Time Machine Backup Problem ?

[Robert4]

Hello,

Over the last few days, I have been getting a msg that Time Machine can't do a backup.
Says to try again when "Time Machine is Available".

"The backup disk could not be found.
Make sure the backup disk is connected or select a different backup disk."

"Latest successful backup: November 28, 2019"

Looked at all the (few) screens that come up, and they all seem to have the options, etc. selected as they always have been. No reel details though on what might be wrong.

Plenty of room on the backup disk.

Cabling to iMac looks fine.

What's "most likely" ?

Any suggestions as to what I might check out, perhaps in more depth, than the
simplistic screens that now show for Time machine ?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[madrich]

Are you connected with the Time Capsule via cable or WiFi? If the latter then reconnect directly via cable, but first shut the machine off and restart.

Additionally you could try to reset the Time Capsule.

 

[Fishrrman]

My "Fishrrman's absolutely broken-record" advice:

Try either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.
Both are free to download and try for 30 days.
Either one creates a "cloned" backup of your internal drive that is BOOTABLE, too.

You can boot from the backup and it will look and behave exactly as your internal drive...

 

[HDFan]

"The backup disk could not be found.
Make sure the backup disk is connected or select a different backup disk."

A number of possible causes. The most concerning would be if the disk is starting to fail. Be sure that you have a clone backup (assuming you are backup up just one disk) to another disk via something like Carbon Copy Cloner. You need that anyway as TM is subject to failures.

You can run Disk Utility First Aid on the disk.

 

[Brian33]

Any suggestions as to what I might check out, perhaps in more depth, than the
simplistic screens that now show for Time machine ?

You can use the 'log' command in Terminal.app to see Time Machine's log messages.

The command below will create a file 'foo' in your current directory that contains all available TM messages. (It will take a few minutes to complete.)

log show --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info > foo

You can limit the output by specifying a start date:

log show --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info --start 2019-12-03

Alternatively you can display the messages in real-time. Enter the following command, then manually start a backup:

log stream --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info

Don't be surprised to see error messages unrelated to your problem. I always see a bunch of "Failed to remove attribute" messages, even when TM is working ok.
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I'm assuming you're on a recent version of macOS. I think the 'log' command was introduced in Sierra(??).