Time Machine 'Waiting for index to be ready': what does it really mean?

See this excellent Link on TM by Pondini...

http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Index.html

Cheers,

I've also had this problem since 10.7 (&10.7.1), with constant re-indexing of the time capsule disk.

I may have solved the problem though - yesterday I deleted the spotlight index on the backup disk (by making it visible using Tinkertool ['.Spotlight-V100 directory'], then deleting it), in order to force the creation of a totally new index.

I speeded this the re-indexing by connecting my MacBook Pro by ethernet to the time capsule (it still took some hours though).

It's just told me it was re-indexing again, but this only took minutes not hours, so is presumably just incremental - lets see if it is properly fixed...

Here's what I had to do to fix "Waiting for index to be ready (100)" error:

1.) Mount the {MyTimeMachine}.sparsebundle disk image

2.) Delete the .Spotlight-V100 folder w/ this command: sudo rm -rf /Volumes/{MyTimeMachine}/.Spotlight-V100

2.) Open Spotlight preferences, go to Privacy tab, and add the {MyTimeMachine} volume to list of excluded directories

3.) Unmount/eject {MyTimeMachine}

4.) Run "Backup Now"

Where {MyTimeMachine} is a variable = the name of your sparcebundle disk

What seems to be happening is that the spotlight index on the backup disk is becomming corrupted, perhaps as the result of a system crash on the machine that is being backed up.

Here's a solution that worked for me, that reindexes the backup disk. It's quite a bit less risky than performing a recursive delete (rm -rf) as suggested above.

1) Disable Time Machine in system preferences.

2) Enter Time Machine to mount the backup image, then exit Time Machine.

3) Disable spotlight indexing of the backup image with:

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups

4) Re-enable spotlight indexing of the backup image with:

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups

5) Wait while mds runs (you can monitor its progress in activity monitor).

6) After mds no longer is utilizing any CPU or transmitting over the network, re-enable time machine.

7) Force a backup to run immediately.

8) The backup runs without the indexing problem occurring, backs up my data very rapidly, and completes all operations in about 4 minutes.

This seems to have helped me :-)

I did points 6 and 7 at the same time and in the reverse order: After mds had stopped (point 5), I forced a backup and immediately re-enabled Time Machine.

The first back-up (the forced one) took well over an hour, but after that initial (re-)indexing things are running much more smoothly than before.