Q: Time Machine will not backup my Home Library Folder
After having upgraded my El Capitan system to Sierra, I decided to wipe clean my Time Machine external disk so as to start a new series of TM Sierra backups.
The problem is that Time Machine now stops backing up when it gets to the Library folder in my Home folder.
It used to work flawlessly when I ran El Capitan.
I then have to cancel the backup process which came to a halt at about half of the job (201.85 Gb out of 360 Gb).
If I dig into the Time Machine "In Progress" file in the Backups.backupdb folder, I find my Home Library folder tagged with a red button with a Minus sign in its lower right corner.
There seems to be an odd authorization problem here.
Any explanation of what is going on here ? Any solution ?
iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12), Core i7, 1 TB SSD, 24 GB Ram.
Posted on Sep 27, 2016 12:37 PM
After upgrading to Sierra, my system log was being spammed by iCloud-related processes every few seconds. This was odd because I'd NEVER used iCloud EVER, but the only way to stop it was to login to iCloud for the first time, then logout again. I notice there's a whole bunch of processes running taking up memory and CPU cycles for things I've disabled/not enabled and never use (eg iCloud, Siri and the list goes on). I looked into using launchctl to "unload" them, but that required booting into the Recovery Partition, disabling system integrity protection, making the changes with launchctl, re-enabling SIP, rebooting etc. I may yet do it, but the system is not memory constrained (16GB) or CPU constrained (i7 quad core) so I've let it slide.
Anyway, back to your issue. Perhaps your files are being moved/copied to iCloud (the new Sierra "space optimisation" and especially if you're low on disk space) and TM waits for that to complete?
I'd wait till the TM backup is finished, then let iCloud do its thing again.
Posted on Sep 30, 2016 12:55 PM