Mojave time machine back up failing

Hey Apple guys,

do you really care of your customers?

I have no Time Machine backup since November, and none of all these answers did solve the problem.

Do you really want me to switch to microsoft and android? I am almost ready. Really fed up against Mac and all these problems...

Say you want a version of a document as it was on Feb 15th 2016. How do you do that with Superduper or CCC? They have a use for total recovery but cannot do what TM can. TM is brilliant and never let me down in 7 years.

I was about to start changing my HD to an SSD and use TM to do it, however when I looked into the TM it showed I only had 62gb left and this is a 2TB TM. Im thinking about clearing everything out of it and starting over, a fresh OS and Mojive updated version and I hope to do this from the CLOUD or should I put the OS on an external SSD to install ? Plz tell me your thoughts! MY Email is jlett87@aol.com not what’s above.

True, but in my case, ALL important "stuff" is already backed up 2x on separate hard drives. I use Super Duper to back up my OS X system. They simply don't make a hard drive big enough to back up everything I have, in particular photos .... not yet.

Not quite sure what you mean, I have 1TB hard drive and a 2TB time machine is plenty. How big is your main drive? Or are you trying to backup the main drive and all attached and networked drives on one TM schedule?

I also have a 1TB main hard drive (iMac 27"), but I now only have 70 Gb "free" and THAT is with almost no photos on it (and 70 Gb is about what is necessary for it to run halfway decent). I do not even use the Photos App, because it eats storage! I do not even have any heavy games! Nor do I store music files on my main hard drive. But I do have "heavy" apps such as photoshopping, music editing, and genealogy. I don't bother to back up any minor apps that I can easily download again... just the ones that can't be replaced. Thus, my SUPER DUPER backup hard drive is also 1TB. All valuable stuff (photos, music, genealogy records, etc.) is continually put on separate drives TWICE, some even THRICE. [I've learned from two computer crashes!] So, for me Time Machine isn't even necessary, even if it did work. It would be "convenient" if Time Machine could backup all this "stuff" onto a separate hard drive, but it can't and it won't. Anyway, I would need at least a very fast 6TB drive to do it. And there ain't no such thing -- at least not that I can afford.

Not easy to tell which of my replies you are commenting on (Yes and I don't know how to do those clever quote boxes either)

Anyhoo,

I don't know what the official guide is but a TM of twice the volume of what is being backed up should allow for the full drive plus a heck of a lot of incrementals. Once TM is full it will drop the oldest incrementals off the end of the stack and keep going.

It is why my 1TB drive with 600GB used and a 2TB Time Machine drive has been backing up for about three years and not quite full yet.

If your Mac is very full, and not even any Photos, you need to check just what is being saved in the main drive.

From the Apple icon top left hit About This Mac

Storage

Then Manage

Then look at the files in each category in the side panel, and sorting the list by size by tapping (twice?) on the size column header.

Go for the biggest!

Apropos "storage / manage" -- Thanks for the tip. I never even noticed those small words up at the top. Very interesting. I shall see what I can chop.....(It's tough keeping up with all these innovations when you are 83. I guess I'll have to find "MOJAVE FOR DUMMIES"... LOL)

peter_watt

Thanks again for pointing out the "Storage/Manage" function that I was totally obvious to. I found and deleted over 95 Gbs. A "newest" screen dump program was saving everything in a "for me secret folder". Like I said, it's tough to keep up with progress when you are 83+. LOL

I tried everything from the post but I can't get it fixed. My TM Backup stops at around 25% for one hour and then continues the backup. It always stops at the same file. Is there any terminal command / application which shows which file causes the problem?

Obviously, the Mojave OSX has a bad bug problem with its TIM, which has been known and reported for many months.

Well known problem:

Can be seen in the Console (with user administrator): search "backupd"

"erreur 09:43:53.790576 +0100 backupd Copy stage failed with error:11"

the file that cant be copied is shown. Generally it is a file from a "not apple application"

Solutions:

- Unistall the application and ALL its files

OR

- exclude from TmeMachine the directories which contain the files

Somebody said that the problem dissapeared some time later but I am not sure

Do a cold boot on Mac, holding the Command+R keys down. Once you get to the main screen that comes up, go to Disk Utility>Macintosh HD, then Repair. Let it run and see if any of your snapshots are corrupt. Time Machine won't back up with a corrupt snapshot.

I found a very simple solution, after a couple of weeks struggling with this issue: free as much space as possible on the source disk, as under Mojave the snapshots seem to be much bigger than with previous versions.

After performing all possible repairs and resets, I reviewed the console with "backupd" as suggested above, and found this:

System Policy: deny(1) file-read-data /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb (etc.)

The (other) culprit is my habit of never emptying the trash until I am required to do so.

Had 11 Gb available, 62 Gb in the trash. Backup size was an estimated 77 Gb in TM prefs.

Emptied the trash, now got 73 Gb available, backup went like a charm.

Maybe an explanation would be that the snapshot on the source disk requires (almost) as much space as the backup estimated size.

Hope this helps.

higherterrain wrote:

Time Machine won't back up with a corrupt snapshot.

It's under your user, not at the top of the MacintoshHD.

Users/[your name]/Library/Containers

The Library is hidden by default.

To show it, open a desktop window and either:

1- Select the GO menu and press the alt/option key. Library will appear

or

2- Click on your name (your environment) on the left side and press Shift-Cmd-. (period) This will show hidden files and folder.

You should be able to see Library and then Containers.

Don't forget to press Shift-Cmd-. again to hide back those essential folders, to make sure not to move or delete them by mistake.

Hello, I use a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch,Early 2015), doing double backups on two Maxtor external drives at regular(ish) intervals with Time Machine.

I had the same problem after updating to Mojave about 10 days ago. Now, having just further updated the system to Mojave 10.14.4, I tried backing up again, but again the backup got stuck and would not complete.

In the meantime I remembered having problems with excessively slow backups some years ago, and getting around that by temporarily (just for the time of the backup) disabling my security software (in my case Sophos version 2.1.0). Eventually the matter got fixed and I did not need to do that anymore. However, in this case I thought I'd try the same strategy again: perhaps, as before, there was some incompatibility between the update and the security software, so temporarily disabling the latter may allow me to do a complete backup. Well it seemed to work!

I've just completed my first post-Mojave backup on one of my two usual drives. It took a bit over one hour (not surprising as it was a big, ‘system update’ backup), but it progressed steadily and finished in the normal manner without getting stuck. Apple and / or Sophos (and other security software brands?) perhaps need to be aware of this in order to fix the matter. In the meantime I hope this tip may be of use to someone.

BTW I do not think temporarily disabling the security software puts one at risk, provided nothing 'risky' is being done during the security suspension spell. If anyone knows differently, I'd be interested to know.

Regards, Bea