Upgrade Stopped Time Machine Pt. 2 – FIXED!
There’s a saying in the tech world that says something like this: “If something doesn’t work, wait till tomorrow and it’ll be fixed.” Well, I’m not sure who said that, but it’s true.
As you read in my very frustrated post yesterday, I upgraded Leopard 10.5 to the latest upgrade, 10.5.3. Whenever I did that, my Time Machine stopped backing up wirelessly to my external HD connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. There was no reason why, to my knowledge. It just wouldn’t work. I tried everything, read every forum and even wrote several frustrating posts on TUAW, Macworld and even Apple.
Earlier this afternoon, I decided to literally unplug my WD Book external HD from my AEBS. I then plugged my WD Book via firewire directly to my Macbook and did a complete format (erasing every backup I’ve done for 4 months) and then I repaired all of my permissions on my Macbook HD (not my external HD, but my Macbook HD). I then went into Airport Setup and re-created my entire wireless network (simply started from the beginning). I reset my Airport Extreme Base Station, re-connected my WD Book to it and then rebooted my Mac.
Low and behold I went into Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” It still gave me the error “The backup volume could not be mounted.” Ugh, I was SO frustrated. So I then went into Finder, disconnected my WD Book HD (ejected it) and then went back to Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” IT WORKED! It began backing up wirelessly! What in the heck???
So I waited for about 2 hours for it to backup my entire Macbook. I then restarted my Macbook thinking it would surely not work again. And as I type, I’m on my third backup via Time Machine (wirelessly to my WD Book!) Woo hoo! It’s back to working again.
So what’s the fix? I have no idea… truly. But for those thousands of you frustrated with the same issue, try to do exactly what I did and see if it works.
Please leave a comment letting me know!
Tags: backup, error, Fix, Macbook, Time Machine, Upgrade, wireless
May 31st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
in 10.5.3, Time Machine tries to unmount then mount the disk on which it stores the backup. If the disk is already in use, it fails to unmount. Without displaying an error message! In this case, you cannot see existing backups in Time Machine, and any further backups fail (this does display an error). It's a stupid bug, and how Apple have released this garbage is beyond me.
June 1st, 2008 at 5:47 am
I have kind of the same problem. Time Machine will backup to my LaCie drive BUT I can not see the drive in Finder or anyplace else for that matter. This is frustrating. I need to access that drive as I have other info stored on there that I want but can't get to. I purchased my 24" Imac in Dec 07 because it was supposed to be the easy computer to use. Somebody told me to do something called a plist? Any clues as to how to repair this? Thanks for any assistance you can offer in advance. Pau;
June 1st, 2008 at 6:45 am
I just tried this: http://el-studio.com/article/fix-for-time-machine...- it doesn't work right now but the guy seems on top of it. Albanypaul, a plist is a preference list, set when you go into preferences in various applications. Someone might have told you to delete a corrupted one.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Well I did get it working — at least for backups from a MacBook to a Mini with an attached disk. It was a permissions issue. How-to on my blog, which Sean links to above.
Sounds like the Airport may have permissions issues, too, though I don't have an Airport, so can't test that.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:49 am
“So I then went into Finder, disconnected my WD Book HD (ejected it) and then went back to Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.”
^^
Right there, there’s your answer. I had the same issue with my brand new WD MyBook, and this step fixes the problem. So for someone just starting off with this problem:
1) Start off with Time Machine disabled (no hard drive selected).
2) Open finder, click on the name of your base station under “Shared Drives” and then open the actual AirDisk drive you wish to use – this mounts it and makes it visible to the selection screen in Time Machine.
3) Open Time Machine preferences, and select the AirDisk drive as your backup drive (should now be visible).
4) Go back into Finder and hit the eject button next to your AirPort Extreme (under Shared Drives) – or otherwise unmount the AirDisk drive.
5) Hit back up now in Time Machine.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Thank you! This saved the day!