[Mary_Henry]

I have a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo mac mini with 4 GB of RAM running OS X 10.8.2. My Time Machine backups are housed on a 1 TB WD My Book Media that is divided into 2 equal volumes, one for working storage that is NOT backed up by the Time Machine and the other for the Time Machine backups of my Mac mini only. In the last few weeks, I have been getting random alert messages, when I'm working on something and NOT interacting with this drive, that say "WD My Book Media is in use and cannot be powered off. Try quitting applications and try again." Since I had not tried to power it off, I went on working and ignored it the first time. Then, at the appointed backup time - I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule my backups for once a day - the Time Machine application says "Time Machine Backup delayed", and an overlay alert says "Time Machine Error - The backup disk is unavailable" and I find that the Time Machine volume on the WD My Book has, indeed, unmounted, but the other volume is still available. I can both read and write to it.

I have rebooted, verified both hard drives (the Mac and the WD My Book) - Disk Utility says they both appear normal. So, I repaired permissions everywhere Disk Utility shows as available for repair (more than once) and then I can get Time Machine to do a "Backup now", but the next day we start going through it again. Immediately after I get the alert, I can still see the backup volume and even get a listing of its contents but I can't get it to do a Backup Now at that point and it will unmount as soon as I go on with something else. I haven't been able to find anything online that even sounds like this. Something is going sour, but what? and what can I do about it before I lose my backups?

Thanks for any help.

[tom90]

very stupid solution.... have you tried a different usb connection?

[Mary_Henry]

tom90, on 30 January 2013 - 12:47 AM, said:

very stupid solution.... have you tried a different usb connection?

A stupid reply: which end do you mean or did you mean the cable itself? Duh! I could try all three. I'll let you know.

Wait. How could the USB connection to the drive affect only one volume? I'll try it anyway since I've no other ideas.

Thanks.

[Martian]

I wonder if partitioning a USB drive doesn't add to the complexity of putting the single device to sleep. TM can be finicky so maybe burdening it with added complexities isn't a good idea. Why not try a second external drive for your other data and run TM separately on its own dedicated, unpartitioned external drive? An added benefit would be to allow TM to back up the data on the other external drive safely onto its dedicated separate device.

[Mary_Henry]

Well, had I not started this so late last night, or tried to answer the first reply too early this morning, I might have had a few other ideas myself.

First I must apologize for having not stated that the drive in question, the WD My Book Media, is a flex drive and is currently configured as a Firewire drive. But, before I remembered this, I dismounted and unhooked all my external drives and checked the cables and linkages (got the shelf dusted too!). Then looked up the WD on its website and found that there is a firmware update. However, the site insists that I, naturally, back up the drive before applying the update. That will take some time and effort, so I guess I will have to do the homework and then see if there is still a problem. To its credit the drive has performed faithfully with that two volume setup for about 3 years.

I will report when I know more. Thanks to everyone who bothered to read this and especially to those of you who responded.

Mary

[smax013]

Mary_Henry, on 28 January 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

I have a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo mac mini with 4 GB of RAM running OS X 10.8.2. My Time Machine backups are housed on a 1 TB WD My Book Media that is divided into 2 equal volumes, one for working storage that is NOT backed up by the Time Machine and the other for the Time Machine backups of my Mac mini only. In the last few weeks, I have been getting random alert messages, when I'm working on something and NOT interacting with this drive, that say "WD My Book Media is in use and cannot be powered off. Try quitting applications and try again." Since I had not tried to power it off, I went on working and ignored it the first time. Then, at the appointed backup time - I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule my backups for once a day - the Time Machine application says "Time Machine Backup delayed", and an overlay alert says "Time Machine Error - The backup disk is unavailable" and I find that the Time Machine volume on the WD My Book has, indeed, unmounted, but the other volume is still available. I can both read and write to it.

I have rebooted, verified both hard drives (the Mac and the WD My Book) - Disk Utility says they both appear normal. So, I repaired permissions everywhere Disk Utility shows as available for repair (more than once) and then I can get Time Machine to do a "Backup now", but the next day we start going through it again. Immediately after I get the alert, I can still see the backup volume and even get a listing of its contents but I can't get it to do a Backup Now at that point and it will unmount as soon as I go on with something else. I haven't been able to find anything online that even sounds like this. Something is going sour, but what? and what can I do about it before I lose my backups?

Thanks for any help.

This thread might be similar in nature: http://forums.macwor...ted-frequently/

If so, you can see if there is anything there that might help.

Since you are using TimeMachineEditor, you can also use it to look at the Time Machine logs to see if there is anything there that you can spot. There is a "Show Time Machine Logs" under the Window menu in TimeMachineEditor.

It seems from your original post that it was working fine and that the problem started out of the blue a few weeks ago. Is this true? If so, can you think of anything that changed around that time (new software, updates, new hardware, etc)?

The firmware update for the drive should not hurt. You definitely want to backup the drive even though it likely won't "hurt" the drive. It is always a good idea to backup a drive when you are going to do ANY major operations on that drive (i.e. firmware updates or partitioning), even if that operation in theory is "non-destructive".

As to the suggestion of trying a different USB connection is not a totally crazy idea. I think the suggestion meant to try a different USB port on the computer (the poster assumed a USB drive). This is not a bad idea at times as USB ports can occasionally go flaky. It likely will not help, but it is still a good idea to "rule that out", so to speak.

[Mary_Henry]

smax013, on 31 January 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Mary_Henry, on 28 January 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

I have a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo mac mini with 4 GB of RAM running OS X 10.8.2. My Time Machine backups are housed on a 1 TB WD My Book Media that is divided into 2 equal volumes, one for working storage that is NOT backed up by the Time Machine and the other for the Time Machine backups of my Mac mini only. In the last few weeks, I have been getting random alert messages, when I'm working on something and NOT interacting with this drive, that say "WD My Book Media is in use and cannot be powered off. Try quitting applications and try again." Since I had not tried to power it off, I went on working and ignored it the first time. Then, at the appointed backup time - I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule my backups for once a day - the Time Machine application says "Time Machine Backup delayed", and an overlay alert says "Time Machine Error - The backup disk is unavailable" and I find that the Time Machine volume on the WD My Book has, indeed, unmounted, but the other volume is still available. I can both read and write to it.

I have rebooted, verified both hard drives (the Mac and the WD My Book) - Disk Utility says they both appear normal. So, I repaired permissions everywhere Disk Utility shows as available for repair (more than once) and then I can get Time Machine to do a "Backup now", but the next day we start going through it again. Immediately after I get the alert, I can still see the backup volume and even get a listing of its contents but I can't get it to do a Backup Now at that point and it will unmount as soon as I go on with something else. I haven't been able to find anything online that even sounds like this. Something is going sour, but what? and what can I do about it before I lose my backups?

Thanks for any help.

This thread might be similar in nature: http://forums.macwor...ted-frequently/

If so, you can see if there is anything there that might help.

Since you are using TimeMachineEditor, you can also use it to look at the Time Machine logs to see if there is anything there that you can spot. There is a "Show Time Machine Logs" under the Window menu in TimeMachineEditor.

It seems from your original post that it was working fine and that the problem started out of the blue a few weeks ago. Is this true? If so, can you think of anything that changed around that time (new software, updates, new hardware, etc)?

The firmware update for the drive should not hurt. You definitely want to backup the drive even though it likely won't "hurt" the drive. It is always a good idea to backup a drive when you are going to do ANY major operations on that drive (i.e. firmware updates or partitioning), even if that operation in theory is "non-destructive".

As to the suggestion of trying a different USB connection is not a totally crazy idea. I think the suggestion meant to try a different USB port on the computer (the poster assumed a USB drive). This is not a bad idea at times as USB ports can occasionally go flaky. It likely will not help, but it is still a good idea to "rule that out", so to speak.

[Mary_Henry]

Mary_Henry, on 31 January 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

smax013, on 31 January 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Mary_Henry, on 28 January 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

I have a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo mac mini with 4 GB of RAM running OS X 10.8.2. My Time Machine backups are housed on a 1 TB WD My Book Media that is divided into 2 equal volumes, one for working storage that is NOT backed up by the Time Machine and the other for the Time Machine backups of my Mac mini only. In the last few weeks, I have been getting random alert messages, when I'm working on something and NOT interacting with this drive, that say "WD My Book Media is in use and cannot be powered off. Try quitting applications and try again." Since I had not tried to power it off, I went on working and ignored it the first time. Then, at the appointed backup time - I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule my backups for once a day - the Time Machine application says "Time Machine Backup delayed", and an overlay alert says "Time Machine Error - The backup disk is unavailable" and I find that the Time Machine volume on the WD My Book has, indeed, unmounted, but the other volume is still available. I can both read and write to it.

I have rebooted, verified both hard drives (the Mac and the WD My Book) - Disk Utility says they both appear normal. So, I repaired permissions everywhere Disk Utility shows as available for repair (more than once) and then I can get Time Machine to do a "Backup now", but the next day we start going through it again. Immediately after I get the alert, I can still see the backup volume and even get a listing of its contents but I can't get it to do a Backup Now at that point and it will unmount as soon as I go on with something else. I haven't been able to find anything online that even sounds like this. Something is going sour, but what? and what can I do about it before I lose my backups?

Thanks for any help.

This thread might be similar in nature: http://forums.macwor...ted-frequently/

If so, you can see if there is anything there that might help.

Since you are using TimeMachineEditor, you can also use it to look at the Time Machine logs to see if there is anything there that you can spot. There is a "Show Time Machine Logs" under the Window menu in TimeMachineEditor.

It seems from your original post that it was working fine and that the problem started out of the blue a few weeks ago. Is this true? If so, can you think of anything that changed around that time (new software, updates, new hardware, etc)?

The firmware update for the drive should not hurt. You definitely want to backup the drive even though it likely won't "hurt" the drive. It is always a good idea to backup a drive when you are going to do ANY major operations on that drive (i.e. firmware updates or partitioning), even if that operation in theory is "non-destructive".

As to the suggestion of trying a different USB connection is not a totally crazy idea. I think the suggestion meant to try a different USB port on the computer (the poster assumed a USB drive). This is not a bad idea at times as USB ports can occasionally go flaky. It likely will not help, but it is still a good idea to "rule that out", so to speak.

That thread talks about a drive that dismounts. My problem is a VOLUME on a drive that dismounts while the rest is still mounted and can be actively written to.

Here's where we are at this moment:

I need to say again that I discovered that the drive in question is a flex drive connected by firewire and daisy-chained with another firewire drive as there is only one firewire port on my MacMini. My other two externals are USB. The second firewire drive is behaving flawlessly and one volume of the WD My Book is available to use even when the back up volume is unmounted. I did find, when I unmounted all the drives to check the cables and connections, that the working volume of the WD My Book had to be forced to unmount for the shutdown. After that check, everything was reconnected and the system rebooted. Both volumes of the My Book came online and I did a Back Up Now at about 9 a.m. However, by the time the usual 6 p.m. scheduled back up was due, the problem had reoccurred and the back up was again unavailable.

I looked at the TimeMachineEditor logs. I'm not great at reading log files, but the text is all exactly the same before each backup, all the way to "Starting automatic back up," UNTIL time for the next back up after the dismount occurs and then the next log entry simply says: Back up failed with error: 19. I believe it simply means that the back up volume was not available since it had unmounted, but I emailed the support team for TimeMachineEditor to see if that was correct.

I am currently making a Carbon Copy Cloner bootable back up on another drive and then will do the firmware upgrade for the My Book and try again.

I'll let everyone know what happens then.

Thanks for all your help.

Mary