Sierra and Time Machine

Not that then.

i cannot delete the inprogress file. trash just says it's "preparing" to. i even changed the name of the file and cannot delete it.

Don't delete it, let it complete first.

it makes sense to have enough room on the hard drive, but time machine app says it automatically will ditch old stuff in order to make room for new. Is this not true?

In my experience, time machine does automatically delete older backups in order to make room for new backups, but it does this rather slowly. For example, it took about 20 minutes to delete 5 old backups in order to recover about 5GB of disk space.

Thanks to Entropee for the very helpful steps. Unfortunately, my problem takes a different turn at step 6. When I try to open the Data folder, the only thing in the Finder window is 'Macbook Air 2015.sparsebundle', with today's date. When I try to open that file, a window pops up saying 'The following disk images couldn't be opened'.... with the reason 'resource temporarily unavailable'.

Sadly, I have two other issues compounding my problem.

First, I have been away for four months with my laptop, and so I keep getting messages that my Time Capsule couldn't complete the backup. I understand that the fix for that is to delete the 'backups.backupd.InProgress' file, but I have no idea where it is. Advice from my Google searches is simply 'open Time Machine' but I don't know what that means:

(1) I tried clicking on the Time Machine icon on the upper part of my screen to 'enter Time Machine', and on the last date I backed it up (May 31), it says 'Waiting' at the top, with no files listed; so apparently that is where the 'InProgress' file is lurking. How do I delete it? Surprisingly, there are backups in Time Capsule since May 31, even up to yesterday-- why, when it says it can't complete the backup?

(2) The other way I've tried to 'open Time Machine' is to click on the AirPort in the Shared section of my list in the Finder sidebar-- leading to the aforementioned 'sparsebundle' problem.

Second, I updated to Sierra before I returned, so may have the Sophos/TimeMachine/Sierra problem described by others. I have disabled it-- must I actually uninstall it?

Third, I changed ISPs to AT&T and relocated the AirPort to the new router-- I can see it with the AirPort Utility and all seems well there.

Hoping for any advice...

Michael,

Stumbled upon your answer. Have not been able to use Time Machine to backup to a Time Capsule via Ethernet since upgrading to Sierra. I did have Sophos AV installed and running. I went into Sophos and disabled live monitoring and my Time Machine backup is progressing at incredible speeds! Thanks very much for the tip.

Each has different phenomena and workarounds in this regard (even though the end results are the same - backup failure and/or very slow operation) so that it is not possible to pinpoint your case. Just for your information, according to my experience (I have both of NAS- and USB-based backups):

1 'MacBook Air 2015.sparsebundle' is your backup file because your backup is on Time Capsule or so called NAS - network attached storage. You cannot open/look into this type of file, which is technically called the image file, by Finder. 'Macbook Air 2015' is your Mac's name which you assigned days ago.

2 You don't have the 'backups.backupd.InProgress' file because the file would be created if the backup were generated on a HDD directly connected to your Mac via USB. The InProgress file is only temporal during each backup operation and automatically deleted/expanded into a new backup set of folders/files once the backup operation has been completed. The folders/files can be manipulated by Finder but it's not recommended at all. The 'backups.backupd' part depends.

Please see if the responses in this thread help: logd high cpu

Hello all, I just found this link for those of you running Sophos AV for Mac OS:

jurkuipers wrote:

Were are the multilevel-experts?

Pondini passed away. There is no-one with his knowledge of Time Machine posting here anymore. But if you have anti virus software (particularly Sophos) remove it.

Csound1 wrote:

But if you have anti virus software (particularly Sophos) remove it.

I Have been using Sophos AV for several years with no problems untiI upgraded to Sierra, so why remove it if they have a fix.

Do as you wish.

I had this exact problem. I went thru and turned off all of Sophos actions. Started Time Machine backup and within 20 seconds was backing up 150GB of data. Backup ran to completion without issues. Sophos was definitely the problem.

It's not just Sophos; I've been having all these problems with backing up to a Time Capsule since I upgraded to 10.12.1 earlier this week ( I thought that by waiting for the first fix release, I'd be mostly ok...!). It was stuck on 'preparing..' and wouldn't move.

I'm running McAfee AV and eventually got Time Machine to work by turning off automatic backups, turning off all McAfee scanning, then running a manual backup which worked. Then I turned on automatic backups and it's been backing up all night without problems.

It's looking like Time Machine in Sierra has a problem with AV in general.