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Level 1

1 points

Time Machine "Cleaning Up..." for the last 12 Hours

I have time machine set up since 2 months ago with my Iomega iX2-200 (that supports Time Machine by default). Everything was fine until 2 days ago when I got an error saying that time machine was unable to backup one of the regular hours backup.

Searching the internet i found that it appears this was a problem with spotlight trying to index the Time machine drive. after a couple of hours i was able to disable spotlight indexing of TM. and also removed the "backupdate.inprogress" file. Manually started time machine and was able to make a backup and usual.

The log of this backup was the following:

Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://stejimenez@Steorage.local/TimeMachine
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://stejimenez@Steorage.local/TimeMachine
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support TM Lock Stealing
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support Server Reply Cache
Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine-1/Sterling-Jimenez-MacBook-Pro_0017f2c6a9c4.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 707.6 MB requested (including padding), 222.90 GB available
Error: Flushing index to disk returned an error: 0
Copied 386 files (463 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Backup canceled.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.

But at the second automatic backup I Noticed that 4 hours later the little icon in the notification area was still moving. When checked it says "Cleaning Up..." and it has been there for the last 18 hours. I have noticed that it seems that TM is doing something in the iX2-200, The disk is constantly reading and writing. Its been 12 hours since the backup and "Cleaning Up...", and the log looks something like this:

Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://stejimenez@Steorage.local/TimeMachine
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://stejimenez@Steorage.local/TimeMachine
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support TM Lock Stealing
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support Server Reply Cache
Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine-1/Sterling-Jimenez-MacBook-Pro_0017f2c6a9c4.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb

Can anyone Help me?

How long Cleaning Up its supposed to Take?
Is This "Normal"?
What Should I do?

I have not used my Machine since the "Cleaning Up..." ; Im still waiting for it to finish.

Best Regards,

Sterling

Macbook Pro 17" 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo - Late 2006, Mac OS X (10.6.2), 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Posted on Jan 24, 2010 11:48 AM

18 replies

Feb 2, 2010 5:27 PM in response to Pondini

Yeah, they've seriously dropped in price. 1TB is crazy considering both of my computers only have 300GB drives.

I guess I'll do a reformat and and see if that doesn't solve the problem. I can dump all the data onto my PC and Mac in the meantime.

Thanks again for your help. I'll let you know what happens after the format.

Feb 3, 2010 8:17 AM in response to Pondini

Well, I backed everything up, reformatted as GUID and added both the Mac and PC partitions and everything went well. TM just ran a successful backup, so it appears everything is A-OK.

The backed up PC folder doesn't want to copy back to the external for some reason, so I had to do it folder by folder, but it seems to be copying OK now.

It also won't let me copy my backed up TM folders to the Mac partition (backups.backupdb folder), so I don't know what that's about. "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified." I'll hang onto the folders for a couple weeks, but I probably won't need them anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Thank you very much for your help; I really appreciate it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have figured this out on my own, and was about ready to go buy that new hard drive. Apple should probably be sending you paychecks for all your hard work.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Feb 3, 2010 9:29 AM in response to Doug E Fresh 91

Doug E Fresh 91 wrote:
Well, I backed everything up, reformatted as GUID and added both the Mac and PC partitions and everything went well. TM just ran a successful backup, so it appears everything is A-OK.

Yay!

The backed up PC folder doesn't want to copy back to the external for some reason, so I had to do it folder by folder, but it seems to be copying OK now.

Yes, Snow Leopard seems a bit cranky about copying things to FAT volumes.

It also won't let me copy my backed up TM folders to the Mac partition (backups.backupdb folder), so I don't know what that's about. "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified." I'll hang onto the folders for a couple weeks, but I probably won't need them anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Correct. You can only copy the entire set of backups, because of the way everything is linked together. See #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Thank you very much for your help; I really appreciate it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have figured this out on my own, and was about ready to go buy that new hard drive.

If the current one is several years old, you may be doing that soon!

Apple should probably be sending you paychecks for all your hard work.

Naw, then I'd have to work regular hours and put up with the bozos! 🙂

I'm glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the kind words.

Time Machine "Cleaning Up..." for the last 12 Hours