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my time machine (to time capsule) backup never gets past the "calculating changes"

I didn’tknow that it hasn’t made a complete backup since 1/4/2012, there is only 19.17 MB available but the prefs are set for oldest backups to be deleted.

How do I fix this?


Lee

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8), time capsule 2nd gen, v 7.6.1

Posted on May 20, 2012 6:01 PM

Reply
10 replies

May 21, 2012 5:37 PM in response to arthurfromhickory

After that long without a backup, Time Machine most likely has to do a pretty large backup, which means it will likely have to delete a lot of old backups.


Unfortunately, prior to Lion, that can be an excruciatingly long process (you are still on Snow Leopard, right?)


To see if that's what's happening, check the TM Preferences window. It should show "Scanning xxxx items" with the count increasing pretty rapidly. Keep an eye on it; if it changes to "cleaning up" and starts over, it is doing that great long process. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. Most of what you see there is rather cryptic, but there should be one or more that say "xx GB required, yy GB available." Find the last one of those, and report the numbers (or just copy and post the message).


If not -- if there's no such message, copy and post them here.

May 21, 2012 6:36 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for your reply.

I downloaded the widget, got this message-

"Open System Preferences, Accounts and enable 'Allow user to administer this computer'.


The Time Machine logs are protected and this widget can only access the content if the user running the Dashboard is an Administrator.


Error: tail: /var/log/system.log: Permission denied"


'Allow user to administer this computer' is/was enabled,

see screenshot-

User uploaded file

Can I manually delete old backups?

May 23, 2012 5:59 PM in response to Pondini

repaired disk permissions,

message log is:

Starting standard backup

Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/AirPort Disk-2

QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Disk image /Volumes/AirPort Disk-2/MacPro 17".sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1

Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb

2012-05-23 20:31:40.517 FindSystemFiles[3169:907] Looking for system packages

2012-05-23 20:31:46.540 FindSystemFiles[3169:907] PackageKit: *** Missing bundle identifier: /Library/Receipts/vpn.pkg

2012-05-23 20:31:46.567 FindSystemFiles[3169:907] PackageKit: *** Missing bundle identifier: /Library/Receipts/vr.pkg

2012-05-23 20:31:47.077 FindSystemFiles[3169:907] Finding system files...

2012-05-23 20:31:52.676 FindSystemFiles[3169:907] Writing system path cache.

Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD

Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

Starting pre-backup thinning: 108.53 GB requested (including padding), 41.65 GB available

May 23, 2012 6:22 PM in response to arthurfromhickory

arthurfromhickory wrote:

. . .

Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HDNode requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

Starting pre-backup thinning: 108.53 GB requested (including padding), 41.65 GB available

Time Machine needs to do a very large backup (about 90 GB, as it adds 20% for workspace), but there's only 42 GB available. Ordinarily, that's not a big problem, but the combination of network backups, a long time since the last backup, and needing a whole lot of space is a difficult combination.


It's going to take a very long time, as it will do the "deep traversal" (comparing everything on your system to the backups, since it's been so long), delete your oldest backup, "compact" the sparse bundle containing your backups, remount it, then start all over again. (That's been improved greatly on Lion.)


Realistically, you have two options:


Erase the disk and let Time Machine start fresh.


Manually delete a lot of old backups, compact the sparse bundle, and repeat, until there's enough space. That's fairly tedious and time-consuming.


You say you're backing-up to a Time Capsule, but the message says "Airport Disk-2." Is that the TC's internal HD, or a USB drive connected to the TC? How you do either of those varies depending on which it is. So post back with details of your setup, and which option you want to use.

my time machine (to time capsule) backup never gets past the "calculating changes"

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