Big Sur, Big Problems with Time Capsule

Agreed. About f**king time.

Below is what I found from Sophos Forum. (Refer to Second Bulletin in Mac Session)

https://support.home.sophos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000129706-Known-issues-in-Sophos-Home-Premium

It's a known issue and fix will come on March 2021.

Yes.. it certainly seems TC is dropping further and further behind.

Sorry nothing running big sur yet but the suggestion is to clear your TC.. if you have previous backups you want to keep use a USB HFS+ formatted drive and archive the TC.. then erase it..

Then try again with Time Machine as it seems to be able to alter things to work with Big Sur.. however your older computers (if you have any) may then have issues.. give it a go..

Not practical for most folks.

Say your Mac connects to your network using WiFi now. You would have to turn off the WiFi on the Mac and connect to the Time Capsule from your Mac using an Ethernet cable. Then, disconnect the Ethernet cable and log back onto your normal WiFi network once a backup has run.

Or, log off of your current WiFi network and log onto the Time Capsule WiFi to back up. Then, log off o f the Time Capsule WiFi and back onto your regular WiFi network once a backup has run.

If you can connect the Time Capsule using an Ethernet cable to an Ethernet port on your main router, you do have the option of turning off the WiFi on the Time Capsule and backing up over the WiFi provided by your regular WiFi router.

You can even "hide" the Time Capsule if you want in this type of setup, because it will not be providing a WiFi network. Then, you will be able to back up seamlessly over the same network that you use for your Internet service. Backups to a Time Capsule occur only over on your "local" network, the Internet is never involved in a backup.

Hi

that’s the way it’s connected at the moment, via an Ethernet cable to the router and was backing up whilst I was using Catalina this ceased when I updated to Big Sur. I’ve lodged an Apple expert call to try and find if they have a work around

Thanks for the reply. I didn't run it prior to posting, but when I just did it came back with no errors.

Attempting to run another backup resulted in the same error reported previously.

I will attempt a backup to a USB hard drive shortly and report the results - but as you said, the snapshot is created on the internal drive, so we'll see how it goes.

I guess I should have stated that there is plenty of room available on the Time Capsule as well -

Open Time Machine Preferences on the Mac System Preferences > Time Machine

Uncheck the box next to Back Up Automatically

Leave things that way for 30-60 minutes

Then, enter a check mark again next to Back Up Automatically

Restart the Mac

Try again

Nope. Even if there is a "solution" from Sophos (or Norton, which is also having issues with Big Sur), AV software is not needed on a Mac.

But, don't trust my word, trust the word of the operating system gurus over in the support forums for the Mac operating systems.

First let me describe my setup. I have two 2019 MacBook Pros. One iMac Pro, and two iMac Retinas. I retain the iMacs on Mojave because I run Adobe CS6 including photoshop on them, fully licensed version, and I'd lose that and have to go to a perpetual payment for a cloud based photoshop, dreamweaver, etc. if I upgraded the OSX on those iMacs.

This is my Time Capsule setup:

The Internet is the cable modem, connected with ethernet cable of course to the Time Capsule at the top that is sitting right next to the cable modem. That time capsule broadcasts WiFi to the Kitchen, Upstairs and the lower right TC, which are extending the WiFi network. The Time Capsule on the lower left is bridged and ethernet hard wired with a 300' underground Cat6 cable to a second house on the property, which is set to broadcast its own WiFi network for that house.

Each Apple computer is set to backup to a different hard drive or Time Capsule. One hard drive is connected directly to the iMac Pro with USB C for its backup, and another hard drive is connected to the main Time Capsule on the top with USB-B, for a different iMac, and then the Time Capsule that is 300 feet away from the other one, is used for backup of a different MBP and one iMac retina.

The MacBook Pro that I upgraded to Big Sur is set to backup to the main Time Capsule directly connected to the Internet, the one connected at the top. It is the only computer using its hard drive for backup, and it is now on Big Sur.

After I upgraded the one MBP to Big Sur, I did notice after about a week that that MBP was no longer backing up to its Time Capsule. It kept giving a message to the effect of that it could not find the Time Capsule. I first tried deleting the two "Time Capsule" keys from KeyChain Access - no effect. Then I hard restarted all of the Time Capsules and Airport Extremes.

Now, after hard restart, the Time Capsule would show up for the MBP on Big Sur, but I could not get that MBP to do much more than end up in "Waiting to complete first backup" mode as far as the TC, and experienced another odd issue, which was that whenever the MBP went into "Preparing to backup" mode, before it got stuck in "Waiting to complete first backup" mode, it would briefly knock the Time Capsule off the network - make it go offline and not show Green in the Airport Utility screen, and internet would go dead across the network.

As well, another odd thing that would happen, is that when that main Time Capsule came back online, the order of connectivity of the Time Capsules and Airport Extremes would change, with the Upstairs and Kitchen Airport Extremes now running off the second Time Capsule that was hard wired 300 feet away. I think this had to do with that when the main Time Capsule went offline, the Airport Extremes latched onto what was still broadcasting WiFi, even though it was far away. None of this was good.

Finally, I went into that main Time Capsule and using Airport Utility, I erased the entire Time Capsule hard drive with the second type of erase - 0 all data - and then when that was finally done, I examined the Time Capsule's drive with Disk Utility and noticed that now it is formatted as APFS.

Gradually, slowly, now the MBP on Big Sur is completing its first encrypted backup to the Time Capsule I erased. It remains to be seen if, in the future, that every time the MBP connects to that Time Capsule if it is going to push it offline as far as its functioning as a router for internet connectivity.

Has anyone else experienced this issue with a TIME CAPSULE - that once whatever device you have connected to it is upgraded to Big Sur, that every time it is "Preparing for Backup" that it knocks the Time Capsule out as far as functioning as a router for internet, for a bit?

I have never had Sophos installed, still had issues with my MBP after upgraded to Big Sur and connected to a 3Tb latest model Time Capsule, until I used Airport Utility to wipe the TC drive and start all over on it. All backups since then have worked automatically without detectible issue.

I actually downloaded and added Avast Security (free version) to this MacBook Pro (MBP) running Big Sur, and it does not seem to affect Time Capsule / Time Machine operation adversely, although I have preferences set to disable Web Shield, and I have unchecked the Email Shield that scans secure connections because this tends to interfere with MSFT Outlook for Mac 2019. Field Shield for Avast is ON.

I am still not clear on whether, for a different 3Tb Time Capsule (TC) of mine, if it is possible to have an iMac Retina on Mojave use that same TC as a different MBP I have that I intend to upgrade to Big Sur - to have two different Macs, one running Mojave, one running Big Sur, both back up AUTOMATICALLY to the same TC.

Thanks for that, is it possible to take the capsule off the network and connect it directly to the Mac as an external hard drive, like the early days of Backup?

Please post over in the support forum for Big Sur to learn from the experts why you would NOT want to install any AV software on your Mac. The link is just below:

macOS Big Sur

Lazy question but do you know if Sophos have 'fixed' their AV yet?

Tried download and install Sophos Home yesterday, after update to Big Sur 11.1.

But problem still persist.