TM Drive Icon was yellow - is now blue - ?

Question

Level 1

98 points

TM Drive Icon was yellow - is now blue - ?

Hi, I just wanted to begin using my old drive for my new Mac.
Yesterday I deleted the one file from the drive (old TM backup)
by moving it to the trash. The following "Empty trash" lasted very long...

Then a long backup followed. About 12 hours for 240GB - is this normal?
I noticed that the drive icon which always was yellow

,
was now displayed in blue! What did this mean?

Today I opened the drive and the color of the icon is yellow again.
Can anyone please explain this?

Thanks!

iMac 27" 3.2GHz; 2x iMacs 21.5" 3.06 GHz;, Mac OS X (10.6.6), Kensington Expert Trackballs

Posted on Feb 27, 2011 1:55 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 27, 2011 5:04 AM in response to coxorange

Hello c:

Open system preferences>time machine. The icon should be the Time Machine icon in blue. What you posted is the generic firewire icon....

I do not know what is going on, incidentally.

You might want to download the Time Machine Buddy widget to see if Time Machine is making backups.

The long backup indicates (to me) that a full backup was performed.

Barry

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Answer 2

coxorange Author

Level 1

98 points

Feb 27, 2011 5:30 AM in response to Barry Hemphill

Thanks, Barry!

Open system preferences/time machine.
The icon should be the Time Machine icon in blue.

Then I see this:

What you posted is the generic firewire icon....

I meant the icon that was displayed on the desktop when the drive
was switched on (mounted). In the past (on my old Mac) it was always yellow,
now (yesterday it was blue during the 12 hours backup) - today yellow again.
I guess this has some meaning. But which?

You might want to download the Time Machine Buddy widget
to see if Time Machine is making backups.

TMP reports:

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/MyBook/Backups.backupdb
Detected system migration from: /Volumes/MyBook/Backups.backupdb/home’s iMac/2010-07-21-035328/Macintosh HD
Backup content size: 226.1 GB excluded items size: 3.6 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 268.27 GB requested (including padding), 928.63 GB available
Copied 7.6 GB of 222.6 GB, 32391 of 809378 items
Copied 13.4 GB of 222.6 GB, 55920 of 809378 items
Copied 15.1 GB of 222.6 GB, 86634 of 809378 items
Copied 21.8 GB of 222.6 GB, 204816 of 809378 items
Copied 35.2 GB of 222.6 GB, 216436 of 809378 items
Copied 64.2 GB of 222.6 GB, 225114 of 809378 items
Copied 90.2 GB of 222.6 GB, 227487 of 809378 items
Copied 133.1 GB of 222.6 GB, 229858 of 809378 items
Copied 175.9 GB of 222.6 GB, 231789 of 809378 items
Copied 208.4 GB of 222.6 GB, 233224 of 809378 items
Copied 218.7 GB of 222.6 GB, 247036 of 809378 items
Copied 247038 files (219.1 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.

I just wonder about the icon's color and the long backup time...

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Answer 3

Feb 27, 2011 6:28 AM in response to coxorange

Hello again:

From what you posted, Time Machine is OFF in system preferences. Turn it on and be sure that the external disk you are using for backup is selected.

Barry

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Answer 4

coxorange Author

Level 1

98 points

Feb 27, 2011 6:38 AM in response to Barry Hemphill

Sorry, switched it off temporarily when making the screenshot.
Of course it was on before and during the backup 🙂
and the external drive was selected.
(Otherwise I wouldn't have a backup now.)
I guess you don't find 12 hours too long for the amount of
backup data. The question regarding the blue icon remains...
???

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Feb 27, 2011 7:22 AM in response to coxorange

coxorange wrote:
Hi, I just wanted to begin using my old drive for my new Mac.
Yesterday I deleted the one file from the drive (old TM backup)
by moving it to the trash. The following "Empty trash" lasted very long...

That's not the way to delete old backups. Either erase the disk with Disk Utility, or you can selectively delete individual backups or all backups of selected items via Time Machine. See #12 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).

Then a long backup followed. About 12 hours for 240GB - is this normal?

Probably not. Assuming no conflicts (other partitions on the same drive being used by other processes, etc.), a full backup via USB2 should run at roughly 40-50 GB/hour; FireWire 400 at perhaps 50-60 GB/hour; FireWire 800 at 80-90 GB/hour.

I'd recommend starting over; reformat the drive with the GUID Partition Map Scheme and +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ Format (see #5 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), if you need instructions).

If it's still slow, try the things in the green box of #D2 of [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).

As noted there, if nothing helps, the drive may be failing. If it's very old, I'm not sure I'd trust my primary backups to it anyway.

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Answer 6

coxorange Author

Level 1

98 points

Feb 27, 2011 2:24 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for your answer! I have a RAID 1 drive (Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB).
It is not recommended to format it using external software.

I now used the supplied 'WD RAID manager ' and configured it to 'RAID 1 HFS+'. (I was
warned this would delete all data on the drive. Exactly what I wanted. Is this OK?

WD Info:

The 'HFS+' setting formats with an HFS Extended w/ Journal volume using a partition map type which best matches the Macintosh model the drive is currently connected to. On Macintosh computers with PowerPC processor(s), an Apple Partition Map structure is created.

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Answer 7

coxorange Author

Level 1

98 points

Feb 27, 2011 5:28 PM in response to coxorange

Feedback: Again I backed up the 240GB.
This time it only took about 90 minutes. Fast!
Icon still blue during backup.

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Answer 8

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Feb 27, 2011 5:38 PM in response to coxorange

coxorange wrote:
Feedback: Again I backed up the 240GB.
This time it only took about 90 minutes. Fast!

No, not fast -- Lightning! 😉

Icon still blue during backup.

Odd. That's used for a network destination. I didn't realize you had a RAID set, and don't know whether that's why TM is showing it in blue or not.

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Answer 9

Nov 7, 2011 9:30 PM in response to Barry Hemphill

Hi Guys, having trouble with TM Icon being displayed on wrong disk. I have two brand new external firewire 800 (WD Studio XL 2TB drives). One is the "backup" and the other is the "primary" where I store iPhoto library and iMovie events, etc. For some reason both of my drives show the teal colored arrow/clock TM icon. Only the backup disk is set in TM preferences to receive the back up. I've unplugged each drive, rebooted, everything and can't seem to get the TM icon off the primary drive. I've read through lots of archives and one suggestion was to go to Lion's hidden Library and delete the timemachine.plist, well, I don't even see that in there so now I'm worried. No PLIST and a BAD ICON makes me very nerrrrrrrrvous regarding confidence in backing up. Screen capture below. Any suggsetions?

Kindest, Jim

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Answer 10

Nov 8, 2011 11:52 AM in response to Jim Jarvie

Hi Guys,

I didn't expect to stump the panel on this - thought there might be an easy answer since I'm coming from PC to MAC. Anyway, called Apple support and the had be check preference and confirmed that it Time Machine was working correctly. But still the icon issue is worrysome. They told me that the teal colored TM icon in this case was marking the external drive that was being backed-up... well that doesn't sound right to me. And it still doesn't explain why I have two in the pic above.

Is there a better section on here where someone may know more about Time Machine issues?

Thanks

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Answer 11

seventy one

Level 7

27,424 points

Nov 8, 2011 3:10 PM in response to coxorange

Hello Jim Jarvie.

Have you checked out the comments to the right of the original post (More like this)

The last one appears significant and you will often find an answer here ,,, and from

that a lead to alternate sections people are using.

Good luck.

Message was edited by: seventy one

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Answer 12

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 8, 2011 7:37 PM in response to Jim Jarvie

Check the drive with the "wrong" icon; open it via the Finder and see if there's a Backups.backupdb folder at the top level. If so, those are Time Machine backups.

Did you format either of those drives yourself, or use them as they came from WD? If you used them "as is," they may have the same UUIDs (Universally Unique IDentifiers). That's not supposed to happen, but we've seen it from WD before.

Use Disk Utiity (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Select each partition in turn (indented under the main line for the drive in the sidebar), then click the Info button in the toolbar (or select File > Get Info from the menubar). Compare the UUIDs on the two partitions.

If they're the same, let us know.

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Answer 13

Nov 8, 2011 9:21 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini, YES to all three of your questions!

1) I do have a folder called Backups.backupdb

2) I used them as the came from WD out of the box

3) The UUIDs are EXACTLY the same

What do you recommend? Should I re-format one? Obviously would prefer to reformat the one intended for Time Machine.

Waiting for your thoughts. Nice Sleuthing on this.

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Answer 14

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 8, 2011 9:34 PM in response to Jim Jarvie

Drat. 😟

The UUID is what OSX uses to keep track of drives. That's how you can have two drives with the same name, and it won't get confused; or rename a drive without OSX losing it.

But with the same UUIDs, all sorts of nasty things can happen. There's no telling which one OSX will use for which purpose. It seems to be the first one connected, or the first one found after a restart, but it's basically a crapshoot. At some point, your "other" drive got set up for backups, and perhaps some backups were actually made to it.

Worse, yes, the only way to change a UUID is to erase the drive/partition. So if you don't mind erasing your TM drive, that should fix the problem. Won't take but a few moments, but of course the next backup will be a full one, so will take a while.

You should also delete the Backups.backupdb folder on the other drive, sooner or later. If there are actually backups in that folder, that may take quite a while, and you may have difficulty emptying the trash afterwards. If you do, see #E6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

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Answer 15

Nov 8, 2011 9:43 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini,

This is a big help. Maybe we headed off big problems early with this assesment.

The Backups.Backupdb folder was only on the TM drive. So I've erased it. Now of course it has a different UUID than the the other one. I'm going to set up TM again and let it go over nite. Will report back the results.

Thanks.

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