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I have been successfully backing up to a NAS drive for over 2 months. I noticed it had not back up for a couple of days. When I entered Time Machine, there was no history. When I try Back Up Now, I eventually get an error that Time Machine is unable to access the sparcebundle.
Through SMB, I can mount the backup and see the contents of the sparcebundle file.
What can I do to resume backups and restore the backup history, if possible?
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
Hi, thanks for the pointer. If it is not finding the backup disk, it is not clear to me why not. In Time Machine - select disk, the location of the backup is listed (and selected). I am able to access the contents of the sparcebundle both through through SMB using finder and by logging into the NAS. When performing a backup, the message progresses from "Looking for backup disk..." to "Preparing backup..." before delivering the message "The backup disk image “name.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error 19). Also, just to be clear, I was successfully backing up until a few days ago.
Is there a way to find out the source of the problem and remedy?
Hello a_simple_guy! Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities.
We understand that Time Machine isn’t backing up your Mac to your NAS drive, and hasn’t been for 2 months. We'd like to look into this with you to see how we can help.
Since you’re able to access your NAS through SMB, and you can see the backup through SMB, it’s likely that there’s a connection issue between the Mac and the NAS drive. Are you able to reestablish that connection? Apple also provides the following resource to help with this and similar issues: If Time Machine on your Mac can’t find your backup disk
Make it a great day!
That sounds like a hardware problem. Get a new backup drive. If you get the same problem with a new drive, and if you have an Intel Mac, you can try an SMC reset: How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support
If that doesn’t fix it - and you’ve tried a second external drive, then you will need to take the computer to an Apple Store or Authorized Apple Service provider for additional diagnostics and repair.
a_simple_guy wrote:
What can I do to resume backups and restore the backup history, if possible?
I recommend you get an external USB drive and use that instead. Network backups are not reliable.
Consider yourself lucky. You could have discovered this on the day that you really needed a backup. Instead, you found out while your computer was still functional and you could just make another backup.
I appreciate the simplicity of backing up directly to a USB drive. I switched to the NAS after experiencing a couple of difficulties with this method. (1) I was having difficulty with the drive being disconnected and reconnected every 15 minutes or so while the computer was asleep for no apparent reason (I would start the morning with some 40 messages of improper removal). This would happen in the middle of backups, causing them to fail. (2) The backup file became corrupted. The NAS seemed to resolve both of these problems, until recently.
Time Machine backup to NAS error
