Time Capsule Fails to Backup

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Level 1

79 points

Time Capsule Fails to Backup

Ever since my 3TB TC reported that it was full and could not do a backup I have been unable to get it to do a backup for either my laptop or my iMac.

I have done everything I could think of to correct this issue. I have erased, factory reset, unplugged for hours, deleted the in progress sparse bundle and rebooted, etc. Start over with the same results.

What happens now is that it will start a backup. Get to about 3gb of 459gb and then just quit with no message as to why. It does not show any recent backup activity, but will sometimes show some memory used.

I am running High Sierra 10.13.6 on both computers. The TC is not setup as a network. It is connected to a router which is connected to the modem via ethernet cable.

One other thing: Isn't the TC supposed to be deleting older backups to make room for newer backups without notice? If so, why would it be full and unable to do a new backup?

I am stumped and would appreciate any help.

Posted on Oct 11, 2019 9:04 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

157,896 points

Oct 11, 2019 2:35 PM in response to dnorth12

The dependability of the Time Capsule (TC,) specifically for Time Machine (TM) backups, has become more and more unreliable since Apple introduced macOS Sierra. There has been no real improvements even with Catalina. The TC is an outdated design that still relies on the AFP file sharing protocol for TM backups. Depending on the exact model of TC that you have, it's basically a gamble on how much longer you will be able to depend on it going forward and you really need to look for an alternative solution if you wish to continue to do Time Machine backups to a network drive.

Interestingly, TM backups to a locally attached drive do not seem to suffer the same faith. Nor is using something like Carbon Copy Cloner to make backups to the TC an issue either. Just TM backups to the TC.

Regardless, there are a few things you can try to "improve" the dependability of your TC, and those include:

Using a base station name of 16-alphanumeric characters or less that does not include any special characters or spaces.
If the TC is NOT the "main" router, to assign it a static local IP address.
To verify, that as a minimum, that IPv6 Link-local only is configured for both the Mac and the TC.

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Answer 2

dnorth12 Author

Level 1

79 points

Oct 22, 2019 5:30 PM in response to Tesserax

Sorry it took me so long to respond. With your information I solved my issue by buying separate WD 4TB drives for each computer. Using Time Machine as the software to drive the backups, everything is back to working properly without a hitch. Too bad that the TC could no longer handle the process seeing as how the process was built by Apple and they seem to have left it hanging.

Thank you.

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Time Capsule Fails to Backup

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