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Never-ending Time Machine backup to Time Capsule

This first occurred three days ago prior to updating to 10.8.2 and updating did not resolve the issue. I'm running OS X 10.8.2 on a late 2009 Macbook with a Time Capsule. All software / firmware is up to date. The Time Machine backup starts as usual, preparing the backup and calculating the total amount of data to be backed up, however, when the actual data backed up gets close to the total amount to backup, the total amount starts to increase ad infinitum. For example, yesterday after updating to 10.8.2, the total amount of data to backup was 4.2 gb. Once the amount backed up was 3.9 gb, the total amount and the amount backed up started to increase together (4.1 of 4.4; 6.5 of 6.8; 9.8 of 10.1, etc). This went on for over an hour and I eventually had to stop the backup since it looked like there was no end in sight. Any ideas? I've tried toggling Time Machine off and on, restarting both Macbook and Time Capsule to no avail. Thanks!

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 8:21 AM

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20 replies

Sep 21, 2012 12:52 PM in response to pwwwayne

Thanks for the suggestion, but after reading your thread, we are not having the same issue. Mine existed prior to updating to 10.8.2 and the time to backup never decreases (i.e. 16 days down to 10 days), it only increases. When the problem first occured, the total backup amount was only 250 mb. Since updating to 10.8.2, is increased to 2.3 gb, but again, once it gets close to that amount the numbers just start climbing without end. I've also tried resetting SMC which did not solve the issue.

Sep 25, 2012 3:59 PM in response to kezarmyaj

Spent an hour at the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store this morning with no resolution. I came home an re-installed OS X 10.8 per the parting advice from the Genius Bar folks, but after doing that, the total amount to backup was calculated at 98.1 gb. When all this started last week, the total backup amount was about 500 mb. Pretty certain I didn't change 97.5 gb worth of data on my hard drive over the past week, so something is seriously wrong. Don't really want to wipe my Time Capsule clean and start over, but it's looking more and more like that's the next option.

Sep 25, 2012 8:15 PM in response to zenaloha

Since the last two updates for Mt. Lion my time machine has been an ongoing problem of unreliable back-ups. I back up my iMac and MacBook Pro to a 2TB Time Capsule. Since the updates, my computers randomly cannot find the back-up disk. When I shut off time machine and turn it back on, somethimes one or both Macs may or may not find the disk and when it does, they try to back up from the beginning. (thats 720GB of iMac back up!) it says back up will take 5 days, usually after 7-10 hours of back up the computer will freeze and the backup has to start over, it will not pick up from where it left off. I have tried erasing the back up disk and starting over but the problem still remains. I succsessfully backed up all 80GB from my MBP but since then it has not been able to find the disk to do any further back ups.

Sep 25, 2012 8:20 PM in response to pwwwayne

Your Mac will stay on for 16 days to back up without freezing? Any Mac I have ever had has never been able to stay on for more than a day or two withour freezing or restarting itself... This is my big problem when trying to re-back up all 720GB form my iMac. both of my Macs were backing up fine until recet updates. Now Im forced to start over but my iMac wont last the 5 days to back up without freezing or sutting it self down...

Oct 11, 2012 8:19 AM in response to Mathias Körber

I found that the backup keeps updating this file:


bash-3.2# pwd

/Volumes/TM 1/Backups.backupdb/vadeMACumPro2/2012-10-11-222844.inProgress/CC5A8E79-E692-4A8 C-ADFA-5A3EA7A58475

bash-3.2# ls -l

total 16

-rw------- 1 root _unknown 533 Oct 11 23:13 .com.apple.TMCheckpoint

-rw------- 1 root _unknown 2441 Oct 11 22:53 .exclusions.plist

drwxr-xr-x@ 11 root _unknown 544 Oct 11 23:03 Macintosh HD



bash-3.2# cat .c*oint

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesCopied</key>

<integer>11156872947</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesToCopy</key>

<integer>11156872855</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesToRepresent</key>

<integer>0</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfItemsCopied</key>

<integer>258169</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfItemsToCopy</key>

<integer>258167</integer>

</dict>

</plist>



What is interesting are the last two numbers. Two more file Copied than ToCopy. I wonder whether there is a back check (equality instead of >) in the test that ends the backup?



A few minutes later this file looks like this:


bash-3.2# ls -lt

total 16

-rw------- 1 root _unknown 533 Oct 11 23:18 .com.apple.TMCheckpoint

drwxr-xr-x@ 16 root _unknown 748 Oct 11 23:18 Macintosh HD

-rw------- 1 root _unknown 2441 Oct 11 22:53 .exclusions.plist


bash-3.2# cat .*oint

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesCopied</key>

<integer>12390444693</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesToCopy</key>

<integer>12390420706</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfBytesToRepresent</key>

<integer>0</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfItemsCopied</key>

<integer>297334</integer>

<key>SnapshotNumberOfItemsToCopy</key>

<integer>297275</integer>

</dict>

</plist>

Oct 11, 2012 5:31 PM in response to Mathias Körber

A colleague pointed out:


# - if you read the console logs for backupd, you'll see that when that

# - hapepens, it's doing a huge post-backup prune. Since HFS+'s hard link

# - methodology is TERRIBLE this takes a hundred years and there's no way to

# - ETA it. It's best to format your time machine drive if it has a backup

# - from a previous Mac OS on it.


and true, I had a (fresh) backup on this external disk from LION.


I will try this and see if ithat cures it (if it later comes back).


And no, I have not looked at the mentioned log yet, will do that later...

Oct 11, 2012 6:44 PM in response to zenaloha

I ended up doing a reinstall of Mountain Lion and a full back up after the reinstall. It took a while, but did complete without going into the never-ending back up loop it was doing before. I am having issues with very slow back ups, as other people have posted elsewhere, but for now the never-ending back up issue is fixed.

Oct 16, 2012 2:22 AM in response to Mathias Körber

Looked a bit closer at my backup logs:



16/10/12 4:08:26.124 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine VadeMACumPro2/Backups.backupdb

16/10/12 4:08:41.209 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD

16/10/12 4:08:41.304 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Will copy (60.2 MB) from Macintosh HD

16/10/12 4:08:41.306 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Found 76 files (60.2 MB) needing backup

16/10/12 4:08:41.312 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: 8.06 GB required (including padding), 1.13 TB available

16/10/12 4:26:07.765 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Copied 3795 files (23.96 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.


hmm. 60.2MB needing backup, .06GB required, 23.96GB copied???


16/10/12 4:26:08.262 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD

16/10/12 4:26:08.991 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Will copy (14.3 MB) from Macintosh HD

16/10/12 4:26:08.992 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Found 44 files (14.3 MB) needing backup

16/10/12 4:26:08.993 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: 10.38 GB required (including padding), 1.11 TB available

16/10/12 4:28:26.972 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Copied 1553 files (2.22 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.

16/10/12 4:28:28.399 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Created new backup: 2012-10-16-162827

16/10/12 4:28:34.404 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Starting post-backup thinning

16/10/12 4:28:34.404 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

16/10/12 4:28:34.726 PM com.apple.backupd[34806]: Backup completed successfully.


so that finished after it had sais 14.3MB need backp, but 10.38GB required and then it copied 2.22GB...




and then:

16/10/12 5:08:25.463 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: Starting automatic backup

16/10/12 5:08:26.083 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine VadeMACumPro2/Backups.backupdb

16/10/12 5:08:27.815 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: Using file event preflight for Macintosh HD

16/10/12 5:08:28.272 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: Will copy (667.7 MB) from Macintosh HD

16/10/12 5:08:28.274 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: Found 86 files (667.7 MB) needing backup

16/10/12 5:08:28.281 PM com.apple.backupd[37537]: 8.76 GB required (including padding), 1.13 TB available



and now it's at 17 of 18GB (when it said 8.76GB needed) (but only 667.7MB needing backup??)

Never-ending Time Machine backup to Time Capsule

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