Big Sur 11.5.2 ruining Time Machine HDs?

[vett93]

Soon after I updated the MacOS to 11.5.2 (from 11.5.1), I noticed USB connection problems. The first symptom was all my USB devices got ejected randomly. Then I used Disk Utility to perform First Aid on the System SSD and the two Time Machine backup drives. Shockingly, I found all three had problems!

So I erased all three drives, reinstalled MacOS, and checked all three drives. They were fine. So I started the Time Machine backup. Surprisingly, I found the TM HDs had problems again.

I then erased these two external HDs with security option 2. It randomly wrote data to these two HDs twice. I used First Aid to check and make sure they were okay. Then I started Time Machine backup. Within a day, Disk Utility First Aid found problems again.

So I unplugged these two external HDs and plugged in a HD that has been reliable over the years. I erased this HD and checked again to make sure it is fine. But as soon as I started using it as TM drive, it failed again!!

This is with my 2013 Mac Pro. The first two HDs are LaCie drives that I bought from Apple Store. The 3rd HD is Seagate HD. I have never experienced this much disk failure in a short time span. I am wondering if others have similar issues.

 

[posguy99]

Plugged in directly or through a hub?

 

[vett93]

Plugged in directly or through a hub?

Plugged in directly.

 

[jz0309]

I had a similar experience, not related to 11.5.2 but after upgrading my iMac from Mojave to 11.4 ... I have not found a true solution, other than not using TM anymore but CCC instead. I also do not leave the external HDD plugged in anymore, I run a backup and eject afterwards.
There is something fishy going on with APFS and external HDDs definitely when TM is involved.

2 external HDDs failing AFTER Big Sur upgrade?? or?

 

[vett93]

I think it is very strange as well. All 3 HDs suddenly all failed after I used TM. I contacted Apple Support last week and escalated to a Sr. Advisor. He was supposed to get back to me on Monday this week. But he did not. I left him a couple messages since Monday and let him know the situation. But I have not heard back from him at all. Very odd.

I reformatted the HD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and try TM again tonight. Will report back in a couple of days on how it goes....

 

[ItWasNotMe]

Mine haven't failed (yet) but whenever I start the machine I can hear the TM drive rumbling away for 20-30 minutes non-stop; not doing a lot for its life expectancy... This behaviour is only since Big Sur converted it to APFS.

 

[vett93]

In my case, Disk Utility would find errors on the TM drives within a day. The subsequent backup usually works though. But subsequent backup would fail from time to time. When it fails, it ejects all USB devices.

 

[razmanugget]

I was a long time user of SuperDuper until they had difficulty getting it to work with Big Sur... so I started using TM with an external WD drive hd.

My first TM backup completes fine, but when I try a second iterative backup, it fails saying I don't have enough room even though I have 100+ GB of free space on both my main SSD and the backup drive itself. I don't have 100+ GB of file changes, so I'm not sure why the 2nd backups are failing.

I figured it was user error on my part since I don't regularly use TM, but your post makes me wonder if it's a Big Sur TM issue I'm having. Looks like I'll be switching to CCC

 

[jz0309]

I think it is very strange as well. All 3 HDs suddenly all failed after I used TM. I contacted Apple Support last week and escalated to a Sr. Advisor. He was supposed to get back to me on Monday this week. But he did not. I left him a couple messages since Monday and let him know the situation. But I have not heard back from him at all. Very odd.

I reformatted the HD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and try TM again tonight. Will report back in a couple of days on how it goes....

TM will reformat it to APFS case-sensitive ... been there.

At this point, I'm using one of my external HDDs for CCC backup and not really run FirstAid anymore, and it seems fine.

 

[vett93]

TM will reformat it to APFS case-sensitive ... been there.

At this point, I'm using one of my external HDDs for CCC backup and not really run FirstAid anymore, and it seems fine.

You are right. TM has reformatted my HD to APFS case-sensitive. Disk Utility First Aid failed again. But the backups seem fine too.

Once in awhile, the backup would fail in the past. When that occurred, the Mac Pro ejected all USB devices.

Do you think Apple is aware of this issue?

 

[jz0309]

You are right. TM has reformatted my HD to APFS case-sensitive. Disk Utility First Aid failed again. But the backups seem fine too.

Once in awhile, the backup would fail in the past. When that occurred, the Mac Pro ejected all USB devices.

Do you think Apple is aware of this issue?

I would think they are aware but they are quiet about it, and even 11.5.2 hasn’t fixed it. I’m just not sure that we could talk to someone about this, senior advisors are good but they can’t really help in this case and they are the ones who have access to the engineers.
I found a workaround for me, which is using CCC and the 2 external HDDs are plugged in only for backup every few days.
I have also rund FirstAid from my MBA which is running Monterey and have seen the same strange behaviors, I might do some more testing with it

 

[vett93]

If the plan is to perform backup once every few days and not worry about FirstAid, I think TM can do it just fine as well. I think this problem was addressed in earlier 11.x releases. I upgraded to the 11.0 when it first came out. I did not have problems until recently. This 11.5.2 came out a few days after 11.5.1. So it looks like Apple engineers found some issues in 11.5.1, determined that these issues were bad, and did a patch 11.5.2 release quickly without going through the full QA cycle.

 

[jz0309]

If the plan is to perform backup once every few days and not worry about FirstAid, I think TM can do it just fine as well. I think this problem was addressed in earlier 11.x releases. I upgraded to the 11.0 when it first came out. I did not have problems until recently. This 11.5.2 came out a few days after 11.5.1. So it looks like Apple engineers found some issues in 11.5.1, determined that these issues were bad, and did a patch 11.5.2 release quickly without going through the full QA cycle.

well, I wouldn't call it "plan" as I had all intentions to continue using TM (actually a combination of CCC and TM), but, given the time I spent trying to get to the bottom of this with no success, I have the HDDs formatted with MacOS Extended and use CCC, and just use those every few days.
I also have 2 external SSDs connected at all times that I use for CCC backup daily, plus I have copies of my files in OneDrive, so I feel comfortable, for now.
Still, I still think something is going on with APFS on external (USB) HDDs, it just isn't a coincidence. But the (lack of) response to this thread and my own make me think this is not a widespread problem ...

Did you ever hear back from that senior advisor?

 

[vett93]

That senior advisor still has not gotten back to me. I have let me a few messages since Monday but no response so far.

I also have external SSD drives attached for storage. They have no problems either. I think the problem is APFS on spin-disk hard drives. APFS is designed for SSD from what I have read.

It does not make sense to me that only some computers have this problem. Maybe we should start a poll?

 

[keonar]

That senior advisor still has not gotten back to me. I have let me a few messages since Monday but no response so far.

I also have external SSD drives attached for storage. They have no problems either. I think the problem is APFS on spin-disk hard drives. APFS is designed for SSD from what I have read.

It does not make sense to me that only some computers have this problem. Maybe we should start a poll?

Has Apple gotten back to you? I have been issues throughout the years, pretty much ever since the usb-c Macs were introduced. I think you are right about APFS. This latest update did the exact same thing for me. I have 4 external drives connected to my Mac mini and 2 will eject randomly within a few hours of reboot; both are mechanical on Apfs. Of the remaining 2, 1 is SSD on APFS and another mechanical on HFS+ all operating fine (ironically those are through a usb-c hub).

Im migrating the data off the 2 APFS mechanicals and will reformat and test and update.

 

[NoBoMac]

A workaround for the First Aid and failure to unmount: boot into recovery and run Disk Utility from there.

Yeah, a pain (not for me: only run FA once a month), but will get FA to run successfully.

 

[vett93]

Has Apple gotten back to you? I have been issues throughout the years, pretty much ever since the usb-c Macs were introduced. I think you are right about APFS. This latest update did the exact same thing for me. I have 4 external drives connected to my Mac mini and 2 will eject randomly within a few hours of reboot; both are mechanical on Apfs. Of the remaining 2, 1 is SSD on APFS and another mechanical on HFS+ all operating fine (ironically those are through a usb-c hub).

Im migrating the data off the 2 APFS mechanicals and will reformat and test and update.

Apple has not gotten back to me.

 

[webg3]

I had a serious problem with this 11.5.2, the mac went crazy, the Finder no longer appeared, I kept restarting the Dock and I couldn't use it, the solution was to format the macOS again, but in version 11.4 and I haven't updated anymore, from then on I didn't have any more problems related to this behavior.

 

[keonar]

Has Apple gotten back to you? I have been issues throughout the years, pretty much ever since the usb-c Macs were introduced. I think you are right about APFS. This latest update did the exact same thing for me. I have 4 external drives connected to my Mac mini and 2 will eject randomly within a few hours of reboot; both are mechanical on Apfs. Of the remaining 2, 1 is SSD on APFS and another mechanical on HFS+ all operating fine (ironically those are through a usb-c hub).

Im migrating the data off the 2 APFS mechanicals and will reformat and test and update.

Just to update, the reformat of the mechanical drive to HFS+ solved my random ejection problem. If these file formats are so specific to drive state, they really should only allow APFS for solid state. I guess to be fair, this wasn't a direct issue was working with till 11.5.2 specifically .

 

[vett93]

Just to update, the reformat of the mechanical drive to HFS+ solved my random ejection problem. If these file formats are so specific to drive state, they really should only allow APFS for solid state. I guess to be fair, this wasn't a direct issue was working with till 11.5.2 specifically .

How did you reformat the drive to HFS+? I have tried to reformat my HDDs to HFS+. But somehow they got reformatted back to APFS after Time Machine finished its first backup. Others have had similar experience as well.

My random drive ejection problem is not as bad. It usually occurs once a week for some MacOS versions. However, not all versions had this problem. It seems to me that Apple knows how to do it right for some versions of MacOS. The 11.5.2 came very quickly after 11.5.1. Maybe they used a wrong branch of code?

I think it is a good idea to reformat HDDs to HFS+. If you know how to do that and it won't reverse back to APFS, please do tell.

 

[HDFan]

I think it is a good idea to reformat HDDs to HFS+. If you know how to do that and it won't reverse back to APFS, please do tell.

I've had no problems on 11.5.2 running 3 HFS+ and 1 APFS TM backups on external Thunderbolt devices.

 

[vett93]

I've had no problems on 11.5.2 running 3 HFS+ and 1 APFS TM backups on external Thunderbolt devices.

Were these 3 HFS+ HDDs formatted in 11.5.2 or earlier versions? From what I have read, if a HDD was formatted in an earlier MacOS version (don't know how early it has to be though), it would not get reformatted.

 

[richlove]

Similar problems here with Time Machine.
Time Machine backup failed on my 5TB external drive.
It erased all previous backups and only left the current backup.
But the backup would fail after that.
Tried repairing with Disk Utility and it said it could not be repaired.
Reformatted as APFS and tried backing up again, but it would never finish the backup. Just kept backing up forever.
And if I looked at the backup drive with the finder, there was nothing there.
However, if I did a get info on the drive, it said there was 2.4TB of data on it.
Purchased a new 5 TB drive and the symptoms are exactly the same.

I am wondering if this problem is caused by my installing Monterey beta on an external hard drive for testing.
I am thinking that it might have updated all of the drivers on my internal drive and all drives attached to my Mac.
I am running OS 11.6.1 on a M1 Mac Mini.

I will install the release of Monterey later today and see if that fixes it.

10/26/21 update...
Sure enough, installing the release version of Monterey fixed my Time Machine problems.