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Problems with time machine back ups

I have upgraded to Catalina and the time machine back up starts of all right with the usual information of telling you on the time machine preferences of how much of the total back up its complete. When the blue line on the preferences screen reaches the end the back up just continues with the blue line staying at the end and the software just loading stuff onto my time capsule. The backup just continues filling up the time capsule and never stops. I have had to turn off automatic back ups and stop the back up. Should I let the time machine back up continue and hope it stops but this will soon fill up my time capsule or is there some other problem.

Posted on Oct 12, 2019 2:30 AM

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Posted on Oct 16, 2019 11:37 PM

Prior to Catalina my Time Machine backups would take a few minutes - it now takes 2 - 3 hours. As soon as one back up finishes it starts another one. It's backing up continuously. The device is getting very warm.

4 replies

Oct 22, 2019 6:09 PM in response to eddie0110

I have this same issue on my 2017 13" MacBook Pro, since upgrading to Catalina. I thought it might be a compatibility issue with my Synology NAS (Time Machine backups previously worked flawlessly for 2 years before Catalina) I bought an external hard drive to test, and shared it as a Time Machine volume from my iMac Pro (from the Apple sharing settings) It sees the drive and starts the backup. However, once the progress bar reaches 100%, the status message changes to "Backed up: xxxGB" and the amount continues to grow. The size it's reporting is WAY beyond what it historically took - it's up to 600GB now, and my total used space is only 175GB. It almost seems like Time Machine doesn't know it's time to stop, so it keeps writing new data.


Any other advice on this issue? None of the posts here really address the problem...Thanks!

Oct 23, 2019 12:23 AM in response to encausticcello

Encausticcello - not sure this will help but sharing my experience. 2013 MacBook Air & Airport Time Capsule 5th Gen 2TB. After speaking to Apple Support tried starting in Safe mode (no improvement in backup performance) then running First Aid on the MacBook (again no improvement). The following day a Time Machine message appeared. Not the exact words but along the lines of "Time Machine has reviewed your back ups and a new backup needs to be taken. You will no longer be able to access previous backups". Time Machine then deleted all previous backups and did a complete 175GB in 3 hours - it's been working fine since - but it still shows "Backed up xxxGB." I don't know if either of the remedial actions triggered the backup review or if its completely coincidental. Maybe the Apple guys can figure out how its triggered as it seems to work. Apologies if no help at all.

Problems with time machine back ups

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