time machine problems with My Book Duo

Question

time machine problems with My Book Duo

My WD My Book Duo fails with Time Machine backing up. It either produces this error or after 2 days just fails to complete.

and the disk appears to need reformatting.

However if you restart the iMac the disk seems to be fine and passes all the WD and Disk utilities tests. And all the previous time machine backups then appear again in finder.

Has anyone else had this issue. I do wonder if it is associated with the fact that my backup may be crossing between the 2 disks as the total volume available during the backup goes over 3Tb (the size of each disk is 3Tb)

iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on May 25, 2021 3:30 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

May 27, 2021 8:20 AM in response to Peter Dromgoole1

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Whew, they've changed pastebin & made it harder, but after pasting in, click Create new paste button, then Embed button, then copy the URL...

The important part of the above is between the quote marks...

https://pastebin.com/embed_js/KuvnghqA

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

May 25, 2021 5:53 PM in response to Peter Dromgoole1

I'd get rid of the WD Disk Utilities.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

May 26, 2021 7:03 AM in response to Peter Dromgoole1

Well, if there are any WD extensions running that may be the problem, & they shouldn't be needed.

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Answer 4

May 26, 2021 1:46 PM in response to BDAqua

well, as far as I can see I am not using WD utilities at all and have only used them to check the disk.

Anyway, since I stopped the latest stalled backup and let the following Time Machine backup carry on it now seems to be working! It has completed a backup and is due to start another 2 hrs later. I will let this carry on for a day or so then add my 2nd back-up disk and hope all continues as it has for the past few years - backing up as it should.

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Answer 5

May 26, 2021 12:06 AM in response to BDAqua

Why? The My Book Duo passed both the WD Drive Utilities and the Mac Disk Utilities tests correctly. I only performed these when it failed. Before that it worked for 2 years no problems. Now it still has Time Machine backups on it from 2018 which appear to work; but it just will not perform another Time Machine backup correctly.

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