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Level 1

13 points

Time Machine Backup stuck on Finishing Backup

Hello

I am backing up my macbook (on snowleopard) for the first time using Time Machine and the WD My Book for Mac external hard drive. The dialogue box shows that Time Machine has finished backing up 370KB of 370KB, but it is stuck on "Finishing backup". I've left it running overnight, but it is still stuck on this message. If I open Time Machine (to the star wars-looking section), it appears that the back up was successful (but of course I've only checked random files - not every single file). I can still use some applications on the macbook, but some things, like Safari, Mail and Preview are frozen.

I've searched this forum and looked at http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html but have not been able to find a solution to this issue.

Please can anyone assist?

Many thanks in advance!

iOS 4, macbook

Posted on Apr 6, 2011 5:44 PM

21 replies

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 8, 2011 7:46 AM in response to starangel

starangel wrote:
. . .
Please, how do I check to see whether the back up is in fact completing successfully?

There are three ways:

One is to look at all the messages for one backup run at a time. See #A1 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) for a handy widget that will do that.

Another is to spot-check the content of your backups, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 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). That should show exactly what your Mac looked like at the time of any backup.

If there's a question about what was backed-up on any particular backup, see #A2 in Troubleshooting for a couple of apps that will show that.

starangel Author

Level 1

13 points

Apr 10, 2011 9:04 PM in response to Pondini

I have downloaded and used the TM Buddy widget that Pondini suggested. The message for each backup states that the relevant backup was completed successfully. The only issue is that the messages only go back to 9 April - 3 days shy of when I ran the first backup (from which my initial problem arose); however, I didn't have anything on my system during those days that would not have been caught in the subsequent backups. So, although it's not clear what caused the initial problem, I think everything is working fine now (unless someone tells me otherwise).

Thanks again everyone for your helpful input!

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 10, 2011 9:15 PM in response to starangel

starangel wrote:
I have downloaded and used the TM Buddy widget that Pondini suggested. The message for each backup states that the relevant backup was completed successfully. The only issue is that the messages only go back to 9 April - 3 days shy of when I ran the first backup (from which my initial problem arose); however, I didn't have anything on my system during those days that would not have been caught in the subsequent backups. So, although it's not clear what caused the initial problem, I think everything is working fine now (unless someone tells me otherwise).

Thanks again everyone for your helpful input!

It sounds like your backups are fine.

Most likely what happened was, during the initial backup, which took a lot of time of course, some changes were made, so Time Machine made a "second pass" resulting in the 370 kb backup.

That also can happen on the other, "incremental" backups. Look back through the messages for several backups; you may find two sets of messages, as in the sample in #A1:
|

The entire backup only took 17 seconds, but it still did a second pass; the first pass copied 11.9 MB, the second one 103 bytes.

There's only one message on the screen at a time; if you didn't notice the first one, you'd have only seen the second one.

babowa

Level 9

78,109 points

Apr 10, 2011 10:07 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini,

mind taking a look at this one:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2812048

Thanks!

siamless

Level 1

52 points

Apr 13, 2011 2:12 AM in response to starangel

I am having the same problem. The first two (manually) backups to my Drobo (2 and 1 weeks ago) finished. Now the backup was not only very slow but got stuck on "Finishing backup..."

Feb 23, 2013 7:48 AM in response to starangel

Sorry for refreshing this old post, but since it's related I didn't want to start a new one.

In my case I have done some changes in the list of excluded folders for backup. The next backup was "stuck" at "Finishing Backup" for almost 2 hours. There was no console entry at all.

After 2 hours it started finishing backup for 2 mins and then backup was done.

So give it a plenty of time, sometimes TM does maintenance task and it may take a lot of time in particular if you don't use fast connection.

Time Machine Backup stuck on Finishing Backup