I have two different problems now. First, the Time Capsule at work is “preparing”:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1606417&tstart=0 forever. No one really has a resolution to this. I’ve run it for 24 hours and it never stops preparing. I really don’t want to lose my backups, but not sure what to do. Maybe take it home over the weekend forever.

Some folks recommend limiting the files you backup (the point is a whole disk recovery!) or turning off Spotlight. I don’t know…

You can check the “system log”:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7554509 by going to:

# /Applications/Utilities/Console which is a confusing application.
# On the left side, there are many Log files and many different entries. Click on _All Messages_
# You want to search for the backup process called _backupd_ by going to the search box at the upper right and typing _backupd_ and pressing enter

Here is an example of a good backup log:

un 6 18:31:01 livy fseventsd41: log dir: /Volumes/Backup of livy/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 3F939294-8F0D-493B-956B-FFB2CC5B5334

Jun 6 18:31:01 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/livy_001b632ffd76.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of livy

Jun 6 18:31:01 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of livy/Backups.backupdb

Jun 6 18:31:01 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.

Jun 6 18:31:01 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Event store UUIDs don’t match for volume: Macintosh HD

Jun 6 18:31:03 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Backup content size: 88.8 GB excluded items size: 48.0 GB for volume Macintosh HD

Jun 6 18:31:03 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: No pre-backup thinning needed: 48.97 GB requested (including padding), 879.05 GB available

Jun 6 18:31:03 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)

Jun 6 18:31:18 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Waiting for index to be ready (909 > 0)

Jun 6 20:55:47 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Copied 226484 files (34.7 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Jun 6 20:55:53 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: No pre-backup thinning needed: 543.2 MB requested (including padding), 841.58 GB available

Jun 6 20:56:27 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Copied 366 files (4.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Jun 6 20:56:30 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Starting post-backup thinning

Jun 6 20:56:30 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Jun 6 20:56:30 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Backup completed successfully.

Jun 6 20:56:36 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Ejected Time Machine disk image.

Jun 6 20:56:41 livy kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_unmount: /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk, flags 0, pid 511

Jun 6 20:56:41 livy /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd125: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

The other issue which just happened is that my Time Capsule seems to hang. The light stays green but it goes offline line like it is crashed. No internet and it disappears as a hard disk. Seems like a hard crash. Hard diagnose but I was doing a big spotlight search of it, so it looks like some bug in the filesystem is hard crashing it.

The “folklore”:http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6886156 is you need to fix permissions and repair the disk before you do the backup and use a wired Ethernet connection as that seems faster.

I’m Rich & Co.

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