Time Machine could not complete backup. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

Hi s,

Did you format/partition the disc as directed by TM instructions?

Did Repair Disk fix anything?

Was this HD working without issue prior to this?

showbuyer wrote:

External HD was working perfectly until yesterday. Repair Disk was unable to repair the disk. Instructed now to backup as much as possible, reformat the external hard drive and try again.

When you erase the external HD, I strongly suggest you zero it.

How old is the external HD?

showbuyer wrote:

What do you mean by "zero it"? How do you do that? Thanks.

The hard drive (HD) needs to be partitioned and formatted before being used.

1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.

2. Open Disk Utility on the MBP.

3. Select the external HD in the left pane.

4. Click on the Erase tab.

5. Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (whichI always think is a good idea, but does take time), click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.

6. Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.

7. Click the Partition tab.

8. Click on Volume Scheme: and choose the number of partitions (just one if you're only using it for TM).

9. Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.

10. Click Apply.

11. Quit Disk Utility.

No help here but.... I will say that I am also now having this problem -- as of yesterday after installing the Lion operating system.

I called Apple Support and they said this: the Time Machine application is designed to work ONLY with their Time Capsule on wireless networks. So their answer was I can only expect the Time Machine to work if it is plugged in directly to my Mac. Further, I was told some times other disks (such as my Seagate external drive) will work 'at first' but may at some time just quit working. Lion may have triggered my problems but 1) it would probably have happened eventually and 2) Apple doesn't guarantee their back up utility to work on a wireless network UNLESS you use their Time Capsule hardware.

I am using a Seagate external hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme base station through the USB port. This configuration worked fine until yesterday!

Same problem here. I've had an external Seagate 2TB drive plugged into my Airport Extreme, and Time Machine always backed up my MBP without issue until upgrading to LIon on Wednesday. Now, I get nothing but fail errors. Strange, since I can read and write to the drive with any of my computers (including my MBP), but Time Machine won't work with the drive anymore. Hopefully, Apple or Seagate will fix this soon. I'm not about to plunk down $300+ on a Time Capsule.

DJRiffe wrote:

Same problem here. I've had an external Seagate 2TB drive plugged into my Airport Extreme, and Time Machine always backed up my MBP without issue until upgrading to LIon on Wednesday. Now, I get nothing but fail errors. Strange, since I can read and write to the drive with any of my computers (including my MBP), but Time Machine won't work with the drive anymore. Hopefully, Apple or Seagate will fix this soon. I'm not about to plunk down $300+ on a Time Capsule.

It would be interesting to see if any TM backups work wirelessly with Lion, or if Apple has made Lion so TM will only work wirelessly by buying a TC . . . .

Thlayle wrote:

. . .

I called Apple Support and they said this: the Time Machine application is designed to work ONLY with their Time Capsule on wireless networks.

Not so. You can back up to a drive on another Mac, via sharing, over your network. See #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

And you can back up to some NAS devices (although many haven't been updated to work with Lion yet).

I am using a Seagate external hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme base station through the USB port. This configuration worked fine until yesterday!

That, however, is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Yes, you are correct of course - using an external drive through a USB port is not supported by Apple's Time Machine application. Also, as mentioned in your reference "Using Time Maching with an Airport Extreme Air Disk," the consumer can (as I did) get bad advice at the Apple Store about this.

As for the other method (backing up to another Mac), well it is something I wasn't aware but I don't see it as anything that will ever be of use to me.

Do you know if there are other backup utilities that WILL work with the Airport Extreme Base Station and an external, USB connected hard disk? I saw in some blog today that other back up utilities are out there & might work as well or better than Time Machine.

Most won't. CarbonCopyCloner won't, and I don't think SuperDuper will (I've never heard of it, anyhow).

From what I hear, Chronosync might be worth a look.

Interesting, yes but I suspect they will only say this method of using the Time Machine isn't supported. When I told Apple Support that everything went fine with my configuration, the reply was along the lines that it was bound to fail eventually, Lion or not.

Just my two cents, Time Machine does work just fine an a standard USB external drive. As long as you format the drive HFS+. Whether it is officially supported by Apple is another story.

And they would be right. I do it (from both Snow Leoaprd and Lion), and it works reasonably well -- the backups only turn up corrupted every few months. I have more than one set, of course, so it's not a big problem.

There are many, many threads here about how it worked for a number of days, weeks, or months, then suddenly the backups were corrupted, usually beyond repair. Seems likely that's why Apple doesn't support it.

They were going to, originally: it was in the Leopard pre-release info, and was tested in beta, but all mention was removed when Leopard was released. Apple isn't talking (surprise!) but the speculation is the problem is the hardware in the Airport just doesn't have a large enough buffer and/or can't do enough checking to deal with interference, network dropouts, power problems, etc. Maybe when they release a new one . . .