Time Machine constantly making new backup

Already sent iMore an email with an explanation and a link to this thread. Don't think they will take me serious, but if we all began to spam them about this issue, it might get their attention.

Ask for Rene Ritchie or Serenity Caldwell.

I'm sure this is old news to some of you, but has anyone tried what this article states:

http://jd-powered.net/notes/fixing-your-time-machine-backup

It seems a bit out of my level of expertise, but I might try and give it a shot. Would appreciate views from others?

Adding a new note after some time.

Time machine backup failed again a few days after my post.

Simply put, time machine does not work with network storage devices (and I challenge Apple to prove the opposite).

I have installed Carbon Copy, that has been backing up flawlessly on the same Nad device since then my entire Mac.

I mean RAM, system memory.

FWIW, I have since I used Time Machine Scheduler to set my back up to once a day instead of hourly (in the evening when the Mac is otherwise idle instead of hourly during the day when I am using it) I have not had had one failure, going on several months now.

From my reading of this article it is doing little else but running a disk repair routine on the sparsebundle file. You can do the same thing much more simply with Disk First Aid, but you have to catch it before it goes bad. The result will generally be the same. The file can sometimes be repaired but not always. The article does show you how to re-flag the sparsebundle as usable after the repair, so that could be useful, assuming the repair was successful.

I spoke to Apple about 10 days ago. They are aware of the problem and the Tech's are trying to find a solution. They said there would either be an update for Time Machine or an OS X update. Didn't know the time frame though.

Hi pjd54, this is exactly what I was told in December 2016 (I think some of the guys on here were told this even longer ago). I'm currently going through another try... I wiped the Time Capsule a couple of weeks ago and backed up fresh... if the error happens again then I'm going to go to Apple Customer Service and complain.

I may have found the culprit. When macOS Sierra came out I bought the new late 2016 15" MB Pro and the LG 4K Monitor. I was running everything through the LG UltraFine 4K Monitor as my connection hub. I noticed a couple of times that the internet speed test was around 25+mb on my new MB Pro going through the LG UltraFine 4K monitor. I thought that's odd, I have 150+mb and I am directly connected. I figured I would check it out sometime when I was not busy. Well, I checked it out a few months back and it appears that the crappy LG UltraFine 4K Monitor ethernet connection via the MacBook Pro USB-C connection heavily fluctuates between ~25Mb ~45Mb. I moved the ethernet connection via the Belkin USB-C connector directly to the MacBook Pro and I got my full internet speed and no more Time Capsule/Time Machine backup failures, so far. I believe if I even remove the Belkin ethernet connection and use WiFi the backups will still work, because my MacBook is very close to the Time Capsule, and the Speed 120Mb+ most of the time. Keeping my fingers crossed.

In my own wifi setup the Macs are quite close to the Time Capsule and I've had many errors (I have not checked the connection speeds so can't comment on that as a contributing factor). Your experience does add to my suspicion though, that Time Machine is not properly negotiating either slow or busy networks, or some combination thereof, and throwing off errors. Having set my backups to occur once a day at a not-busy time, rather than hourly, I have not seen the error in months.

I have this question as well, and just now started another "New Backup to improve reliability" lol. Ironic.

This problem, for me, started with Sierra.

I have a few Laptop Macs I backup wirelessly to a Time Capsule and I'm grateful for this forum because now, at least, I know it's not me. I've tried erasing the Time Capsule drive, but still get this error every few days.

I've tried the following, which did not fix it: Erased the Time Capsule and started new backups from all three laptops. The error persists.

If anyone comes up with a fix, please let us all know.

My experience is that it is not necessarily a WiFi issue, but a networking performance issue. It just so happens that most people are using WiFi and performance is more likely to fluctuate which causes the Time Machine backup issues. It also appears to be more prevalent with MacOS Sierra, based on this thread and other boards on the net. For me the issue was occurring on my new LG 4K UltraFine Display built-in USB-C hub. I was running an ethernet cable directly from my Time Capsule to a Belkin ethernet adapter that was attached to the LG 4K UltraFine Display built-in USB-C hub. I was getting networking performance between 25mb~45mb. It took me several months track it down, because I had a New MacBook Pro, New MacOS and a New Monitor. I have been doing Time Capsule backups for years over WiFi, of course my laptop is only 3 feet away from the Time Capsule. When I bought the LG 4K UltraFine Display with the built in USB-C hub I decided to do a direct line to the Time Capsule which would be faster right ? NOooooooooo! I called LG about the issue and they said I should be getting better performance. So, I have now sent my LG UltraFine Display back to LG for repair twice. It is currently in an LG repair facility in Canton, MI for a second time. Hopefully it will be resolved this time. Inside the packaging I placed a tech note and other assets showing my network performance and which ethernet adapter I am using. All the equipment was bought directly from the Apple.

I first posted on this thread in April (2017)--was having this problem with my elderly Mom's brand new MB and TC (purchased in Dec.). Tried backing off the frequency of backups just just twice a week, but it still failed every time. In June I reset the TC to factory settings, renamed it with new/different name, set it up fresh, and it's performed perfectly since then. Very mysterious, but it's working now, miraculously!

Bumping this thread as I am still having this issue - nearly two years after it was flagged. Macbook Pro 10.12.5, prompting to create new back ups about once every three months (usually timing it for just after I've completed a big project or am about to take it on holiday or something else tense!).

It's several years old, and I am also having slight problems with our home wifi (other macs are fine, just this one struggling) where the connection drops out repeatedly. I'm wondering, given teh last couple of posts, whether this is related in some way to the timecapsule problems.

I'm also interested in alternatives for the mac - I don't see the point in using the TM if it's actually going to wipe all my data and restart every few months. 😟

I've been seeing this problem for a while, backing up an iMac (late 2013 model) to a 2014 3TB Time Capsule. After going through the lengthy but thankfully automated process of creating a new backup several times, I decided that the Time Capsule was probably suffering from a hardware fault and I had better try something else.

I've since added two extra backup devices and now backup to all three using Time Machine. So that's:

1. A directly connected hard drive

2. The 3TB Time Capsule mentioned above

3. A synology NAS device

This has worked flawlessly since September until this week. The Time Capsule is now on its third rebuild of the week. The other backup devices report no errors and appear to be working fine.

The iMac is running High Sierra (10.13.1) and has 16GB memory. It is directly connected to the Time Capsule by Ethernet, not WiFi, and via the Time Capsule and another network switch, to the Synology NAS (gigabit Ethernet).

Annoying.

This article might be useful for you Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must cr…