Apple Time Capsule Errors: Unable To Complete Backup

In Summary: Apple's Time Capsule Backup - Unable to Complete Backup Errors

· Apple Tech Support - The Good....
· Try These Steps To Resolve Backup Errors With Time Capsule
· SO? Is it fixed?
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Posted by Rich Leach on 05/20/2008 @ 7:49PM. Categories: Product Reviews

TIME CAPSULE ERRORS - UNABLE TO COMPLETE BACKUP

Apple Tech Support Almost Fixes Problem
In the fall of 2008 I bought myself a 1 terabyte Apple Time Capsule to handle network and backup management for my system. I don't know if my configuration could be much more simplistic: my MacPro is connected via ethernet to the Time Capsule, wireless is turned off and while I have my Windows server also connected via ethernet to the Time Capsule the PC does not use the backup features, it simply uses Time Capsule to connect to the internet. For the first few months everything worked great, then after about 8 or 9 weeks I started getting ambiguous errors when Time Machine would try to do a backup. "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory." and "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume."

Apple Tech Support - The Good....
The first time this happened I called into Apple, they walked me through a few basic troubleshooting issues, had me send them my logs and right there on the spot declared there was probably an issue with the drive and overnighted me a new one - stellar service. I setup the new Time Capsule and things worked fine, for about 8 or 9 weeks. Then the same errors started to appear again, and also the Time Capsule was taking forever to prepare backup, but never actually got to even start the backup. One time I let it prepare for 3 days! Folks, when things are working fine, without problem and running smoothly even an interrupted backup could take a while to prepare, but not 3 days!

Try These Steps To Resolve Backup Errors With Time Capsule
Back on the phone with Apple, this time a very patient and pleasant Maria - who literally spent hours on the phone with me, called me back several times and interacted with me to try and resolve the issue. In no specific order, here is what we tried, and I believe all of these things may help you if you're suffering the same problems that I described above:

• We ran Applications>Utilities>Disk Utilities. We did a verify disk and a repair disk on my Time Capsule disk and my local hard disk. On both drives it looked like a few things were out of sync but the OS repaired all of the problems and on we went.
• We cleared out my passwords and accounts in my Keychain. It turns out over the course of time I had a few extra entries for my Time Capsule disk which appeared to be confusing the entire backup system. We (OK, Maria at Apple) also noticed that in my logs there appeared to be some looping errors. If you're wondering how to check your logs on a Mac simply go to the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your screen, click About This Mac... and click the More Info... button. Down on the left of the screen is the link for "Logs", click that and check out the system.log entries. There will be a lot of data there so look for seemingly repeating strings of text, that will help you see if the Mac OS is running into a loop.
• We (there I go again, it was really Maria at Apple) had me reindex my drive, which noticeably made my entire system faster, especially the backups to Time Capsule. How do you index your drive on a Mac? Easy.
  1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
  2. Click Spotlight.
  3. Click the Privacy tab.
  4. Drag a folder or even an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
  5. Remove the item or volume you just added.

Spotlight will re-index the contents of the item you initially dragged to the list. The indexing process causes the little magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your screen to pulse, so you'll know when it's doing it's thing.
The entire article from the Apple Knowledge Base is here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409

So I do one restart and everything works fine again....

...for a few more weeks, then those same errors started coming back again.

FINALLY, A FIX
Turn off any real time virus monitoring software. Not my first choice since, even though they say Macs don't get viruses, they can. But I still left my virus software on my machine and still run regularly weekly scans. The result?
I haven't had a single error with Time Capsule since then. And as far as I know, nor have I had any viruses.

So if you're getting those irritating errors "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory." and "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." try the things that Maria and I tried first, then try turning off your real time antivirus software.

Comments: 4 | Post Comment |

COMMENTS

I haven't checked all your sites so far, but those five I managed to look through really impressed me! How long are you in this business? There's always field for improvement, sure thing, but this is what a good site should be! Thanks for your time!
Posted by annetag reen on 11/18/2009 at 10:38:AM

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Rich, Thanks for this post. I got here from a Google search and was fortunate that the first step of verifying and repairing the Time Machine drive did the trick.
Posted by Houston Graham on 12/23/2009 at 2:48:PM

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You shouldn't be mad at apple or it's tech support for fixing a problem you caused... Just because you bought and installed an anti-virus software that doesn't work with time capsule doesn't mean they are at fault or that all anti-virus doesn't work. Have you tried complaining to the software company who wrote it or looking for another solution? There is more then one virus software company... I feel bad for "joe" for having to deal with people like you.
Posted by Ryan Junk on 03/20/2010 at 6:02:PM

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Hi Ryan- Turns out the problem was much more than anti-virus software, it was the lack of communication from within Apple's four walls, which they acknowledged to me personally. Additionally, I've run into several issues on a non related tech support issue with Apple's Keynote application (and QuickTime), where from the marketing materials all the way through to the help files, and even to the Tier 1 AppleCare tech support folks where Apple set the expectation of very specific behavior, which not only did not work but Apple actually credited me with discovering several bugs. So I can concede my method of communicating my frustrations at Apple to your posting, but ultimately, and quite simply, if you pay for something, it should do what it says, without any footnotes or asterisks, again, something that Apple agreed with me on. But between you and me personally I think the real crux of the time machine issue was running backups on more than 1 Mac, but that's just a hunch. Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate your input. Rich
Posted by Rich Leach on 03/21/2010 at 11:59:AM

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