time machine will not backup to empty external hard drive after replacing Mac's internal hard drive and restoring

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time machine will not backup to empty external hard drive after replacing Mac's internal hard drive and restoring

First - I live in a tiny fishing village in Belize, so getting support here is virtually non-existent. There is no one else in my village who even uses a Mac. Recently, my hard drive in my 2012 Macbook Pro 13" went bad (said it suffered a "shock"?) and I was traveling to Cozumel, Mexico, so had it replaced there. We used an external hard drive backup to restore the data to it's last time machine backup (October of 2014). Everything was working fine, until I returned home, added some pictures, and wanted to do a fresh backup. Now, time machine will start the backup, but gets about 113,000 of 181,000 done, and it locks up. I can do nothing - everything freezes, and I have to eventually power down the computer. I even tried deleting the old backup from the external hard drive, erasing it completely, and reformatting the external hard drive using disk utility. Still locking up. It is a 5 GB external hard drive, so space shouldn't be an issue, and it was backed up to the same external hard drive previously with no issues. I'm still running Mavericks, and don't want to try to upgrade to Yosemite until I can be sure I have a backup of my old data and pictures. I am a writer, and use that to make my meager living LOL

I'm stumped. I've looked through the files endlessly but can't find anything similar to my issue. Any suggestions? I know just enough to be dangerous, and don't want to lose everything we worked so hard to retrieve when my hard drive crashed last month.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

Posted on Mar 25, 2015 3:23 PM

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Answer 1

Smh5206

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Mar 25, 2015 5:28 PM in response to dawndiego40

Not a very technical answer but ... In the past I have used the wait it out approach with my mac and it seems to work. Sometimes it appears that the computer isn't doing anything but it really is in the background. Unfortunately the time remaining bar isn't always as accurate as we might hope it to be. Try running it at night before you go to sleep or before you leave for the day, it'll make it less painful than being able to sit and watch.

Also just shooting in the dark but did your time machine settings change after installing the new hard drive? If you are currently trying to back up your whole system 5GB will probably not be enough space. Maybe before you were just backing up certain folders.

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Answer 2

kahjot

Level 4

2,462 points

Mar 25, 2015 6:12 PM in response to dawndiego40

Can we assume that you meant 5TB rather than 5GB? Is it a 5TB Seagate external drive, by any chance? There have been recent reports of problems with them at Macintouch: http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/index.html#d25mar2015

Got another reply from Seagate after asking them to escalate my request. I was informed that the drives use USB Attached SCSI as the transfer protocol (rather than Mass Storage) when connected over USB 3. Apparently Seagate's implementation isn't compatible with Apple's implementation (so much for standards), and that is what causes the issue.

The solution for now is to connect to a USB 2 port so it uses the Mass Storage method and then becomes fully compatible. The drives are running normally at USB 2 speeds with no interruption or lock-ups, and I can live with that.

The initial problem report about the 5TB Seagate externals was on March 16th, so scroll back up to get to the beginning of the reported problem.

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Answer 3

dawndiego40 Author

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Mar 25, 2015 7:29 PM in response to Smh5206

SMH5206 - I tried letting it sit and crank overnight twice. First time I thought it was my error causing it to lock up. Now I know better. I haven't changed any of my time machine settings - and actually never used time machine regularly. Only reason I had a fresh backup from last Oct was because I did one before I upgraded to mavericks. Everything worked fine then - and we used that to restore when the hard drive crashed and was replaced. I have actually deleted hundreds of pictures off my hard drive and one entire user, so it should actually be a much smaller backup - so if it did it before on the same external hard disk, I don't understand why it won't now. I'm really confused.

Kahjot - the external hard drive is the same one I backed up to previously - and I have completely erased it and reformatted, and the information I'm backing up now is less, so there should be no reason why it doesn't have enough room now, when there is actually less information on my current hard drive (see my reply to SMH5206). When I plug it in, it says it is a 500.07 GB WD "My Passport"

I've even tried to have time machine only backup certain files, and not the whole thing. Still locking up.

I'm sure it's my error somewhere, - I just don't know how or where 😟

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Answer 4

Smh5206

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Mar 25, 2015 8:34 PM in response to dawndiego40

I also use a WD "My Passport" external hard drive (1T though) to backup my computer.

When you say reformatted I'm assuming you do so by partitioning it via Disk Utility, Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

I know there are other formatting options such as FAT32 which will allow you to copy items from your mac or a PC onto it that are under 4GB but it will not work with machine

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Answer 5

dawndiego40 Author

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Mar 25, 2015 10:04 PM in response to Smh5206

Yes SMH5206 - that is correct. I spent a great deal of time searching the forums for answers before I posted, and that was one suggestion. Like I said, I know just enough about what to do to be dangerous 😟 That's how I ended up erasing the only backup I had of my machine, and so now I have none.

So, I really, really want to back up my information before I update to yosemite and in case I have any hardware problems again. Do I have any other options other than getting a bigger hard drive? That is going to be very tough to get here. We can't order things easily - or inexpensively - here in Belize.

Unfortunately, I know nothing about how to backup my data, or other options for saving my (newly) important documents, as I never had a pressing reason to do so until recently. I did just look up Google drive, but I think my pictures alone will use up all my free space on that….

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Answer 6

kahjot

Level 4

2,462 points

Mar 27, 2015 8:58 AM in response to dawndiego40

SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner will make an exact bootable clone of your existing system to another drive.

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