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Unable to backup via TimeMachine - "The backup disk image .. already in use"

I

idyll

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 5, 2007
502
19
Ever since upgrading to Sierra, I keep receiving the following notification from TimeMachine:
"Backup has failed.
The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Name.sparsebundle" is already in use."

I am trying to backup to a WD MyCloud NAS.

I have tried the following:
  • Restart computer and NAS
  • Remove and re-add NAS drive to TimeMachine
  • Delete previous TimeMachine backup from NAS and start a new one
Removing and then adding the NAS drive back to TimeMachine fixes the problem for a few hours, but then the notification comes up again. Any advice?
 
idyll said:
Ever since upgrading to Sierra, I keep receiving the following notification from TimeMachine:
"Backup has failed.
The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Name.sparsebundle" is already in use."

I am trying to backup to a WD MyCloud NAS.

I have tried the following:
  • Restart computer and NAS
  • Remove and re-add NAS drive to TimeMachine
  • Delete previous TimeMachine backup from NAS and start a new one
Removing and then adding the NAS drive back to TimeMachine fixes the problem for a few hours, but then the notification comes up again. Any advice?
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1487805468][/doublepost]I had the same problem. Restarting the computer solved my problem. I suspect, but not based on any evidence, Crashplan created a conflict. Prior to this starting I was browsing my share with Crashplan to set files to backup.
 
idyll said:
Ever since upgrading to Sierra, I keep receiving the following notification from TimeMachine:
"Backup has failed.
The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Name.sparsebundle" is already in use."

I am trying to backup to a WD MyCloud NAS.

I have tried the following:
  • Restart computer and NAS
  • Remove and re-add NAS drive to TimeMachine
  • Delete previous TimeMachine backup from NAS and start a new one
Removing and then adding the NAS drive back to TimeMachine fixes the problem for a few hours, but then the notification comes up again. Any advice?
Click to expand...

Have exactly the same issue. Rebooting of either Mac of Nas helps - but problem reappears shortly after.
Anybody with a solution?
 
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I experienced this problem with my Macs backing up to a Synology NAS. I tried all those suggestions too and the problem would just return in a few days.

I was using SMB to connect to the Synology (DiskStation Manager 6.1) and switching back to AFP solved the problem. I know that AFP is deprecated, so going forward this solution may not be feasible but it works good for now.
 
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Reactions: jagooch
I have the same problem with Time Machine running on Sierra and WD Cloud NAS

The problem occurs when the iMac is left overnight and goes into sleep mode as per energy saver

I am unable to remount the volume manually. A restart of the Mac is my only known solution.
 
QuotesUK said:
I have the same problem with Time Machine running on Sierra and WD Cloud NAS

The problem occurs when the iMac is left overnight and goes into sleep mode as per energy saver

I am unable to remount the volume manually. A restart of the Mac is my only known solution.
Click to expand...
I have the same problem with my Macbook Pro. I did recently move my WiFi AP to another location , but that shouldn't be a problem.

I get the "backup file in use" ( paraphrase ) message and the backup fails. Rebooting my Macbook Pro fixed it.
 
jagooch said:
I have the same problem with my Macbook Pro. I did recently move my WiFi AP to another location , but that shouldn't be a problem.

I get the "backup file in use" ( paraphrase ) message and the backup fails. Rebooting my Macbook Pro fixed it.
Click to expand...

It's back again . I reconfigured my WiFi so backups for my iMac and Macbook Pro which go over WiFi were interrupted. this time rebooting the computer did not fix the problem.

Bump
 
I've been struggling with this for weeks! Problem combination has been macOS 10.12.x, Synology DS1817+, DSM 6.1.x, over SMB. I also backup to a Mac Mini running 10.13.1 over SMB without issue. I've found that manually mounting the SMB share on the Synology, then mounting/unmounting the sparsebundle will sometimes allow a backup or two to proceed (and also verifies the image isn't corrupt).

Strangely, the Mac Mini that serves as a secondary target backs itself up to the same Synology without any complaint (and did under 10.12, so it's not a High Sierra fix). I've restarted the backup from scratch so many times and it makes no difference.
 
Last edited:
Same problem on High Sierra. Ugh.

This did start after I partitioned my Time Machine (AirPort Extreme) though.
 
Same problem here. Mac Book Pro, High Sierra with Synology NAS.
(note: after Reboot of MBP a backup was sucessful. Will see how it goes and report)
 
Last edited:
George254 said:
Same problem here. Mac Book Pro, High Sierra with Synology NAS.
(note: after Reboot of MBP a backup was sucessful. Will see how it goes and report)
Click to expand...

I found a solution on the Synology forums (create a blank file with a certain name).
 
Albschmidt said:
I found a solution on the Synology forums (create a blank file with a certain name).
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on what this blank file is named and where it needs to be placed on the synology? I am having this exact issue.
 
George254 said:
Same problem here. Mac Book Pro, High Sierra with Synology NAS.
(note: after Reboot of MBP a backup was sucessful. Will see how it goes and report)
Click to expand...

Same problem. Nothing works, rebooting NAS or MBP several times. It appeared out of nowhere. Did it perfectly well. After missing several backup dates I tried a new NAS profile, but did not make any difference.

Anyone a solid solution yet?

I find all of the Mac products to be highly unstable these days. And the number of updates are nearing the Windows amounts now too. The only difference, the poor service at Apple. Never any spot available for service, poor problem solving...
 
I have the identical problem with the same WD MyCloud NAS drive. I tried Apple Tech Support and after much trial and error they said they couldn't help because it had to be a MyCloud problem. After many very tiresome emails with WDMyCloud they wanted me to delete everything from the Mac and the Drive and reinstall!
I have not followed this latter advice but after restarting and relocating both Mac and WDMyCloud Time Machine stared working again. But after a couple of backups the problem came back.
Did you ever find a stable solution?
 
Have you already tried do exclude the NAS Drive from Spotlight Indexing ?

This is an old issue which has been re-introduced in Sierra.
Spotlight doesn't automatically ignore Time Machine volumes on third party hosts.
  • Restart system and start time machine backup
  • Wait until time machine volume is mounted in `/Volumes`
  • Go to Spotlight privacy settings and add the time machine volume to ignore list

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7729199
 
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Fratotec said:
Have you already tried do exclude the NAS Drive from Spotlight Indexing ?

This is an old issue which has been re-introduced in Sierra.
Spotlight doesn't automatically ignore Time Machine volumes on third party hosts.
  • Restart system and start time machine backup
  • Wait until time machine volume is mounted in `/Volumes`
  • Go to Spotlight privacy settings and add the time machine volume to ignore list

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7729199
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1525338542][/doublepost]I have been battling this issue with so-called customer support experts at Apple and WD for weeks and weeks without success. And now Fratotec you have provided the very simple solution which has solved the problem. I am deeply indebted to you! Many thanks.
 
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Fratotec said:
Have you already tried do exclude the NAS Drive from Spotlight Indexing ?

This is an old issue which has been re-introduced in Sierra.
Spotlight doesn't automatically ignore Time Machine volumes on third party hosts.
  • Restart system and start time machine backup
  • Wait until time machine volume is mounted in `/Volumes`
  • Go to Spotlight privacy settings and add the time machine volume to ignore list

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7729199
Click to expand...
I haven't had the issue for some time, but I went ahead and add the time machine share to the exclusion list in Spotlight privacy settings. It can't hurt anything, so why not?
 
idyll said:
Ever since upgrading to Sierra, I keep receiving the following notification from TimeMachine:
"Backup has failed.
The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Name.sparsebundle" is already in use."

I am trying to backup to a WD MyCloud NAS.

I have tried the following:
  • Restart computer and NAS
  • Remove and re-add NAS drive to TimeMachine
  • Delete previous TimeMachine backup from NAS and start a new one
Removing and then adding the NAS drive back to TimeMachine fixes the problem for a few hours, but then the notification comes up again. Any advice?
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1526532398][/doublepost]i've had the same problem, the only resolve is to restart my MacBook Pro, then backup works fine, it happens about once a month, can't figure out what the problem is.
 
I'm unable to add /Volumes/timemachine to Spotlight Privacy. It says "Privacy List Error: The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error". Running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

I was however able to add the AFP mount to the privacy list: afp://xxxx.local/timemachine/
Not yet sure if it helps with the issue at hand.

A sidenote, but there seems to be some anecdotal indications around the web that Apple doesn't really want one to exclude Time machine backups from Spotlight: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21902?locale=en_US and https://eclecticlight.co/2016/06/20...otlight-indexing-on-your-time-machine-backup/.

If you add a Time Machine backup disk to the privacy list, you will continue to see messages that Spotlight is indexing your backup disk. This indexing is necessary for Time Machine to function properly and can’t be disabled. Spotlight does exclude from searches any items you store on your backup disk that are not part of a Time Machine backup.
Click to expand...

But I don't see the harm in trying, if it potentially helps to get rid of the "Unable to backup" problem.
 
Lynjon said:
[doublepost=1525338542][/doublepost]I have been battling this issue with so-called customer support experts at Apple and WD for weeks and weeks without success. And now Fratotec you have provided the very simple solution which has solved the problem. I am deeply indebted to you! Many thanks.
Click to expand...

Huge thanks for providing such a straightforward fix.
 
Fratotec said:
Have you already tried do exclude the NAS Drive from Spotlight Indexing ?

This is an old issue which has been re-introduced in Sierra.
Spotlight doesn't automatically ignore Time Machine volumes on third party hosts.
  • Restart system and start time machine backup
  • Wait until time machine volume is mounted in `/Volumes`
  • Go to Spotlight privacy settings and add the time machine volume to ignore list

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7729199
Click to expand...

This worked for me too but I had to do one more thing. Adding the Time Machine Backups volume alone (even after restarting the MBP and waiting for a while) didn't help yet I noticed that MobileBackups had gotten pretty large (the last backup was in April) so I added it to Spotlight Privacy too. Within a few minutes, Time Machine was "preparing backup" and the volume already in use message was gone.

Thanks!
 
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Thankz, this Solution works for me:
unmount nas:/Time_Machine
add url nas:/Time_Machine in the privacy tab to the spotlight ignore list
start backup, no problems anymore!
(reboot is not needed)

Using a Macbook-Pro M1 with Big Sur and a Synology nas
 
Last edited:
My issues searches led me here, so I will provide a potential answer to "inheritbackup" or "associatedisk" for SMB/APFS/sparsebundle destinations (on Ventura 13.7.8) that are failing.

Backups stopped working one day, likely due to insufficient space allocated on the SMB server share. After allocating more space it would no longer sync, so I forgot the destination and continuously encountered errors attempting to reconnect to the old backups. Despite TM's visibility of the location and providing the correct password for the backups, it showed a new/first backup was required.

---
**PROBLEM:**

`destinationinfo` always showed what appeared to be correct after associating the smb destination:

**‼️ NOTE "Mount Point" changed to the name of the MOUNTED sparsebundle when fixed, which should be `/Volumes/Backups of <ComputerName>` (ComputerName = `sudo scutil --get ComputerName`)**

```sh
$ tmutil destinationinfo
Name : <smb-share>
Kind : Network
URL : smb://<user>@<smb-server>/<smb-share>
Mount Point : /Volumes/<smb-share>
ID : <uid>
```

```sh
$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/<smb-share>/<name>.sparsebundle
The image "<name>.sparsebundle" can't be inherited because another image "<name>.sparsebundle" belonging to this computer already exists in the same directory.
```

```sh
$ tmutil listbackups
No machine directory found for host.
```

```sh
$ tmutil machinedirectory
No machine directory found for host.
```

Clicking the sparse bundle in finder would show inprogress & failed backups:
```sh
$ sudo ls -lG /Volumes/Backups of <ComputerName>
total 8
drwx------ 5 _unknown _unknown 160 13 Apr 2025 .Spotlight-V100
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 96 25 Oct 23:43 .com.apple.TimeMachine.IOCheck
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 21 Oct 17:17 2025-10-21-185932.previous
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 22 Oct 23:03 2025-10-22-230247.interrupted
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 23 Oct 16:06 2025-10-23-160337.interrupted
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 25 Oct 20:17 2025-10-25-201616.interrupted
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root wheel 160 25 Oct 23:44 2025-10-25-234322.inprogress
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 2495 21 Oct 19:19 backup_manifest.plist
```

---
**SOLUTION:**

These are the steps that allowed the re-inheritance where all others failed. I suggest skipping steps 2-5 the first try, and only doing the deletions as a last resort.

1. Forget/remove all TM destinations via gui or cli
2. `$ sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /`
3. `$ sudo tmutil disable`
4. `$ sudo rm -r /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots`
5. `$ sudo rm -r /Volumes/.timemachine`
6. reboot smb server & mac
7. `$ sudo tmutil setdestination -ap smb://<user>@<smb-server>/<smb-share>`
8. can't remember if I had to manually mount the `<smb-share>` or sparsebundle, so do those until `/Volumes/Backups of <ComputerName>` appears...
9. ```sh
$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Backups of <ComputerName>/
Password:
Successfully inherited machine store at /Volumes/Backups of <ComputerName>
```
10. reboot smb server & mac

TM GUI then showed the destination and nothing about a new/first backup. `listbackups` displayed the old backups, and `destinationinfo` "Mount Point" was now aligned with `machinedirectory`.

**‼️ NOTE: Still took a couple of manually triggered backup attempts & reboots to complete a full successful sync. Successful sync took a few hours.**
 
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