Mac Time Machine problem OS X

[ShawWellPete]

I have used the OS X Time Machine since it was released and think it is a fantastic feature, I use it on a Macbook pro with the latest version of Lion and the software is up to date.

I ran out of space on the 1T external hard drive I was using, so I bought a Buffalo 2TB hard drive from Amazon for about £65, which I thought was a bit of bargain.

However when I try to use it for the initial backup I get the following error

The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk.

The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.

The backup does run for a while and appears to be working, if very slowly, before the error comes.

I have tried reformatting the hard drive and made sure that I have full permission, I have also tried verifying and repairing the disk using disk utility and get the message

The partition map appears to be OK

Is it likely to be an issue with the drive? or with the OSX?

Any other suggestions?

 

[Chappers]

First thing I would do is change the USB cable, just in case.

Next try coping a large file to the Buffalo drive to see if is a problem with the drive. Is it slow coping this/these files

Finally Id try re partioning the drive as 2 x 1TB drives and see if that makes any difference

 

[ShawWellPete]

Thanks John, I think I have it sorted.

In case anybody else finds this thread with the same problem...

It seems to be a problem with some files. I downloaded the Time Machine Buddy. This pointed out some random files in user/library/application support that were causing the problems.

I excluded these directories from the backup and that seems to have sorted it.

 

[Marcel]

I had a very similar problem the other day. All of a sudden my time machine stopped working and threw up a generic "Could not complete backup" error.

It was after I was forced to hard powerdown my machine for some reason.

If you browse the files on the Time Machine backup, there may be a file which ends in .InProgress

Delete that and run it again, it sorted me out

http://www.davidalison.com/2008/05/fixing-simple-time-machine-error.html