OSX’s Time Machine Stuck In Backing Up Process: A Way To Resolve It

by | Sep 5, 2013 | Uncategorized

Apparently, I forgot to back up my MacBook Pro for about 16 days. Two days ago, I finally forced myself to back it up. That was the time when I realized that something was wrong: The backing up process always stuck in the process of “backing up”. Here’s how it went:

  1. I plugged in my external HD
  2. Clicking back up now on the menu bar of OS X
  3. Time Machine prepared the back up for about 3 – 5 minutes
  4. Time Machine backed up the files

Time Machine kept failing me at the 4th process. Sometimes it was successfully backing up 250 MB of files then get stuck, sometimes it was successfully backing up 840 MB of files then get stuck, and so forth.

I tried restarting my MBP, failed. I plugged out and in the external HDD, failed. Turning off and on the Time Machine, failed.

After two days of trying and Googling, I asked about this matter on twitter to @sayzlim of @makemac. Even though he gave me suggestions I have tried, magical things happened: @andrayogi and @evanhindra gave me couple of suggestions which one of them finally lead to help me to make this Time Machine thing finally worked. Finally, I was able to back up my files using Time Machine. Here’s how it went:

First, delete the failed .inProgress files. As I’ve mentioned before, I tried to back up several times and it failed backup was stored on the external HDD. The file was stored in YOUR EXTERNAL STORAGE/Backups.backup/YOUR OSX NAME/year-month-date-id.inProgress.

Second, I checked the log using console.app and realized that when the Time Machine failed or get stuck in backing up my files, it kept showing me this message:

Time Machine Error Log Through Console App

So with a help of Google, I finally found this page: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1377845

What the thread suggested was there’s this hidden backup directory in YOUR HD NAME/.DocumentRevisions-V100 which contained corrupt files and Time Machine got stuck when backing up those files. Try excluding this directory from: System Preferences > Time Machine Preferences > Options then exclude the YOUR HD NAME/.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory.

I excluded the directory and tried the “Back up now” process once again and VOILA! It worked 😀

I hope this helps you the way it helped me.