Initial Time Machine Backup Failures Increasingly Being Reported by Mac Users

[georgB]

A very long-time Mac user, I’ve been using TM (to a TimeCapsule over WiFi) since it was first introduced. It was never 100% reliable, but a few years ago it started to become even less so, occasionally restarting backups from scratch, thereby losing up to 2 years’ data - not to mention, that mail backups were almost always bad, even non-existent. I still use it, and very occasionally it’s been needed and useful, but it’s a far cry from what it’s supposed to be. Back-in-Time was sometimes a help, but it’s not terribly intuitive, and, above all, it can only find what’s there on the TM at the time it’s used.

Altogether, with both its software and hardware, despite many undeniable advances and improvements, Apple’s old motto “it just works” is dead and buried. Apple users (who are mostly paying customers) have become its beta testers, yet even after all the feedback and negative reports, things are all to often not corrected swiftly, sometimes not at all.

 

[neuropsychguy]

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.

Mine finalized. It was stuck on finalizing for a long time but I took my computer with me to my office and when I opened it up, it said the backup had completed. I checked it when back home and it's working as expected.

 

[halfmac]

Apple's built-in Time Machine backup solution for macOS appears to be causing problems for some Mac users running the latest versions of Monterey and Big Sur, based on a steady trickle of reports on both the MacRumors Forums and Reddit.

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I spent hours last Friday to try to BU my 2021 MBP M1 Pro. Was on the phone 4 times with Apple. Every time TM gave me the back up error everybody else is getting. No successful back ups. I also tried only 2020 MacBook M1 with Big Sur and got no back ups. The odd thing on all this was the space was taken up on the drive but nothing is there.

I tried to BU my wife's iMac MI with Monterey on one drive and nothing. Swapped drives and it worked! Very strange.

I am now using Carbon Copy Cloner and it works just fine.

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[MacinMan]

Originally I started the Time Machine thread because after upgrading Time machine was very slow. Since then, my issues are resolved, but the thread has grown to almost 20 pages of M1 users mostly of all the issues mentioned here. Numbers of users have also reached out to Apple and have gotten confirmation they can reproduce the problems, but a fix is still coming, but not time frame promised.

 

[Rookbird¥]

They better not let this feature degrade. It is one of the big reasons I use Mac. Windows built in backup feature sucks!

 

[netnative]

What fixed this for me on my 16" M1 Max was going into recovery mode and using disk utility to repair both volumes on the internal SSD. I then erased my Time Machine drive that was accumulating the failed backups to restore the lost space. Time Machine has been successfully backing up since then. This was suggested by a user in a thread on the forums here, who I believe got it from Apple support.

Trying to complete the initial backup in Safe mode didn't work for me, but the above seemed to resolve the issue.

EDIT: Here is the post I had seen. I should note this still worked for me even though I kept my Time Machine drive connected to my Caldigit TS3+ dock rather than connecting directly to the Macbook Pro.

Thank you for sharing this. It worked on my 2020 MacBook Pro. I will try it on my 2021 MacBook Pro once I set it up again. I ran Disk Utility on all devices. It did not appear to have repaired anything but it fixed the problem with Time Machine.

 

[400]

^^^^
Mine failed again after the various fixes. Just make sure you have another method (or many) in play as a serious backup, and that includes off site HD.

 

[Wando64]

size of backups grew out of control,

It is designed to use an entire dedicated disk or partition.

 

[flexiboy1912]

It is designed to use an entire dedicated disk or partition.

That’s the problem it grows massive and becomes unusable. By your logic give it 50 petabytes and it would still out grow it

 

[svish]

Hope Apple fixes this real quick. Backups are very important. Might be better to backup using other methods till this issue is fixed.

 

[Wando64]

That’s the problem it grows massive and becomes unusable. By your logic give it 50 petabytes and it would still out grow it

No, it will not “outgrow it”, but it will use it fully.
This is by design. My “logic” has nothing to do with it.
I was just trying to help you understand how TM works.
If you want to dedicate less space for TM just create a smaller partition.

What do you mean with “it becomes unusable”?
I have dedicated a 3 TB disk to TM and it works absolutely fine.
What problem are you experiencing that makes you say that it is unusable?

I also have a network attached 1TB disk with two 500GB partitions each used by separate laptops as TB disks.
It is up to you to set the limit of how big you want your TB partition to be.

 

[ahaynes42]

This has to be related to the Monterey bug where certain external drives are rendered unusable and unreadable. There's a widely documented issue where certain drives just don't work with Monterey. Most of my drives are fine, but one of my external SSDs refuses to work on Monterey. Works fine with older MacOS versions. Apple Forum Thread on the issue.

 

[400]

It is designed to use an entire dedicated disk or partition.

I have no idea on the new workings but I used to get a very long time between a new tm start on a 4tb backing up 900gb or so getting anywhere near full and was the case just before this last fail then it went nuts filling the drive but with nothing I could find.

 

[dysamoria]

Apple need to stop releasing new stuff and finish development on, and doing bug fixes on existing stuff. There are so many bugs accumulating and staying unfixed year after year.

As soon as they had iCloud backups as an added service, their maintenance on Time Machine probably stopped at “does the program start?”

 

[KevinB]

On my few months old Macbook Air M1, I upgraded to Monterey and TM worked fine.
On my 2019 Macbook Pro 16, I upgraded to Monterey and TM worked fine.
On my brand new Macbook Pro 16 M1, I upgraded to Monterey and TM bombed!!

I have tried everything on my brand new Macbook Pro 16 M1 to get TM to complete without the dreaded "nothing backed up" message at the end.

I've had more problem with the MacBook Pro M1 than with any other Macbook (every). My MB Air M1 is great.

Hey Apple, what every happened to "It just works" ??

 

[tyrotex]

What fixed this for me on my 16" M1 Max was going into recovery mode and using disk utility to repair both volumes on the internal SSD.

Just registered here to give a +1 to @-griffy- comment.

I've been having this problem (with network backups) since updating to Monterey (It worked in Big Sur) on my 2020 M1 Mac mini.
It seems to be working now after using Recovery mode on my Data slice, which found a mismatch in allocated extents (and presumably fixed them, although there was no message to that effect).

Also to @chucker23n1 for his log suggestion, which showed a problem with the TM snapshot file (it claimed it didn't exist).

Those running into this can do:

log show --style syslog --last 30m --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info --debug

(adjust "last 30m" into something like "last 4h", maybe)

…to get a lot more detail on what went wrong.

 

[Shirasaki]

As soon as they had iCloud backups as an added service, their maintenance on Time Machine probably stopped at “does the program start?”

They probably only tested Time Machine on their pristine machine carefully configured by Apple to have the best possible scenario to run the software on, rather than testing a wide range of software configurations and machines.

 

[theipodgod16]

Monterey 12.1 is out...is it fixed yet? Let's find out.

EDIT: NOPE!!!

 

[dk831]

Monterey 12.1 is out...is it fixed yet? Let's find out.

EDIT: NOPE!!!

Same. Isn’t fixed for me yet.

 

[DaveMcM76]

I’ve been trying the safe mode for initial backup fix that some people have recommended - so far it’s been running for about 72 hours, has copied 5.65GB and claims to be 74% done. No estimate on time remaining. ?

 

[400]

Problem is it should just work. People should not have to restart in safe or only run it when there is a z in the name of the day of the week or face slightly south west when starting the process whilst hopping on one foot. If it doesn't run out the bag, it's bust.
If reports are it is still broken, not sure I want to even bother with a fresh start and drop TM as an option in my backup plan.

 

[edgarde]

User reports Time Machine backups running forever without completion; used to work. M1 MacBook on Big Sur, copying to external WD hard drive with a USB-A to USB-C adapter.

I found it stuck on "Preparing Backup"; OS updates and disk first aid did not improver. Disk did a fine Time Machine backup when connected to my MacBook (pre-M1), so presumed the problem was the computer. After exhausting other troubleshooting advice for Time Machine stuck on "Preparing Backup", I excluded drives. Got a successful backup after excluding hidden folders and /Applications . This makes sense because backup stopped working around the time this computer had MS-Office 2019 installed. Pleased with this solution, started backup and handed it back to the user (as requested).

User later reports backup would not complete until she swapped in a different USB-A to USB-C adapter. I had used a different adapter on my PC, so the bad USB-A to USB-C adapter could have been the entire problem. If that makes no difference, excluding hidden drives and /Applications is the other persistent change I made.

 

[pixxelpusher]

I too have encountered this problem on my first Time Machine backup on 16" M1 Max. But for me the backup seem to have completed but I get a small red "i" in Time Machine System Prefs with this message when I click on it: "Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked."

When I run the Terminal Log command posted it basically ends with this line:

2021-12-18 15:16:31.706761+1100 localhost backupd[293]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)

There is a 2021-12-18-151536.inProgress file but no new folder for today's backup. Also it claims the last backup is from last month, and when entering Time Machine I can't click on any of the previous backups in the history list, it's like they aren't connected to Time Machine properly anymore.

 

[Sogni1]

Clean up freezing after Time Machine Back up (Monterey)
Did anyone find a fix for clean up freezing ?

 

[Eternal Oak]

After having spent AU$4,400.00 on a 16" M1 Pro MacBook, I am more than a little pissed that the current Mac OS Monterey release is so half-baked, that even Time Machine is giving me grief. I've concluded also that Monterey - and Big Sur before it - corrupted my .zsh permissions, such that installing programs through my login are prone to be buggy.
I am glad, however, that this problem with Time Machine has been noted and reported online, and Apple's software engineers are on the case. On the strength of this issue, however, I am no longer inclined to use Time Machine, erring instead in favour of Carbon Copy Cloner.