Time Machine error creating the backup folder on a spacious hard drive

I had the exact same symptoms with a Nov 2013 MacBook Pro (came with Mavericks already installed) using WD "My Passport" USB drives for Time Machine backups. The solution was to erase and reformat the external drives using Disk Utility as described in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5911 under the heading "Erase and reformat the storage device".

I had a spare drive so, in order not to lose existing backups, I did the following:

• erase spare drive as above
• use Disk Utility to "restore" the backup drive's volume to the erased drive (you have selected the volume correctly (rather than the drive) if the Disk Utility window shows "First Aid; Erase; RAID; restore" as options not "First Aid; Erase; Partition; RAID; restore")

After this I have no problem doing multiple backups in a row, putting the machine to sleep without ejecting the backup disk and then doing a further backup, and no problems with ejecting the disk.

Good luck!

I ejected the backup drive by putting in the trash. Then I shut the drive down and plugged it back in. Waited for it to appear. After that I re-selected the disk as my backup and it seems to work fine. I had this problem before and did the same procedure and it worked until I installed Mavericks.

Can't figure out why Apple won't fix this problem as it's persistent every time I do a system update.