Time Machine issue

M

mfogler

Registered
iMac 2.66 GHz, 640GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM.

I have a Western Digital external hard drive used by Time Machine. Worked perfectly for a few months. Now every day, I get a message that a backup failed because the disk appears to be read only. I launch Disk Utility, and run Verify Disk. It finds nothing wrong. I ask Time Machine to back up again, and it does and continues hourly for the rest of the day. The next day, the same thing happens all over again with the read only problem.

Can anyone help?

thanks.
 
Right click or control+click on the time machine volume and there should be a check box around sharing and permissions and check ignore permissions on selected volume.
 
Thanks for the reply, but I don't see what you are talking about. When I right click on the volume I get things like burn, eject, get info, duplicate etc. If I go to get info there is a place on there about sharing and permissions. At that place it says that my user account has read and write privileges. Would appreciate further response here. Thanks.
 
Also, this is what the built-in OS help says:

To ignore the ownership of the files on a disk:

Select the disk and choose File > Get Info.

Click the disclosure triangle next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section.

Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.

This option doesn’t make all files accessible. If a file’s permissions don’t allow its owner to read from or write to it, the file remains inaccessible.

AND NOTE THIS: Do not select this option for a disk you plan to use to back up files, because user and group information might be lost.
 
mfogler said:
Thanks for the reply, but I don't see what you are talking about. When I right click on the volume I get things like burn, eject, get info, duplicate etc. If I go to get info there is a place on there about sharing and permissions. At that place it says that my user account has read and write privileges. Would appreciate further response here. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I left out select get info in the shortcut menu. Or else click on the time machine volume and do a command+i.
 
Okay, but... Mac OS help says not to do this for a disk used for backups, which this is. And, the option of ignore ownership on this volume isn't even available on the Time Machine disk anyway. So... other ideas?
 
What are the permissions on the time machine volume? Get info to find out. If set to read only for your user, change it to read and write.
 
You should probably do some home directory maintenance to make sure its not a issue with that by taking the recommendations offered by DeltaMac and I in this thread. Do DeltaMacs suggestion first and do mine next.
 
I appreciate your time, but I don't get it. What does this have to do with my home directory? This is a Time Machine disk doing backups on the entire internal hard drive. It's the EXTERNAL hard drive which suddenly (somehow?) changes itself to read only. When Disk Utility does a verify if finds nothing wrong, and then the external hard drive is read and write.
 
mfogler said:
I appreciate your time, but I don't get it. What does this have to do with my home directory? This is a Time Machine disk doing backups on the entire internal hard drive. It's the EXTERNAL hard drive which suddenly (somehow?) changes itself to read only. When Disk Utility does a verify if finds nothing wrong, and then the external hard drive is read and write.
Click to expand...

It may have everything to do with the home directory in regards to POSIX permissions and ACLs that are set but unseen through the GUI with the user directory. If you want to verify if its a user directory issue you should be able to create another user and try to reduplicate the issue from that account and theoretically everything should work fine. So get back to us when you want to proceed to a solution.
 
okay, well -- there already is another user on this machine. There's my user account (which is an administrative account) and my wife's user account (which is a standard account). Both of these have been there since day one of using the external drive with Time Machine. And it worked perfectly up until several days ago. So... ?
 
mfogler said:
okay, well -- there already is another user on this machine. There's my user account (which is an administrative account) and my wife's user account (which is a standard account). Both of these have been there since day one of using the external drive with Time Machine. And it worked perfectly up until several days ago. So... ?
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter that there are other user accounts on the machine. The issue is happening in your user account. Did you try to reduplicate the issue while logged into the other user account? How about creating another admin account and trying to reduplicate it? We can sit here and you can question me and not take any advice and wait for the next person to maybe come along and help you out. Everything I've mentioned so far are valid things to try which are not complicated and will not make things any worse and are considered good maintenance procedure. I'll just pass on this thread and go back to paying customers tomorrow...
 
It's happening in both user accounts, not just mine. Doesn't make any sense that adding a third user account would change anything. When I've gotten the message that the disk appears to be read only, it's been there on both user accounts. When it works as it should, that's also been on both user accounts.
 
FYI -- the fix for this problem was to reformat the drive. It was in the format of Mac OS case sensitive extended journaled. I reformatted it to Mac OS extended journaled. Today the computer booted up and the drive was read and write. All fine.
 
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