Time Machine and Spotlight (Sierra)

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Level 1

4 points

Time Machine and Spotlight (Sierra)

Hello.
So my situation is as follows. I use an external USB SSD for Time Machine backups. Usually after erasing the drive Time Machine works as expected for some time. Then the backup starts to fail on each attempt with 'Time Machine could not complete backup'. I've noticed that sometimes it's impossible to eject the drive also.

I've then checked what might be holding the drive (lsof) and found out that's mds process, which stands for Spotlight indexer as far as I get.

If I add mentioned drive to 'Privacy' list in Spotlight preferences, each reboot it disappears from this list.

If I disable indexing (launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist), scheduled or manually triggered Time Machine backup goes just fine each time.
Now the backup runs each hour and keeping indexing on means facing the same issue quite often. I don't use indexing and therefore consider having it disabled OK.

All this doesn't look sound in 2017. I'd like to know if there is any other good solution to this issue.

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Aug 21, 2017 11:48 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 21, 2017 12:01 PM in response to vpav

It turns out that Spotlight indexing of the Time Machine drive is part of normal Time Machine operation. If you place the drive in the Spotlight Privacy list, it will still get indexed by Spotlight.

You might consider running Disk Utility and first aid on that Time Machine drive. Before you do that though, it might be informative to review the Console logs (most recent on the bottom) for drive errors/failures involving your Time Machine drive. Did you attempt to force TRIM on that external Time Machine drive, and was this before reading the manufacturer's recommendations about using TRIM on their drive?

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Answer 2

vpav Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 26, 2017 3:55 AM in response to vpav

It appears that that was not a solution. TM fails as always.
I've checked some more logs and found out all this comes to 'Error: (22) setxattr'
Also nothing helped, so I've just dropped the idea to use that disk.

It just doesn't make any sense that no other software on any plaftform reported any issues except for TM which just doesn't want to work with this disk. 😠

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