My time machine says two of my backup disks exist and it will no longer backup to the disk.

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Level 1

12 points

My time machine says two of my backup disks exist and it will no longer backup to the disk.

I'm trying to back up my disk using time machine (has been working for a long time). Now all of a sudden it gives me an error message that "Time Machine couldn't back up to the "Backup-Primary" and when I look for details, it says "Two of the disks to back up have the same name. Rename one of the disks name "Macintosh HD - Data."

Two of the disks don't have the same name. And there is a disk name Macintosh HD - Data, but no clue why it would be asking me to rename a disk to that name that already exists. Something seems corrupted.

Clueless

iMac Pro

Posted on Oct 21, 2019 3:15 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

raina_b22

Community Specialist

Oct 28, 2019 7:42 AM in response to Falcon16-75

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities, Falcon16-75!

It sounds like you’re having an issue with Time Machine saying you have 2 disks with the same name. Please open your Applications then go to Utilities. Once you’ve opened Utilities, open Disk Utilities. When you open Disk Utilities, select one of the Macintosh HD - Data volumes in the sidebar and look at the red circle with a minus sign ().

If this is greyed out and not clickable, it’s the active volume. If it’s clickable, then this is the volume you can remove. Click the red circle to remove it. Once that is done, attempt another Time Machine backup.

Let me know the results and take care!

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Answer 2

Falcon16-75 Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 8, 2019 4:40 AM in response to raina_b22

Thank you everyone for your help. Bottomline ... I ended up restoring the disk to an earlier time (about one week prior) and it's worked fine since then. No clue what was really happening.

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My time machine says two of my backup disks exist and it will no longer backup to the disk.

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