Time Machine Not Working - Perpetually Counts File Changes

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Time Machine Not Working - Perpetually Counts File Changes

I bought a new 26TB G-RAID drive to back up 3-8TB external drives that I use for work (there is probably about 21TB of data on the three drives combined). I did the initial backup and that worked fine. However, ever since then whenever I connect the external drives in order to do another backup, Time Machine perpetually counts the number of files that have changed. This goes on forever. I've let it run for three straight days and it just keeps counting up the number of files that have changed and never begins the actual backup. In actuality, only a few files have been added to the drives, but I've let it keep going until it reached about 34 billion files and counting until I gave up and stopped the backup. (I tried to start one an hour ago, and it is currently running and is up to 21 million). I've tried removing the G-RAID drive and adding it back again but that did nothing.

Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be and why Time Machine thinks so many changes have occurred since the last backup?

MacBook Pro 16-inch November 2023

Apple M3 MAx

64GB RAM

Golden Gate 27.0.1

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.3

Posted on Oct 17, 2026 2:40 PM

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Answer 1

steve626

Level 6

19,403 points

Oct 17, 2026 9:28 PM in response to charlesgenedip

I don't think your backup destination is large enough.

You have "probably about" 21 TB to backup and the destination has 24 TB. The Mac is probably struggling with this changed files process because it doesn't have enough space to handle this work. How much free space is there on your Mac? It is using its internal space as scratch space and no doubt is paging to disk a lot, this can take a long time. Usually users are advised to make sure the destination is 3-4 times the size of the disk(s) being backed up.

I suggest partitioning the 26 TB drive into three partitions, and use the three partitions to make a "clone" type backup (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) of each 8 GB drive. It would be better to have something closer to 30 or 36 TB here versus 26 TB, some headroom is needed. Anyway, these cloning apps, after the first backup, do incremental backups much faster than the first one. I believe these cloning apps are better suited than Time Machine to enormous drives with many small files like you appear to have.

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Answer 2

Oct 18, 2026 9:16 AM in response to steve626

Thanks for your response. I will definitely look into these alternatives.

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