Trouble with time machine back up (getting stuck mid back up) and attempted fix.

[Eggtastic]

I have a WD hard drive thats about 8 years old that I use for time machine back ups. I am lazy with it and only do it a few times a year.

Anyway, this back up was significant as I didn't back up until last year in October. I knew it would take a bit but it would get stuck at a certain percentage and then just stay stuck there for hours. I would pause the back up, remove the back up drive from my mac and reattach it (correctly) and attempt the back up again. It would reach a certain percentage and get stuck again.

When that would happen, google search told me to just cancel it and run disk utility to diagnose a problem. I did that and see the screen shots attached. Now the back ups appear to not be working even after removing and connecting the back up disk to my mac.

Not to sure what is happening but if anyone can help that would be appreciated. I assume either my disk is failed / failing, the operating system upgrade messed with things, or something else. I am open to wiping the disk clean and starting over if that's what it takes to get it working properly.

I am aware that I should be more serious with my back ups so once I resolve this that will be my next move to establish a proper / safe back up protocol.

Thank you.

 

[Fishrrman]

What follows is my opinion only.

Option 1:
Reformat the drive to APFS and start over.

Option 2 (better):
STOP USING time machine for backups
Instead, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
An SSD would be best to use with these, but you can still reformat the existing drive and (again) start over.

I'd suggest CCC, using an SSD.
And STOP being lazy -- back up once a week (pick a day and time and stick with it).

Personal experience.
Using CCC and an SSD, backing up my boot partition takes about 50 seconds.
Using CCC and the same (partitioned) backup SSD, backing up my "main" partition (where I keep most of my data), takes 0 seconds.
That is not a mis-type. For 60-70 small-sized data files, it goes QUICKLY.

 

[Eggtastic]

What follows is my opinion only.

Option 1:
Reformat the drive to APFS and start over.

Option 2 (better):
STOP USING time machine for backups
Instead, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
An SSD would be best to use with these, but you can still reformat the existing drive and (again) start over.

I'd suggest CCC, using an SSD.
And STOP being lazy -- back up once a week (pick a day and time and stick with it).

Personal experience.
Using CCC and an SSD, backing up my boot partition takes about 50 seconds.
Using CCC and the same (partitioned) backup SSD, backing up my "main" partition (where I keep most of my data), takes 0 seconds.
That is not a mis-type. For 60-70 small-sized data files, it goes QUICKLY.

Thanks for the detailed reply. Any idea what might have happened with my disk? It's a WD My Passport Ultra 4TB drive from 2018 if that helps. Based on my research people are split on how reliable these / the company / HDD vs. SSD etc.

 

[benwiggy]

I have a WD hard drive thats about 8 years old

Mechanical hard drives do have an expected lifespan; and you can usually get 5 years out of them before problems are likely. You say your usage has been quite light; but time gets us all in the end.

You need to get a new disk. Don't reformat the old one.

There's no reason to stop using Time Machine.

 

[Honza1]

Using as backup a drive which has had a problem is, well, less than smart... Any disk can fail at any time, it's just the likelihood which changes. Since the disk shown its inclination to problems, reformat for something else and get a new disk. And be happy you did not find out when you needed to restore something.
If you are using TimeMachine, what you are doing is nonsense. Value of TimeMachine is continuous backup. You may benefit from other methods if you want to backup only occasionally. Carbon Copy Cloner can do this quite nicely. But it TimeMachine is build in and should work, so I see the value here.