time capsule not working with sierra

Just got off of 90 minutes of technical support with Apple.

Sierra broke the way that Time Capsule sparsebundles are opened. If you navigate to your Time Capsule volume and open Time Machine backups, you should see a sparsebundle for each machine you back up. Double click on one.

If you get an error that the application "DiskImageMounter.app" cannot be opened (-36), then you've been bitten by this known issue.

I found that you can still do level 0 backups by hand (that is, you can start over with backups—it's only the incremental backups that stall for me). This is not a realistic solution in the long run, but will at least let you do a backup.

It also seems to be Time Capsule specific—I can still do incremental backups to another drive.

They said that this should be fixed in OSX 12.3

FWIW, I got the same message. After about 10-15 minutes of preparing it finally performed the backups. Once this initial backup went through successfully, it did not take as long from that point on.

It may all depend on two things:

1. The amount of data that has changed with the update, and
2. Where you are backing up to. For example, a locally attached drive or to a Time Capsule over wireless.

In my case, I had both as I employ doing Time Machine backups to multiple destinations. The over wireless connection did take considerably longer the first time as well.

I am having the same issue. Have been waiting about 10 hours for the back up to WD My Book for Mac. I had no issue with the last back up prior to installing Sierra. I guess I will let it try overnight and see what happens.

Fingers Crossed. 🙂

Something else to look for is high CPU utilization.

After installing Sierra I noticed that my Mac mini was running "hot." Using the Activity Monitor I found a few processes that were hogging the CPU. Not just the one used by Time Machine.

It turns out the Photos app was running a process to update photos in the Photos Library for facial recognition. Until this process completed, it used up most of the CPU limiting the amount of CPU available for Time Machine. Anyway, this process alone took almost 20 minutes and I don't have that many photos.

Have you tried shutting down the Time Capsule and then restarted it again?

Unlike Tesserax, I did not have any success getting past my Time Capsule preparing to backup, even after an hour or two.

After effecting my use of the Epic browser, the Thunderbird app, not going to sleep or shutting down properly and generally running sluggishly I have reverted back to El Capitan until at least Sierra 10.12.1 is released. Generally I have found these OS upgrades painless, but not in this case.

I had the same problem. I was finally able to resolve it by disabling my Sophos anti-virus software long enough to back up. Until Sophos and Apple coordinate, I'll have to back up manually after turning off Sophos each time.

Thanks for the suggestion, as I am having the same problem at work connecting two computers linked with our Time Capsule there.

I'll try it on one of them and see what comes of it.

Unfortunately I have 1.5 TB of video files backed up on my TC and I am not going to erase all of that. Hopefully a better solution will come with 10.12.1

Did you sort this out in the end?

Have also had problems. Have Time Capsule with 2 external USB 3 drives attached (both used, alternately for backup). Since installing Sierra, have noticed:

- TM said that my backups were corrupted (1 drive). Tried DiskWarrior w no luck, finally had to take a complete new backup. This might be unrelated, but don't usually believe in coincidences like this.

- On the 2nd drive, TM did not say anything but from the size (250 GB) it must have been a complete backup. No idea why, but certainly chews up a lot of space on the backup drive!

- First time entering TM took forever. Finally cancelled, re-booted, and times seemed better - not fast, but not too slow.

- If in TM, the forward/back buttons on the right are screwy. For example, pressing to go "back" in time jumps several days (can't see a pattern of how many days). If you use the bars on the extreme right, each day is present as expected, so don't know why all the jumping over multiple days.

Overall, it seems like something is seriously wrong w Sierra. Backups are pretty critical - Apple has got to get this fixed!

Agreed, and I have had issues with Epic browser, the Thunderbird app and even Safari is hanging at times. Best solution for me was to revert to El Capitan and await a better Sierra OS. All works as it should with El Capitan. The same problems persist with workplace Macs (Mac Mini, Macbook and an iMac) and Time Capsule. So this is a Sierra problem.