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Initial Time Machine Backup Failures Increasingly Being Reported by Mac Users

TM was great when it came out. But the writing’s been on the wall for some years now. I abandoned Time Machine when it became clear that Apple had no intention of allowing TM to back up iCloud contents.

Sorry guys, the ship has sailed on this one. Time Machine is a historical artefact now. I wish it wasn’t but that’s what it is.

I have a 2 TB iCloud online backup now. It works well for what it is. My greatest annoyance is I also want a full local backup and that’s not easy to do with mobile devices (laptops, iPhones etc).
 
I thought it was just me.

I had a backup of my MacBook Pro Intel 2020 on Monterey and tried to reuse it for my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. It kept either not accepting my password, accepting it but doing nothing or spending time looking for the back up.

So I deleted the backup and started from scratch and got the same issue as this article.

Eventually after a lot of retries it backed up and it’s been ok since.
 
My wife's M1 iMac simply forgets the TM disk about once every month. I have to re-associate the disk then backups run okay after that, but now I must take a closer look at the data.
 
There are/were issues with Time Machine and drives larger than 4TB for quite some time. That was complicating the issue for some. Using 2TB for a 1TB system drive seemed to be the "sweet spot" for reliability. NAS or any "Time Machine Drive" backups via network connections are abysmal.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner drives in rotation and in combination with Time Machine on a directly connected USB drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is fantastic and only wish Apple would make it easier for them with APFS and full TRUE OS clone with the newest OS releases. The workarounds CCC uses are barely noticeable by the end user.
 
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No issues here with Synology NAS after reading through a few guides and adjusting a few SMB settings in Synology itself, has been going well for years.
 
I had this problem initially, and then after fooling around in safe mode, it finally completed and went back to normal. I also supplement TM with Carbon Copy.
 
RedTomato said:
TM was great when it came out. But the writing’s been on the wall for some years now. I abandoned Time Machine when it became clear that Apple had no intention of allowing TM to back up iCloud contents.

Sorry guys, the ship has sailed on this one. Time Machine is a historical artefact now. I wish it wasn’t but that’s what it is.

I have a 2 TB iCloud online backup now. It works well for what it is. My greatest annoyance is I also want a full local backup and that’s not easy to do with mobile devices (laptops, iPhones etc).
Click to expand...
For I would imagine many of us, we have way more than 2 TB of data to back up. And with upload speeds really throttled on many plans (mine is only 12 Mbps) that would take forever and day to upload the initial backup. Not to mention that my current internet plan also only gives 1.2 TB per month. So I'd chew through that entire quota and more. Having local backups are thus still crucial.

Actually, I use three types of backups... Time Machine covers hourly, daily, etc. And backs up all files locally (software business, documents, photos, videos, etc.). I then use iCloud for the most crucial of files (software business). An encrypted DMG of these files is currently only around 5 GB. I then have an off-site backup where physical drives are stored with a larger set of encrypted DMGs.
 
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Given how amazingly frugal Apple can be in regards to software upkeep and QC, Time Machine gets a hard pass in my studio. Conversely, Bombich software's sole purpose is to facilitate easy, reliable, and trustworthy MacOS backups.

+1 on Carbon Copy Cloner.
 
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My problem with TM was that I was using a 2016 MBP 15" in dual boot mode- 80% Big Sur and 20% Sierra. Even though I was using two separate Time Capsules (work/home) it was wreaking havoc. Now that I have two MBPs (new M1), TM seems to be working fine, but I don't trust it anymore. Currently using TM, but also CCC as well as having critical files in the Cloud and on separate external drives. Four separate backups should be enough, no??
 
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Typical years old unreliable broken Apple functionality (Airdrop also, etc). We've moved away from it since Yosemite, it's mind bending the amount of broken software they put out and leave them in that state sitting throughout the years.
 
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Robin Bonathan said:
not having issue, long term TM user.
Click to expand...
The issue is only with new backups, not continuing existing backups. I successfully used my long term TM backup to downgrade from 12.1 beta to 12.0.1 due to boot camp issues with 12.1 .
neuropsychguy said:
No problems with my M1 MacBook Air. I created a new Synology backup to try it out and it’s progressing as expected.
Click to expand...
The issue doesn’t show up until the end of the backup. Please keep us posted.
 
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No issues here. I have a Thunderbolt NvME drive that is dedicated to Time Machine hooked directly up to my M1 Mini. No dock is being used.
 
Time Machine has always worked very well for me, really. It always amazes me when so many people report issues with the same equipment, and everything continues on swimmingly for the rest. I'll admit that I use Onyx with the option to Delete Time Machine Local Snapshots enabled, and I tend to use Onyx maybe once or twice a month. I also restrict my Parallels VM folder in Time Machine's preferences (and also in Parallel's preferences) and then use a nightly CCC script to back that folder up to an external drive.

I'm on one of the 2TB/16GB M1 MBPs connected to a Belkin dock along with another USB hub. I've got 8 external drives connected (all powered accept for one that's not always connected), and 3 of these are Time Machine drives. I'm using all of the same drives I was using on my older 2015 MPB, also 2TB/16GB (rip). I'm really kinda pushing it, as far as how many things you can connect and still expect to be reliable. And again, no problems with Time Machine (or CCC for that matter) at all. iMazing, on the other hand.... SUPER slow. Also backing up to an external drive. But I digress...
 
I have had zero issues with TM backups of two MBPs (2014 and 2016) to TC... but those machines are still running Mojave. ?
 
Used to be fine until Big Sur for me (with occasional issues which I could fix).
Formatted my Time Machine drive several times and would always fail multiple times during initial backup for my 27" iMac and never would complete.
Never tried since, so I don't think this is an issue related to Apple Silicon has been an issue for me since Big Sur launched and has never been addressed.
 
rs-mac said:
For I would imagine many of us, we have way more than 2 TB of data to back up. And with upload speeds really throttled on many plans (mine is only 12 Mbps) that would take forever and day to upload the initial backup. Not to mention that my current internet plan also only gives 1.2 TB per month. So I'd chew through that entire quota and more. Having local backups are thus still crucial.

Actually, I use three types of backups... Time Machine covers hourly, daily, etc. And backs up all files locally (software business, documents, photos, videos, etc.). I then use iCloud for the most crucial of files (software business). An encrypted DMG of these files is currently only around 5 GB. I then have an off-site backup where physical drives are stored with a larger set of encrypted DMGs.
Click to expand...
Oh I agree local backups are important.

And if you have more than 2 TB to back up, I wouldn’t go with Time Machine. It’s fine for home use (and was revolutionary when it came out) but for professional use it’s opaque, difficult to tune, doesn’t give bootable backups, and there’s no support dept to call up for help.

I’d go with one of the other paid options listed in other posts - CCC, SuperDuper, Retrospect etc depending on your needs & budget. But not Time Machine.
 
neuropsychguy said:
No problems with my M1 MacBook Air. I created a new Synology backup to try it out and it’s progressing as expected.
Click to expand...

There is no issues with progressing. It will pretty much go to 100% but still be stuck without a functional first-backup and when viewing debug logs via terminal you'll have several issues talking about issues with com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople* files.

I have no trouble simply enabling Time Machine Backup and have it working for 1 hour, but it eventually fails and is never able to finalise anything.
 
I had similar issue to this in the past backing up to a Synology NAS. The issue turned out to be Sophos AntiVirus, uninstalling it fixed it!
 
gank41 said:
Ahhh.. That would explain why it's not as widespread of an issue, if it's only happening when Time Machine runs first.
Click to expand...
Hmm. And what about *restoring* from Time Machine? Vast numbers of people saying in this thread that all is fine with Time Machine …

An untested backup is not a backup

That applies to TM and CCC and all the rest.

How to test:

SuperDuper and CCC and others: you should be able to boot from the backup and open a few files & check the contents are what you expect. Or possibly explore the backup in Finder & open some files there.

Time Machine: Quick test: Open Time Machine in Finder and check what backup dates are available. Are they what you expect? Restore a few files and see if they are what you expect.

Full test: grab a blank HDD and do a full restore from scratch. This may need to run overnight / over the weekend. Boot up from the restored HDD and check files and their contents are what you expect.

If you haven’t checked your backup in the last few months then you effectively have no backup

Note: Checking that files restore properly can also be dangerous - restored files / folders can accidentally overwrite current files or get inserted into existing workflow / interact with other backup / online systems in unexpected ways. Take care when doing this.
 
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This article came just in time. Despite my constant backup attempt, Time Machine keeps saying my latest backup was 2 months ago. I tried erasing the disk to be in APFS, no difference.

Current setup: MacBook Air M1, Monterey 12.0.1 (then updated to 12.1 RC), both OSes with TM broken
 
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