My Time Machine backups aren't running automatically. I can do a backup using the "Back Up Now" menu item, but they won't run automatically.
Any ideas what to try?
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X El Capitan (10.11)
Its definitely to do with the USB connection to my APC brand UPS.
Disconnected the USB cable, re-started and now backups are running every hour on the dot.
I can also confirm that TM works flawlessly with my APC brand UPS connected via USB to my iMac (21.5" late-2013) under Yosemite, but does not under El Capitan (10.11.1)
Reverted to Yosemite and everything works as before.
Our mini can’t be restarted in recovery mode because it’s now running on a RAID1 mirrored array of 2TB drives, and R C-R’s step won’t help.
(so error is expected: 10/28/15 6:50:34.960 AM com.apple.backupd[6353]: Could not back up OS X Recovery to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=0 "Unable to mount recovery partition" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Unable to mount recovery partition}
But the good news is that after the restart with the UPS USB cable unplugged from the Cyberpower’s end, it started TM backups again and continued after plugging it back in but since there is no UPS tab in Energy Saver it hasn’t really dealt with it. Will try cold reboot with cable plugged in.
<sigh> I've just done the First Aid from recovery partition / add and remove drives from Spotlight Privacy routine as described by @R C-R on the previous page, plugged my APC in with its USB cable again and I'm back to TM not backing up my iMac to my Time Capsule via ethernet again.
I'm giving up until Apple rectify this, assuming they will - TM scheduled backups only work for me if my UPS is not plugged in with USB.
As @Swamp_Fox said yesterday, I'm pinning my hopes on 10.11.2 and Apple's request for developers to concentrate on things including USB in the latest beta.
R-C-R and I have both been trying to solve this issue same as everyone else. This is an issue with some computers, not all. I've done many things trying to fix this and I can always get it to work, but a restart will disable it again. I have gotten to this point of leaving the UPS unplugged and restarting will start it working and it will stay working as long as you don't plug the UPS back in.
So either keep the UPS plugged in and let it backup when it awakes from sleep or manually, or unplug the UPS and let it back up hourly.
As I've mentioned before, everyone needs to send Apple feedback. I'm sure they are aware of this by now and the more people that send feedback, the more attention this will get.
From 10.11 to 10.11.2 (15C27e), if the USB UPS cable is connected, in my iMac 27'' (mid 2014 full optional!) this window appears:
<<Warning! You are using power supply with UPS. Save documents and shutdown your computer.>>
each time that OS X start up or restarts.
Important! Because this alert appears for a short time, care should be taken when appears the window to insert the login password.
(A trick: you can record a little movie with an iPhone)
This problem is associated to serious issue: if the USB cable of the Backup-UPS power supply is connected, Time Machine does not perform properly the hourly backups. If I disconnect the Backup-UPS cable from the USB port and I start OS X, instead, the hourly TM backup properly works.
My UPS is a APC Power-Saving Back-UPS ES 8 Outlet 700VA 230V model ES 700G by APC (now it is renamed BE700G-IT) and with Lion and Yosemite it works well. The Power icon of the Menu Bar, say that my iMac is 100% powered, also in El Capitan.
Obviously, i tried also with some clean installations of El Capitan, stable or beta version, but the problem persists.
I sent various feedback to Apple, from site and with Feedback Assistant.
Excuse me for my bad English 😊
Pinturikkio wrote:
From 10.11 to 10.11.2 (15C27e), if the USB UPS cable is connected, in my iMac 27'' (mid 2014 full optional!) this window appears:
<<Warning! You are using power supply with UPS. Save documents and shutdown your computer.>>
each time that OS X start up or restarts.
Important! Because this alert appears for a short time, care should be taken when appears the window to insert the login password.
(A trick: you can record a little movie with an iPhone)
Very helpful! I saw the warning pop up on restart but it was so brief that I could not read what it said.
Glenn Leblanc wrote:
R-C-R and I have both been trying to solve this issue same as everyone else.
{...}
As I've mentioned before, everyone needs to send Apple feedback. I'm sure they are aware of this by now and the more people that send feedback, the more attention this will get.
FWIW, I had called Applecare about this issue a week ago & eventually got bumped to a senior advisor. At that time neither of us knew about the UPS tie-in. However, the advisor gave me his work email address so I could contact him with any more info about it. I just sent him an email referencing this discussion, including a brief summary of what users have discovered about its cause & a request to forward the info to Apple engineering.
My penultimate step in testing will be to reboot, and if the backups continue I'll then re-connect the network time machine drive and monitor the timing.
Another couple days of backups happening on schedule to the USB drive with the UPS attached, so I added my external drive again and now I see where it started to break - I think.
Notice that neither drive has a "next backup" entry - the way I understood that dual drive TimeMachine setup to work was that it would at least alternate between them, if not backup to both hourly. Am I wrong in that understanding or does adding my external drive simply break that function.
How many of us are also using dual or external drives for the backup? Maybe the UPS is a red herring?
I'm using an internal drive in a 2010 Mac Pro.....so it's always mounted and available.
-Kevin
I'm using an external (USB) WD My Book as my TM drive.
Ruprick the Monkey Boy wrote:
Notice that neither drive has a "next backup" entry - the way I understood that dual drive TimeMachine setup to work was that it would at least alternate between them, if not backup to both hourly. Am I wrong in that understanding or does adding my external drive simply break that function.
How many of us are also using dual or external drives for the backup? Maybe the UPS is a red herring?
You are not seeing the "next backup" entry because once you add more than one backup drive, the line that would show that doesn't display in the limited space allocated for info on each drive in the preference window. It has been like this for several OS versions -- it isn't anything specific to El Capitan.
It is slightly annoying but functionally irrelevant. I have been using two drives for alternating TM backups for several years & the display has always been like that.
R C-R wrote:.
It is slightly annoying but functionally irrelevant. I have been using two drives for alternating TM backups for several years & the display has always been like that.
Very annoying and a pretty crappy UX - but that's good to know - I added the second network drive just after the El Cap upgrade so the two occurred simultaneously.
My USB drive did its backup on schedule and the network drive started its backup too (though very slowly, which is an unfortunate known issue with the MyCloud Drives)
In my case, disconnecting the UPS cable and immediately restarting has allowed Time Machine to function normally again. In addition, plugging the UPS cable in again hasn't interrupted the process. I now have both hourly Time Machine backups and full UPS functionality.
I'm suspicious that restarting the machine with the UPS USB cable plugged in would break things again, but I restart the machine so infrequently that at this point I'm going to just try and live with it and hope OS X 10.11.2 has a fix included.
I'm unclear on the details, but am aware from back when El Capitan was in beta that Apple has made deep level underlying changes to how it handles USB in this version of OS X (just search the web and see). While this bug is the most problematic for me, I have seen other signs of USB flakiness (drives slow to mount and at least one USB Thumb drive that won't mount at all).
As Swamp_Fox pointed out they appear to be trying to stamp out USB issues in the current 10.11.2 beta, so here's hoping.
I have the Time Machine problem of no hourly backups. I also have a APC UPS connected by USB cable. The problem started when I updated from 10.10.5 to 10.11.1. My Time Machine drive is an external USB disk. Time Machine was working fine on 10.10.5.
I'm in the process of running First Aid on my Time Machine volume and have disconnected the USB cable to the APC UPS. I will restart after the First Aid run completes. Will report back on the status of hourly Time Machine runs after the restart.
Time machine backup not running
