How to get Time Machine to work in High Sierra?

[kat.hayes]

I have a 4TB bare bones drive connected to a docking station that I always used with my MBP as a Time Machine backup. I just upgraded to High Sierra, wiped the drive and am trying to set it up as a Time Machine backup. The drive is currently formatted as a SATA external physical volume - Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I'd prefer doing it as an Encrypted drive, though when I tried that I got an error, and read there were some issues with encrypted Time Machine backups and High Sierra.

Currently, as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) it will not backup. It gives me a message that it can't complete the back up because FileVault was encrypting or decrypting a disk. I have FileVault for my MBP turned on.

1. This was never an issue with Sierra. What do I need to do to use Time Machine in my situation?
2. How can I reformat my external drive as an encrypted drive, so I can use it with Time Machine? What format should I use?

Thanks!

 

[treekram]

I don't know what happened. But I would just start again - try to erase your "disk" as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)". If it fails, in Disk Utility, on the menu that appears at the top of the screen, select "View" and then "Show All Devices" and then try selecting the Disk (whatever name you selected for the "disk" in the default Disk Utility view is actually the volume, the Disk will appear above it, with some less user-friendly name). Try erasing that. If it doesn't work, try again. I don't know why, but since Sierra, erase operations sometimes fail only to work on a subsequent try.

The main thing is to get the disk successfully encrypted when it's empty before doing your first Time Machine backup. Once the disk is erased, you should be able to use it as a Time Machine disk. If a prompt doesn't appear asking if you want to use the disk as a Time Machine backup disk, go into the System Preferences app, click on the Time Machine icon. See if your disk is there already. If not, there should be an item towards the top right that says "Add or Remove Backup Disk". Click on that to add it.

There may be other issues you're having but I've gone through this process with a couple of my computers and I've done what I described above and it works. So if doesn't for you, there's probably some other issue.

 

[kat.hayes]

I reformatted the drive and tried again and I keep getting a message in Time Machine that Time Machine is preparing the backup and 4TB of 4TB available, encrypted. When I click on the TM icon up above it indicates it preparing the backup. Nothing ever happens...

 

[treekram]

If you were able to successfully erase (format) the drive as Journaled, Encrypted, and you don't get that message before of "can't complete the back up because FileVault was encrypting or decrypting a disk", then you just need to wait. It does take time, depending on how many files you have to backup. When I did an initial backup of 90GB or so (did this on two separate backup disks), I started it, walked away and about an hour later, it was done. Obviously, if you have more files or if you have a lot of smaller files, it will take longer.

 

[CTHarrryH]

When you say nothing happens- how long have you waited. I have found preparing with a new backup disk takes a long, long time. Above says waited about 1 hour but it could take longer to do that initial prepare