Mojave time machine back up failing

I have this problem too and have read various "solutions" - involving deleting files from the library and excluding items from backups, all of which I've tried and none of which have worked. I STILL cannot back up to time machine with Mojave. It looks like Apple have addressed this problem in recent weeks or am I wrong? If anyone can suggest a definitive solution to this problem I'd appreciate it.

Not fixed yet. In fact, while I was typing this reply, my system completely froze and I was forced to do a hard reboot. I forgot that I had turned Time Machine back on to test something and didn't turn it off. I was able to complete a manual backup, but automatic backups are still causing random freezes for me.

Maybe the Time Machine developers were all repurposed to work on Apple's autonomous driving efforts...

Updated yesterday to 10.14.2 without beeing able to backup via TM, always excluded the sharded folder, added appcleaner exclusion, still doesnt backup, will stop after a few gigs.

And btw - Apple Support removed my earlier post because i was criticizing Apple´s quality change over the last 21 years.

Deinstalled App Cleaner manually from Applications and Library containers, restarted and after backing up 6 mb from 250 gb it stopped working with the well known error log. Will Apple pay me for using my precious time trying to fix their problem? ;)

No! I updated to 10.14.3, erased the external 1TB USB3 disc and started a (first) backup (130 GB to backup).

It took the whole night and in the morning the backup finished, but the backup disc was full !!!

Only 4.81 MB !! available!

No more (incremental) backups possible!

The TM **** still doesn't work!!!

Unbelievable!

Updating to 10.14.3 did not help me. The backup job starts, thinks for a long time, actually writes for about 20 MB, then stops. The error message says that it could not backup to the backup drive, which is the TM.

Hello mensadoc,

Why do you use Norton or any other security software? Many writers have said that security software causes problems. I ask only because I really want to understand and you seem knowledgeable. Thank you.

Thanks, but not all of us are computer nerds who are capable of understanding your ingenious

procedure. It is supposed to work without all this "techno-fiddling" work around -- says

this 83-year-old !! SUPER DUPER does, so I'm going to stick with that! At least until TM works like it should.

Greetings to Michael Graubart! Today, I turned 83, and I agree with what you write completely. I started with a Commodore 64 back in 1984, I think it was. I spent liters of midnight oil studying Basic and even a bit of Machine Language, but progress has now outstripped my "learning curve". Nowadays, I simply want a computer to work for me, not the other way round. I keep saying that we are not yet in the computer age, yet — not when WE have to do all the hard thinking. Let's hope that Apple not only reads what we write here, but acts on it. "Computer, heal thyself!"

You said: "The files that caused the inability to backup via Time Machine was due

to another vendor's (Waldorf Largo and PPG Wave 3) software that I had

not updated recently. "

It would be very interesting to see, as an example, which files (paths) exactly have been responsible for your problem.

I have had a disturbing thought. Could it be that all this stuff about Time Machine not making complete backups is a red herring? I am now puzzled and confused. According to the toolbar Time Machine icon after attempting yesterday's backup (see my post two posts back from this one), my last successful backup was made on 12 January, 2019. But today I started examining what actual files, etc., were backed up yesterday (8 February), and everything I looked for that had been modified or newly created since 12 January was correctly present in yesterday's backup.

This is obviously very far from a complete inventory of what was or was not backed up. But could it be that TM is, after all, backing everything up correctly, but showing misleading information in the toolbar icon? Have any of the more technicallly-adept posters in this string any actual evidence that material has not been backed up in the recent trials with TM in Mojave?

My latest test was with a long exclusion list (see attached).

Again I erased the external 1TB disc and TM started a fresh initial backup.

But despite all that exclusions there was again TM creating way too much of backup data:

I expected about 100GB to be backed up, but TM only ended after around 800GB.

Result: I still didn't find a directory beeing responsible for this behaviour.

I agree. The whole purpose of Time Machine is to be as transparent and effortless as possible. It's not the be-all, end-all for backups. It's part of a comprehensive set of tools and practices to minimize the possibility of data loss.

I've resorted to leaving automatic backups off and gingerly hitting "back up now" after I've saved and closed everything (in case I have to reboot). I do it only when I remember and only when I have time, which defeats the purpose of Time Machine's reason for existing.

Hopefully Apple has some spare cycles to fix this, now that they've fixed the FaceTime bug.

I called it more-or-less that and Apple deleted my comment. So, I agree -- it is crap! The end-user is not supposed to be the quality-control guy. That sort of thing is supposed to be done in the factory.

The most ridiculous thing after I opened my ticket, is that they told me it's normal that TM target size grows as we backup since new data is coming in.

This is totally wrong as TM is using a mechanism called Snapshot. Guess what? Snapshot... what does that mean? it means that TM makes a picture of the disk state, and backs up this content. Why does it do a Snapshot? Because, and that's its only purpose, it avoids endless loop of backing up changing/growing data.

Since I told them it's a snapshot and the explanation is bull, I don't have any followup anymore.

Instead, they should admit there is a problem, and fix it.

Everybody can make mistakes and write buggy processes, especially on complex ones like TM. Every user is ready to behave and be nice to Apple if bugs are admitted and treated.

What is not working here, besides TM, is that stubborn attitude pretending the problem is on dumb users side not knowing how to use the software, or having screwed their systems by their sole responsibility.

The problem is on TM, not on the users.