Time machine backup not working in macOS high sierra

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.

my airport TC started acting flacky so i replaced with the synology 2600 ac very very easy setup

i was planning on hooking up a 4tb hdd to the usb 3 port and run time machine

but how to format the hdd? i have 2 mbp 16 running high sierra and 2 older early 2008 iMacs 20 inch running 10.9.5 they use two different file systems don't they??

so can i use time machine for backup for all 4?

if so share some links on how to do this

right now i'm backing up with dedicated super duper clones on 2 separate hdd

insight? direction ???

thanks

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.

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)...

Very welcome dhc1009 and glad it's worked for you too. It's a slow and painful process of elimination. Anti virus software is often the culprit when unusual things happen but in this case it doesn't make sense. I may reinstall Kaspersky and switch it on now that I have an initial backup. Perhaps the smaller incremental updates will work fine?!

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!

This solved my problem!!! I've marked this as helpful.

My backups stopped last week and I couldn't see any reason for it. Tried restarts, etc.

I assumed the TC had died.

So I erased my TC and the initial backup was still going after backing up 1.34 TB for 800 GB of disk. It was nuts.

Erased again and started with this setting and it completed overnight without taking any more space than expected.

Thanks!

Time Machine has become unstable for me ever since upgrading to High Sierra. First, some of the backups were failing, giving me the error that the external disk was bad. I erased and reformatted the disk. Then it was fine for a week or two, then the disk was bad. I erased and reformatted the disk again. It was fine until 10.13.3, and then my entire system started hanging every time it was backing up. I had to force quit apps, and do a hard restart constantly. Finally, I turned off Time Machine and all apps are fine, no rebooting, no hanging. I also tried turning off sleep mode, and I don't have any antivirus software running. I'm tired of messing with this and feeling like even if I get a backup, it is likely unstable and who knows if I'll be able to retrieve any of the files anyway. Is Carbon Copy Cloner the best alternative that others are using?

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?

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.

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!

Having same issue. Have not been able to back up to TM for 23 days now. Not running virus scanning software. It seems that TM is making copies on my MBA hard drive, and that is also chewing up a lot of system resources. Essentially, the TM utility states that it is preparing to back up, but just hangs on this operation. Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem would be appreciated.

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.

Indeed....It seems a thing of the past with the free of charge OS. Apple is losing it and I'm slowly losing my sympathy for Apple. Also dealing with TM issues after "upgrading" to High Sierra. TM stuck in prep backup mode.

What really really annoys me is that Apple seem increasingly deaf to increasing bugreports...Come Apple, get your show on the road again. Don't make Steve turn in his grave!!