Time Machine - No backup happening

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Level 1

8 points

Time Machine - No backup happening

I have my external hard drive set up as a my Time Machine backup disc. In the past there has been no problem with backups completing.

However, now the backup goes through the 'preparing' process for about 15 minutes. Then that appears to finish (or at least it stops) but no backup follows that.

It has now been about a year since the last successful backup (not ideal I know) so I would have thought that the 'preparing' process would have taken longer in any event.

I'm running High Sierra 10.13.3 on an early-2014 Macbook Air.

Thanks everyone.

MacBook Air 11", macOS 10.13

Posted on Mar 16, 2019 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eric Root

Level 10

684,573 points

Mar 16, 2019 1:22 PM in response to mark.devane

Start with A4 in the 1st linked article.

Time Machine Troubleshooting second source Time Machine Troubleshooting

Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

245,189 points

Mar 16, 2019 8:41 AM in response to mark.devane

Open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when it tries to backup..

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

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Answer 3

mark.devane Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2019 9:11 AM in response to BDAqua

In console, I've gotten the following error messages about the backup

Failed to write unlock record UUIDs as extended attribute for disk '/', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

When the 'preparing' stopped and no backup occurred, I got:

Failed to unmount disk mounted at '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Air/2019-03-16-154820/Macintosh HD', error: {

Action = Unmount;

Target = "file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook%20Air/2019-03-16-154820/Macintosh%20HD";

}

and

Failed to unmount snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-03-16-154820 source: Macintosh HD

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

245,189 points

Mar 16, 2019 10:54 AM in response to mark.devane

The local Backups thing seems overkill to me...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

https://www.howtogeek.com/212207/how-to-free-up-space-used-by-time-machines-local-backups-on-your-mac/

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Answer 5

TheLittles

Level 10

195,515 points

Mar 16, 2019 8:00 AM in response to mark.devane

Have you updated your Mac’s OS to 10.13.6?

Utes may have been created to fix issues like this.

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Answer 6

mark.devane Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2019 8:06 AM in response to TheLittles

I haven't - I'm reluctant to update when I haven't completed a backup to be honest. I'm ideally looking for a fix without having to update to 13.6 (or Mojave)!

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Time Machine - No backup happening

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