Timemachine backup to Time Capsule doesn't work-only 'preparing'...

Oh well, the above post is incomplete and I'm not able to edit it. 😕

Therefore re-posting it in entirety

Timemachine is not able to backup at all. This is the situation and the system config

Macbook Pro upgraded 2 days ago from Lion to ML; status: time machine backups not working

Two external drives being used for independent backups

When I try to backup on either of the two on ML, Time Machine gives error messages such as:

The backup widget shows messages such as: (this is for the portable)

Backing up to: /Volumes/WDB/Backups.backupdb

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

Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

Finished scan

Found 538892 files (489.75 GB) needing backup

588.5 GB required (including padding), 507.22 GB available

Deleted backup /Volumes/WDB/Backups.backupdb/MBPmak-e (10)/2012-07-26-000817.inProgress/07DD8868-FB52-4D52-BE5F-605C6D7AD080 containing 4 KB; 507.22 GB now available, 588.5 GB required

Removed 1 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room

Deleted 1 backups containing 4 KB total; 507.22 GB now available, 588.5 GB required

Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Jul 29, 2012

Backup failed with error: 1002

And though it says oldest backup is now July 29, 2012 I cannot see it. However, I can 'browse' through the backups in 'Backups.backupdb'

Tried some of the fixes on pondini.org, for e.g. A4 Full Reset of Time Machine or reset TC by pressing the button at the back

But nothing has resolved the problem so far. Hope someone can provide a resolution. Or since I already have 2 existing backups for 8th & 16th, should I stop wasting further time and instead erase each HD one by one and start new backups on them?

Not sure if this will work though; from what I have gathered from the forums and various posts is that this is because of the OS upgrade and also the Recovery HD also gets backed up first.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions

Message was edited by: Ravindra Holalkere

Pondini, thanks for your reply

Pondini wrote:

Ravindra Holalkere wrote:

. . .

This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 588.43 GB but only 507.22 GB are available.

That's your main problem. Looks like it's trying to do a full backup, and there just isn't enough room. See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. Is there roughly 480 GB or so on your internal HD?

By internal if you mean the time capsule and portable USB HD--each is 1TB capacity, and per TimeMachine former has 499 GB free, while latter has 507 GB free supposedly. If you meant MBP HD, it has 215 GB free.

Pondini wrote:

How did you install Mountain Lion? Did you just upgrade "in place"?

Or did you do a "clean install" (erasing the internal HD, installing OSX, then putting your data back)? If so, how did you put your data back?

And though it says oldest backup is now July 29, 2012 I cannot see it. However, I can 'browse' through the backups in 'Backups.backupdb'

So they're still there, anyway. It sounds like either you erased the disk, or TM thinks you did, so the old backups are treated as being made from a different disk, that's no longer connected. If so, you should be able to see them via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Upgraded in place. Directly over Lion. But then as I noted earlier, backups appear to have stopped last on 16 July 2012, when I was still on Lion (don't recall the errors at that time coz I wasn't able to spare attention to timecapsule and backups).

I'll research on #E3 asap and report back

Pondini wrote:

Or since I already have 2 existing backups for 8th & 16th, should I stop wasting further time and instead erase each HD one by one and start new backups on them?

It may come to that. 😟

That's why I ask... should I just skip all this trouble-shooting and directly erase the SL/Lion based backups) and start new backups based on ML

from what I have gathered from the forums and various posts is that this is because of the OS upgrade and also the Recovery HD also gets backed up first.

No, it gets backed-up last. And it's only 650 MBs.

650 megs. That's good-I thought being named a 'recovery HD' and all, it would be larger, similar to the ML installer size! 🙂

Oh and just now I tried to run time machine again on the time capsule and it came back with this message !!

And the time capsule is available. I can mount it on Finder, see the Data folder within, and the sparsebundle within that. Could also double-click and mount the sparsebundle and view the Timemachine backups.backupd folder.

Noticed the permissions for time capsule--is this how it should be? (unknown? and my user id is not listed)

Message was edited by: Ravindra Holalkere

Ok, just now finished reading the #E3 procedure and trying it out with each backup disk. In the cascade view, for timecapsule the last update is on 16 July and with the portable USB HD, last update is 8 July (as noted for each earlier)

Pondini wrote:

Look at the messages via the widget again, and see if the underlying problem is still this one:

This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 588.43 GB but only 507.22 GB are available.

You may see one about the sparse bundle being in use (it may not have gotten ejected after you were looking at it). If so, see #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Yes, the backup too large message is still there. No, the sparse bundle was not in use- I had unmounted it; also no messages about it in the widget. On a side note, I took a look at #C12 and found that on SL/Lion, Airport Utility had an option to 'Disconnect all Users'. Don't see that though in airport utility 6.1 (on ML)!

Pondini wrote:

Ravindra Holalkere wrote:

. . .

By internal if you mean the time capsule and portable USB HD--each is 1TB capacity, and per TimeMachine former has 499 GB free, while latter has 507 GB free supposedly. If you meant MBP HD, it has 215 GB free.

Sorry, I missed this post before. There's some sort of problem with these forums -- posts and emails get delayed and out of sync, posts don't appear on different servers for long periods, etc. Probably related to the huge volumes since Mountain Lion was released.

Anyway, the one thing we're missing is, how large is the internal HD on your MBP?

Time Machine is trying to back up about 500 GB. Assuming that's roughly the amount of data on the internal, TM is trying to do a full backup, and there isn't room for that on either backup drive. Since the problem started before you installed Mountain Lion, those logs are now gone, so we can't tell what happened.

should I just skip all this trouble-shooting and directly erase the SL/Lion based backups) and start new backups based on ML

Sounds like you don't have much choice. 😟

Time Machine will never delete your last remaining backup, and it needs workspace for a new one, so there isn't room for two full backups, plus workspace, at once.

The Internal HD is 750 gigs capacity, of which 224 gigs is free. So it does look like TM is performing a full backup-maybe this is because I upgraded to ML, though we'll never know why it stopped doing so on Lion too!!

Yup, I guess I'll be better off erasing the backup disks in sequence and letting TM go ahead with a full backup-that's a weekend job.

Thanks for your replies Pondini-much appreciated.