Time machine has stopped working

The best source on TimeMachine is http://www.pondini.org

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the 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.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now

CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD

so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. 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 to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.

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

☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Does your backup use WiFi or Wired connection?

If wired, is your backup drive connected via Ethernet cable (Network), USB or Firewire?

When did it stop working?

Is your backup disk full?

Usually the Seagate 3/4 TB drives (with USB3) are not formatted for MAC (they may be NTFS), but require an initial format to MAC OS X Extended Journaled (JHFS+).

Can you see the drive in Disk Utility when you plug it in to the USB3 port (a screen shot without personal information would be very useful)? What model of the MAC are you using? What is the model of the Seagate?

Can you run Disk Utility and click on the Seagate and post a screen shot of just DU? Also, a diskutil list would be useful.

This looks good. It is a GPT drive. If you click on the icon below the drive, with the Time Machine like circle, it should be JHFS+ (Mac OS X Extended Journaled). If it is not, then you can post a screen shot of what it is. The icon says it is a Time Machine backup destination, which is also good.

You can now open both, a Console window and the System Preferences -> Time Machine window. The button should be ON and the right-hand side should show you this Seagate drive. In the console window (with System Log -> All Messages highlighted), in the Search box at top right hand corner, type "backup".

Click on Backup Now under Time Machine on the menu bar. Wait till the backup fails/aborts. The Console window now should have messages that you can copy and paste here. (This is what Linc had mentioned).

We can then analyze the messages and see what is happening.

Excellent. Please take a look at this http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090515063602219

The last attempt that was executed failed and did not clean up after itself.

Before you attempt what is in the link, you can double click on the icon on your desktop which says "Seagate..." and look at the directory in Finder that comes up. The latest file should have a .inProgress extension.

You can post a screenshot of that list so it can be verified that the outlined procedure will actually work.

You posted a link to a five-year-old web page with some instructions to run various shell commands, including fsaclctl. Have you tested those instructions on your own computer, as the terms of use of this site require you to do? If you have tested them, what happened when you ran that command? I'll assume you're running Mavericks, as the original poster is.

The solution is much simpler than the MACworld article makes it to be. TM is not cleaning up. The .inProgress file is an indicator (which includes the date), of a potential problem.

http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2008/08/13/fixing-time-machine-backup-faile d-with-error-11

My comment also states this...

"Before you attempt what is in the link, you can double click on the icon on your desktop which says "Seagate..." and look at the directory in Finder that comes up. The latest file should have a .inProgress extension.

You can post a screenshot of that list so it can be verified that the outlined procedure will actually work."

Is this a sufficient caveat to address the risk which may be involved in the solution?

This can only be reproduced on a machine which already has a failed backup, not a machine which does not show this behavior. 😉

The listing should look similar to this one. (This is from one of my old Iomega TC backup drives which used a USB based drive).

My question is what happens when you do what you advised the original poster to do. You don't need to have a failed backup to run "fsaclctl" in a shell.