Sierra and Time Machine

Hi.


So I upgraded to Sierra yesterday morning.


Time Machine has been stuck since.


It's stuck on 'Preparing Backup'.


It's been about 18 hours.


At what point should I worry? And suggestions on a fix?


Don

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 6:21 PM

Reply
272 replies

Sep 22, 2016 1:44 PM in response to arizonadonn

About "mkdir") from macrumors/guides: http://guides.macrumors.com/mkdir


Strange that you mac creates a tmp-file (temporary file) on your desktop.

It seems something is seriously wrong - why does your Mac automatically create a directory by putting a file on your desktop? Strange...


Did you restore permissions on your harddisk and also TM-disk? - restart in recovery-mode by restarting using Command+R and then choosing Disk-repair and run it on those disks for best result.


If everything fails you could copy all of your important files to an external disk and go for a clean install...

I see no other solution.


I mailed "pondini" via his website a few hours ago...

He hasn't responded yet...

On his website he states: "I do not answer specific questions or problems via e-mail; only in the ASC forums",

- but I asked him anyway...

http://pondini.org/TM/Contact.html

Hi “pondini”,


Hope all is well…


Now macOS Sierra has arrived some people have Time Machine-troubles.


see thread (example) https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7677444?answerId=30688752022#30688752022&start=0&tstart=0


Hope to see you back in the Apple-forums.

You’re surely missed.


Compliments for all you have done in the past.


Sorry for my poor English.


Best regards,


Jur Kuipers, The Netherlands

Sep 23, 2016 3:42 AM in response to arizonadonn

Same here ...

Got always the same problems on 3 different machines with 2 totally different backup targets.

So I have NO more a backup for all this machines since I updated to Sierra.... *** 😟

targets

a) Linux /Netatalk based TimeMachine Server (over AFP)

b) Apple AirPort Extreme (of course AFP)

in both cases I found tons of such messages in the console log

AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1

and a huge load of backupd (99%) and logd (40%)

Backup hangs always with the state "Preparing Backup ..."

Sep 23, 2016 3:59 AM in response to arizonadonn

I am not sure it is a Sierra problem I tried to do a back up before upgrading and I use a my book live it was painfully slow this time and after two days I was only third of way through so I then excluded some of the files to try and quicken it up and it restarted process again, got half way through and then did same again, leaving it with that same issue preparing update message, I then had had enough and stopped it, found my small storage device and attached to computer and backed up to that, it took me 20 minutes to do a complete backup. I wasted four days of trying to get the thing to work before that. Very frustrating. Made installing Sierra seem a doddle lol.

Sep 23, 2016 2:47 PM in response to arizonadonn

Hi, I had the same issue with extremely slow time machine backup after upgrading to Sierra. For me the issue wasn't indexing of backup drive. The issue was antivirus software. I use Sophos home for mac, 1.2. I turned this off and suddenly Time machine is now backing up like a a rocket ship.


Try turning off your anti-virus app if time machine is slowed to a crawl on Sierra. Remember to turn it back on after backup.


perhaps Sophos needs an update since Sierra was released??

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Sierra and Time Machine

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