Monterey Time Machine not working

BlueberryLover wrote:

I also created a new Time Machine volume (Time Machine-2) in order to have 2 Time Machine volumes. I used diskutil from terminal (see command below) since I wanted to limited the maximum size of the Time Machine volume (container is shared with other APFS volumes). I presume that required the terminal command needs to be run from an admin account.

This configuration is working fine on my Mac mini (2018). Each Time Machine volume is stored on its own external SSD (500GB Samsung T5).

- Pie Lover

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/ec3e5fc2-35f9-4775-a2ac-2c9ace493cf3

Time Machine backups should be on their own separate drive or at a minimum its own physical partition/container on a drive. Time Machine has always been problematic on shared volumes on a single APFS container.

I also have this issue,

I was running macOS Big Sur when the 19 October 2021 backup was made.

The disk to which I am backing up is a Seagate Backup Plus Drive with 1 TB of Storage, my Mac with 512 GB of storage, but now, only 128 GB out of 1 TB storage is remaining.

Yesterday, a successful backup occurred, but the latest backup is still on '19 October 2021'. The disk, in Finder, appeared to have the latest snapshot on 19 October 2021. Today, the date was updated, but today, after several backup attempts, the date of the latest backup is still yesterday. But I noticed that those attempts were successful, from the 'Enter Time Machine' option.

I am using:

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)
• macOS Monterey 12.0.1

I faced the same issue today. I made multiple attempts to back up, facing the same issue.

Here are screenshots:

Note: It is currently the 13th of November here.

So, the backups are indeed successful for me, if I enter Time Machine.

Today,

• I erased the whole time capsule disk, by going to Airport Properties,
• changed the name of the disk to a new (different) one,
• set up Time Machine once more

and the new backup started right away without any issues (thus dar)

I went through all sorts of attempts to get a backup to work using Monterrey and M1 (14 in.); a long time ago I noticed that I could back up (once) by keeping the backup to a minimum. I never went back to that strategy until today. Here's what happened so far.

1. I backed up excluding ~/Library and Applications and a large set of documents/pdfs that are backed up to a Box account anyway plus another very large set of music files. Worked. (astonishingly)
2. I removed Applications from the exclusions. Worked. astonishingly again.
3. I removed ~/Library from the exclusions and am waiting for the result. Will post back later in 2 hrs. (est.)

In any case, I would recommend this incremental approach rather than any other extreme measures. The culprit may be in the Library folder somewhere. Or it may be a matter of the quantity of files being backed up. Time will tell.

If the Library folder backs up I will try removing the music files and then the box-synced folders.

According to this article APFS format doesn't work on Time Machine with Monterey. If so, Apple needs to clarify the format required. FYI only, no guarantees. Make sure your existing Time Machine data is backed up independently if you erase and reformat an external drive.

https://www.stellarinfo.com/article/time-machine-not-working-on-macos-monterey.php

If the external hard drive you are using on your macOS Monterey-powered Mac is not correctly formatted, it will become incompatible with the Time Machine feature. This is a probable reason for the Mac Time Machine not working issue. The default file system for most external hard drives is FAT and NTFS (suitable for Windows), but the Time Machine does not support these file systems. Moreover, the APFS file system supported by Mac is also not compatible with Time Machine. Check the file system of your external hard drive as under:

• Connect the hard drive to your Mac system.
• Open Finder and select the drive from the sidebar on left.
• Right-click and select Get Info option. Alternatively, press Command + I.
• The file system format of your hard drive will appear in the Backups Info window.

If the format of your external hard drive is one of the unsupported file system formats, you need to reformat your drive and change the file system. To change the file system format, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Connect the external drive to your Mac system.

Step 2: Open the Finder from Dock and click Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Step 3: From the list on the left side of Disk Utility window, select your external drive.

Step 4: Click Erase button on the top of window.

Step 5: In the pop up window, change the format of your drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click Erase.

I also created a new Time Machine volume (Time Machine-2) in order to have 2 Time Machine volumes. I used diskutil from terminal (see command below) since I wanted to limited the maximum size of the Time Machine volume (container is shared with other APFS volumes). I presume that required the terminal command needs to be run from an admin account.

This configuration is working fine on my Mac mini (2018). Each Time Machine volume is stored on its own external SSD (500GB Samsung T5).

- Pie Lover

Boot into the Recovery volume (boot with the Command + R keys held down), select Disk Utility and run First Aid on both the Data and HD volumes. If you get any error message rerun First Aid.

Then reboot normally and test.

I have 2 Samsung 500GB T5 SSDs, each with a Time Machine volume (used for backup of the system and user files). The first (TM1) was a holdover from Big Sur while the second (TM2) was created in Monterey (I used a Terminal command to create the TM2 volume). Both TM1 and TM2 seem to function normally with Time Machine on my Mac mini (2018) running Monterey.

- Pie Lover

I've had trouble with Google Backup and Sync in the past. The problem at the time was that it was preventing me from uploading photographs from my camera using its provided 3'rd party software. My solution to syncing with Google Drive was to create a small Automator app (see below) launched by a Calendar event at midnight each day. Admittedly, I don't use Google Drive in this way for Cloud storage.

- Pie Lover

I have something similar working in my environment (see below for details). The Time Machine volume is encrypted, case-sensitive, and has a quota specified (I used a Terminal command to create the Time Machine Volume). Also, I didn't have to use Safe Mode for the first Time Machine backup to complete.

- Pie Lover

I was finally able to fix my "Waiting for First Backup" woes in Monterey by adding this path to the exclusions list. Worked for me at least after lots of digging through error logs. I also had to first boot into Safe Mode and start with a freshly formatted external backup drive (as discussed previously in this thread).

Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople

I'm running an M1 Pro machine with macOS 12.0.1

Does Monterey now backup to individual folders instead of a backup folder. Also I had a load of previous hourly backups disappear over the last few days. Only got my M1 Pro on 19th November. Does hourly backups but has deleted a load. Backup history looks like this now. I have a 1TB Lacie drive and only around 300gb is used so why is it deleting backups.

All hourly backups from the 19th November through to yesterday have been deleted.

Another backup has completed and one of yesterdays backups got deleted.

The reason your back failed was "2021-11-24 09:25:59.821010-0800 Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)"

For me I was able to skip over the protected files in Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople

From my previous post:

I was finally able to fix my "Waiting for First Backup" woes in Monterey by adding this path to the exclusions list. Worked for me at least after lots of digging through error logs. I also had to first boot into Safe Mode and start with a freshly formatted external backup drive (as discussed previously in this thread).

Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople

I'm running an M1 Pro machine with macOS 12.0.1

I'm having the same issue and would like to add my anecdote.

I'm on a fresh install of Monterey and I attempted to use a newly formatted external drive for Time Machine. When the backup begins, there will be a progress bar and it will appear to be working normally. Even after it reaches 100% and appears to have completed, the Time Machine menu will still imply that there has been no completed backup as evidenced by two things:

The menu will still say "Latest Backup: None" and also when directly opening the Time Machine drive in Finder, there are no files at all. Odd too is that the actual space for the backup is being taken up on the drive, but as stated there are no files actually copied or accessible on the Time Machine drive after it appears to have completed.

Timemachine stuck at "waiting for the first backup to complete" forever. Apple, what did you do... is it soooo difficult to release Mac OS versions that work? What is even more intriguing - both Timemachine and Photos did work with Big Sur. Now they're both broken.