Don’t bother getting a time capsule. It does the same thing. I bought a WD MBL to try and avoid the issue when actually I should have realised it’s Lion that’s the problem.
Just to pipe in and share that I’ve experienced this problem as well. Today I got the error message for the 3rd time. I’m on a brand new macbook air with all software updated, and am using a my book live 2TB drive. It takes a couple of days to finish the backup over wifi, and then I get the error and have to start all over again. Looking forward to a solution to this.
I have 2 macs imac and laptop that use this useless MBL to backup as it was one of theh sales features. I am having to redo backsups from scratch every 2 weeks. Because the MBL is so slow and i’m only getting a history of 2 weeks before i have to wipe it it would be easier to buy a standard backup disk and just copy stuff to it.
Also how can you release such bug ridden firmware updates that clearly haven’t been tested. Shame on you WD
Hi,
To avoid making a brand new backup, the solution is here :
Re: Issues with Time Machine - new backup must be created
I had this issues 3 times on one MBP and it works every times.
Good luck
Hi KC5MZR
Yes, I have Snow Leopard and I am attempting a backup of 420GB with Time Machine, however, I am now at 620GB and the backing up is still continuing. This is to my NAS via a router.
I have backed up to a WD MBL connected to a USB port on my MBP using TM with no problem at all. Introduce a LAN and things have gone wrong.
I have contacted WD Support and they recommended a hard reset of the WD MBL and it made no difference at all. I deleted the backup and started a fresh backup with exactly the same problem … the backing up just keeps on going well after it should have completed.
hello,
i have a WD MBL for my backup with an Imac and OS X 10.7
for the 10 last mounth i tested lots of solutions trying to resolve the same problem : need to refresh the first backup with time machine after 2 days.
and now, since i updated OS x in 10.7.4, the problem seems to be fixed… …i hope 
it’s just the first week, but the MBL backup very regularely : its a real pleasur.
every one else ?
Hi gmhwd18
I have yet to attempt a TM backup using my new custom i7 MBP which is running Lion but I will do so after I have succeeded in backing up my older MBP which uses Snow Leopard and cannot be upgraded to Lion.
I, too, have had trouble making an initial backup to my WD 6TB NAS but I have been chasing the problem for only about 3 weeks, not 10 months. I may yet succeed in the next few hours following a factory restore & rebuild recommended by WD Support. I think something went wrong with the original RAID 0 to RAID 1 conversion and I have to start over from the beginning.
I am encouraged by your news that the latest version of Lion works OK with your WD MBL. I am thinking about buying a WD 3TB MBL as a backup for my Safepoints.
Hi folks,
After more than 15 issues ‘new backup must be created’, I decided to use another backup solution instead of Time Machine. I have test Tri-Backup for a month now, and it’s working really great, I’m gonna buy it.
So, it seems to be an interresting option for people like me who are not very confident in Time Machine’s backup and who are bored about this issue.
The backup is a little bit longer, but there are a lot (maybe too much !) options.
The interface is less funny but the tool is efficient and reliable.
Sure wish I had seen all of this before I bought this MBL! I am using MBL and a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard. I did the first backup while connected by ethernet and it went fine. Waited a couple of weeks until I saw it was running smoothly and backing up as it should and then I deleted a lot of things off my computer that were bogging it down. Since I had them all in my backup I wasn’t worried, I could retrieve them from Time Machine if I needed them. Well now I’ve got the “after verification need to do a new backup blah blah blah” thing. So does that mean that all of my data/photos/documents that I thought were safely stored are now gone forever? The MBL won’t even connect to my backup through ethernet now.
I am definitely panicking and have been for days. I am trying to use what you’ve said here but I can’t even get past step 2. I’m not sure how to get to the time machine folder on the MBL. That’s the problem, it won’t show it to me. I can see it if I’m in Dashboard on the MBL but on finder I have two things: MyBookLive which if I click I get the public folder and MyBookLive-backup which if I click it says connection failed. There is a button that says “connect as” but when I click it I get nothing. So I tried just putting the AFP://ip address in a finder search window and it finds nothing. Is the ip address for MBL the same as for my network? I just went to system preferences and clicked on network and it showed me the ip addresss. I realize this thread is old and I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about, mainly because I have no idea what I’m talking about. But there is information in that Time Machine Backup that I desperately need to restore. The only option Time Machine gives me is to do a new backup which of course will mean that’s all gone. Is there anything I can do to get that backup back whether it’s stable or not? You have no idea how grateful I would be for the help!!
Im trying to back up my imac which is 320GB over wifi for the first time. Should I expect it to take at least 24hrs?
PaulaE wrote:
I am definitely panicking and have been for days. I am trying to use what you’ve said here but I can’t even get past step 2. I’m not sure how to get to the time machine folder on the MBL. That’s the problem, it won’t show it to me. I can see it if I’m in Dashboard on the MBL but on finder I have two things: MyBookLive which if I click I get the public folder and MyBookLive-backup which if I click it says connection failed. There is a button that says “connect as” but when I click it I get nothing. So I tried just putting the AFP://ip address in a finder search window and it finds nothing. Is the ip address for MBL the same as for my network? I just went to system preferences and clicked on network and it showed me the ip addresss. I realize this thread is old and I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about, mainly because I have no idea what I’m talking about. But there is information in that Time Machine Backup that I desperately need to restore. The only option Time Machine gives me is to do a new backup which of course will mean that’s all gone. Is there anything I can do to get that backup back whether it’s stable or not? You have no idea how grateful I would be for the help!!
Have you tried contacting our Support team with this for help?
aboyes wrote:
Im trying to back up my imac which is 320GB over wifi for the first time. Should I expect it to take at least 24hrs?
Yes, it can easily take that long depending on how fast your network is. You may want to get a long ethernet cable and directly connect to your imac, if it has that capability.
I don’t want to cry victory yet, but I’ve been on Mountain Lion for two days now and my back ups seem to be working… Will keep you all posted.
PaulaE wrote:
…Waited a couple of weeks until I saw it was running smoothly and backing up as it should and then I deleted a lot of things off my computer that were bogging it down. Since I had them all in my backup I wasn’t worried…
PaulaE, What the heck were you thinking?
Sorry, you’re not alone in this… many people actually think this, but it’s absolutely wrong… so while it’s way to late for you I wanted to make a point of it in this thread about TM.
Having copies of your data on Time Machine is _NOT_ a safe way to archive them for later use. That’s not how TM works, that’s not how TM is supposed to work, that’s not what TM is for… DON’T DO IT, you will get burned. Time Machine is for making a backup copy, not an archive.> Please realizie that:
#1 Time Machine will automatically delete old backup files when it starts running out of space, starting with the oldest files that aren’t currently on your computer. It doesn’t try to keep a copy of everything around for you, it tries to keep a version of what’s currently on your hard drive.
#2 While Time Machine makes having a backup copy of your data easy, TM or the the HDD it’s using can fail. If you delete your local copy of data you backed up to TM, you no longer have a backup and you’re back to relying on a single point of failure which you should never ever do…
If you want to remove files from your internal hard drive and want to have access to them later than you need to move them to an external hard drive AND you need to backup that external hard drive to somwhere else. There are lots of options (RAID 1 mirroring, or two externals, DVDs, whatever). You can even move them to an external HDD & then tell Time Machine to backup that external along with your internal. Note, you can NOT partition one phyiscal external drive and have Time Machine and your archive be on the same drive, since if that single physical drive failed you’d lose both.
Time Macine is a backup system… NOT an archive system.
Hi All
I, too, have had terrible problems backing up with Time Machine. I have an early 2006 MBP (Snow Leopard) and a mid-2010 custom i7 MBP (Snow Leopard then Lion then Mountain Lion) and after 6 months I have still not made the initial backup on the 2006 MBP. I mention my experiences in another thread within this Forum. It was not until I installed Mountain Lion on the i7 that TM backups became possible on this Mac. I am no further forward on my early 2006 MBP. Very frustrating. However, drag-copying of files between either MBP and NAS works fast and reliably. I have discovered 2GBpm is easily achievable.
I have not seen the warning messages mentioned above.
The reason for recommending a wired connection for the initial backup is usually the size od the initial backup. I had 426GB to backup and with wi-fi running at no better than 5MBps it took over a week to tranfer 426GB and then I found out the backup was corrupt. By using a wired connection I was seeing speeds approaching 50MBps which makes a huge difference. Subsequent incremental backups are usually much smaller and you can safely revert to wi-fi to backup.
WD Support staff state that extensive testing of their NAS products have not revealed any problems yet a great many owners of these products report backing up problems. I have used Time Machine successfully for many years with directly connected HDDs (USB, Firewire) without any problems yet the WD Support staff imply there maybe a problem with TM. I would have discounted this opinion except that TM and Mountain Lion seems to work OK. Has Apple changed TM for Mountain Lion to permit its use with NAS devices other than Time Capsule? If true, maybe Apple should issue a TM update for their previous versions of their o/s.
I believe there is an issue but it is for WD and Apple to resolve. In the meantime the adverse commentary towards the WD product is bound to harm sales and WD’s credibility.
I am leaning more toward the Lion (Mountain) OS being the culprit. I haven’t had any issues whatsoever with the Leopard line from Apple, in my previous TM solution via a MyBookWorld, I had close to a year’s worth of backups without a hiccup. _ Then I switched to Lion. _
_ _
Now every two weeks to a month, I had this little message “Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on “WD_Backup”. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” So I purchased the newer MyBookLive thinking it was just old hardware… unfortunately I get the same message…“Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on “MyBookLive”. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” After much deleting and recreating sparsebundles, I am resigning to the fact that there is a glitch between the MBL and the Lionized Mac causing corruption in the updating of Time Machine over the network.
I hope this is resolved soon. I love the 43Mb/s upload, but it’s still a pain to have to recreate backups at least once a month.
My problems with TM are chronicled in another thread.
Since posting my previous comment I have resolved my issues and the MBLD NAS is now working correctly.
Really big backups ought to be performed using a cable connection. Smaller backups can be undertaken with wireless.
I’ll look for the thread. Thanks. Unfortuneately, my pc is wired only… but it may help my wife who is experiencing the same problem over wireless.
The issue is still the same with Mountain Lion.
The only solution is to use a more reliable solution than Time Machine.
I use Tri-Backup with my 4 Macs (3 on Mountain Lion and one on Snow Leopard) for months and I never had any issue.
