For the past few days, when time machine has finished its backup, the time machine icon remains on my desktop rather than ejecting automatically like it used to. The only thing that has changed is that I downloaded Mac Family Tree about a week ago. Is there a way to rectify this?
TM does not automatically eject the backup drive upon completiong of an hourly backup?
That's correct. It fails to eject automatically. I can eject it manually though.
It's not supposed to eject automatically. There's no such facility in Time Machine.
Hmmmm. Maybe I'm not stating this correctly. I use a Time capsule (wireless) for my time machine backup and up until a few days ago, the Time Machine icon would pop up on my desktop when the hourly backup begins (still does) and then automatically disappear from the desktop upon completion of the backup. Since I've been backing up to the time capsule, I have never had to manually eject the time machine icon from the desktop, until now.
Sorry, you didn't mention the Time Capsule. I'm not familiar with using them. Maybe this info will help:
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Ditto,
Mine just started not un-mounting (that the correct term) the sparce bundle file after I upgraded to Lion.
So it's not USB related but Time Capsule / TM related so we can all get on the same page.
It never failed to unmount the bundle when I was on SL. It would spin, mount, backup, and unmount.
Now it spins, mounts, backs up, and leaves the mount around. PITA as normally I use the desktop and the place that the mount comes up as a quick visual if a backup is happening. It's big and easy. The litlle spinner is still there I agree.
Whatever the cause of this was, it self corrected after a week or so. I quess I'll never know the cause, but I'm glad it's back to normal.
Most likely, it's either not finished indexing the backups, or the index is damaged.
A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. Locate the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here.
I'm having the same problem after upgrading to Lion and using Time Capsule. The Time Machine disk won't un-mount after a backup. I tried deleting the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file in the Library>Preferences folder and then restarting as suggested by another thread, but no change. I can manually eject, but it's a real hassle.
If you're having the same problem as The Bookworm, please follow the same advice provided in my response to him/her.
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Conrad%20Hanstein@Time-Capsule-f5321.local/Data
Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://Conrad%20Hanstein@Time-Capsule-f5321.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Conrad Hanstein’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
325.8 MB required (including padding), 839.78 GB available
Copied 1511 files (11.2 MB) from volume Untitled.
314.4 MB required (including padding), 839.78 GB available
Copied 1579 files (1.1 MB) from volume Untitled.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
Backup failed because the destination disk was ejected or disconnected unexpectedly!
**The last line I expect is because I manually ejected the "Time Machine Backups" disk (because it didn't auto eject)**
Update: I backed up again, but this time didn't manually unmount the disk, and this is what the backup widget is showing:
Backup completed successfully.
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Simple answer would seem to be to tell Spotlight not to index the TC drive.
I'm trying that in Spotlight preferences, ie adding it to the privacy list, but it doesn't stay in there after I eject my Time Capsule (adding it to the Spotlight privacy list mounts the disk). Am I not doing something correctly, is there another way to prevent Spotlight from indexing the disk?
I would have thought that would work, but as I don't have TC I'm not in a position to check.
Add the TC to the list while mounted. If it disappears when the TC is unmounted, does it reappear in the list as it mounts for backup?
(ps - my last post for today. Bedtime)
noondaywitch wrote:
Simple answer would seem to be to tell Spotlight not to index the TC drive.
That doesn't work; you cannot exclude Time Machine backups from being indexed. If you do it on Lion, you get a message that the backups will still be indexed, but any other data will not. That message is new in Lion, but the handling is not -- Time Machine backups must be indexed for TM to work properly. That's why you'll sometimes see indexing messages during a backup.
Why won't my time machine icon eject from the desktop after backup is finished?
