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My new hard drive died the last week and had to put my old drive backup into my Mac Mini, which is running Snow Leopard. I was then able to restore my latest Time Machine backup.

When I upgraded a few months ago I used Carbon Copy and I had permission problems.

So I have my old drive in my system at the moment, but when I try to do a Time Machine backup, it's VERY slow. It's using the same settings / locations as before. I download TM Buddy, which says...

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Mac Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Waiting for index to be ready (100)
Waiting for index to be ready (100)
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 109.39 GB requested 
      (including padding), 121.15 GB available

I'm trying to do a backup so I can put in another new drive, so I can do a Time Machine restore, like I did last week.

What can I do to fix this problem?

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The problem is that your Mac's disk UUID doesn't match the one stored on the TM volume. You are probably creating a new backup instead of incrementally updating the old one. The solution would involve changing the UUID on the TM volume. I have to look if I can gather some information, should be solvable. – slhck♦ Oct 4 '11 at 18:43
That makes sense, look forward to your solution. I did try this web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html which deletes com.apple.TimeMachine.plist which hasn't helped. – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 18:49
It also says Backing up 32kb of 92.25GB after about 20 minutes :( – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 19:06
And was this indeed full restore to the old disk, hence completely wiping out the old contents of that old disk? (In other words: just like if it were a totally different disk?) – Arjan Oct 4 '11 at 19:39
Yes it was a full restore using the option from the setup program from my grey dvd. – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 19:45
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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

To fix this: wait.

  • After performing a full restore, Time Machine will always create a full backup, by design. Without knowing why Apple thinks this is required, I'd favor a reliable backup over time and disk space. See also Apple's Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine performs full backup after a full restore.

  • In all other cases: Time Machine has detected that it cannot tell what's on your backup, and what's not, and needs to compare both. You're probably also seeing Node requires deep traversal.

This is not related to the ID of the disk (the hardware) itself. TM keeps the FSEvents ID it used for the last backup in the "extended attribute" com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeLastFSEventID on the disk. Normally, all it takes to determine what has changed is to compare that value to the ID known by OS X. However, if for some reason the OS X FSEvents database can no longer be trusted, it creates a new one, which changes its unique UUID. TM checks to see if the FSEvents database can be used for a specific backup disk by comparing that unique UUID to the UUID that is stored with the backup, in com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeFSEventStoreUUID. So after a new FSEvents database is created, these UUIDs no longer match and TM needs to compare the harddisk with the backup, or might need to create a full backup.

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Yes it does also say 'Node requires deep traversal'. Since my comment above, 7 minutes ago, it now says 35kb of 92.25GB, at this rate I'll be a year older by the time it finishes ? – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 19:15
In fact I started the backup this afternoon and after an hour it had done 52kb. Surely there must be something I can do, or is it lying to me? – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 19:18
TM only knows if something changed for each directory. That 92.25GB might be the total size of all changed directories, but the files that have actually changed might be smaller in total. So maybe the 35kb is not really 35kb of 92.25GB. Don't know. – Arjan Oct 4 '11 at 19:21
Are you sure it's not the issue in my answer (currently deleted below)? Jules changed their disk, therefore the UUIDs won't match. – slhck♦ Oct 4 '11 at 19:26
I've added the full text from TM Buddy to my question – Jules Oct 4 '11 at 19:31
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up vote 1 down vote

I found that the UUID issue is resolved and the backup continues after many messages like this:

3/15/12 1:49:35.010 PM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

BUT, only IF there is enough space on the backup drive. My drive was very full, and this 'waiting for index' lasted forever until I reclaimed some space on the drive.

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