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Time Machine can't make any backups regardless of what disks I use

I fiddled a lot with a networked time machine disk but it took days to write just a couple of hundred gigs I think because of slow WIFI. Anyway that is not the issue I have.


I decided to buy a separate SSD to make a complete backup in case I have to restore quickly. I must have fiddled too much with the first networked disk, because now I constantly get the error:


Time Machine could not back up the disk “Macintosh HD” because a snapshot of the disk could not be created.


I get this error now on the networked disk as well, it seems to be a 'local' problem, it occurs even before anything is written to the backup disk.


This problem was described on this forum here: Time Machine snapshot could not be create… - Apple Community and the suggested solution (deleting local snapshots) seems hopeful.

However, the command for deleting local snapshots


sudo rm -r /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots


results in the error message: Operation not permitted on my mac.


I am running Monterey 12.01 on an M1 Macbook Air. I am the only user, so I should have all the rights to do this??


I really want to have a backup because I will travel next month. Is there any solution for this issue?


thanks, Rogier

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on Feb 7, 2022 9:46 AM

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Posted on Feb 7, 2022 10:25 AM

ragious wrote:

I decided to buy a separate SSD to make a complete backup in case I have to restore quickly. I must have fiddled too much with the first networked disk, because now I constantly get the error:

Time Machine could not back up the disk “Macintosh HD” because a snapshot of the disk could not be created.

That's an indication that you don't have enough free space on your boot drive to create the local snapshot. I strong recommend you free up a minimum of 50 GB of space, preferable in the area of 100 GB, to facilitate the creation of local snapshots and improved system and application performance.


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 7, 2022 10:25 AM in response to ragious

ragious wrote:

I decided to buy a separate SSD to make a complete backup in case I have to restore quickly. I must have fiddled too much with the first networked disk, because now I constantly get the error:

Time Machine could not back up the disk “Macintosh HD” because a snapshot of the disk could not be created.

That's an indication that you don't have enough free space on your boot drive to create the local snapshot. I strong recommend you free up a minimum of 50 GB of space, preferable in the area of 100 GB, to facilitate the creation of local snapshots and improved system and application performance.


Time Machine can't make any backups regardless of what disks I use

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