macOS Big Sur - First Aid fails on new APFS encrypted Time Machine backup disk

Yes, I'm getting the same problem. I use Samsung T5 and T7 SSDs for time machine. I allowed time machine to reformat them to APFS after I installed big sur, then after a couple of TM backups the first aid would fail. I then reformatted them myself to APFS encrypted and ran time machine, they would get through first aid the first time after the initial backup, but then all fail later. I don't have an answer for it, I plan to abandon time machine and just do it manually.

re above entry, this is the error message, looks the same as OP -

Repairing file system.

Volume was successfully unmounted.

Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk3s2

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

warning: Unable to read apfs keylocker ranges: No such process

Checking the object map.

error: failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdisk3: Resource busy

File system check exit code is 66.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

Big Sur seems less than half baked. Additional issues that I had while trying to change TM to APFS include the APFS disks not showing in the TM System Preferences "Select Disk..." and not being able to resize APFS Containers.

MacBook Pro 13 Retina 2015

Big Sur clean-installed.

EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM. Contacted the support, got to the engineers who replied me this:

“Hi. Thanks for your request. 

This kind of error normally indicates either a hardware issue with the computer, likely the hard drive, but possibly something else like the data cable that connects the drive to the logic board, or possibly a software issue with the drive formatting. If Disk Utility can't repair the trouble itself, then the only way to know for sure if we're looking at a hardware issue is to try erasing the drive, then installing a clean OS. Once complete, check and see if the same unrepairable errors are still present. If so, then we're likely looking at a hardware issue with the hard drive. If the errors are gone after erasing the drive, that means this was a software issue. However if the same thing keeps happening after, this is a hardware issue that will require a hardware repair to correct.

Hopefully our customer has a backup of their data already; if not, we can try backing up the data before erasing the computer. If needed, our customer may be able to install a clean OS to an external hard drive, start up from the external drive, and then try to manually back up their data that way if they don't have another backup, and the computer can't currently boot to the normal OS. They could also try booting to an external hard drive, and then seeing if they can migrate data from the internal drive to the external one prior to erasing the internal drive.

Please keep in mind, however that it is possible these drive errors could keep the data from being backed up correctly. A fresh backup is better the nothing, although we should be using a backup from before the issue occurred if at all possible.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or if something doesn't make sense.

Thanks!”

Hey Apple, would you please fix that??

I’ve had my tests and can 100% confirm that in this case the Time Machine Volume is totally fine, because once you log in and the volume mounted, Time Machine seems to constantly interact with the volume.

Just boot in the recovery mode: Cmd+R and run First Aid on the hard drive, container, and volume. You’ll get no errors guaranteed.

I erased my drive and then was able to get a good TM backup.

I'm running into a lot of funny stuff trying to get 2 TM backups on the same disk, though. Best I can tell is that the backups have to be placed in separate containers. Also, don't seem to back up to a Mac OS Extended ... partition on the same disc with a TM volume in the APFS part of the disk. When I attempt the backup to the Mac OS Extended... partition, the computer takes it upon itself to reformat the Mac OS Extended .... partition to an APFS Encrypted container and then TM backs up to the new container. It does allow converting the new APFS Encrypted container to an APFS container that isn't encrypted.

Still working on all of this. I wish Apple would tell us what all the rules are.

Same issue here. If first aid is checked from a running macOS he issue is there regardless if the TM volume mounted or not.

My system: running macOS 11.1

SSD: Crucial X8 2TB (900MB/s effective transfer)

Now TM works absolutely fine despite the first aid error but is incredibly slow. it takes half hour to copy over 200MB, but this is fine. If erased from TM volume and on standard APFS it takes 12s to copy 5GB file. Now, I understand that TM cannot have that speed but for this kind of performance it doesn't make sense to have a SSD.

More severely, TM is very unstable on first backup with system freezes and crashes. I've run multiple tests, once I had to forcibly remove the drive as the os wasn't even able to reboot.

I'm seriously worried what might happen in a month or two if I urgently need to access my data on the TM drive.

I though 11.1 was quite stable until now...

I'm having the *exact* same issue with my Mac Mini (Intel 2018) running macOS Big Sur Version 11.1

I'm using 2 Time Machine drives. Time Machine seems to work fine with both of them.

Western Digital is formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"

Seagate is formatted as "APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)"

With the former, First Aid finds nothing wrong with the "Physical Disk" or the "CoreStorage Logical Volume"

With the latter, First Aid finds nothing wrong with the "Physical Disk", but fails on the "APFS Container" and fails on the "APFS Volume".

For now, I'm going to *assume* that Time Machine is doing something with the latter that First Aid doesn't understand since the backups to Time Machine work and the restores from Time Machine work.

"2 TM backups on the same disk"

Don't do that!

The entire reason for backups is that any given physical disk *will* fail at some point.

Use 2 separate physical disks so that *when* one fails, you'll have the other one available.

I am having the same problem on both of my TM external HDs formatted in APFS.

Running First Aid on “Travel Backup” (disk10s2)

Repairing file system.

Volume was successfully unmounted.

Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk10s2

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

warning: Unable to read apfs keylocker ranges: No such process

Checking the object map.

error: failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdisk10: Resource busy

File system check exit code is 66.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

Running First Aid on “Home Backup” (disk11s1)

Repairing file system.

Volume was successfully unmounted.

Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk11s1

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

warning: Unable to read apfs keylocker ranges: No such process

Checking the object map.

error: failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdisk11: Resource busy

File system check exit code is 66.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

MBP M1 2TBHD 16RAM

This is clearly a bug of Big Sur and it's not surprising. Apple has made changes to the internals of APFS in every release of macOS since APFS's initial debut in 2017 - and Big Sur is no exception. When APFS first came out I found a bug in it immediately. I formatted a disk with encrypted APFS, then ran Disk Utility First Aid (DUFA) and if failed. I reported this bug to Apple and it was fixed in a few months. That was a big obvious bug, but Apple had not tested for it during their preparation for the initial release of APFS. To me this shows how important Apple considers Disk Utility - it seems to be a 2nd tier app at best.

Big Sur has many, many changes in it and therefor has many, many bugs. Personally, I have had problem after problem since upgrading to Big Sur six weeks ago. In just the category of Time Machine related issues, I have found a whole slew of issues under Big Sur so far - this bug being one of them.

So I would imagine that the Mac software engineers at Apple are very busy squashing bugs these days. Hopefully this DUFA/Time Machine bug can be addressed quickly.

Same issue here. I've used TM for several years with an 8TB Seagate Ironwolf used to backup the main hard drive as well as 3 additional external hard drives.

The backup drive was acting strangely last week so I completely wiped it and started over with an APFS encrypted format. It's struggling to get a full initial backup done now. I get the same error reported here when trying to run First Aid.

I'm ready to leave TM behind. Any suggestions for a comparable third-party option?

Same here : iMac 2019, 27" i5, using time machine from external WD Blue NVME APFS Filevault SSD to internal Apple 2TB APFS fusion drive. It completes a backup occasionally but most of the time I get this error message even booted in safe mode :

Repairing file system.

Volume was successfully unmounted.

Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk2s1

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the fusion superblock.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

warning: Unable to read apfs keylocker ranges: No such process

Checking the object map.

Checking the Fusion data structures.

error: failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdisk2: Resource busy

File system check exit code is 66.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Apple, Big Sur is (like everything since Sierra) buggy when released until v xx.5.

I waist a lot of time because you produce uncooked software (pun intented)

I just bought my first PC yesterday so I can finally use that EVIL software banned by Apple : CUDA !

Slowly shifting away from Buggy Brother. ..........................

Same problem here, anyone could solve it? I've created a TM backup using Big sur and now I'm getting this issue.

Sounds like a bug. Also a big problem, because I have another MBP running Catalina and it doesn't work at all.

I remember when Apple was great at UX...