Sierra and Time Machine

OK. I disabled the real-time virus protection in AVIRA and went into Spotlight preferences and specifically excluded my USB-connected drive (a 2TB My Passport) that I have used for Time Machine. It seems to also have resolved the issue. It seems likely Spotlight was attempting to index the drive - but I am not sure. Whatever the cause, it seems the workaround has fixed it for now.

Although this is not the place to talk about Beta Versions, my post is about the release version and I hope someone at Apple will read it

I was using the preliminary beta versions of Sierra since the first Beta release (probably early May), and I never had any issue with Time Machine and two Time Capsules connected via cable. Something has changed in the distribution version.

I was using exactly the same configuration that does not work now: Spotlight without any exceptions, Sophos, etc.

Erasing drives might not be such a good idea as some folk, me included, have a time capsule and other family members do their backups on it as well :-)

I now have my SAN and USB external hard disk working in Time Machine. But still no joy on Apples own Time Capsule. How bizarre is that??

arizonadonn wrote:

Do you think Apple monitors these forums and makes notes or 'fixes' based on these posts?

No.

Did you read my earlier reply to you?

I have just bought a USB disk to make the backups, and I probably will skip Time Machine altogether. Any idea of what software to use?

I would certainly use Time Machine, it will probably work well with your USB disk.

You can at least give it a try!!

I am already doing TM backups over USB for another - smaller - computer that I use everyday.

Fact is that I am not happy at all with Time Machine. TM is binary, either it works, or it doesn't.

I was using a Beta of Sierra since four months ago, and TM worked flawlessly, on a two Time Capsule configuration. So, I thought that I cannot have any problem. Well, I was wrong.

One of my Time Capsule disk broke, so, I still had the other one, isn't it?

I bought another Time Capsule, I configured it, I setup Time Machine to work only with the new disk... no way. It became stuck sometimes "preparing **", sometimes in the middle of a transfer. Transfer speeds dropped from 10-12 mBytes/sec to a hundred kilobytes.

So, I decided that nothing as a fresh start would wipe down all the jumble-mumble of half done backups. So, I disconnected the new Time Capsule, I went back to the other one that should be working, I checked that I was able to access the backup, and I was. But I not entered into Time Machine as such, I only saw that it found a backup on the disk because it was "Preparing backup", so, I stopped the backup, and when there was no backup in progress, I

erased my working disk (!!!!) (yes, I know... that was a bad move, you simply should never delete your working disk to solve problems that you may have with your backup disk),.

So far, so good, I had a new computer. When starting, I selected: start from a Time Machine copy.... and this piece of junk said that it had found two time machine copies (one for my primary computer, the other for the portable I was working with) but they were unusable!!! (or something like this). Probably the aborted backup corrupted something in the Time Capsule disl

I looked like an *****le. 🙂

So, I configured my computer from scratch, the only data lost were old messages that were not stored in the email server, as all the information was also replicated in Dropbox or in iCloud.

But I needed to download and install all the apps, and to enter usernames and passwords for the whole stuff. Total, 30 work-hours lost, but almost no data loss.

But should the same think happen in my other computer, where I have all my music and pictures, I should have lost two year data. (I have a two year old Backup that may work... or not)

To conclude, I am not very happy with Time Machine. Its easiness of use (Fit an Forget) is wonderful when everything goes fine, but really is not usable in case of problems, because there is no tool (at least that I know) able to navigate and to pick up the files selectively. I need a Backup software that works smoothly in the background, but that provides tools to work with files and directories when not. At least, to recover the root files and not the incremental.

While it depends on how you upgraded, if you upgrade from an older OS, it has to spend a lot of time calculating the system iterations. For me, It took sometime when upgrading and backing up for the first time when new OS is ready. I suggest you to be patient.

Thanks, worked for me. TM started running the second I turned off Sophos.

I had all sorts of problems slow, not able to connect to time capsule, wouldn't recognise time capsule (even though using it for the network). I've tried all the reset suggestions, tried deleting Plists suggested. None of that seemed to work.

I finally resolved by adding another TM backup disk connected directly to my MBP and Mac mini, and asked it to back to both. Suddenly everything started to connect correctly. Still slow in backup but getting faster better and I've now disconnected to new TM back up disk and is working only on the time capsule.

I don't have antivirus running on Sierra but I have the same problem here with Time Machine. Even Sierra is not behaving as responsive when Time Machine is active. I even thru out a good external Hard Drive thinking this was the issue. I hope for an update for this, I feel very insecure without my time machine backups. I'm trying again Time Machine in a new HD and it has been stuck with 10K of 37.21GB for half an hour.

All information is greatly appreciated. 😕

My Mac: MacBook Pro (late 2011) / QuadCore 2.5Ghz i7 / 16GB RAM

I have done everything and I am fed up of wasting my time trying to debug Apple's software for free

I have bought two 4Tbytes USB disks (120 € each) plus Data Backup Software (45 €), and since yesterday my antivirus and Spotlight are running again. I have gone back 5 years, but at least I have backups, hourly if I want to.

I have disconnected one Time Capsule, while the other is used as a 200 $ switch

Thanks, Apple! We all miss Steve

Hi,

one quick question, does anyone use a USV connected to the mac via usb, when time machine stops running?

I had the problem last year and now after the new sierra update again, it seems to me that the usb from (my) USV does the "trick" at least for me, since i disconnected my USV from the mac with sierra running, time machine seems to run as expected.

Maybe the iMAC "thinks" -- ups we are running in Bat-Power, so i stop doing backups .....

Greets

(and sorry for my bad bad english)

I had the same issue with Avira

I had this problem too; stuck on 'Preparing backup' or eventually running extremely slowly.

I wondered if it was related to MacOS Sierra's new "optimise mac storage' feature that uses iCloud to save disk space, and it seems that may have been the case.

Note there are 2 settings to change:

1. Settings | iCloud | iCloud Drive | (options) | Optimize Mac Storage (uncheck the box)
2. About This Mac (small apple logo in top left corner) | Storage | Manage | Deselect ' Store in iCloud'

As soon as I disabled these, it ran through a backup as quickly as before the Sierra upgrade.

I couldn't definitively swear that this is what fixed it, but none of the other Apple suggestions had made any difference and now it's fine.

Hope that's helpful.