Time Machine constantly making new backup

I followed your suggestion and I managed to repair the sparse bundle file. In my case Time Machine regularly comes up with the "Time machine completed a verification of your backups... " message every week or so.. really frustrating.

In my case I made a variation: I stopped Time Machine and mounted the share where my spare bundle sits (I use a Synology NAS in Raid5 for the backup).

Once it was mounted, I used disk aid to fix the sparse bundle and it worked. Then modified the com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist file following this article:

http://jd-powered.net/notes/fixing-your-time-machine-backup (look at the bottom part of the article. The upper part is what I unsuccessfully tried first before using the Disk Aid idea).

Currently my Time machine is backing up again, and I haven't lost the old backups.

Apologies if this has been asked before, but is this a Time Machine on Sierra problem, or an Airport Time Capsule on Sierra problem? The reason I ask is that I can't be confident now using Time Machine & AirPort for backups due to this known problem.

So I could buy another NAS drive and use Time Machine..

Or use the Airport manually as a NAS without Time Machine..

Or buy another NAS drive and use it manually without Time Machine,

Does that make sense!? Which seems to be the most stable?

So I could buy another NAS drive and use Time Machine..

Not a good idea. 99% of the Sierra users who are having problems are trying to back up to a network drive. I'm sure that a few users might be having problems backing up to a "local" USB or FireWire drive connected directly to their Mac, but I can't find any on a forum search.

Or use the Airport manually as a NAS without Time Machine.

Yes, keeping in mind that the AirPort Time Capsule is not really a true NAS.

Or buy another NAS drive and use it manually without Time Machine,

Probably your best option.

Since I started using Time Machine Scheduler to reduce the frequency of backups to once a day I have not seen a failure for many weeks (doing this manually would work too, but with Scheduler I don't have to remember). I know this is not a complete solution but it is darn sight better than having to start the backup from scratch every week or so.

Another possibly random benefit of fewer backups is I am no longer having the problem of my Mac becoming unresponsive and needing to be restarted with the power button, a problem I was also seeing almost weekly before. I suspect something is seriously wrong with the Time Machine backup process.

I have the same issue. macbook Pro, 3 to time capsule, all software and OS up to date. Getting the message about weekly for the time capsule backup. But I also have a separate drive connected by USB that is also backing up passively using time machine and all is fine with that.

Another "me too." This started a couple weeks ago, a few weeks after upgrading to Sierra. A real pain. Fortunately, I have my most critical files saved with Carbonite, too, remotely, so I'm not in grave danger of losing important data.

Mid 2010 Mac Pro, Sierra 10.12.2. 2TB 2011 Time Capsule.

Happens to me too on both my macbook and macbook pro (both running sierra). I even bought myself a new time capsule thinking that the old one had disk issues. Did a new backup on the pro just a couple of days ago, only to now have to do it all again.

OK, with the help of Applecare I was finally able to fix my issue. I started getting the message daily that says “Time Machine completed a verification of your backups ‘xxx Time Capsule.’ To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” but every time I tried creating a new backup it failed again. In my case it turned out there was a corrupted backup image which Time Machine was unable to delete. Here’s how we found it and worked around it:

First, go to Time Machine Preferences and turn off Time Machine (for now). Now open a new Finder window and under “Shared” in the left pane select the Time Capsule. It has just one folder called “Data”—double click it to open it. Here we found one file called "Jim's iMac.purgeable.purgeable.purgeable.purgeable.purgeable.purgeable.sparsebundle”. (I think maybe every time it tried to delete it it must’ve added another “purgeable” in the filename.) Select it and from the action button in the toolbar select “Move to Trash” and confirm when prompted. Again, in my case it would not delete this file, complaining that “The operation can’t be completed because the item “bands” is in use.” What is this “bands” file? No idea. Anyway again from the Action button we created a new folder called “archive backup” and then moved this file we were trying to delete into this file. After that we went back to Time Machine Preferences and turned it back on, then from the menu bar I selected “Back Up Now” and it backed up successfully. Yea!

Now, since this purgeable.sparsebundle file couldn’t be deleted I took the extreme effort to get rid of it permanently by executing the following steps. First, turn off Time Machine on ALL computers being backed up by the Time Capsule. I back up three computers to this Time Capsule so I had three sparsebundle files on my Time Capsule that didn’t say “purgeable”. So next I copied each of these sparsebundle files onto another drive (I just happened to have a new 3TB drive I had gotten the day before). Copying these files took a long, long time (i.e. over 24 hrs.) because of their file size but also the fact that it had to copy them over the wireless connection to the Time Capsule. I suppose you could skip this step if you don’t care about historical backups but I didn’t want to risk losing that because, well, you never know.

After all of the sparsebundle files were copied to a backup drive then I opened Airport Utility. Click Edit to edit the Time Capsule and then click on the Disks tab. Select the “Data” partition and click the “Erase Disk….” button. Once the Time Capsule drive was erased then I copied all of the sparsebundle files from the spare drive back to the Time Capsule. Again this took a long time. Once the files were copied back then I turned re-enabled Time Machine in my System Preferences on my iMac and then started a new backup. Success! Then I re-enabled Time Machine on the other two computers backed up by my Time Capsule and verified that they are each backing up successfully. I’ve now been backing up for two weeks without a single error. Hope this helps!

Hmm...seems to me that you just deleted the old back-up and started a new cycle. That's what I (and many with me, I guess) have been doing for some time now, witch only delays the errror message for a week or a month and then we start all over again. I hope this helped you get rid of errors forever, but I can't help beeing a bit sceptical about it.

Please let us now in a couple of weeks if it still backing up without any problems.

Thanks.

Yes, I hope it works out for you, but I'm also sceptical. I even went as far as buying a brand new time capsule. It worked as intended for some time, but the problem reappeared and seems to be increasing in its frequency.

My current "solution" is to disable the automatic backup and trigger it manually whenever I remember to. That way it at least makes incremental backups and I don't have to suffer through the complete backup pain anymore. Well, its been working so far at least. Not the solution that I want though, so Apple, please fix this.

Thankfully, my parents' computer is too old for Sierra, so their backup solution works fine. I bought them that Mac so that I wouldn't have to act as the go to support guy in the first place 🙂

Piling on. Converted my Mom (she's 85 now) from Windows laptop to a MB at Christmas (Dec. 2016) just so I could get her a Time Capsule and not have to worry about backups anymore. New 13" MB, new TC, both purchase in Dec. Problem started about a month ago, getting worse each week.

Cpunt me in also. I have a Mac Mini (2012), wife's 21.5 iMac (2012) and my 27" iMac (2015) all backing up to a 2Tb Time Capsule. Only the 27" iMac has been generating this error message. All are connected via Ethernet through an 8 port switch and WiFi also (so location services work). All machines are running Sierra and have the most current updates. I have tried all the fixes mentioned previously, but the problem keeps coming up only on my 27" iMac. Apple support has sent me a new TC, but that only helped for a couple of months. I have even done a clean install of Sierra (Nuclear Option ) And zeroed out the TC drive, but problem has returned.

I am now using SuperDuper on external USB drive which I connect each weekend to do reliable backups.

Hi rscharf,

So, that's interesting: it only happens on your 27" iMac and not the other Macs, while they all run the latest version of Sierra. It happens to me also on my 27" iMac, but I don't have another Mac to test if it occurs there too.

Anyone having a 21" iMac whit this problem? Maybe we can isolate the source of the problem a bit...

My Time Capsule has this behavior after Sierra upgrade. I even had the TC replaced under my 3-years AppleCare.

I also have an external hard drive directly connected to the iMac's USB port, and that backup is behaving just fine.

I'm trying the suggestion above of totally erasing the TC.