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Level 1

20 points

Internal Time Machine "looking for backup disk" (not time capsule)

Hello,

I have the infamous "looking for backup disk" issue. My Time Machine drive is an internal drive, NOT a time capsule. It is mounted and visible, and the backups show up on it in the Finder. When I select to enter the Time Machine "starfield" UI, all my previous backups are browsable. But when it comes time to actually back up... it just says "looking for backup disk" forever. I've tried leaving it like that for something like 40 minutes, no joy. This is not a huge disk, there are about 700 GB of backups on it. The HDD activity light on my computer is NOT showing any activity when I am idling but it is "looking for backup disk," so I don't think it's scanning the drive or anything.

I have tried turning TM off and on, removing the drive and re-selecting it, unmounting it and remounting it, deleting the TM preference plist file from the library, rebooting, and all manner of combinations thereof. Nothing seems to work.

Anyone have any advice? This is on OS X 10.8.2 by the way. The TM backup worked fine through 10.8.1 and 10.8.2 with no problems until now. I don't recall doing anything specific to mess up TM or the disks in any way, although I may have turned TM during a reboot cycle prior to this happening (don't recall if this is actually the case, but in any case it shouldn't have caused such an error, no?).

Thanks in advance,

—Gabriel

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 3, 2012 9:21 AM

17 replies

petrush

Level 1

0 points

Jun 8, 2013 1:38 PM in response to GLebec

Thanks for this description. I had the Time Machine nonfunctional for many month now, and tried all kind of magic to get it running.

Removing (temporary!) the ntfs.kext and a reboot solved the "looking for disk" hangup, and now it is backuping as it should.

Jan 28, 2014 11:11 AM in response to GLebec

Many thanks to GLebec GLebec and his ingenuity! My Time Machine was stuck "Looking for backup disk" on my Time Capsule and I almost gave up my web search for a solution until I happened upon this thread. I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a working solution for my OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion system.

I want to let other 'net searchers know that this solution (removing the ntfs.kext file) can resolve the problem when TM is set to backup to a Time Capsule, as in my case.

I have two NTFS-formatted volumes, one external and one internal (BootCamp XP installation). Since I don't want to remove or wipe the BootCamp partition, I instead copied for safekeeping, then removed, the ntfs.kext file, then rebooted (normal mode). I turned Time Machine back on, and it started working fine.

Since I have no need to read the NTFS partitions from OS X, I will just continue with the ntfs.kext not loaded. (FYI, one can verify whether or not the kext is loaded with the Terminal command "kextstat | grep ntfs".)

Internal Time Machine "looking for backup disk" (not time capsule)