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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.)

How did you find out which file causes the crash?
 
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How did you find out which file causes the crash?

I moved a couple of thousand media files from my HD to a sample drive when it first happened. When you copy a file that causes this kernel panic it will actually tell you what file it is just before everything freezes.
 
I moved a couple of thousand media files from my HD to a sample drive when it first happened. When you copy a file that causes this kernel panic it will actually tell you what file it is just before everything freezes.

Ah ok!

In my case the third TimeMachine backup was interrupted twice by crashes and the fourth backup four to five times. So it is probably not related to a specific file in my case. I interrupted the first and second backup, because I wanted a pristine backup, but gave up. Right now my main machine is without backup: really scary!

I had zero problems with migration assistant, so data-in is fine. I used Thunderbolt 2. The machine is stable. It crashes only on excessive data-out. Quite difficult to find. Maybe at Apple they are using 256GB SSD equipped machines and did not encounter this problem. You would also have to back it up in order to discover this bug.

It is definitely IO related. Probably firmware, but everything is possible. CATERR stands for catastrophic error. CATERR could come from system board, CPU, chipset, bios, bmc, virtualization environment, drivers, os, storage, IO, network and graphics so actually from almost everything, but no MCA code is specified in the Kernel crash log. This makes it quite difficult to analyze if you are not a system engineer from either Apple or Intel. CPU, memory or I/O timeout, .... bufferoverrun .... probably not related to TimeMachine per se, but something lower. We should cross our fingers for firmware, OS.

Thunderbolt and USBc go through the Thunderbolt controller and there is one per each side each one connected through 4 PCIe lanes to the PCH which is connected to the CPU.

Difficult to say. I don't think it is a bad batch of machines. It is all of them, either hardware or software. The 2011 generation had too much thermal paste applied and therefore did not dissipate heat well. But at the end the machines just produced too much heat and the thermal architecture was not able to cope with it.

Please send all your crash logs to Apple, call Apple, open a bug report, etc.

Just one thing I am curious of. Did everyone here migrate his machine? Or did anyone setup a new machine and also has this problem?
[doublepost=1480863539][/doublepost]Could also not be Apple related, could be a general problem of Thunderbolt3 & USBc. Our friends at Dell have also problems with USBc stability:

"Digging deeper, we found references to similar behavior online within Dell’s support forums (http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19677047?pi41097=1) for some users of Dell’s Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C docking stations. While the thread is quite long, it does reflect similar unstable dock behavior while also indicating the common theme of the whole USB bus resetting or disconnecting and causing problems.

As official Dell comments on the thread have dropped off, customers have tried their own pragmatic approach in finding work-arounds and some (but not all) have found the behavior diminished if the laptop was run with the lid open. Others found that putting the system in ‘Airplane Mode’ to disable the internal Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter helped. And there’s even multiple users who report working with Dell engineering on the issue, stating that Dell is aware of the problem on some systems and working on a fix in the form of a BIOS update."​

"So where does this leave us? While we have many test systems in our lab, we do not have an example of every model Dell system that has Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C. In our internal testing with the Dell XPS 13 9350 and Dell XPS 9550 (non-hybrid) both of our USB-C docks work well. We are hopeful based on Dell forum comments that updated system BIOS files or Thunderbolt 3 NVM firmware will be released to help with the behavior. Though we don’t know if in some cases the solution will go beyond BIOS/firmware updates and instead is indicative of a hardware problem with the host system itself.

Interestingly as we were putting the finishing touches on this post before publishing, Dell has posted a BIOS update for their Thunderbolt 3/USB-C Precision 7510 and 7710 models http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=7HGW6 that indicate various Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C fixes. Our hope is that these changes will filter down through their other models in the near future."
from plugable.com
 
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so am i the only a$$hole that did a time machine backup over wi-fi? :D

950GB+ backup that took 16-ish hours... not a single issue. no crashes, no errors, nothing. everything working flawlessly.

definitely seems like a bug that only occurs when plugged in.
 
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so am i the only a$$hole that did a time machine backup over wi-fi? :D

950GB+ backup that took 16-ish hours... not a single issue. no crashes, no errors, nothing. everything working flawlessly.

definitely seems like a bug that only occurs when plugged in.

Lmao so you're telling me I have an excellent web surfing machine that can do some photo editing and whatnot so long as I don't even think about using a plugged in drive? Excellent! I will say it is a very pretty machine though!
 
I was experiencing 5 to 12 kernel panics a day with my maxed spec 2016 MacBook Pro. Kernel panics came when I was using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a disk image > 180Gb on my external Thunderbolt2 OWC Raid (2.x6Tb enterprise drives). Very repeatable, very annoying.

Filed an Apple Bug Report #29333645 and Apple had me send in a diagnostic report.

I have found have resolved the issue by booting into safe mode: Command + S

and running: fsck -f at the prompt. Reboot, and CCC backs up now.

Hope Apple fixes this soon with a firmware fix, but in the meantime, try this.
 
Came here to post that I've experienced this issue with my new 15" MBP as well. I've got the 1TB SSD version with everything else maxed out.

I encountered it when trying to install Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate 10 (install files are on an external HDD). Over 200GB of the install is audio samples, and typically with these types of products, you want to have all of the samples stored on a separate disk from your internal disk for performance reasons. I have a 1TB Samsung T3 external SSD I'm using for this purpose (USB 3.0, USB-C connection), and there was a single 1.8 GB file that caused the system to crash and report this MCA error every time I tried to transfer it to the external SSD. It occurred both when I tried to transfer directly from the external HDD and when transferring from the internal drive to the external SSD (the file transferred from the external HDD to internal disk without issue).

I ended up having to do the transfer using my older MacBook Air (also running macOS Sierra), and it worked fine.

A source inside Apple told me that their quality control team is overwhelmed with crash reports coming in, and it's far beyond the norm for a typical hardware release. Just more evidence that this issue, and others, are certainly widespread.
[doublepost=1480872521][/doublepost]
so am i the only a$$hole that did a time machine backup over wi-fi? :D

950GB+ backup that took 16-ish hours... not a single issue. no crashes, no errors, nothing. everything working flawlessly.

definitely seems like a bug that only occurs when plugged in.

My Time Machine backup is over WiFi as well (to a WD MyCloud NAS), and I haven't had any issues either.
 
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so am i the only a$$hole that did a time machine backup over wi-fi? :D

950GB+ backup that took 16-ish hours... not a single issue. no crashes, no errors, nothing. everything working flawlessly.

definitely seems like a bug that only occurs when plugged in.

I was thinking about it, but I only have 802.11n here and in general prefer working wired for security as well as for speed. There is absolutely no way I will work wirelessly in the office or at home.

Backup over wireless is actually not very advisable. It works, but it is always preferable to backup wired. Wired has the most stable connection, no drop outs, ...

With 802.11n and the Tx Rate I get it would take something like 200 hours? Although I might well try this. Will just leave the machine running....
[doublepost=1480875760][/doublepost]
I was experiencing 5 to 12 kernel panics a day with my maxed spec 2016 MacBook Pro. Kernel panics came when I was using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a disk image > 180Gb on my external Thunderbolt2 OWC Raid (2.x6Tb enterprise drives). Very repeatable, very annoying.

Filed an Apple Bug Report #29333645 and Apple had me send in a diagnostic report.

I have found have resolved the issue by booting into safe mode: Command + S

and running: fsck -f at the prompt. Reboot, and CCC backs up now.

Hope Apple fixes this soon with a firmware fix, but in the meantime, try this.

Hello over there. Did the same: Filed an Apple Bug Report. We have to do our part to make this work.

Will try your solution and report back. Last attempt I am going to make before backing up over WIFI 802.11n....
[doublepost=1480876921][/doublepost]
Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate 10

A source inside Apple told me that their quality control team is overwhelmed with crash reports coming in, and it's far beyond the norm for a typical hardware release. Just more evidence that this issue, and others, are certainly widespread.

Nice Komplete 10! Is there a Maschine user over there?

You can be assured that I send in every single crash report I can get my hands on.

I think the new MBP is amazing. It is definitely a huge leap forward. The design is laid out for the next 4-5 years. It is designed for the technology from 2016 to 2020, but todays technology might still stress the form factor a bit.

I really hope that this is software!!! The 2016 MBP was the most expensive machine I have ever purchased from apple and I only buy Pro and maxed out.....
 
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Nice Komplete 10! Is there a Maschine user over there?

You can be assured that I send in every single crash report I can get my hands on.

I think the new MBP is amazing. It is definitely a huge leap forward. The design is laid out for the next 4-5 years. It is designed for the technology from 2016 to 2020, but todays technology might still stress the form factor a bit.

I really hope that this is software!!! The 2016 MBP was the most expensive machine I have ever purchased from apple and I only buy Pro and maxed out.....

Yep! Maschine and Komplete Kontrol. And this MBP is also the most expensive machine I've ever purchased from Apple... no regrets, but a little disappointing when the shiny new $4,000 toy isn't 100% perfect.
 
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I bet it's tied through high I/O via USB-C port. I've also backed up successfully to my Synology NAS. With nothing but the USB drive plugged in via the Apple USB-C to USB-A adapter, and after a clean boot with no apps running, the system still hangs after a few minutes of backing up.
Interesting. Tried multiple times via USB-C and failed each time. I'm going to try plugging my drive into my Mac mini and see if I end up with the same issues via wifi. If so...Apple really failed hard on this new laptop.
 
I have the new 15" macbook pro late-2016 with touchbar, maxed out, an encrypted hard drive, have not done any backup, no transfer of files going on, and the only cable plugged in is the USB-c for power that came with the machine.

My mbp has crashed about 5 times although I never know what happened because I am not around when it occurs and I am unable to replicate it. I am using the pre-installed Sierra and have made very few changes, thank goodness.
Yes, I will report this to Apple although they should know about it as I have been sending the log reports to them.
 
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I have found have resolved the issue by booting into safe mode: Command + S

and running: fsck -f at the prompt. Reboot, and CCC backs up now.

Hope Apple fixes this soon with a firmware fix, but in the meantime, try this.

Thank you so much!

You meant Single User mode with Command+S and not Safe-Mode, but your hint resulted in a full uninterrupted backup on my side! It has also been ages since the last time I was in Single User and Single User is how I like my computer: Command Line. No Facebook, No Mobile Gadgets, just me and a few lines of white instructions on a black surface, as if I were back in the 80s with basic... Just that on the new machine you get 140 lines on a 15" display, almost impossible to read...

I followed your advice and:

1. Booted into Single User, ran fsck -f at the prompt and rebooted
2. Booted into Safe-Mode and ran Time Machine from there. This morning the machine had completed a whole Backup sequence + hourly backups. Everything over Ethernet!!!

This could still be just luck after having all 6 Time Machine backups crash on multiple occasions before I tried what you suggested, but I keep my fingers crossed that this means driver/firmware, since Safe-Mode does load only a rudimentary driver set. I will update my Bug Report to Apple and let us see.

Could anyone else please verify what Blairthornton suggested and report back?
[doublepost=1480922095][/doublepost]
I have the new 15" macbook pro late-2016 with touchbar, maxed out, an encrypted hard drive, have not done any backup, no transfer of files going on, and the only cable plugged in is the USB-c for power that came with the machine.

My mbp has crashed about 5 times although I never know what happened because I am not around when it occurs and I am unable to replicate it. I am using the pre-installed Sierra and have made very few changes, thank goodness.
Yes, I will report this to Apple although they should know about it as I have been sending the log reports to them.

All the logs are received by a computer and probably automatically grouped by the system. Until a human eye takes a look at it, it really has to be widespread.

Would you please try to do an SMC reset. This should reset the configuration settings of your machine to a pristine state. SMC resets can solve quite a lot of different problems like for example screwed up power management, if your machine does not charge properly, etc. Try this first and keep your fingers crossed.

Try also running it in Safe-Mode and see if it crashes. It is not very funny to work in Safe-Mode, but worth the try in order to find out what it could be.
 
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Hi there,

same issues here. MBP 13 TB with 512 SSD crashed during Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups repeatedly. I used no adapters for the external hdd (La Cie Porsche 1TB USB-C) and no encryption.

I tried the USB-C power cable from Apple instead and that worked just fine although the speed is not that great. But for the time being it worked flawless and without crashes for TM and CCC.

Have to check out the Single User/Save Mode work around.
 
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10 days now since Apple took crash logs from my machine when I reported it, and still no response. In the absence of any new information, as a stopgap, I've wiped my USB-C Time Machine drive, plugged it into a spare 2011 MacBook Pro (the disk drive also comes with a USB cable), shared it, and now I'm repeating my Time Machine backup from the 2016 onto that disk over WiFi to see what happens. Presumably it will complete, but it's going to take a while (540GB).

If it does work, the incrementals won't be too slow, and at least I've got a backup working before Apple fixes (or even acknowledges) the problem. And according to what I've read, when they do fix the problem, I should be able to plug that same disk back into the 2016 and the backups should carry on fine.
 
I also got multiple, reproducible kernel panics today when I tried to install a large software (X-Plane 11) on to my external SSD (USB3 enclosure connected to Apple USBC-adapter). I also get a input/output error and crash when trying to install the Windows version using Bootcamp, so it looks like it's not only a macOS driver issue...
 
Apple Support just gave me a call that they want to collect log files, will do tomorrow. But it seems engineering does not have a clue about this problem(s) which seems like it will take until 2017 they fix this... Holy moly...
 
I just had a call with a colleague from Apple. Before I had kernal panics according to this thread every single time when I connected my external Time Machine HDD to the original USB-C to USB adapter.
His first guess was my Vmware Fusion installation to cause that issue. And in fact after deinstallation of Vmware Fusion the error disappeared.
Unnecessary to say, that I need that Fusion for my daily work... :(
 
I just had a call with a colleague from Apple. Before I had kernal panics according to this thread every single time when I connected my external Time Machine HDD to the original USB-C to USB adapter.
His first guess was my Vmware Fusion installation to cause that issue. And in fact after deinstallation of Vmware Fusion the error disappeared.
Unnecessary to say, that I need that Fusion for my daily work... :(

What version of Fusion are you using? Did you install it from scratch on the new MBP or did you copy it over from your old Mac?
 
It's the latest version 8.5.3 and I did install it from scratch.

Well that's interesting. I don't seem to be having the issue, at least when it's not running. But I do quit all helper applications when not running VMware. Does it change anything if you quit anything, including the menu bar thingy?
 
Hello from the UK, Apple over here doesn't seem to be aware of the issue:

Screen Shot 2016-12-05 at 18.52.14.png
 
Got my 2016 15-inch MBP, bought a Porsche 2TB usb 3.0 for back-up, and can't get past ca. 140gigs copied. System crashes, reboots and gives me the CATERR crash report. Will try the fsck -f and clone in safe-mode workaround. It was good to see that many of you seem to have the same problem - the more we are to report it to Apple, the better, I assume. Hope it can get fixed soon enough - I don't like having no full, bootable back-up !

EDIT: same thing after trying to clone with CCC in safe-mode. Next-up : trying to create a Time Machine back-up, but after reading through this thread, I wouldn't bet on it.. :/
 
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I also got multiple, reproducible kernel panics today when I tried to install a large software (X-Plane 11) on to my external SSD (USB3 enclosure connected to Apple USBC-adapter). I also get a input/output error and crash when trying to install the Windows version using Bootcamp, so it looks like it's not only a macOS driver issue...

Looks like it's fixed in the new 10.12.2 Beta 5! Could now install without a problem. Hope it lasts.
 
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so am i the only a$$hole that did a time machine backup over wi-fi? :D

950GB+ backup that took 16-ish hours... not a single issue. no crashes, no errors, nothing. everything working flawlessly.

definitely seems like a bug that only occurs when plugged in.


I have the predictable crash when TM backup to USB drive, but successfully backed up to a NAS as you did. So 'no', you're not the only a$$hole. There's me too.
 
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