Hidden File to fix Time Machine start errors

(Update: so while this worked for a couple of days, it has now stopped working. Sigh) so sorry Internets, YMMV on this one!)

So I’ve had a Time Machine backup on my computer at home for a couple years. It’s never really worked ever since I got a dual-hard drive box setup with RAID. It would backup once and then give errors even though I could run it manually – once per reboot – if I rebooted and hit “Backup Now”. I’ve never had this problem on other systems with Time Machine, only this one. I just assumed it had something to do with the RAID in the hard drive and was content to initiate it manually.

Today I noticed in the logs (because I’m a big enough geek to look at the logs sometimes … “tail -fn 500 /var/log/system.log” can be fun to watch in the Terminal on rainy days) that there was a single error being generated from the hidden folder .fseventsd on the backup volume while the backup was happening.

Given that it was hidden, which generally means it is automatically regenerated when it is deleted without too much effect… I deleted it.

Lo-and-behold now it appears Time Machine is automatically starting itself up as it should without errors.

To lay it out more specifically:

Problem: After initial successful backup after a reboot Time Machine gives error when starting automatic backup. Workaround is to Turn Off Time Machine and initiate “Backup Now” manually after rebooting.

Operating System: MacOS X 10.6.8

Solution (Perhaps): In the Terminal go to your Backup Volume:

cd /Volumes/MyBackupVolume

List all of the files in the directory:

ls -la

You should see:
.fseventsd

Delete it. It’s actually a folder so you’ll need to apply it recursively:

rm -rf .fseventsd

Now reboot and turn on Time Machine and see what happens. It worked for me. Hope it works for you.

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