MacOS Sierra - time machine stuck preparing backup on Network devices

I've had good luck getting past this TM problem while running the Avira free antivirus software. I had to reformat my Time Machine disc first, but since then (middle of last month) I've had no problems with Time Machine backups.

pvarman wrote:

I replaced Sophos with AVG Antivirus...

From bad to worse.

I thought so too.

i disagree.

I have tested the Synology Time Machine with all of our Macs and it works well. It has already also proven itself in a situation where a MAC had a corrupted Parallels VM of approximately 60 MB. I have a coworker who has lost data despite using genuine Apple Time machine devices and the geniuses were unable to solve it. So I would say that Synology is good, Apple is good but nothing is perfect and a Time Machine backup... regardless of vendor, should not be anybody's only backup or their long term backup.

You are free to believe as you wish. I am very happy with the cryptolocker attack which Sophos removed from my imap inbox and placed in quarantine.

I have already turned off the on access scanner and rescheduled Sophso scans to a more favorable time. Esentially what you are suggesting is to turn off the important part of the scans. At this point, what would even be the value of keeping Sophos installed? Even with everything disabled Sophia does impact the system.

As Sophos has obviously still not resolved their issues, any further tinkering on my part will be to check out AVG or a paid antivirus. I've got 27 years of distributed software development under my belt so I'm not about to go into ostrich run a Mac or any networked device without an antivirus.

What you or anyone else think "works well" does not matter. What matters is that you are made aware that your backup strategy is relying upon an unsupported configuration that is absolutely certain to fail, perhaps when you really need it to work. When that occurs, only you will bear the consequences of having made that decision. No one else will care.

Actually, if you are following this issue you understand it applies to all networked Time Machines, not Synology devices. Not everything Apple is perfect and everything non-Apple "unsupported and certain to fail". I'm old enough and deep into the industry enough to remember the days when Steve Jobs was dismissed from Apple, primarily because he was locked into Applenet (remember that?) and against unsupported and lesser protocols such as Ethernet, token ring, Novell and Arcnet. All other vendors supported the stack and the Ethernet protocol won.

Any vendor which implements the Time Machine protocol should be just fine outside of the occasional bug, Apple included. I didn't buy Synology to run Time Machine. I enabled Time Machine on it to save money. Several Synology devices synchronizing from different locations provide backup mirroring that go well beyond Time Machine. We probably have different goals and use cases.

Listen. I had this problem just when Sierra came out.

I'm running the Computer Software and not the web based and I have had no problems for the last 2 months.

Try it out.

Backup all your computer either to Dropbox or to the Mac Cloud. Everything.

Then if the backup shows virus or malware or what ever, there is nothing to do but launch DU and clear the back up disk.

Then go to your website login and disable the web based version.

Then just run the Sophos on your computer and let it run . DO NOT RUN A SACN just leave the app open, it does the job.

And finally go to SP and select the disk you are going to use (which I asume it's going to be the one you cleared if you had a problem and I'm almost sure your problems will go away.

Trying to bring the conversation back...

Sophos is supposedly releasing a new update today or tomorrow (11/14 or 15), lets see if it fixes this issue once and for all.

Not 100% sure it will be fixed. I found people having the same issue with other antivirus packages. I tested AVG on a work mac and got the same problem. I suspect the OS has a bug maybe and may require a patch from Apple. This is only a feeling so please don't quote me, but i would not hold your breath on tomorrows update resolving the issue, although will be very happy if I am wrong.

Thanks Konrad, both for improving the level of discourse with needed factual information and for the heads up as well. I will be on the watch for it. I just received a Sierra update yesterday and there was definitely a lot of changes in the networking area* so I imagine that Apple is quietly addressing some issues as well.

*Long time AFP network paths over the last several 0SX versions no longer function. ie, legacy paths such as /Volume/foo are still present but nonfunctional while new ones such as /Volume/foo-1 have mysteriously appeared and are functional. Sierra was a little rough in the networking area so Sophos may not be the only cause here.

Interesting, if AVG was impacted as well it will be interesting to see if the new Sierra release mitigates in any way. I do intend to be a little slower on the upgrades in the future. There is nothing new here that is compelling enough to lose backups. I preferred the El Capitan / iOS 9.x combination of features over Sierra / iOS 10.x combination. You really cant go back without a lot of work if you use iCloud.

I also would like to add the disabling my Sophos Home did the trick too. Time machine is now backing up correctly to my NAS drive. I was originally stuck in preparing backup mode.

Thank you Maverick6978 for that tip