time machine looking backup disk

Thanks, quiktrade. Your solution worked for me.

THANK YOU qiktrade!!!

This is still happening in 10.8.2 for me.

Reboot seems to have caused it.

Hi !

Did you have a look on that ?

PAGE 6 OF THIS THREAD : back up to time capsule not completing receiving error-1. can't access sparse bundle

For me JULIEFROMFEDERAL post & tip on about Western Digital external disk soft "Smartware" solved my issue like for many other users to.

I apologise if I am out of topic or if you already tryied it,

but it would be for too bad if it could solve your problem not to let you know.

Jean.

This solution solved my problem in less than 3 minutes from http://pondini.org/TM/A4.htmlall right reserved.

This worked! Thanks.

this worked!

I am writing this as a possible solution to the problem "Time machine looking for backup". It worked for me. I have an iMac with 10.8.3. For the past year when starting the computer Time Machine would backup properly. Most often after the first backup the next would say "Time machine looking for backup". At this point Outlook, Safari and other programs would have problems. Many would not shut down. The computer would slow down. Also the computer would not shut down properly. I had the computer checked at the Apple Store. The main drive and the backup drive checked ok and since we only had 15 minutes to try to resolve the issue the computer appeared to work properly. Back home the issues reoccurred. Next I called Apple Support. After a review of the problems the only suggestion at that time was to check with the manufacturer of the backup drive to see if there could be a problem with it not waking up. The first thing I did was disconnect the 2TB Seagate GoFlex Desk drive from the computer. Well everything started working properly. I had a new 2TB Fantom Green Drive available and set it up to be the backup. Since then everything has been working fine. Hope this helps someone.

Hello all,

I just had the same issue and whatever spell I was throwing at it it wouldn't go away.

Turns out I was using fuse for osx (I was using it to mount an ext partition I have on my main disk) and somehow it was messing up TM. Got rid of fuse for osx and the problem disapeared instantly.

More generally, if check that you don't have some kext that's providing support for other filesystems like NTFS (or FUSE). Not that they are bad, but TM seems to be easily confuse by these.

Hi,

Thanks all for the great posts. I am having the same exact problem. I get the infamous can't find backup when running Time Machine. I have tried all the above approaches but still get the same results. I have even reformated my time capsule and it actually worked once. It won't find the backup except for one other random time in the last week.

I do have a question. Should the backup volume be mounted and shown as a device in the finder? The two times backup actually started it was mounted but I noticed posts saying it should not be.

I have Mountain Lion 10.8.4. I can easily get into the "Star Wars" view of the backup everytime I try so I see Time Machine can see the sparsebundle bakup form that view.

Any ideas?

thanks,

mike

Hi !

I know this solution has already posted a long time ago,

so you may not be aware of it.

Would you have any Western Digital external hard drive

attached to your Mac ?

If that's so you have to uninstall the W.D. software resident

on that disk. (it's not necessary to run the disk-just a gadget

to show available space on the lcd display of the disk, etc ...)

This solved the problem for hundreds of people !

All the best,

Jean.

Hi,

The old backup drive was on the desktop but the computer kept looking for another drive labeled backup. I think the same drive. Not sure why all this happened.

I wish I had more details but once the computer started working properly after replacing the backup drive 'I thanked the Lord' (not that I am very religious) and have not looked back.

I am not very tech savvy.

Neil

Hi,

The old backup drive was on the desktop but the computer kept looking for another drive labeled backup. I think the same drive. Not sure why all this happened.

I wish I had more details but once the computer started working properly after replacing the backup drive 'I thanked the Lord' (not that I am very religious) and have not looked back.

I am not very tech savvy.

Neil

Hi

Thanks folks.

I actually am using a Time Capsule for backups over a wireless network.

Oddly enough (very rare) it worked once this AM but had to leave with the laptop so it stoppped. Powered it back up tonight but of course no luck.

thanks,

mike

In the end, this is what helped me. To overcome my fear of deleting this .plist file, I simply moved it to my desktop before deleting it from the library. So far so good.