Monterey Time Machine not working

Same for me. I actually had disconnected my backup drive, but plugged it back in after seeing your post. It completed the "first" Time Machine backup and now there are visible files in my drive finder window. Everything is now running on schedule and working the way Time Machine is supposed to.

I had followed all of the suggestions in this thread, including starting up in Safe Mode and excluding Library files, but none of it worked. The size of my drive kept going down like something was being backed up, but 0 files showed up in the drive finder window and Enter Time Machine module. There have also been no OS updates since 12.1, so this really is a mystery on how my backup drive is suddenly working. No matter; glad it is fixed.

I would suggest looking at your time machine logs to figure out your specific solution.

https://eclecticlight.co/consolation-t2m2-and-log-utilities/

Any messages when it stops?

Once the TM2 volume had been created, Monterey displayed a pop-up message asking if I wanted to use the volume with Time Machine. After that I used the Time Machine System Preference to add the second (TM1) volume (specifying that I wanted to use both volumes).

Once all that was done, Time Machine worked in much the same way that it had worked in Big Sur.

- Pie Lover

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.

Chatted to Apple about this and after saying I had tried everything they suggested, they admitted that there might be a bug.

How long does it take for them to sort this problem out? They have caused it! Am now using CCC Backup which does work.

I have a brand new M1 (24-inch, 2021) and safe mode did not work for 2 SSDs and an AirPort Extreme. However, I reformatted all of my backup drives and was starting brand new backups; might have to do with that. Time Machine goes through the process, reaches around 85-90%, and then "Cleans Up,", but there are no accessible files on the SSD. It's backing something up since available memory shows being much less than the full capacity, but Finder reports "0" items.

I did a session with Apple this morning and reported everything after following all of their standard checklist suggestions. I wish there was an easier way to report software issues without them assuming it is somehow something you are doing wrong.

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.

I've had the "same" problem. On November 20th I setup a new 10Tb external hard drive as my Time Machine drive. I left the older Time Machine drive attached. I also excluded all of my external HDD from Time Machine backups. Monterey was released on November 25. Since then Time Machine produces a message that it can't backup a specific file. I reinstalled Monterey and nothing changed. With Senior Tech Support we found the file(s) in the hidden Library. The offending file changed, but was always related to a browser (Safari, Firefox, Chrome). I uninstalled Chrome and quit all browsers and it made no difference. We deleted the offending file and the problem continued. I am getting a successful backup - probably only one a day - when Time Machine is backing up, the "last backup" is not from 11/20, but a more recent date. I haven't made many changes to the system parts that are currently being backed up. So I suspect that the error is with one of the scheduled backups: local snapshots, hourly backups, daily backups, weekly backups. Since it happens with files from the 3 browsers in the hidden Library, has nothing to do with the browser being open/in use, has nothing to do with the external disk, after 4 days of 6 hours a day working on this problem and a background of 5 decades consulting and managing IT departments (CIO at an international bank and brokerage firm on Wall St.) I have a bit of an understanding about PCs (my first was the first IBM twin floppy PC with DOS) and extensive problem solving experience (I won't mention the post graduate degrees) this is a hidden conflict with the new macOS. Finding it is not going to be easy, But, once it is found I believe fixing it won't be difficult. Hopefully I've provided enough detailed information to the Sr. Tech/Engineering support person I've been working with.

I have a 2015 (intel) iMac running Monterey and TM backups have continuously worked on that machine without disruption. I haven't tried a new set of backups though.

On my 2021 M1 computer they have never completed (officially; they do take up space on the external HDD; they do not show up as backups though). Both machines are almost identical in the storage, apps, etc.

I tried that - boot into Safe Mode - and Time Machine Backup continued having the same problem. It gets to this file: Hidden: Option+Go (Finder) Library -

Macintosh HD/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/5m1wd3yi.default-1574911010263.  

I changed that folder to: “* 5m1wd3yi.default-1574911010263”.  I left the Firefox folder renamed, by the way it is empty. Time Machine Backup complete without a error, ONCE!

The produced the same error on this folder:

Time Machine Backup on the next scheduled backup, the second backup of the day, it did the same thing with this folder:

“/Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/genrenamesdataTable.tdb” could not be backed up.

and Time Machine Backup stopped! I'm reluctant to change anything about this folder/file because it's probably being used by Siri.

I checked the info on that file and got this:

Size: 4.3 Mb on disk

Created: April 27, 2017 at 10:41 AM

Modified: December 3, 2021 at 10:33 PM

Sharing & Permissions:

yourusername – Read & Write

Staff – Read only

Everyone – Read only

Interestingly Time Machine says: 

Oldest backup: November 20, 2021 (probably when I switched Time Machine external HDD.

Latest backup: November 25, 2021 (even though the prior backup TODAY, acted like it completed successfully.

Next backup: Today, 6:27 PM.

This is not accurate, because the "Latest backup ..." should be listed as this afternoon (12/4/21). I also checked the permissions on this file and found no issues:

I'm scheduled to talk with a senior tech/engineer again Monday or Tuesday. He has spoken with the macOS engineers about this problem, I'm interested in what they say. My suspicion is that clearly Time Machine Backup has a problem backing up "hidden" files and folders. But, I think it's not all of the scheduled backups - Snapshot, Hourly, Daily, Weekly. It's interesting that Time Machine Backup objects to different files, I can't identify a similarity between the files/folders causing the problem.

Thinking my TM drive had failed, I bought a new one, and it didn't work.

I took both drives home to try on my personal Mac (still running Big Sur), and they worked fine.

I can't believe such an important feature of an OS is taking so long to resolve.

Well, I previously posted that by Erasing the drive and reinstalling Monterey, then Migration Assistant all files EXCEPT other, I got Time Machine to work with a local disk. That lasted a few days. Now, it's back to the same problem. It's something with the permissions. The files must be being put onto the disk (the disk "used" space is the same as my internal SSD), but it continually says "latest backup" and "earliest backup" as "none." When you open the volume, it appears totally empty, but when you check "used" via Disk Utility, it shows the space is taken. In permissions, it says "you have custom access" but no opportunity to change that. I even signed in as Root and even Root has no authority to change the permissions. I also tried a remove backup. On the remote drive, the Sparseimage is created, and becomes the same size as the internal SSD (i.e. the files must be going there), but if you try to open the sparseimage--nothing. And you can't get to any of the files via "enter TimeMachine."

There are several other glitches with Monterey, but this one makes me want to scream. Good luck everyone. I guess all we can do is hope Apple figures this out. I totally regret having purchased the MBP 14" with M1pro at this point. Monterey is NOT ready for prime time.

Here we are 3 months later and my wife's 16" MBP M1Pro can still not do a simple time machine backup. After spending 3 hours on phone with Apple support and doing a fresh reinstall of Monterey it worked for a couple weeks and the same thing. It shows oldest backup: None and the Time Machine status says something like waiting to complete backup. However, it never completes. If I leave "Backup Automatically" checked then it will try again and again until the external drive is full. I have repeated this on 3 different external drives. The odd thing is the drives show full when "get info" is selected. However, when opening the drives in Finder there are no files or folders. When I do command+shift+dot to show hidden files no love there either but it is showing the drive with data on it that about equals the amount of data in my wife's computer.

Maddeningly frustrating and, quite simply I'm not at all happy with Apple for allowing this to go on this long.

I think it's affecting everyone differently. Having tried the Safe Mode solution (and failing every time), eliminating the Containers folder is the only thing that worked for me so thank you to those who posted that. I really hope Apple pushes out a fix for this soon- I've never encountered problems like this with Time Machine before and it's maddening. I'm on a base 16" 2021 MacBook Pro.