New MBP 2016 Crashing During Time Machine Backup

[mgw38]

I've had the same problem. Same error message, etc.

I took the advice here and ran a $5 USB 2 hub between my USB-C hub (with USB 3) and my 3TB Passport drive. The backup completed and the system still crashed sometime after it had completed (and 2 more incremental backups completed). I ran a backup at that point and then unmounted and disconnected the drive and turned TM off entirely.

I've decided I'll simply do weekly backups until this mess is fixed. Hopefully soon.

Try to locate the file that is causing the issues. Chances are it is an image or a video file. And then remove it from the system or save it in a different format.

The file that causes my system to crash is a raw video file in a quicktime mov container. As soon as I convert that in something else, it does not create any issues anymore.

Edit: and you might want to try different USB 2.0 hubs. The behavior you got is fairly identical to the behavior I had before I added the USB 2.0 hub. At one point it had completed the backup without any hub successfully but afterwards it would still crash once in a while.

 

[flyhighone]

I have a bit of a different take on this that might or might not be helpful in determining the root cause. I have a 2016 15" MPB and aside from some of the visual distortions (i.e. checkered pattern in preview when looking at .STL files which go away when moving the image around only to return when the motion stops), I can make the system freeze and restart itself every time by plugging in an external hard-drive that is in the process of being either encrypted or decrypted. As soon as I enter the password for the drive, the system hangs and restarts shortly thereafter. I have to have the encryption/decryption process complete on my 2015 13" MacBook Pro for it to work in my new 15" MBP.

UPDATE: Can someone else please try this to see if it's an issue across the new line??

 

[ic2]

I have been watching this thread with interest and with some trepidation
i set up my new MBP tonight from a TM back up earlier today, after reading this thread i was worried that it would fail. It successfully completed successfully, i completed a CCC of the drive as well and attempted a TM back up to a WD (my passport) via the apple thunderbolt to USB adaptor. There was no photos or music to transfer and it backed up 26.7GB without any issue, which is strange as lots of people reported issues with TM back up but did have he drive already plugged in when i started the laptop. I have just completed another TM back up, maybe its USB 2 rather than 3?

 

[Mike84]

This started happening to me today. Three times in a row, my external hard drive was connected using Apple's usb to usb-c adaptor and it freezes, states that the hard drive was not properly ejected and crashes. It either shuts down and restarts or completely freezes.

 

[Ryan0751]

I just ran into this problem this evening. In my case it's with a G-Tech Thubderbolt 2 disk with the Apple adapter.

Oddly I didn't have this problem copying large volumes of data using the Finder. I copied my entire iTunes library (500GB) over to the new machine just fine. I only hit the problem when using Time Machine.

Machine freezes, reboots, CATERR.

Seems like a software issue to me, but we will have to see... disappointing.

 

[mgw38]

I have a bit of a different take on this that might or might not be helpful in determining the root cause. I have a 2016 15" MPB and aside from some of the visual distortions (i.e. checkered pattern in preview when looking at .STL files which go away when moving the image around only to return when the motion stops), I can make the system freeze and restart itself every time by plugging in an external hard-drive that is in the process of being either encrypted or decrypted. As soon as I enter the password for the drive, the system hangs and restarts shortly thereafter. I have to have the encryption/decryption process complete on my 2015 13" MacBook Pro for it to work in my new 15" MBP.

UPDATE: Can someone else please try this to see if it's an issue across the new line??

Started encryption on a non-encrypted external drive and could unmount and remount during encryption just fine without crash.

Edit: the drive I am encrypting includes the file that caused me all the trouble. In case that has any crashing effect on the encryption process I'll post that here.

Edit 2: crashed, see below

 

[Mike84]

I just ran into this problem this evening. In my case it's with a G-Tech Thubderbolt 2 disk with the Apple adapter.

Oddly I didn't have this problem copying large volumes of data using the Finder. I copied my entire iTunes library (500GB) over to the new machine just fine. I only hit the problem when using Time Machine.

Machine freezes, reboots, CATERR.

Seems like a software issue to me, but we will have to see... disappointing.

I surely hope it is a software issue. I am really disliking how Apple support is jumping to offer a replacement when, if it is a software issue, it could continue happening with the replacement.

 

[mgw38]

I surely hope it is a software issue. I am really disliking how Apple support is jumping to offer a replacement when, if it is a software issue, it could continue happening with the replacement.

So far, I have not seen any report that a hardware change resolved the issue. To me it looks more like a freak coincidence with one of the files on your system that might very well effect all new MacBooks.

 

[Mike84]

So far, I have not seen any report that a hardware change resolved the issue. To me it looks more like a freak coincidence with one of the files on your system that might very well effect all new MacBooks.

I read earlier that some folks are encountering issues with media files, e.g., videos or photos. I have a lot of the latter on my computer and I am wondering if that is the issue. Has anyone tried to erase the time machine back up and start a fresh back up to see if that works?

 

[Creep89]

The thing is my MacBook even crashes when encrypting a 400GB partition of a 1TB external USB3.0 HDD. So a fresh TimeMachine Backup shouldn't solve anything.

 

[mgw38]

Started encryption on a non-encrypted external drive and could unmount and remount during encryption just fine without crash.

Edit: the drive I am encrypting includes the file that caused me all the trouble. In case that has any crashing effect on the encryption process I'll post that here.

Turns out the encryption process crashed with the exact behavior that flyhighone reported. I did the USB 2.0 trick and put the drive behind a USB 2.0 hub and the encryption continued as expected. This seems to be a result of the same issue. There is a file on your drive that crashes the system.

Edit: after a couple of minutes I unmounted the drive, removed the USB 2.0 hub and remounted the drive directly again and encryption took up again without troubles. That kind of makes sense since you would expect that every file needs to be piped through the USB port during the encryption process. Once it is past that problematic point it just continues normally.

Edit 2: drive completed encryption and is working as expected. Encryption just crashed at this one point which I assume is when it arrived at the file the causes the kernel panic when pushed through the usb at usb 3.0 level.

 

[flyhighone]

Started encryption on a non-encrypted external drive and could unmount and remount during encryption just fine without crash.

Edit: the drive I am encrypting includes the file that caused me all the trouble. In case that has any crashing effect on the encryption process I'll post that here.

Edit 2: crashed, see below

In the middle of the encryption/decryption, eject the drive's via the standard procedure. When plugging them back in, it will ask you for the password to mount them which should continue the encryption/decryption. Mine continuously and reliably crashes upon entering the password. I have confirmed this one 2 different drives and using 3 different Apple USB-C -> USB Adapters. However, when I plug those drives into my 2105 MBP, the drives load after successfully accepting the password and then continue their encryption/decryption. Once the encryption/decryption process completes, the drives work fine on my 2016 MBP without causing the freeze and subsequent restart.

It has been 100% consistent on my machine (with different HDD's) that I figured it might be something that can be reproduced on someone else. And that maybe it might be getting us closer to the root cause of this annoying issue.

In the interim, I am replacing this 15" MBP with another one over the weekend in the off-chance that the new one I'll be getting won't have these issues.

P.S. Anyone else getting the checkboard pattern in Preview when opening an STL file? Once you move the item, the checkered pattern goes away and everything appears fine until you stop moving it, this is where the window become the pattern again.

 

[mgw38]

In the middle of the encryption/decryption, eject the drive's via the standard procedure. When plugging them back in, it will ask you for the password to mount them which should continue the encryption/decryption. Mine continuously and reliably crashes upon entering the password.

I observed that behavior on my system as well. It appears that the encryption is reaching a file on your drive that causes the kernel panic when pushed through the USB. I used a USB 2.0 hub to get past that point and from then on encryption continued as expected.

P.S. Anyone else getting the checkboard pattern in Preview when opening an STL file? Once you move the item, the checkered pattern goes away and everything appears fine until you stop moving it, this is where the window become the pattern again.

STL displays fine here, but I am on a 13 inch model with internal graphics.

 

[flyhighone]

I observed that behavior on my system as well. It appears that the encryption is reaching a file on your drive that causes the kernel panic when pushed through the USB. I used a USB 2.0 hub to get past that point and from then on encryption continued as expected.



STL displays fine here, but I am on a 13 inch model with internal graphics.

Thank you for trying it out! The 2 HDD that I reproduced the issue with had different files on them but it's possible that there is a type of file on each of them that is causing the error. I hope that the new MBP I'll be picking up over the weekend won't have these issues. Or at least that Apple will release a software fix in the near future.

 

[mgw38]

Thank you for trying it out! The 2 HDD that I reproduced the issue with had different files on them but it's possible that there is a type of file on each of them that is causing the error. I hope that the new MBP I'll be picking up over the weekend won't have these issues. Or at least that Apple will release a software fix in the near future.

If you have the time and energy it would be interesting to find out if it is indeed a specific file that causes that behavior. For that you would have to copy the content of your drive through the MacBook onto another drive and see of there is a specific file at which this crashes.

In any case, I would be interested to know if you have success by exchanging the hardware. I would appreciate if you could post your findings here.

 

[flyhighone]

If you have the time and energy it would be interesting to find out if it is indeed a specific file that causes that behavior. For that you would have to copy the content of your drive through the MacBook onto another drive and see of there is a specific file at which this crashes.

In any case, I would be interested to know if you have success by exchanging the hardware. I would appreciate if you could post your findings here.

Well that is interesting because, I went out earlier today and purchased a 3rd External HDD just in case and used my 2016 MBP to copy all of the contents from one of the drives to the new one. It had no issues whatsoever! This was one of the same drives that was freezing and restarting the system upon entering the encryption password, while it was being encrypted/decrypted. 914GB moved over without a hitch. And now the hole gets deeper...

 

[Kn!ghthawk]

Aside from the whole copying issues I've had a fair number of other bugs and issues crop up on me....That being said I truly feel bad for the front line call center reps at Apple. It must suck to be one of them at the moment. I know because I've had to call three times to attempt to troubleshoot. Here's to hoping that maybe this will be resolved by next week as an early present!

 

[SEJU]

I can add some info.

I received my machine on Wednesday 30.11 and already had 11 system crashes. I encountered 2 different typologies of crashes:

1) on 2 occasions my system froze completely after I unplugged a USBc or Thunderbolt3 adapter. This did not happen always, but twice in 3 days. A hard reset was needed!

2) the machine crashes while I try to do a Time Machine backup over ethernet to a MacOS Server. No USB involved. Macbook Pro 15 full specced machine, charged over USBc cable attached to power adapter, network is hardwired 1G ethernet. Since my belkin USBc-ethernet adapter is going to arrive in 10 weeks (WHAT?), I had to attach the MBP to the network in the following way: MBP 15 2016 > Thunderbolt3-2 adapter > Thunderbolt2-ethernet adapter > cat6 ethernet cable.

Backup size is 750GB

Machine starts back up, later the machine does not wake up from sleep/screenstandby, touchbar black, machine unresponsive. Sometimes the machine reboots. A hard reset is needed!

This is not a USB problem, but an IO problem related to massive data transfer off the machine. I had no problem migrating from my old MBP to the new machine via thunderbolt2 cable & thunderbolt3-2 adapter.

I sent the same description to Apple via Bugreport and feedback pages. Let us hope they can solve this problem fast, since this machine is really great. This year's MBP is really a huge leap forward! The design and functionality is amazing. The CPU and graphics performance is not Apple's fault! When Intel does not deliver Apple can not do very much, they can go forward with the overall setup and so they did. This generation is a real improvement in every way and the speakers just blew me away: real stereo right in front of you. The only negative point for me is basic SSD configuration starting at 256/500GB and upgrade prices. The basis price for new MBP generations has always been this high, but I would expect 1TB SSD standard.

Beyond this I encountered occasionally some screen artefacts. For example when I switch between screens in Mission Control I got twice rosa input fields in iTunes and so on. Happened only twice, maybe driver related?
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If you have the time and energy it would be interesting to find out if it is indeed a specific file that causes that behavior. For that you would have to copy the content of your drive through the MacBook onto another drive and see of there is a specific file at which this crashes.

In any case, I would be interested to know if you have success by exchanging the hardware. I would appreciate if you could post your findings here.

I am not convinced that the problem is with a single file. My guess is that it is related with how big the files are, since the size of a file influences the read/write as well as transfer performance. Some files copy faster and the interface is pushed to its limit. Maybe some chips overheating?

In 2011 we had that problem with GPUs. Apple published an update to OSX, which throttled the GPU performance and we were good until the GPU recall. The 2011 generation had problems with heat dissipation and this caused crashes etc....

 

[hendl]

getting the same error when copying a 9 TB movie on usb stick via hub.

hope apple doing something about that.

 

[CTGreybeard]

P.S. Anyone else getting the checkboard pattern in Preview when opening an STL file? Once you move the item, the checkered pattern goes away and everything appears fine until you stop moving it, this is where the window become the pattern again.

I was seeing the checkerboard but can't seem to reproduce it right now. Mine was also in the preview pane of the finder window. It seems to come and go.

 

[shareef777]

I have been watching this thread with interest and with some trepidation
i set up my new MBP tonight from a TM back up earlier today, after reading this thread i was worried that it would fail. It successfully completed successfully, i completed a CCC of the drive as well and attempted a TM back up to a WD (my passport) via the apple thunderbolt to USB adaptor. There was no photos or music to transfer and it backed up 26.7GB without any issue, which is strange as lots of people reported issues with TM back up but did have he drive already plugged in when i started the laptop. I have just completed another TM back up, maybe its USB 2 rather than 3?

The issue occurs during large transfers over the USB port (large transfers of over 100GB).

 

[mgw38]

Well that is interesting because, I went out earlier today and purchased a 3rd External HDD just in case and used my 2016 MBP to copy all of the contents from one of the drives to the new one. It had no issues whatsoever! This was one of the same drives that was freezing and restarting the system upon entering the encryption password, while it was being encrypted/decrypted. 914GB moved over without a hitch. And now the hole gets deeper...

That is indeed interesting. I just ran another test on my system and in my case I can pinpoint everything to one particular 600MB movie file. If it is there the system crashes, if it is not, it doesn't. Some of us have speculated that it is not a particular file but rather a particular pattern that triggers the kernel panic when pushed through the USB at USB 3.0 mode. If that would be the case, that pattern could obviously appear anywhere during any process.

In my case the issue is completely predictable. I know exactly what I need to do in order to cause the kernel panic and when it will happen. And it always happens, there is no randomness to it. And as soon as I put a USB 2.0 hub in between, everything works just fine, no panic whatsoever. This makes me believe that this is a firmware bug rather than a hardware issue or at least something that can be resolved with a software fix. At this point I am not yet ready to head down to the Apple Genius Bar to exchange the hardware. (But I would still be interested to know if anybody was able to resolve the problem by exchanging hardware.)

Update: just for the sake of completeness, 10.12.2 resolved the issue.

 

[poorcody]

Just to add a data point, I haven't seen this problem on my new 15"... I copied over 100GB of files from an external USB-3 drive with no problems. I've done a few Time Machine backups to the same drive with no problems.

I tried copying that second jpg file that at least two people said caused a crash: no problem copying it back and forth a few times.

(On an unrelated note, I do see that checkerboard pattern in Preview with two STL files.)

 

[k57slye]

I have same issue. New MacBook with touch bar. Computer freezing and restarting at least 30 times in the last few days. It does seem to be connected to the hard drive, although like many people on here I didn't have the problem in the beginning and managed a couple of big data transfers/backups without any problems. Now its almost unusable.

 

[TKHOORY]

today was my third time the laptop crashed, it happened when i was in the apple store trying to backup my iphone 6+ infront of one of the staff. he talked to his manager stating that i was having my laptop crashes when i was transferring data to or from the mac and the in charge just replied " let him take an appointment to check the issue". oh my how apple has changed...