Time machine says backup delayed

Connect to the NAS with file sharing.

When looked at from the Mac with Finder, how is the space in the Mac Volume on the NAS?

On a NAS, the Mac backup volume is almost certainly a Mac Volume simulated inside a File (a Sparse Bundle Disk Image) That works fine as long as it does not exceed a certain size, then the image may have to be expanded to hold more stuff. That expansion process can take a while.

if you hold down Option while you click on the Time machine icon on the menubar, you may be offered "Verify Backups".

Poking around at internet postings, the most frequent reason cited for "backup delayed" seems to be a dodgy connection to the backup drive.

Could your NAS or you connection to your NAS be overwhelmed by other data, or a develop a dodgy connection?

Files can be un-available if your Mac went to sleep, or if you have engaged storing/sync-ing files on iCloud. The Master copies are then on iCloud, and the copies on your Mac may be removed whenever disk space gets tight. These files will be delivered from the cloud to your Mac 'when demanded' but it will take some time for them to arrive.

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive and others may have similar features, if you have engaged them.

Glad you got it sorted out.

My notes suggest Time Machine shared backup destinations (for storing on another Mac's shared drive across your network) were first available for macOS 10.13 High Sierra. Storing on a NAS has been available MUCH longer, provided the NAS was well-behaved enough to support creating a Mac Volume inside a file (sparse bindle disk image).

Hello -- I've just joined the community.. I'll try to keep this brief.

I have three USB drives I use for backup - let's call them D1, D2 and D3.

With D1 and D2 I get the "Backup delayed" message. What's more the TM menu top lines say that my previous backup was to D3, many days ago.

Grant says the cause could be a dodgy connection to the backup drive. I've now tried backing up again to D1, then D2, using different USBA-USBC connectors in each case. Same result.

When I drag to the "Backup Delayed.." TM menu item, I'm told TM couldn't complete the backup to D3. As if it had been trying to..

Grant also pointed out that if you hold down Option while you click on the Time machine icon on the menubar, "Backup Now" changes to "Verify Backups". I hadn't known that! When I tried "Verify Backups" TM told me it was verifying the backup to D2, the drive I'd just backed up.

Which looked promising - it's verifying D2, not D3.

And when it finished, reported the correct time I'd backed up D2.

So that's good. BUT the TM menu still says that my most recent backup was to D3, many days ago.

Bottom line: TM seems to be backing up perfectly, but its messages are misbehaving. I can live with that till Apple fixes it.

Hello All,

This is my first post to this forum too. I have an Intel iMac running 14.1.2. For many years I have been using two directly connected LaCie drives for my TM backup on an alternating basis; one drive is always 'off site'. Since upgrading to Sonoma I have noticed that one of the backups kept failing [ LaCie USB 3 + Firewire 800 interface ]. The other LaCie drive started failing occasionally [ Thunderbolt interface ]. In desperation I reformatted the USB 3 drive to see if there was a problem with the drive that fsck didn't find. I commenced a new backup and it ground to a halt after around 24 hours. I purchase a new LaCie drive [ USB C ] and set it up as a new TM. That backup took just under 24 hours to complete. Now I keep getting 'Backup Delayed' messages.

I do NOT have iCloud enabled to / from my iMac and I do not use any other 'Cloud' storage from my iMac.

I do not believe that there is a problem with my 3 LaCie drives. I have found nothing to indicate that any of the drives are faulty. The available storage on all 3 LaCie drives is greater than the used space in my iMac. Prior to Sonoma the two TM backups were flawless.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

<<. I have found nothing to indicate that any of the drives are faulty. >.

the steps you have taken so far are not adequate to ensure no Bad Blocks.

Disk Utility FirstAid/RepairDisk should rightly be named 'Repair Disk DIRECTORY'

It and its low-level Terminal command fsck do not read ANY blocks outside to the Directory area.

If your drive is a few years old, and has developed some Bad Blocks, it could be slowed by re-reading Bad Blocks, hoping for an error correction to yield good data. Worst case for ONE Bad Block on a rotating magnetic drive is a quarter MINUTE per block.

a SMART Utility that can read out the SMART details and show you the counters, such as DriveDX, can help you understand whether you have un-repaired "Pending Bad Blocks".

ERASE and start over repairs all Bad Blocks in most cases, unless the drive runs out if spare blocks.

Following up my post of 16 November:

I'm running Sonoma 14.1 on an M1 MacBook Air.

A discovery! When I backup to one of my USB drives, get the Backup Delayed message, the first line beneath the TimeMachine icon still says, as before, that the last backup was (a) to a different drive and (b) on 22 October.

BUT when I go down the menu and choose OPEN TIME MACHINE SETTINGS.., one of the icons has beside it the name of the drive I've just backed up to, and the correct date and time the backup was completed.

So I won't worry any more. (Though I wish Apple'd fix this minor bug.)

If and when I buy a new drive (or reformat this one), I'll be interested to see whether TM's first-line message is still wrong, but it isn't a big deal.

if you can supply a terse summary of what the problem is, Apple Product Feedback would like to hear from you:

Product Feedback - Apple

Thanks Grant -

Have just reported it to Apple Product Feedback (and discovered that

• "terse" means 800 characters maximum
• I won't hear from them unless they want more information

The latter's a little discouraging, but I can understand they're probably swamped with feedback..)