time machine hangs after Lion installed

Pondini, thanks for your suggestions.

My understanding is that Disk Utility won't catch a corrupted file unless it comes with a corrupted entry in the filesystem database. In any case, I ran it on all drives and they all passed.

My MBP may once have had the Apple Hardware Test on it, but since several OS upgrades have come and gone since I purchased it, it is gone, and Apple no longer offers it for download (for this mac version).

I used Migration Assistant to move my Apps to an external boot drive with Lion on it, then manually moved my Documents over. As suspected, as I moved files to the external hard drive I found some that were damaged. Deleted them, and was able to move the rest.

Then I did a clean install of Lion on the internal HD. Everything is working much better. So I used Migration Assistant to return my applications and user files from the external HD, and am now backing up to my Time Capsule with no apparent issues. I'll be happier when I get all my Documents backed up, but at least for now they are 'save' on the external drive.

Again, thanks for your suggestions. Your guide on Time Machine is very well done, I was just going after the wrong culprit, so to speak, in thinking the problem was with TM.

neilpet wrote:

Pondini, thanks for your suggestions.

My understanding is that Disk Utility won't catch a corrupted file unless it comes with a corrupted entry in the filesystem database.

That's correct, but Time Machine often catches "internal corruption" when it indexes such files, and fails with a message naming the file.

My MBP may once have had the Apple Hardware Test on it, but since several OS upgrades have come and gone since I purchased it, it is gone, and Apple no longer offers it for download (for this mac version).

It should be on one of the discs that came with your Mac, as specified in the Additional Information section of the link provided. It should be printed on the label, in very tiny type.

If you no longer have the discs, AppleCare will send a duplicate set for a nominal fee.

LOL

I was about to make some self-deprecating comment about how I never throw any system disks away until the ones for my MacBook Pro, and then of course found them. I'll run the AHT after the TimeMachine backup completes. Although given that the computer seems to be working just fine since the clean install I don't expect it to find much to complain about.

Thanks again for your assistance. It's nice to get a response on thse discussion groups once in a while.

N.

I have tried everything in this post, even the big one such as erasing the TC drive. Nothing works. It must be some type of software issue with Lion as I didn't have the issue before the upgrade. Is yours now working fine?

Patrick, it seems to be working fine now. The only thing that was not fully up to my expectations so far has been Photoshop CS5.1, which at a client's office was very sluggish. Other than that, no problems.

Do you run FontExplorer Pro? I think part of my problem was twofold: FEP conflicting somehow with FontBook, and one or more of my fonts being damaged (I have a large font library). In any case, what seemed to work for me was to create a boot drive on an external drive, then after booting from it, using Migration Assistant to move everything from my internal HD to it and then reformatting the internal drive. THEN, do a 'clean' install of Lion on the internal drive. Reverse the process, and use Migration Assistant to restore your applications and user(s).

One thing I found during the process was that Migration Assistant stalled while transferring some of my documents. No helpful message was given, but it clearly stalled. So I manually moved a large portion of my documents to the boot drive, and then also manually moved them back to the restored internal HD. During that process I was able to identify a few files that just wouldn't copy, so I deleted them.

Hope this (and my sacrificing the goat) helps.

Neil, No I don't run FontExplorer Pro. I do run Tech Tools Pro which I've seen on another forum as a potential cause of this problem.

Things were running fine until I installed Lion and the latest Time Capsule update so I'm thinking its something to do with that involving different software. I've tried EVERYTHING I have found on these forums on it. Have not tried doing a clean install of Lion. Doesn't the clean install wipe out everything?

I have Apple Care so I think when I have time I will call them and go over all of it again. It clearly is something to do with Lion and this latest Time Capsule update. Haven't installed or changed anything and it was working fine before.

I trust the Gods have been pleased by your goat sacrifice. Maybe they will be so kind to come to my aid!!

patrick96 wrote:

. . .

I do run Tech Tools Pro which I've seen on another forum as a potential cause of this problem.

Yes. exclude your TM drive from it. You might also want to see the other suggestions in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Things were running fine until I installed Lion and the latest Time Capsule update

For most of us, the update to 7.6.1 helped; but a few folks had trouble and going back to the previous version helped them. It's worth a try.

Have not tried doing a clean install of Lion.

There's no reason to do a clean install. If you want, though, you can install a fresh version of OSX (that won't disturb anything else). If you saved the installer, just run it. If not, boot from your Recovery HD and reinstall OSX. See Using the Recovery HD.

Here is how I fixed this issue...

I changed my backup disk from the Time Capsule to a USB HD. I selected this as my backup disk and backed up. (It worked)

after ompletion of the backup, I went into Airport Utility and clicked on the disk tab and erased the Time capsule.

I reselected it as the backup drive in Time Machine, and it started to back up...

I lost all of my data after trying to install Mountain Lion two days ago...

It was then that I found outj htat my tim machine had not been backing up since Nivember of 2011...

It's is fixed now...

Best

Mike

Regretably, I have done similar. I think the issue for me has been that the disk was full, and it's log files had got out of sync, however could not do anything about it because the disk quite literally didnt have space to upload a 16kb file!

I think TM should give a safe limit before filling a disk, so that it doesnt mess up when the disk is full.

Just my thoughts. But as I said.. regretably I ereased and started again. I've got 600GB of stuff to backup so not like many here with 10 or 16gb!

imacmad wrote:

. . .

I think TM should give a safe limit before filling a disk, so that it doesnt mess up when the disk is full.

Ordinarily, it does. The only exceptions I've seen are kinda out of TM's control:

Most commonly, some other files are put there by some other process, during or between backups, so TM suddenly finds too little room.

Less often, several consecutive backup attempts fail for some other reason, each taking a small amount of space.

For each backup attempt, TM creates (or adds to an existing) ".inProgress" package -- a base package, with log and exclusion files, and the beginnings of the actual backup structure. Then it figures out how much space is required for the backup, and only then starts deleting backups to make room if necessary.

When a the backup fails, those beginnings remain in the ".inProgress" package. Normally, TM will clean that up on the next successful backup, but only after it completes.

If there wasn't much room to start with, and several backup attempts fail for some other reason, the disk gets so full that TM can't create those initial files, and the backup will crash, rather than fail with a message.

In that case, deleting the ".inProgress" package will usually get TM working again.

Message was edited by: Pondini

Where is the .inprogress file for future sake.

Sorry, I should have posted the link below.

It's inside the Backups.backupdb folder, along with the date-stamped backup folders:

See #A10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for details.