Monterey Time Machine not working

Let me join the crowd of Time Machine victims. Brand new MBP 14" with M1Pro. I've erased and formatted three hard drives--two Toshiba, two Hitachi. They format as APFS by Time Machine. Time Machine takes forever to complete the first back-up. Then it MAY or may not run a second and third backup, each lasting forever--at least overnight with no termination. I force the process to quit (skip backup) and then examine the disk. It shows no files are there and Time Machine shows "first" and "latest backup" as "never." But oddly, if I ENTER Time Machine, the files seem to be there. But honestly, I have ZERO confidence that my files are actually backed-up. While I do have cloud back-up and I make a clone, Time Machine's historical backups have saved me countless times and I really need a functioning Time Machine. How could Apple miss this?

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.

Similar problem on my Intel iMac 2020 using external 8T drive. Mine drive disappears from my desktop, followed by an "improper ejection" message. Worked fine with Big Sur and, after one failure, was OK with Monterey12.0.1. Can't get it to complete first backup with newly updated 12.1. Wish Apple could get its act together with its own Time Machine.

Appreciate all suggestions, including https://www.howtoisolve.com/time-machine-not-working-on-mac/ but NONE work for me. Like many, I was hoping 12.1 would fix it. I won't run down each things I've tried, but I've tried all suggestions from multiple sources. Worse, I can't even get SuperDuper (new version, Silicon native) to make a bootable copy. The nice folks who make the product say it's something with the OS. So, something about Monterey + M1Pro chip just isn't working for my brand new MBP 14" As I've already tried Safe Mode, and using a separate administrator account, the only other thing I can think of is completely wiping the disk and starting over. But that will be a lot of work. I guess I'll start the undoubtedly frustrating process of seeking help from Apple. I've used Macs since 1985 and have never had this much grief.

The problem certainly is limited or restricted to the M1 chip. I have a 2021 iMac with a M1 & a 2020 MBP16 with an Intel. Both were backing up fine to a drive connected to an Airport Extreme under Big Sur. After the upgrade to Monterey, the M1 continued to backup to the Airport Extreme, and the Intel stopped. I reformatted an external drive to APFS & connected it to the iMac via USB as a shared drive. TimeMachine backups are now working fine for both machines. On the bright side, the only reason I haven't replaced my Airport Extreme is due to the TimeMachine backup capability. Since Apple destroyed that capability with the introduction of Monterey I can replace Airport Extreme with something better.

After upgrading to Monterey 12.1 Time Machine Backup is working. I spent hours over two weeks with a Senior Tech (contracted by Apple, not an Apple employee, who had access to the macOS engineers). They are aware of the problem and apparently 3 or 4 days after we identified the source of the problem they updated Monterey to 12.1. If you go to Recovery Mode, you will also see a new option to reinstall Time Machine. I upgraded to Monterey 12.1 and Time Machine Backups have been working - Hourly, Daily, Weekly and I suspect Monthly although it hasn't been a month nor has the month changed since the upgrade. The problem seems to have been in the (hidden) Library/Containers/... folder. Various folders and files there caused Time Machine to stop backing up, claiming it couldn't back up a folder or a file. This happened to me with a Chrome folder, a Firefox folder, a Safari folder and finally a Siri folder. The last two (Safari and Siri) clearly pointed the finger at Apple and Time Machine Backup. Don't reformat your external disks, don't replace your external disks. If Time Machine Backup does continue to stop, first try a reinstall of Monterey (12.1). If it continues, I would try a reinstall of Time Machine Backup. If it continues it is important to note the folder or file that Backup claims it can't backup. Then contact Apple Support and request a Senior Tech - Tech is apparently the important group, since they have access to the macOS engineers. BTW I'm on a 2019 16" MacBook Pro with an Intel chip, backing up to an external USB C Seagate 10Tb HDD. I was using a USB C Seagate 5Tb HDD, the backup problems occurred shortly after I switched drives and after the upgrade from Big Sur to Monterey. The dates on the backups and two external drives help us identify where/when the problems started. I hope this helps you all!

It's in my nature (and 50 years consulting, managing in IT and being a CIO on Wall Street). I need to find where a problem is, not just what the problem is. So, I spend a lot of time problem solving and talking with Senior Techs helps solve problems. The continuation of my last post ... 

I removed these files from the "Exclude" list:

/Users/neilcooktriczar/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/genrenamesdataTable.tdb

/Users/neilcooktriczar/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/GenrenamesedgeTable.tdb

/Users/neilcooktriczar/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/GenrenamesfinalTable.tdb

Time Machine Backup again stopped on the first file, saying it could not be backed up.  I excluded these three files again and Backup is working again.  It's worked for more than a full day, so I'm some what confident that it will continue to work. Again, I'm using an Intel chip and the firmware for the M1 chip and the POST probably is different than for the Intel chip. I don't know why this type of problem would be related to firmware or POST processes. Look, Apple has a huge financial investment in this product and this OS. I'm sure they are working on resolving these problems. I know the OS engineers are aware of the problem and are working on resolving it. I also mentioned some other minor problems when I booted this morning, those all resolved themselves after a short period of time with minimal intervention on my part. I've passed that information on to the Senior Tech I was working with, so it will get to the engineers. No one has mention the files that Time Machine Backup stops on. Everyone is looking else where - external drives, WiFi vs Ethernet, type of format used on the Time Machine target drive. From my experience those areas are of less priority than looking at what Time Machine Backup says it's problem is. Sending logs and error reports to the engineers will identify where the problem is. Not sharing all of this information with the engineers and complaining about the problem(s) is just venting, not working towards a solution we all want. After my first two weeks of working with the Senior Tech it took the OS Engineers 2 or 3 days to release an upgrade to Monterey that resolved the problem I was experiencing. I tested it by not excluding those 3 files and the problem returned. I suggest that your note the fiile that Time Machine stops on and exclude it from the future backups. If Time Machine is successful, report that information to Apple. I have a theory of problem solving - The 15 Minute Rule. If you can't identify where the problem lies in 15 minutes, your biases will keep narrowing your search down that same unsuccessful path. You need to start over - describe the problem to someone that knows nothing about it, take a day off, address another problem. Then return to solving the problem with a new approach. This has worked for me and for my IT staff over the years.

continued in my next post..

continuation of my prior post ...

Since the problem occurs on boh the Intel Chip and the Apple M1 chip, I suspect that is not the issue. Since the problem occurs on various target disks - Apple, USB, NAS, and others. I suspect the problem is not the target disk. In addition the problem appears to be the file or folder that Time Machine is attempting to read/copy to the target disk.

I've had problems with USB external HDD over the years. Most of the time it is the USB cable, connector or port on the drive. If the problem is the drive itself, you will usually hear a clicking or not hear/feel the drive spinning. Plug another drive in to the same port, change the cable, check the seating of the cable in the port. Swap out the drive and simply copy a file to and then from that new drive. If that's successful, the problem isn't the drive and probable not the Mac's ability to write and read from an external drive. To me it points at the app attempting to write and read to/from the drive - Time Machine Backup! Since that app identifies the file/folder it is having a problem with, I would start there. Since the file Time Machine Backup stopped on wasn't always the same, but was always in the same area of the MacOS files - hidden Library:/Users/neilcooktriczar/Library/Containers/ and those folders/files are OS and app files written and used according to Apple specs, I'm pretty certain that Apple has changed something about those files, and the apps that use them - the apps all work fine, but the Time Machine Backup app seems not to have been updated to address some change that was made to that category of files.

I'm waiting for, asked for and hoping for some explination of the general discription of the problem - not specifics nor the solution, just were we looking the right place. And, I don't think the problem is completely resolved, as indicated by the new problems I encountered when I booted this morning. In some way - resolution of embbed URLs (which occured when Time Machine wasn't working, and occassionally occured with Big Sur ad the first release of Monterey (it also occurred on my Windows PCs), the resolution of aliases, the resolution of access permissions and such all probablly have the same component (routine) in the OS as the Backup problem uses.

If you've gotten this far, and still are clear-eyed, maybe you'll approach this problem by sharing more of the details of your problem directly with Apple, and not just on this forum.

Thanks and good luck.

jinet - I switched from (A) a USB 3.0 Type A (at adapter end) to USB 3.0 Type B (at external drive Time Machine end) cable attached through Apple's adapter to the iMac USB C/Thunderbolt port to (B) a USB Type C (at iMac end) to USB 3.0 Type B (at Time Machine end) cable. I saw no improvement in operation. That is, my Time Machine still disconnected and disappeared from the desktop. After finally getting my external drive to wake up by my being persistent in restarting my iMac a few times in Safe Mode and then repairing the external drive from Recovery mode, I was able to get Time Machine to operate normally all of today -- so far -- using the one-piece cable. Since my problem might be due to a failing external drive, I can't say that my experience will apply to your situation. However, I do not think the Apple cable adapter is the cause of your problem. If you have another cable on hand, you might using it with the adapter to see if that helps. Good luck.

There are so many different use cases, it's hard to know what's going on, but I'm going to share what worked for me. My use case: New MBP 14" with the M1pro chip running Monterey. Previous machine was MBP 2016 13" running Big Sur. To set up my new machine, I used Migration Assistant and moved over my User Account, Applications, System & Network, and Other. Time Machine failed to work, in the way others described. Took forever to "complete first backup" and always said Last and Most Recent backups were "none."

I eventually reached a senior support guy who was great. We found that the files had actually been put on the backup drive, but they were invisible, not readable in any way. If you opened the drive, it said empty, but in Disk Utility, clearly the space was used correctly. He escalated the problem to Apple Engineers and while I waited for response, I decided to do the "nuclear" action. I had already re-installed Monterey to no avail. But the one thing I hadn't done was completely erase the internal SSD. I used the Monterey "erase all content and settings" menu option (in the System Preferences menu) and completely wiped my internal SSD. (I had backups via SuperDuper.) Then--and this I think was what did it--when it came time to do a migration, I used Migration Assistant but ONLY for my user account, applications, and System & Network. I did NOT migrate the section "Other Files and Folders"

After this, Time Machine has worked without any problems. It's been working for three days without a hitch.

I spoke back with Apple support and he didn't know if it was the wiping per se, or the fact that "other files and folders" was left off, but suspected the latter and said he'd report it to the engineers. He DID say Apple is aware there have been a lot of issues with Time Machine since Monterey and M1/M1pro/M1max and they are trying to sort it out.

Hope this is of some use to others, although the problems are so diverse it may not.

I also did a clean install and enabled Time Machine after the basic install. Time Machine began working again but by the time I had reinstalled all my applications and documents Time Machine stopped working. Somewhere in the process I was unable to download previously installed applications from the App Store. The only way I could get that working was to download MacOS Montery form the app store and reinstall over my existing files. I got the App Store working but it seemed like the Time Machine stopped working after that. In the last year or so I have had issues with iCloud and I wonder if there might be a problem there causing the Time Machine problem. I am glad that Apple is working on a solution. Mostly I keep everything on iCloud drive and just reinstall from there but it was nice to know that the Time Machine backup was available in case of a catastrophe.

The ~/Library folder contains the problem (somewhere). Re-including it caused the backup to fail. I doubt this is news to Apple engineers. So we'll just have to wait for a version update to solve this.

Like someone else in this thread, Most of the errors were in the findmy... associated folders/files. But not all (though they may be related), eg:

2021-12-20 11:59:18  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/jiporter/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsItems/Data/tmp error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

2021-12-20 11:59:27  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/jiporter/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/Library error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

2021-12-20 11:59:27  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/jiporter/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/Documents error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

2021-12-20 11:59:27  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/jiporter/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/tmp error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

2021-12-20 11:59:39  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/jiporter/Library/Metadata error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

2021-12-20 11:59:53  Skipping further sizing for finished volume 7CE1ECA1-9F8B-4B8E-B15C-745BE79B6BF6

2021-12-20 11:59:53  Finished copying from volume "Macintosh HD - Data"

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Saved back-up-later cache (Protected:13) at /Volumes/Time Machine+/2021-12-20-112730.inprogress/.reservations.plist

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Records for BULRecordType

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Failed postflight for destination <APFSDestination /Volumes/Time Machine+>

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data'

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-12-20-112727.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-112727/Macintosh HD - Data source: Macintosh HD - Data

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-110659/Macintosh HD - Data'

2021-12-20 11:59:54  Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-12-20-110659.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/JIP MBP 14/2021-12-20-110659/Macintosh HD - Data source: Macintosh HD - Data

2021-12-20 11:59:55  Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)

I'll try again to exclude these but have zero confidence that this will work. I tried once earlier.

I think you are referring to my replies. First, I spoke with a senior tech that was also very helpful. She also said the macOS engineers are aware of the problem and working on it. I thought the very recent upgrade to 12.1 was going to solve the problem, but it didn't, at least not completely. I've added the files and folders that Time Machine Backup has "objected" to (stopped on). Apparently, I removed one (as a test) or forgot to exclude one and Time Machine Backup again stopped with the same message, referring to the file that was not being excluded. What was different this time, unlike in the past, I added that file to exclude, with out closing Time Machine and then clicked on the "Ok" button on the messaged. When I then clicked on the "Ok" button, Time Machine Backup continued and finished without any errors or messages. My MacBook Pro (Intel chip, 2019 version, 16" screen) has not had any other issues as a result of excluding those files. I didn't expect any problems since I just excluded them from the Time Machine Backup.

This was the message I received when Time Machine Backup stopped. I believe if you are getting a message that says Time Machine Backup can't backup a folder or file, you should exclude that file or folder from the backup. I am skeptical that this problem is caused by the target drive, the connection of the target drive (type of connection or problem with the cable(), format of the connection drive (which I believe Time Machine would have objected to when the drive was assigned to Time Machine, cables, connections, drive can all fail, but for the Time Machine app to object and stop to that type of issue I believe that the messaged and action of the Time Machine app would be very different). I also know that many of us have difficulty describing the details of a problem or issue like this, due to the stress it causes, the biases we have about how things work and what is causing a problem and in describing what has happened to others. This belief includes users, support personnel, technicians and engineers - it's just part of our psychology and problem solving process. I have this belief based on decades of IT management and on post graduate research in neuropsychology. It just is the way we are in my opinion.

I do expect the macOS engineers to release another update "cleaning" up this issue so we don't have to wait for a problem to occur and then exclude the file or folder that Time Machine Backup is unable to backup.

Maybe I just have too much faith and too much experience (causing me to have my own bias).

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.

I worked through this issue with a Senior engineer and in the end (After trying most things discussed in this thread) we could only get a backup by excluding the whole of the ~user directory but it fails when including the directory. The outcome so far was: "After reviewing the submission and the logs provided, Engineering can confirm that Apple has received reports of this behavior and is investigating. "

So I guess there will be a fix in a later update. For now I'm using Carbon Copy Cloner as a backup solution.