Time machine backup not working in macOS high sierra

Hi,

I had the problem of Time Machine failing directly after upgrading to High Sierra on iMac 27 with Fusion drive. My MacBook Pro with SSD upgraded and worked ok.

Eventually after many contacts with Apple support they finally recommended removing ~Library/Mobile Documents from the backup and this has worked successfully.

To remove Open System Preferences/Time Machine/ Options. Next open the Finder window on the same screen and while holding down the Option(Alt) key select Go from the menu at the top of the screen. Select Library and locate the Mobile documents folder. Drag this folder into the Time Machine Options screen as if to exclude it from the backup. Now try backing up. Apple have explained to me that the contents of this folder has something to do with iCloud documents. Still not sure why they won't backup though. Hope this helps someone.🙂

Steve

Quick Update - hopefully this may be of use to someone - I freed up some space on one of my hard drives as there was 6GB available (suggested by another user earlier in this thread) and then I de-selected some of the larger folders (>100GB) from the back up. I first backed up 150GB successfully and since then have started to add back the big folders one at a time. In total I have over ITB to back up and so far I have successfully backed up about 500GB and I keep adding another folder to each back up ... so far so good. So in summary - it could have been that there wasn't enough space on my start up SSD and / or the back up was just too big at >1TB. Hope this helps.

Hi,

I've been having a similar issue with a backup getting stuck at 22gb and after so many attempted fixes following google without success. I had been using Kaspersky anti virus software and decided to completely uninstall it. Remarkably, the Time Machine backup is unleashed and running at a backup rate of approximately 3GB/minute. I'm so pleased with the result. I am backing up to a USB disk rather than wifi. I do have a wifi 'my cloud' drive too that was my preferred Time Machine backup drive but as it kept failing I assumed the issue was the wifi. Now that I have tested and fixed the issue with a USB drive I expect the original wifi based drive should also work. Anyhow if you have any antivirus software installed you may want to try uninstalling and see if that helps with fixing any Time Machine backup issues.

Ok, this solved my problem: the hard-drive was getting quite full, I had about 20 GB free disc space left. After cleaning up a bit and making some room the backups started working agains as usual. Might just have been a coincidence with the OS update, or maybe High Sierra needs more free disc space to complete backups - in any case, would have been nice if the OS simply told me the problem instead of leaving me wondering and tinkering for a couple of days.

Thanks jetsteam!

I'm using Kaspersky as well: I turned Wi-Fi off (to be safe), and then in Kaspersky "Turn Protection Off". I did not uninstall, yet this worked for me (System folder excluded; I'll try later with a full backup).

So, I'm happy for now, and keeping my fingers crossed.

p.s. I'm quite upset about Apple support: they implied it was the external drive at fault (which they "can't help with"), and then outlined an intimidating number of time-consuming iterations before they'd actually pass the information on to a developer! Very disappointing indeed!

Update: tried with a full backup (System folder included). Checked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off", unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible", in Kaspersky "Turn Protection Off".

Full backup proceeded swiftly and without a hitch. So, seemingly things are ok now. (will try with just turning protection off if I get motivated)...

High Sierra also brought me Time Machine problems that required that I reformat the TM disk, note this is an internal TM disk, not USB. Still had problems with the initial backup never completing and the disk space used exceeding 2X the size of the disk being backed up.

I don't recall where I found the solution (Google), but I had to change my TM preferences under options to exclude the following folders:

~/Library/Mobile Documents

/Users/Shared/adi

I know I added the first one, but my current TM Options shows the second as well. Maybe I added it too.

After making these settings, I once again formatted the TM disk and started yet another initial backup. This time after much ado and way too much time, it completed and has been running well enough that I haven't trashed the thing.

And yes, some of the TM status reports in the menu bar made no sense at all, numbers mixing up MB and GB. It was crazy stupid.

I lost backups for two other Macs in the process and now have them backing up to a local SDHC card.

High Sierra has been a C*F* of problems.

Remember when Apple meant it just works?

My Time Machine backs up to 2 drives, one attached to the computer and one a NAS drive in a different location. They both had the same problem where neither would complete a backup and they both just hung after getting about a quarter of the way through. I tried everything suggested on this thread but none of it worked. In the end I took a snapshot of my Backup on the NAS (and created a bootable backup in Chronosync), switched off one drive so Time Machine was only backing up to one, deleted existing backups on that one and started from scratch. Once that worked I repeated the process with the second drive. Both now backing up perfectly. I'm not sure but I think it might have been something to do with not enough space available on the drives. They were both fairly full and at the stage of deleting old backups to make space for new ones. Backing up a new OS means pretty much everything is going to be changed anyway so as long as you have the snapshot to preserve your data I felt safe deleting the old Time Machine backups. Apologies for the non-technical description!

You can add me to the list of Time Machine failures. Like everyone else, it just stops after a very small amount backed up and it never resumes no matter how long I wait. I'm not running any anti-virus so that is not an issue. Turned off Wi-Fi and that didn't help. The System Preference idea was tried and that didn't help either. A few of you said You can add me to the list of Time Machine failures. Like everyone else, it just stops after a very small amount backed up and it never resumes no matter how long I wait. I'm not running any anti-virus so that is not an issue. Turned off Wi-Fi and that didn't help. A few of you said "This solved my problem!!! I've marked this as helpful." but there's no way I can determine exactly what helped since there are numerous posts with multiple "Helped" marked.

There IS one thing I tried that DID work, and that was to go into Safe Mode and do a Time Machine backup. For those still having a problem, try that, at least till Apple provides us with a patch.

hey I had the same issue with macbook air mid 2012 and external WD storage

I also tried to get back from zero and start a fresh new time machine disk but the issue is still the same.

anyway I finally succeeded backing up by checking "automatic backup" (before I was in manual way which seems to be the problem to me with high sierra 10.13.1

You shouldn't be using the hard drive for backups. Maybe use a SDHC card. Check your TM Preferences.

Read back to my February 6 response.

Basically what worked for me (copied from it) was changing my TM preferences under options to exclude the following folders:

~/Library/Mobile Documents

/Users/Shared/adi

That solved my TM backup failures. If you read through the thread, others have found different solutions. Your mileage may vary and a trip to the "Genius Bar" may help. Apple has really messed up TM with High Sierra.

Yesterday I just gave up and downloaded a 30 day trial of Carbon Copy Cloner. So far, it is fabulous and it works. You can schedule backups the time and frequency you want. If you need to find a backed up file, you go to your backup disk and there it is, drag and drop. No more needing to go through that weird space/time thing that time machine offers to sort through your files. Carbon Copy Cloner will make a bootable drive should you have a catastrophic event.

I've been using Apple products since the late 1980s and I'm having more issues the last year or two with minor things that don't work as well as they should that end up taking too long to troubleshoot. I just upgraded to High Sierra in December. I always wait out system upgrades so at least if I have problems, I'm not the first to find out!

Are you leaving the computer long enough for it to go to sleep? If so, turning that off worked for me (see above).

I had the same problem: I tried several times, and the backup kept getting stuck around 20gB. What seems to have solved it for me is preventing the computer from sleeping:

System Preferences -> Energy Saver

check "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off"