Unable to use Time Machine anymore

[BHanular]

For the last 3 years I’ve used Time Machine on my MacBook Air to backup to a
Seagate portable hard drive. It has worked flawlessly until yesterday. Now when I do a backup I get a popup that says: Time Machine couldn’t do back up to “Seagate Bac”. When I try to delete an old backup folder I put in my password, which the computer accepts, and then I get the message: “The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items”.

I did recently upgrade to operating system Big Sur 11.6.8. I can’t upgrade to Monterey as my computer is too old. I upgraded a few days before the problem was discovered.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

 

[HDFan]

When I try to delete an old backup folder

Did you try to delete a backup folder within the Time Machine backup? Not a good idea as it can corrupt pointers.

Can you create/delete a new folder, not in the Time Machine directory structure, on the drive?

Note that in a 3-2-1 backup strategy TM can only be one backup due to its unreliabilty.

 

[BHanular]

Thank you for the reply! That’s much appreciated. I can create/delete new folders outside the Time Machine directory. I do not use the 3-2-1 backup strategy. I was able to delete folders within the backup directory before this issue with no problem. I did that to free up space on the hard drive. It’s been a year ago since I did that, and TM had been working fine until now. The hard drive is functional for except for this issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you again.

 

[McScooby]

If you don't need anything off the TM back-up. just delete it from the Seagate & start a new one - I've had to do this at various points over the years, but way way easier than troubleshooting stuff.

 

[svenmany]

If you don't need anything off the TM back-up. just delete it from the Seagate & start a new one - I've had to do this at various points over the years, but way way easier than troubleshooting stuff.

I've been in this boat before and ended up following that advice. It's not without risk though; I never know whether some day I'll need an old version of a file, or a deleted file. It really isn't enough for me to only consider what I need now.