Time Machine

[junior279]

I have a 750gig iomga hd which I use to back up with time machine. Sometimes time machine freezes and says preparing to back up. Any ideas what I need to do.

[xcorvis]

If you have another backup somewhere, I would blow away your time machine backups (wipe the disk) and start over. I don't know for sure that that will fix it, but it's a possibility.

If that doesn't work, start excluding certain folders from your time machine backup and see if the backup still hangs. It's a bit time consuming but you should be able to narrow things down to a bad file this way.

You might also want to run a cache cleaning program like Onyx just to get your system squeeky clean. It's rare that it really helps, but sometimes it works for certain issues.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

TM is flaky at times. I use it everywhere, but I take occasional snapshots using Superduper too so I'm not totally hosed when TM lets me down - needing to buy and label a few extra 2.5" USB drives is worth it for me.

The situation where TM is almost guaranteed to throw a fit is when you interrupt a backup. Especially on the Time Crapsule - which in my case have been pretty much all abandoned, having reverted to giving all my Macs their own dedicated TM drives.

When you interrupt a backup the catalog is also interrupted. In this case, Time Machine will do a lengthy compare - and this can, depending on your volume of data, take a loooooooooooooooong time. Also bear in mind that TM may throw up additional problems if you have less than 15% (I think) of total disk space free on your TM backup drive.

Leave it for a while. Depending on how much stuff you have already, a while = a few hours even. Or leave it overnight (disable sleep in this case obviously). If it's not worked, I say nuke it and start again. There are fiddlier ways that you can try to get it working again, but usually it's too much trouble (like most things Apple - it's Fisher-Price or bust).