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Problem with Time Machine Backup or Maybe Not Time Machine

The problem manifests after a Time Machine backup.

I have an iMac 24-inch, Early 2008. iMac 8,1

Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM.

Last week I purchased two 4-Terabyte G-technology G-Drives. Each drive is equip with FireWire 800 and USB 3.0/2.0. In general use they seem to work fine on the iMac.

I designated one drive as a Time Machine Volume. This is where the problem happens.

Time Machine will do the initial backup just fine. Then it runs once per hour with no problem. Intermittently however, Time Machine will fail and report :

“Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “hard disk name”.

Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.”

Interestingly enough if I try to open a folder on the Time Machine volume using the Finder I get:

“The operation can’t be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -50).

If I try to eject the volume I get the irksome “Cannot eject volume because it’s currently in use by one or more programs.”

To resolve this I’ve tried everything, from the banal verifying permissions, to swapping the two G-Drives around, swapping out all the cables, etc.. When the error occurs I go into the shell and check with lsof and always find no software apparently holding or using that volume.

Very frustrating

I can force eject the volume, then remount the volume and things are back to normal. Same with restarting.

This happened under OS X Mountain Lion and is now happening under a clean install of Mavericks.

I thought that even though I don’t see any MDS related processes using the drive, it might be spotlight, so I told spotlight not to index the volume. Problem still happens.

I’ve found that one person had almost this exact same problem at:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4756742

His solution turned out to be replacing the G-Drive with another brand new G-Drive.

Unfortunately, I cannot return the drives to the Apple store because the boxes were tossed out. I also don’t relish trying to explain that the drives work just fine until some glitch that occurs either just before or just after a Time Machine backup.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Mac OS X (10.7.2), iTunes

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 9:17 AM

23 replies

May 5, 2014 4:23 AM in response to Alan Chocolate

I had the same issue but I am using the USB port. I recently migrated from an old iMac 2007 running Mountain Lion to a late 2013 iMac running Maverick with an external G drive.

I used Alan's Time Machine reset and this seems to have worked. Though I haven't yet seen it through and back up after a screen sleep which seems to have been a trigger.

Kevin

RhettM

Level 1

4 points

Jul 14, 2014 7:28 AM in response to Monica618

I can confirm Monica618 response that USB works flawlessly. After switching my Time Machine backup from an OWC drive to a G Tech drive, Time Machine would backup fine for about 4 hours and then I'd get the "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup" error message. After restart, it would work for another 4 hours and repeat... USB works fine with the same drive. Frustrating, but I guess there's some truth in Apple not really working on FW800 hiccups any longer.

Jul 14, 2014 7:30 AM in response to RhettM

It has been my experience that this is specifically related to G-Tech drives, and hence not necessarily an Apple problem. I had the same issue on two different G-Tech drives, and when I got rid of those drives and switched to LaCie drives, the problem went away. I also noticed that the issue was specific to newer G-Tech drives with older iMacs. (Sorry for not remember exact models. )

jtsydney

Level 1

0 points

Oct 17, 2014 2:36 AM in response to Marvin Price1

I've been experiencing this problem and it's been driving me nuts! After many hours wasted searching for a solution and trying everything I came across to fix it (reformatting the drive, trashing time machine preferences and starting fresh, updating G-tech firmware, changing energy saver preferences, using different cables, connecting directly instead of daisy chaining, etc, etc, etc), I think the issue may in fact be quite simple.....

The problem occurs when the external hard drive spins down and 'sleeps' / 'power saves' (not sure that these are technically the right terms, but hopefully you understand what I mean). For some reason the drive doesn't wake up / start spinning again when Time Machine wants to backup, so there's an error that causes Time Machine to stop backing up (although I can still enter Time Machine and restore files). Or put another way, Time Machine doesn't wake up the drive before trying to create the backup folder.

So this error will occur with any drive that sleeps / goes into power save, which probably means that many if not all 'green' drives are not suitable for use with Time Machine.

I called G-Tech tech support and they confirmed that they have had this issue reported before. 2 solutions were suggested:

Change Energy Saver preferences so that disks do not go to sleep.
Install Keep Drive Spinning so that the G-Tech drive does not sleep.

The first failed (as it had when tried previously), but the second solution worked..... so far (it’s been 24 hours and backups have been running smoothly in the background just as they should).

I have heard that keeping the drive spinning all the time will wear it out faster, although after reading various forums opinion seems to be divided as to whether more damage is caused by keeping a drive spinning or by repeatedly sleeping and waking.

In the end I have decided that I’ll risk wearing the drive out faster as for me this is preferable to having to force eject and reconnect the drive several times every day.

Would be delighted if Apple would update TM so that it wakes the drive before attempting to create the backup folder, but until then this seems the only option I can find that works......

Oct 24, 2014 11:15 AM in response to Marvin Price1

I have the same problem - with a LaCie ...If I power it off, and restart it, it will usually do a few back ups and then quit again

Dec 22, 2014 8:42 PM in response to Marvin Price1

I'm glad you resolved by using USB. I just wanted to confirm that I have this same issue with my 4 TB G-drive and late 2006 iMac running Lion. USB2 works fine. Since it is so slow, I connect with Firewire 800 on the rare occasion i have had to do a full restore from the backup, and then i revert back to USB2 for daily backups. A little irritating since i paid extra for a nice Firewire drive, but it works OK.

Jul 9, 2015 10:39 AM in response to Marvin Price1

I am the same boat, well sort of.

We use in our family 5 G-DRIVE Q 1TB eSATA, FW400/800, USB 2 drives bought in 2008. All are fool proof products and ar serving well .

I use it with a FireWire 400 and Apple Thunderbolt-to-FireWire Adapter to a MacBook Pro retina mid 2012. Due to a recall (Screen jitter issues) I got a new motherboard replaced 2 weeks ago. After I got it back from the Apple Store in Amsterdam the problems began.

My setup might be a tad different as I have two partitions on the 1TB drive. Both are 500 GB, one for TimeMachine and another to make a SuperDuper copy of my internal 500 GB SSD drive. (great back up strategy btw)

As described else in this thread after a few hours TimeMachine did stall, but also when I copied through SuperDuper, I got errors. I also had Magic Mouse freezes at the moment the copy freezes occurred.

See below all I did:

- reset PRAM

- reset SMC

- checked internal SSD (Disk Utility)

- checked external G-DRIVE Q 1TBdrive (Disk Utility)

- repaired permissions both in Rescue mode and normal mode.

- start up in Safe mode

- made changes to energy panel to get the drive never in sleep.

- deleted the …..progress file in the Time Machine data file.

- changed new FireWire 400 cables

- bought a new Apple Thunderbolt-to-FireWire Adapter

- took another G-DRIVE Q 1TB drive

- updated last week from 10.10.3 to 10.10 4

But problem remains. Some SuperDuper copies and TimeMachine copies go OK but then after a few hours I get a freeze, can’t access the external drive and have disconnect/connect the Apple Thunderbolt-to-FireWire Adapter.

Believe me, an Apple Evangelist since 1985, I was so mad and this was so frustrating, putting hours in solving a problem which I could not solve.

Yesterday I took the plunge and erased the internal SSD and install 10.10.4 from SuperDuper copy. As I never use Migration Assistent (it restores the same crap, you actually don’t want) it too me another 4 hours to get everything copied back etc.

After installation I erased the external drive and made the 2 partitions. SuperDuper took about an hour and TimeMachine about 2 hours. I was happy that it finally worked so to check I fired SuperDuper again. Well, I got a freeze again.

This morning I called AppleCare and was connect to a very kind person (second line support) who admitted this should not happen.

I couldn’t think of any other steps to take except using the external drive in 1 partition. Also the idea of using USB was a suggestion.

I took another G-DRIVE Q 1TB drive, erased it and used it for Time Machine. Well, this seems to be working for some hours now, but I leave it on for the night to have more evidence.

Alternatively I connected the G-DRIVE Q 1TB drive with 2 partitions through USB and this also seems to hold….

Conclusion: there is a FireWire conflict caused by the new MacBook Pro retina motherboard and my G-DRIVE Q 1TB drive. My guess it is a modified chip or FireWire controller as the problems occurred after the new board.

May 29, 2016 10:52 AM in response to Alan Chocolate

Worked for me as well. Thank you for posting the link, Alan!

Problem with Time Machine Backup or Maybe Not Time Machine