Time machine 'Waiting to backup' - but never does

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Time machine 'Waiting to backup' - but never does

I realised that time machine was backing up when I had aperture open and minimised. Time machine said there was not enough space on the terabyte drive however, the max file I have to back up are about 350 gb. The capacity on the time machine drive was about 200 gb empty. It is because it kept doing full back ups of aperture.

After playing around for a while and not finding any forums to help I decided to attempt turning off the time machine and restarting it, reindexing it in spotlight and the rest of the computer, repair disk permissions, restart my OS operating system.

I then formatted the timemachine drive to back up the system afresh. Unfortunately time machine now says at the the top drop down tab in the menu in grayed out letters 'waiting to back up'.

It continues to attempt to back up and does appear to work but after the slider completes the grayed message still appears. I have redone all the things I tried above and even reinstalled the operating system with no effect.

I think perhaps there is an issue because the HD on my mac is (Journaled) but the external hard drive I am also backing up is (Case Sensitive, Journaled) the timemachine consequently is (case sensitive, Journaled).

However, as the time machine is case sensitive journaled I don't see why it has touble backing up a HDD (journaled) and an ExHDD which is case sensitive Journalled.

Can you please assist? It does appear that the files are being copied i.e. space is taken in the time machine disk but apple won't recognise a successful time machine back up. This is the notes from the time machine app last unsuccessful back up.

I am currently attempting a back up by excluding the ex-HDD and other files to see if this will help the problem.

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 168.6 MB requested (including padding), 536.34 GB available
Error: (-48) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/'/iTunes/Music/Beirut to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Scott Finneran’s MacBook Pro 15"/2011-01-11-190202.inProgress/F5002B3D-9B93-45CB-ACAC-27A3DF170082/'/iTunes/ Music
Stopping backup.
Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/'/iTunes/Music/Beirut/Pompeii/Fountains and Tramways.mp3 to (null)
Copied 4046 files (455.5 MB) from volume '.
Backup canceled.

Any help in fixing the problem would be great!

Macbook Pro 2.16 gzh, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 11, 2011 1:14 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,849 points

Jan 11, 2011 2:11 PM in response to sfinnera

I would say the issue is that both your drives should not be formatted using the Case-sensitive filesystem. That is intended for highly specialized situations. Most all applications do not understand the case-sensitive filesystem, so you should not use it. Unfortunately, in order to change, both drives must be repartitioned and reformatted. After that you should find that TM works as expected.

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 11, 2011 4:24 PM in response to sfinnera

sfinnera wrote:
. . .
I think perhaps there is an issue because the HD on my mac is (Journaled) but the external hard drive I am also backing up is (Case Sensitive, Journaled) the timemachine consequently is (case sensitive, Journaled).

No, that's not a problem. That's the default if you let Time Machine format it, and it's required since one of the volumes being backed-up is case-sensitive. (That volume being case-sensitive may be a problem to some apps -- is there a reason it's set up that way?)

Error: (-48) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/'/iTunes/Music/Beirut

That's your problem. There's something wrong with that file or folder.

But it also indicates that your iTunes folder is on a disk/partion named with a single apostrophe ('). That's going to be confusing at best. I'd suggest renaming it to something more conventional (right-click it in a Finder window's sidebar to rename it).

Then exclude the item in question, per #10 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), and try again.

If it happens again, see #C3 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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