Time Machine no longer works in Catalina 10.15.5

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Level 1

8 points

Time Machine no longer works in Catalina 10.15.5

I have been running automatic backups to Time Machine on my Airport for years. But since upgrading to Catalina the backups have stopped working. After years of seamless operation it's frustrating that this has suddenly arisen. Clearly from the forums this is a real issue for Apple but not apparently being resolved.

This is the error message:

Time Machine could not delete the backup disk image “/Volumes/.timemachine/Duniya AirPort Time Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local./F7289E93-8BD1-4FC4-8736-B0C33C23F61E/Data/DuniyaMac2018.purgeable.sparsebundle”.

Do I need to erase the whole 3TB disc and start over, and if so, how do I do that? Or is there a better way to resolve this extremely annoying issue?

Thank you anyone who can help!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 27, 2020 11:39 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LD150

Level 10

90,197 points

Jul 28, 2020 2:59 AM in response to SWDun

When moving a whole version like Mojave to Catalina it is often cleaner to either get a new disk or to use Disk Utility to erase the disk (and format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784#format

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Answer 2

pwoodr

Level 1

9 points

Jul 28, 2020 1:17 PM in response to SWDun

try using recover to reinstall os 10.15.6. 10.15.5 broke time machine. 10.15.6 may have fixed it in some cases. the normal update process doesn't do the job. apple support has a good description of reinstall. I had to do it to two Macs. now time machine works correctly.

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Answer 3

pwoodr

Level 1

9 points

Jul 28, 2020 1:58 PM in response to LD150

I didn't find that anywhere online. spent a lot of time with apple support and it was mentioned. they also told me that updating to 10.15.6 would fix it "most" of the time. that didn't work in my case. as soon I reinstalled 10.15.6 using recover my time machine works as advertised.

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Answer 4

LD150

Level 10

90,197 points

Jul 28, 2020 1:25 PM in response to pwoodr

I wasn't aware that 10.15.5 broke time machine. Can you give us a web link to that?

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Time Machine no longer works in Catalina 10.15.5

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