/Bryan McCoy’s new Computer /2009-09-24-235434.inProgress/5D180E53-477B-4C1D-ABBD-F5E70FA492A5/Macintosh HD/Library

That's usually either a corrupted file, or corruption on your TM drive.

(note: the two above are often -- but not always found together, and there are several different paths referenced in the second message)

Do you mean different files (/Library/Keyboard Layouts), or different destinations (after " to " in the message)?

If it's always the same file, exclude it from TM (see #C3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip.* )

If the destination is different, and the difference is just the date or UUID (the string starting "5D180E53"), that's normal; TM is just recovering from the previous failed backup, and using a new date and UUID.

Sep 20 10:52:41 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[89763]: Error: (-1407) Creating directory Bryan McCoy’s new Computer 512 (This was the 512th version of this same message.

This also usually indicates a problem with your TM drive (#C10 of the Troubleshooting Tip).

That backup had started at 8:16:29 -- 2.5 hours before.)

Assuming no help yet, you might try the things in item #D2 of the Troubleshooting Tip.

One other oddity: your TM drive named "300 GB Homemade." What is it, how is it connected, and how old is it?

One last question: have you ever moved, changed or deleted anything in your TM backups via the Finder?

Considering that you've already done most of the usual fixes, you may be seeing the beginnings of an HD failure.

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Answer 6

Sep 25, 2009 7:30 PM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan, yes TM is a bit wonky after upgrading to Snow Leopard. I've got another recent post that discusses resetting TM and you might try a complete reset. However, it would be good to rule out your external drive as part of the problem. I recommend that you get a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (free or donateware) and do a complete backup for a bootable clone. At the least, you will know your drive is good and your data is backed up. Hopefully, your external drive is large enough to partition so that you have room for a complete CCC copy, as well as a TM partition. If not, I would still clone to the external with Carbon Copy Cloner, just to make sure it's not a problem with the drive.

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Answer 7

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 5:31 AM in response to Pondini

Then I guess most of my /Library folder got corrupted then with the SN update, since there are a lot of /Library/* files referenced in the various (-36) errors. Such as:

Library/Fonts
Library/Fonts Disables
Library/Frameworks
Library/Graphics
Library/Image Capture
Library/Input Methods
Library/Internet Plug-Ins
Library/iTunes
Library/Java
Library/Keychains

[Note: I just checked the /Library/Keyboard Layouts folder, and it's empty (or at least there are no visible files in it).]

And it's no specific files that are mentioned in those errors, but the entire folders.

The hard drive, since you asked about the name, is only a couple years old (2-3). It's called "homemade" because it's the first time I had bought an internal drive and stuck it into an enclosure (as opposed to buying a "ready to go" type." It's only a couple of years old. It's a Western Digital drive (if memory serves and the "WD" indicator in the system info is telling), connected via firewire.

I'm not getting any odd sounds, etc., from the drive, and since Disk Utility consistently shows no problems on it, I've been a little reluctant to seriously consider it a hardware issue. The timing of the problems starting and the upgrade to SL made software the more obvious suspect.

I've never messed around with things in on the backup drive, either. I'm one of those types who knows that catastrophic failure can often be traced to someone messing around with things that should have been left alone, so I don't go doing things in the guts of the system/programs/etc. unless I know exactly what I'm doing. I'll admit to having opened it in the finder a couple of times out of curiosity, but I've not moved/deleted/etc. anything in it.

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Answer 8

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 5:36 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

I have no idea why the "note" above is crossed out, but that's not my doing. As it says, I just checked the /Library/Keyboard Layouts folder, and it's empty (or at least there are no visible files in it. That comment still applies.

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Answer 9

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Sep 26, 2009 8:19 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan Mccoy wrote:
. . .
It's only a couple of years old. It's a Western Digital drive (if memory serves and the "WD" indicator in the system info is telling), connected via firewire.

I'm not getting any odd sounds, etc., from the drive, and since Disk Utility consistently shows no problems on it, I've been a little reluctant to seriously consider it a hardware issue.

If both drives show good via Repair or +*Verify Disk,+* then it's likely not something Disk Utility can see wrong with the file system. If you already have +Disk Warrior 4.2,+ it's possible it may be able to find and fix something on the external, but I wouldn't spend the $100 on that small chance. Or one of the apps like +Tech Tool+ that will do a "surface scan." Just be certain anything you use is SL-compatible.

If you haven't yet, try the things in #D2 of the Troubleshooting Tip, per the previous post. Also check with WD for updated drivers or firmware -- they have released some in recent months that have fixed problems, for a while at least, for some folks.

The timing of the problems starting and the upgrade to SL made software the more obvious suspect.

That would seem reasonable, but you've ruled out most other things. You could reinstall SL, of course, but that's an even longer shot.

SL does seem to be a bit more picky about external drives, and we see a lot of problems reported here with WD drives. If it's 2-3 years old, it's certainly of an age where a failure is not unlikely. And disk drives rarely actually "crash" any more; they do just this sort of thing. They are mechanical beasts, after all, with tiny bearings and moving parts.

I've never messed around with things in on the backup drive, either.

Good. That rules a few things out.

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Answer 10

biver

Level 1

9 points

Sep 26, 2009 10:07 AM in response to BoySetsTheFire

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.

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Answer 11

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 10:48 AM in response to biver

Here's a perfect example of a case of stalling with no error messages. I'm going through it right now.

Prior to this, I ran a Disk Genius scan on the drive....and it reported all was fine. No bad blocks, etc.

A backup started at 1:25:34. The rather useless widget reads, in its entirety:

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/300GBBackup/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.97 GB requested (including padding), 27.42 GB available

It has been running now for 20 minutes, stalled at this. Clicking on the rotating icon at the top of the screen reads:

Backing up 92.5 MB of 1.18 GB

And it has read this for the last 20 minutes.

I'll let it run for a while like this, but past experience tells me the only way to get out of this loop is to turn the drive off and then turn it back on.

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Answer 12

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 11:08 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

It should be noted that I have been working on 1 file through today, with a total save sie of 270k. And yet time machine is trying to backup 1.8 gb?

I don't know if this is helpful, but on a hunch I looked in the system logs NOT for "backupd" but for the name of the external drive, and I found additional error messages:

Sep 26 13:25:34 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[24325]: Backing up to: /Volumes/300GBBackup/Backups.backupdb
Sep 26 13:57:15 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _CIMetaInfoSync:sync err: 22
Sep 26 13:57:15 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _ContentIndexSyncIndexBulk:indexCommitSyncBulk error:22
Sep 26 14:02:20 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 22
Sep 26 14:02:20 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _ContentIndexSyncIndexBulk:preSync error:22 22

I should note that the drive in question is excluded from spotlight in the system preferences.

Does this provide any useful information?

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Answer 13

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 11:13 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Also, of note, the finder gives me the spinning beach ball of death. This also sometimes happens, but not with any kind of regularity.

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Answer 14

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Sep 26, 2009 11:19 AM in response to Bryan Mccoy

Bryan Mccoy wrote:
It should be noted that I have been working on 1 file through today, with a total save sie of 270k. And yet time machine is trying to backup 1.8 gb?

I don't know if this is helpful, but on a hunch I looked in the system logs NOT for "backupd" but for the name of the external drive, and I found additional error messages:

Sep 26 13:25:34 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer com.apple.backupd[24325]: Backing up to: /Volumes/300GBBackup/Backups.backupdb
Sep 26 13:57:15 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _CIMetaInfoSync:sync err: 22
Sep 26 13:57:15 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _ContentIndexSyncIndexBulk:indexCommitSyncBulk error:22
Sep 26 14:02:20 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 22
Sep 26 14:02:20 Bryan-McCoys-new-Computer mds[42]: (/Volumes/300GBBackup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/E389DA93-10D2-48B0-9F2B-8 924E05AB0FC)(Error) IndexCI in _ContentIndexSyncIndexBulk:preSync error:22 22

I should note that the drive in question is excluded from spotlight in the system preferences.

Apparently not! The mds process ("MetaData Server") is used by various system processes, but mostly Spotlight.

So either Spotlight is still trying to index the drive, or some other process is trying to use the (corrupted) spotlight index (but it does look like Spotlight). And it looks like you've changed the name, which might affect it.

Try removing the exclusion, quitting System Preferences, then excluding it again.

If that doesn't solve it, there's a Terminal command that should work. I don't have it bookmarked, but if you search the +Using Snow Leopard+ forum for Spotlight or mds you should find it.

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Answer 15

Bryan Mccoy Author

Level 1

141 points

Sep 26, 2009 11:24 AM in response to Pondini

After the finder locked up, and I tried to shut down from the apple menu (but was unable to, since the finder wouldn't/couldn't quite), I forced a shut down (again) by holding down the power button for a few seconds. And then rebooted.

Whatever happened to Macs being stable?

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