Monterey Time Machine not working

Try excluding your ~Library folder from your Time Machine backups. The problem seems to be there (no one seems to have located definitively where in that folder yet). You can continue to use Time Machine to back up everything else including the whole of your user directory (minus that folder). CCC will back up your Library folder without issues, and you'll be covered.

I believe it is in the subfolder "Containers" - /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/artistnamesfinalTable.tdb. Try excluding the offending "Containers" folder or all the "Containers" folders.

When Time Machine Backup stops does it display an information message to the effect "can't backup a .... " naming a specific file or folder? This was happening to me both with the automatically scheduled backups and the manual (Backup Now) options. The file or folder it referred to wasn't always the same, but all were in the Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/ folder. Some times it stopped on a Chrome sub-folder, sometimes on a Safari folder, sometimes on a Firefox folder and at the end repeatedly on a Siri folder/file. When I excluded the Siri file (“/Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/mediatitlesfinalTable.tdb") backup worked regularly. After the Monterey upgrade to 12.1 the error/warning occured again, except when I clicked on "Ok" backup continued and completed. Subsuquent backups did not have this problem.

If you are getting a different message, copy it or take a screen shot and share it with the advisor you speak to next. Use the same case # so that it will be escilated to a higher level. The first level of support you speak with is usually just basic level support and directs calls/cases to a more technically skilled support level. If they are not aware of this problem ask to be transfered to a Senior Tech support person, or schedule a call back with a Senior Tech. That level will have the experience to understand the issue, access to reports of the issue and can message the OS Engineers with additional information (and get back additional information). If we don't participate in the solution to this problem, it will take longer to be resolved. The OS Engineers can only do so much testing, we are able to provide much more varied information from our different user environments.

I've participated in the problem solving of this problem, and a few others, that my wife thinks Apple should give me their latest top end MacBook Pro and top end iPad Pro. That's never going to happen, and I don't expect anything more than a thank you and the opportunity to help both Apple and those on this community discussion thread. I'm retired and I enjoy the opportunities to be back in the IT problem solving mode.

I'm just an end user, not an Apple employee nor an Apple consultant. I do have a half century of IT experience and this issue with the release of Monterey 12.0 and the partial fix with release 12.1 is something I've experienced numerous times.

I've been told the OS engineers are aware of the problem (since November) and are working on a resolution. Since my backups are working as designed and as I expect, I'm being patient for another update release.

I hope this helps/works for you. Happy New Year!

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.

Exclude the ~Library directory and it will work. You just won’t have backups of that one folder. Ignore suggestions about removing container folders or specific files. These are unproven guesses and they regularly fail. This method works.

Are you running Monterey 12.1 or 12? You should update to 12.1. When Time Machine stops does it have a message? Exclude the container folder that Time Machine objects to. Also, just click on "OK" when it stops with that message, don't quit or force quit Time Machine. If I just click "Ok" Time Machine continues and completes the backup.

Time Machine Backup has been working for me, for about a month. The backups that initially were attempted when this problem first occurred for me do not exist. I don't know anything about the amount of space on the Time Machine drive, but I do know that Time Machine calculates a percentage of the size of the drive and always leaves that amount free. I don't think it has nothing to do with the size of the source drive, just the amount of disk space Time Machine needs to perform the backup. All the older backups are deleted to create more space for the current backup process. I don't know the purpose of formating the target drive, switching the target drive, unless your are getting an error that points to the drive itself, or the Mac can't see the drive when you boot. In my experience External USB HDD are susceptible to problems with the USB port (changing the cable doesn't help). I'd try "First Aid" first, then copying a file from the drive to another location. If that works, the drive is fine. Create a new file (just a test file, that's of no value to you) saved some place that Time Machine will back it up. Then try to restore it from Time Machine.

It's clear to me that this problem is not simple and obvious. But at the same time the posts I'm reading here seem to be taking a shot gun approach - just trying things that are not based on logic and information that can be gleaned from all these posts. People have formatted, replace HDDs, and cables with no success. Repeating those attempts is frustration and a waste of time and effort. Also, I've asked specific questions about what happens when Time Machine Backup stops/fails, what version of Monterey being used, what level of support tech they are working with, if they are certain that the tech they are working with knows about the problem and has information/confirmation/contact with OS Engineers.

If you can't get a complete backup with Time Machine it is reasonable to use another app to backup critical data. You will have to track/log when (time and date) backups were made with the other app, when Time Machine stopped succeeding at making backups, so that if you need to restore information you know where to restore from.

jinet, I've had success excluding the container folder and excluding the specific files that Time Machine objected too. This is NOT an unproven guess. And it HAS worked (for me) consistently since I first identified the container file that was being objected to. I've also posted the specific locations and files that Time Machine failed on. I haven't ever said that these may be the only files and only these files/folders need to be excluded. I believe that the files/folders that Time Machine fails on very likely with be different for others. There are too many variables to recommend a specific file/folder. Excluding the Library file probably will work since the container folders are all in the Library folder. I just don't know the consequences of excluding any file or folder would have if you needed to restore that folder or files. I don't know how the apps and OS use what's in the Library or Container folders. Excluding any files or folders in the Hidden sections of the OS will only be an issue if you have to restore the OS. And reinstalling the OS from an image source instead of the Time Machine seems to be Apple's preference. I don't know if the Library or Container folders are deleted or overwritten when the OS is reinstalled, and in many instances I know Apple won't be able to state, since they are mostly third party apps. Reinstalling those apps if they don't work properly after reinstalling the OS probably will be fine. While Senior Tech I worked with expressed concern that the files where in the Container folder, I haven't experienced any issues with the apps who's container files I excluded from the backups - because I haven't needed to restore a backup that contains them. Also, remember this past week a Time Machine backup stopped with the same message as before objecting to the same file in the container it had objected to previously. But when I clicked on "Ok" it continued the backup and competed it with out another error.

As mentioned, what works for you (excluding the Container folder) hasn't for me and, barring confirmation from the community, hasn't for others either. So perhaps it's not a guess, just a lucky hit, and not a universally valid one, judging from the sundry complaints by posters to this site. Neither my nor your solution is a proper fix, since complete restores from TM backups are ruled out in both cases.

I was simply trying to help the OP to a quick solution that I am quite certain will work as a pis aller to get TM going (preferable to CCC, which overwrites and doesn't offer the same depth and ease of versioning; I still use CCC just the same and this hobbled version of TM). If you'd like to confirm the Library folder method, by all means report back to the user community. It would be good to know if there's a lowest common denominator that works for everyone and not just this or that user.

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.

I’m experiencing this issue and have opened a case with Apple support. It took ~30 min on chat with the entry-level support person, and then 1 h 43 min with the senior support person the next day. That got me to the point where they were able to confirm the issue and collect data from my machine (2021 14” M1 Pro MBP). The senior support person confirmed that others have reported this issue (TM appears to complete a backup, but then reverts to the “Waiting to Complete First Backup” state). He couldn’t speculate on a timeline for resolution. He told me he encourages everyone experiencing this issue to log it with Apple to raise the issue’s profile and allow them to collect more data about the problem. (Just passing that on—I realize not everyone has 2.5 hours to spend with Apple support, and we all wish they had not broken TM in the first place.)

Just to be clear, the issue I’ve experienced is: starting with a newly reformatted backup drive and macOS Monterey 12.1, Time Machine acts like it’s successfully making an initial backup (it takes 1-2 hours; progress bar goes from 0% to completion; status is briefly “Cleaning Up,” etc.), but then reverts to the state it was in before the backup was started (“Waiting to Complete First Backup” in menu bar drop-down; Oldest backup: None / Latest backup: None in TM preferences). No backups appear on the backup drive in Finder, but the used space on the backup drive increases by about the expected size of the backup. Subsequent backups take some number of minutes or hours to complete, but end with the same result, until eventually the backup drive fills up. When I point Migration Assistant to my backup drive, it doesn’t find any usable backups. I’ve tried two different backup drives (an SSD and an HDD), reformatting the drives, running the backup in safe mode, reinstalling the OS, and running First Aid at all levels of the various disk hierarchies. None of that has helped. 

The one change that has allowed me to successfully create backups is excluding /Users/[username]/Library from backups for all the users on my machine. I haven’t tried to narrow the exclusions down any further than that. Not a solution, but it allows me to create some kind of backups. (In the TM logs, I’m also seeing what appear to be error messages related to files in /Users/[username]/Library/Containers, and backups appear to be failing with the code “BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES”.)

I appreciate the work of folks who have already looked into this issue and have provided suggestions. I will continue pursuing my case with Apple support (and hope others do the same), and will report back if I learn anything useful.

The Apple support person got back to me today. Engineering requested that I run the command:

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy*

and try backing up again. After running that command, the next backup succeeded. If I removed the exclusion (tmutil removeexclusion), the next backup failed; if I re-added it, the next backup succeeded. No other changes were needed.

Presumably the engineers were basing the exclusion on these errors in my Time Machine log, which other folks have also seen:

2022-01-05 20:52:41.604577-0700 localhost backupd[540]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/[computername]/2022-01-05-205219/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/Documents error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

All of the errors like this in my log referenced items that fit the pattern “~/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy*”. For those who want a workaround to get TM to mostly work, searching the Time Machine log entries for those “Failed to acquire device lock assertion” errors (or any other errors that appear to happen when backups fail), and tailoring your TM exclusions to what you find, might help. (Again, this echoes what other folks have said.) For those who aren't helped by this workaround, consider logging your case with Apple.

Meanwhile, at least there’s evidence that Apple engineering is working on it, even if they’re not currently very far ahead of us.

I can confirm that this works for me too (MPB 14). Thanks very much for sharing the information. Strangely, a manual exclusion of the entire containers folder did not work in the past, but running this terminal command did.

Actually, it worked only once the first time. Do you run the terminal command each time? ie, is the exclusion permanent or temporary? I'm guessing you have to make the exclusion request repeatedly to get a backup to work. will experiment.

@tundraespresso

Actually, it worked only once the first time. Do you run the terminal command each time? ie, is the exclusion permanent or temporary? I'm guessing you have to make the exclusion request repeatedly to get a backup to work. will experiment.

I haven't needed to run the terminal command each time. The exclusions appear to persist across backups and reboots. (You can verify with tmutil isexcluded.) However, I tried running a backup a little while ago and it failed like before. So I went back to the Time Machine logs, and this time I saw the same "Failed to acquire device lock assertion" errors as before, but for the other user on my machine. (Not sure why I didn't get errors for that user yesterday.) So I logged in as that user and entered the same command (tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy*) in the terminal. After I did that, backups started working again. So if backups are failing, it may be necessary to go back to the logs to see what they're failing on. I've been viewing the Time Machine logs using this command:

log show --style syslog --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info > tmlog.txt