Why won't my Western Digital (2TB) My Book for Mac backup to time Machine?

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Why won't my Western Digital (2TB) My Book for Mac backup to time Machine?

This past fall (2012) I was notified by apple that the hard drive on my 2010 iMac might need to be replaced due to issues. Before doing so I was prompted to back up all of my data with an external hard drive using Time Machine. I purchased a Western Digital 2TB external hard drive and set it up easily. The setup parameters were such that the thing should backup my iMac to Time Machine on the hour every hour. This worked well and also allowed me to restore my user preferences for nearly everything when I got my computer back with its new hard drive. This was around October.

Recently (mid-March), my WD My Book no longer backs up to Time Machine. The computer recognizes the drive, allows me to access it, but will not backup to Time Machine. I have no hypotheses as to why this has started happening, but it just did. I have tried shutting Time Machine off and turning it back on to the particular external hard drive. This has not worked. I have tried to prompt a manual backup, but the computer gets stuck when preparing to back the drive up. It never actually commences the backup.

I understand that just like anything else that things fail. I also understand that sometimes things fail within the first few months of purchase (half a year-ish in my case). I just cannot understand what might be causing it. Any speculation?

Here are some screenshots associated with my current problems:

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Apr 23, 2013 2:48 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,568 points

Apr 23, 2013 2:51 PM in response to mattymath1

Please carefully read Pondini's Time Machine Trouble Shooting Guide, you can find it by clicking;

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 23, 2013 2:53 PM in response to mattymath1

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.

If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

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Answer 3

mattymath1 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 23, 2013 3:14 PM in response to Linc Davis

I think this is what you asked for and I believe that this is the entire backup attempt log.

4/21/13 11:09:04.877 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Starting automatic backup

4/21/13 11:09:04.886 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb

4/21/13 11:09:05.460 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD

4/21/13 11:09:05.545 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Error: (-36) Applying backup protections to /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Matt Allen‚Äôs iMac/2013-03-18-185315.inProgress/95EB135F-B7FA-4224-AF5D-AF9A4D15A6CE

4/21/13 11:09:05.574 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotStartDate path:/Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Matt Allen‚Äôs iMac/2013-03-18-185315.inProgress/95EB135F-B7FA-4224-AF5D-AF9A4D15A6CE size:17

4/21/13 11:09:05.574 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotState path:/Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Matt Allen‚Äôs iMac/2013-03-18-185315.inProgress/95EB135F-B7FA-4224-AF5D-AF9A4D15A6CE size:2

4/21/13 11:09:05.575 AM com.apple.backupd[34993]: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

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Answer 4

mattymath1 Author

Level 1

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Apr 23, 2013 3:18 PM in response to mattymath1

I'm also attempting a Disk Utility repair as per the iMac's suggestion. Here is another screenshot from that effort btw. Not sure if I've helped or hindered. Sorry if it's the latter.

It seems to reached a plateau and the expected wait time increased slowly from 2 minutes to the time shown above.

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 23, 2013 3:25 PM in response to mattymath1

The drive has malfunctioned at least once. If the repair fails, you should either replace it or erase it and start over. Don't do either one until you've backed up to another drive. Even if the repair succeeds, the drive is damaged goods and should be replaced at the first sign of any further trouble.

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Answer 6

mattymath1 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 23, 2013 3:27 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you.

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Answer 7

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,708 points

Apr 23, 2013 5:03 PM in response to mattymath1

It's probably the drive enclosure. WD bare drives have been good to me but their enclosures are not very good. I had terrible probelms with a MyBook Studio Mac edition on two different Macs. I finally ripped into the WD enclosure, extraced the bare drive, put it in an enclosure from OWC similar to this one:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME3QHKIT0GB/

and the old drive is now trouble-free. After the case swap, reformat the drive to Mac HHS+ Extended (Journaled) and it will run quite nicely with Time Machine

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