Time Machine Backup won't finish in a timely manner

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Level 1

40 points

Time Machine Backup won't finish in a timely manner

My new MacBook running Big Sur is trying to backup my photos library (about 160GB) to my Time Capsule. My whole Macintosh HD holds 600GB, the Time Capsule has a capacity of 2TB and it has more than 1TB free. The connection between the Mac and the TC is the standard WiFi the TC offers (2.4GHz).

The backup has been running for two days now and every once in a while it is saying it was finishing up, then it says the last backup was 4 days ago, then it starts again and now it has been running for more than 4 hours. The progress bar is at maximum and I can hear the TC's hard drive reading / writing all the time.

What should I do?

Wait for another x days to let it finish hopefully?
Erase the TC and start from scratch? (The MBP is pretty new so the oldest backup is not very old)
Something else?

How could I find out what the problem is?

Posted on Dec 19, 2020 8:21 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Bob Timmons

Community+ 2024

Level 10

162,200 points

Dec 20, 2020 7:53 AM in response to Gin Tonyx

Sorry, I do not know which files are protected or if there in fact protected files. We will need to wait for a programming expert to help.

At this point, I would run Disk Utility - First Aid to check and see whether there are errors on your Mac that can be repaired which might allow the Mac to be backed up successfully.

Open Disk Utility (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)

Select Macintosh HD on the left panel, then click on First Aid and run the check

Click on the next file named "com.apple......" on the left panel........IF......it appears and run First Aid on that file. The file may not appear at this time because these are "snapshots" that may not have started yet.

Then click on Macintosh HD - Data and run First Aid on that file

Note whether or not Disk Utility has attempted or completed any repairs on your Mac's hard drive.

Try to run a Time Machine backup again. If still no luck, I am running out of ideas. If you have not already done so, you could try erasing the Time Capsule disk and starting over with a new backup, but I cannot say whether this will help.

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Answer 2

Dec 19, 2020 8:32 AM in response to Gin Tonyx

Make sure that your Mac is NOT running any kind of "anti-virus" software or any other utility that might claim to "speed up", "optimize", etc your Mac. These things can really cause any number of issues with Big Sur, not to mention really slowing things down.

2.4 GHz is the absolute slowest connection that you could choose. You want to use 5 GHz for your normal connections if possible.

For major tasks like backing up the entire Mac on a first backup or when you have a lot of new data to back up, you would want to connect the Mac to the Time Capsule using a wired Ethernet cable connection if at all possible. This will be at least 2-3 times faster than 5 GHz and probably 7-8 times faster than using 2.4 GHz.

If your Mac does not have an Ethernet port, you'll need a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter or a USB-C to Ethernet adapter.

Be sure to turn off the WiFi on your Mac to make sure that the connection will be over the wired Ethernet connection.

I would let the current backup continue until it completes or until you see an error message. If you stop the backup, then the process has to start all over again from the beginning.

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Answer 3

Gin Tonyx Author

Level 1

40 points

Dec 19, 2020 10:37 PM in response to Bob Timmons

There must be more to it I think.

I have disabled the backup to the TC and plugged in a LaCie 2TB USB3 HDD. The result is the same. Backup starts but never completes.

In the mean time I downloaded T2M2 and I think I found an error message, but I don't know what it means and I have no idea how to fix it. The log output is:

2020-12-20 06:19:06.342734+0100 Estimated 198365 files (160,75 GB) need to be backed up from 'Data'
2020-12-20 06:19:06.344457+0100 Estimated 198365 files (160,75 GB) need to be backed up from all sources
2020-12-20 06:34:19.547519+0100 Finished copying from volume "Data"
	       39190 Total Items Added (l: 521,5 MB p: 233,6 MB)
	      204889 Total Items Propagated (shallow) (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)
	      372358 Total Items Propagated (recursive) (l: 419,61 GB p: 421,9 GB)
	      411548 Total Items in Backup (l: 420,13 GB p: 422,13 GB)
	           7 Files Linked (l: 83 KB p: 106 KB)
	      199708 Files Move Skipped (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 199708 items propagated (l: 243,35 GB p: 243,56 GB)
	       17679 Symlinks Copied (l: 470 KB p: Zero KB)
	        5181 Directories Move Skipped (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 172650 items propagated (l: 176,26 GB p: 178,34 GB)
	           9 Files Delta Copied (l: 25,5 MB p: 30,5 MB)
	        2228 Files Copied (l: 495,5 MB p: 203 MB)
	       19260 Directories Copied (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)
	           7 Files Cloned (l: 2 KB p: 29 KB)
2020-12-20 06:34:21.355039+0100 Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-12-20-060815.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro (M1)/2020-12-20-060815/Data source: Data
2020-12-20 06:34:21.681514+0100 Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-12-12-125020.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro (M1)/2020-12-12-125020/Data source: Data
2020-12-20 06:34:22.504668+0100 Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)

Now if that's the problem: which files are "protected"?

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Answer 4

Gin Tonyx Author

Level 1

40 points

Dec 20, 2020 8:07 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thank you for all your advice. Unfortunately I have already run the Disk Utility First Aid (nothing found, did it again just now, again nothing found) and the TC was erased when I first set up the new Mac two weeks ago.

I'm also running out of ideas, and google doesn't offer any advice on error 104. Maybe I'll have to start over with the Mac?

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Answer 5

Gin Tonyx Author

Level 1

40 points

Dec 21, 2020 10:34 AM in response to Bob Timmons

That definitely was not a good idea. I've been trying to reinstall the machine the whole day. It fails to the point where I cannot log in because supposedly the password is wrong. When I try to change the password in terminal I get the message