Time Machine Won't Back Up After System Restore After Logic Board Replacement

I have a 2020 Mac mini that was damaged due to a power surge. The mini was backed up using Time Machine with a My Passport for Mac installed. Upon receiving my mini back from repair I restored using Time

Machine backup. No problems. I have Time Machine set to back up automatically every hour. It is not backing up. It will also not back up manually. The Passport shows up as mounted and when I click "Back Up Now" the triangle spins for about 5 seconds then stops. I talked to support and they had me unplug (unmount) and try again. That didn't fix anything. The conclusion was that there must not be anything new to back up so Time Machine will wait until there is. That made a bit of sense at the time but I've been using the mini all day and now have some new downloads and documents so I expected Time Machine to start running. It hasn't. Any thoughts as to why Time Machine won't back up?

Mac mini, macOS 13.4

Posted on Sep 12, 2023 10:18 PM

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Posted on Sep 13, 2023 6:03 AM

Check Time Machine settings "Options" and make sure that your drive is not on the exclusion list.


Next, I would run Disk Utility->First Aid on the drive to see if there is any problem and if it can correct it. If it finds errors and cannot correct them, then the drive could possibly be damaged. In that case, you could try and see if you can successfully erase the drive and then try a new Time Machine backup. However, I personally would not trust it as it could still be an accident waiting to happen because of your power surge issue.


I don't know if you went through this iteration but try removing the drive from Time Machine settings, property eject the drive. Wait several minutes then plug the drive back in. If not immediately recognized as a Time Machine drive re-add it to Time Machine settings.


Sometimes continuing Time Machine backups when getting a new machine (replacing the logic board essentially is giving you a new machine) can be problematic and ultimately the only solution is to erase the drive start anew.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 13, 2023 6:03 AM in response to bkerea66

Check Time Machine settings "Options" and make sure that your drive is not on the exclusion list.


Next, I would run Disk Utility->First Aid on the drive to see if there is any problem and if it can correct it. If it finds errors and cannot correct them, then the drive could possibly be damaged. In that case, you could try and see if you can successfully erase the drive and then try a new Time Machine backup. However, I personally would not trust it as it could still be an accident waiting to happen because of your power surge issue.


I don't know if you went through this iteration but try removing the drive from Time Machine settings, property eject the drive. Wait several minutes then plug the drive back in. If not immediately recognized as a Time Machine drive re-add it to Time Machine settings.


Sometimes continuing Time Machine backups when getting a new machine (replacing the logic board essentially is giving you a new machine) can be problematic and ultimately the only solution is to erase the drive start anew.

Sep 13, 2023 7:25 AM in response to woodmeister50

Thanks. The agent did have me unplug the drive, but he didn’t have me wait several minutes. When plugged back in it immediately recognized it. I suspect your last comment is what I need to do as I received an error message right after I restored the system that said “back up could not be completed because there are other files from another computer” on the back up drive. I mentioned that to the agent and he seemed to dismiss it as not an issue. It only has a couple of days of back up on it anyway, as I didn’t use it until after the power surge.

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Time Machine Won't Back Up After System Restore After Logic Board Replacement

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