Time machine freezes when going back through time on a particular week

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Time machine freezes when going back through time on a particular week

I have run repair disk no problem, reset permissions etc.

Around the time of this particular date/week I discovered a set of 4000 small pdf files were mostly missing after I moved the folder they were in from the desktop to a sub folder. The permissions were read only - when I restored them from Time Machine had to load them into the Drop Box - change the permissions to read/write and then move them into the folder I wanted it in.

Funny about them I had loaded them from a CD and the system said I didn't have permission to write in the folders but copied them in anyway.

With the time machine restore it wrote the main folder and a sub-folder and 2 documents and then gave the error on permissions.

That is about the time I started having issues -- first could not go into time machine at all, now can back up to that day - but then the system freezes and as its full screen - doesn't get an interrupt.

I have seen discussions on the back up freezing but none on paging through time machine.

Am wondering if its an issue because I changed the permissions on all those files -- or is Time Machine Toast. I can open the drive through its folder and actually see all the folders without it freezing.

I am thinking if I have to clear the drive and restart - that, I would partition it -- and change between partitions every so often so that I don't have this problem

Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 18, 2016 1:05 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 18, 2016 1:12 PM in response to notcloudy

FWIW, I have never had TM freeze. Rather than try to figure out what happened, I would clear the TM disk and let it make a complete new backup. I do not think I would try to have it backing up on separate partitions. I try to avoid possible confusion. In my own world, I have two external HD TM partitions (in addition to other partitions that hold bootable clones, among other items). The system backs up to them alternately (that is a setting, as I recall).

Barry

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Answer 2

Apr 18, 2016 1:41 PM in response to notcloudy

I don't recommend partitioning and changing between partitions.

Drives are cheap.

If you give Time machine an ADDITIONAL drive, it will alternate drives -- every other backup to every other drive, providing a complete backup set on each of the two drives. "It just does it"

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Answer 3

notcloudy Author

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1,252 points

Apr 18, 2016 5:31 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

I don't recommend partitioning and changing between partitions.

Drives are cheap.

If you give Time machine an ADDITIONAL drive, it will alternate drives -- every other backup to every other drive, providing a complete backup set on each of the two drives. "It just does it"

I have other things to spend my money on -- biggest growth in my time machine use size was when I tried the correction options on IPHOTO and the entire library was backed up.

So as it seems I have to restart on it - am simply looking at cutting it off when it gets to a certain time length then restarting in the next partition and after a bit of time deleting that first partition.

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Answer 4

notcloudy Author

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1,252 points

Apr 18, 2016 5:35 PM in response to Barry Hemphill

Barry Hemphill wrote:

FWIW, I have never had TM freeze. Rather than try to figure out what happened, I would clear the TM disk and let it make a complete new backup. I do not think I would try to have it backing up on separate partitions. I try to avoid possible confusion. In my own world, I have two external HD TM partitions (in addition to other partitions that hold bootable clones, among other items). The system backs up to them alternately (that is a setting, as I recall).

Barry

Actually the backups are still working although I chose to stop hourly ones -- I just select to backup now. I have a second backup disk - 1/2 the size of my time machine drive that I back up sets of my folders - so I am also considering just doing backups to the larger drive - as I may want to configure the smaller one to be Windows compatible just in case.

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Answer 5

notcloudy Author

Level 4

1,252 points

Apr 25, 2016 2:26 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

I don't recommend partitioning and changing between partitions.

Drives are cheap.

If you give Time machine an ADDITIONAL drive, it will alternate drives -- every other backup to every other drive, providing a complete backup set on each of the two drives. "It just does it"

Actually I just deleted the Time Machine drive and partitioned it -- my feeling is that time machine software can only handle a certain amount of time before it is too stretched out - so rather than lose backups again - when I feel enough time as elapsed rather than size I will restart time machine in the second partition and mothball the first until enough time has elapsed where I don't need that back up.

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