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