Mojave time machine back up failing

Same issue here too. It says it fails all day long every time. But I can clearly restore files by going into time machine. So it's backing up something, but gets this fail state.

I deleted all .plist files from preference, formatted the drive. Bought new drives, same error. Wish I hadn't bought new drives, because it seems nothing is wrong with them. It's a software issue.

I ended up registering my copy of SuperDuper today, so that I could do incremental backups as well. Works great. Beforehand, I tried one more TM backup with all USB hardware disconnected except the keyboard and external drive, but that didn't work either, so I've moved on. As mentioned in another thread, I'm really liking everything else about Mojave, so TM bugs certainly aren't a deal breaker for me. I even hooked up my old iPod 5G Video, and Mojave iTunes found it and updated it just fine. I also backup my iPhone 6 via iTunes Wi-Fi, and it also works fine. With previous MacOS's, iTunes Wi-Fi would drop out occasionally, and not see the iPhone until I'd reset everything. It seems more stable to me now.

It looks as if those who are affected by the loss of TM will have to wait for version 10.14.1 for a fix. In my ten years of using a Mac, any bugs had to wait for a newer version to be corrected with the exception of gross security lapses such as the root password fiasco.

For better or worse I decided to use Google Drive a while ago as another backup medium for my photos, music and document folders. Part of the choice was simply because I use an Android phone and also use a Chromebook. I am not planning on leaving Apple but prefer the Chromebook for many portable uses and it syncs well with the Chrome browser on my two Macs.

Nothing beats Time Machine for easy and up until now, reliable backups. I hope the fix is sooner than later.

namuang26, as an added bonus, my external drive is now a bootable disk after running the initial full backup with SuperDuper. Tried it yesterday, and it worked perfectly. This is a really nice option in case an issue arrises with the main internal boot drive. Thus, TM's failure turned into a positive solution for me – one that I may not have tried otherwise. Even if a TM fix is coming, I won't be going back.

After "upgrade" to Mojave, Time Machine backups always fail. I have tried three different external USB hard drives, all freshly formatted with MacOS Extended (Journaled) file system. They were all different Seagate models. Multiple tries on each drive. Time Machine fails every time. Runs for a while then you get the notice "Backup Failed, Time Machine couldn't back up to <disk name>". Click on Details and it says "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “<disk name>”, An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.". This is clearly a bug in Mojave.

There are many bugs we can live with but this one is critical as it involves potential data loss, if we can't back up using Time Machine. Apple needs to fix this immediately! IMO Time Machine is one of the major benefits of using a Mac rather than Linux. Now they've broken it. Inexcusable that Mojave made it out the door without discovering this bug in testing. Also inexcusable that Apple is saying nothing about this, not even acknowledging it, in this their own forum.

Just got off the phone with Apple support. The Engineers had no real input other than telling me to remove certain Applications that I have installed like Transmission and HyperDock. They also suggested downloaded Malwarebytes and running a scan.

Essentially nothing. Was hoping for acknowledgement of the issue and being told that it would be addressed in a future update.

I encourage all with this issue to contact Apple support and get them really investigating this and not just writing it off to 3rd party programs.

I am extremely disappointed.

I have used SuperDuper for many years and find it to be unmatched at cloning. It is an indispensable part of my backup strategy. I also use TM with a time capsule for automatic wireless backups but SD is my "go to" utility when disaster strikes. I will not be upgrading to Mojave until this issue is addressed however since backup is one of Apple's core philosophies and I find it irritating that there is a disabling bug in TM accompanying a major OS release. A lot of time can be wasted fiddling with a malfunctioning backup app before you realize it's a bug in one of Apple's core technologies. BTW - TM cannot be running at the same time as SD or there will be a copying error so turn off TM when cloning with SD

I forwarded this thread to the technician I was speaking to. I asked him to take a look and also to forward it to the relevant people so this can actually get looked at so it can move on from just being an echo chamber of people with a real issue that Apple has yet to address.

No answer from Apple? Not serious.

When using this command

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 48h | grep Error

I had this report:

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283406+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeFSEventStoreUUID' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283528+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeLastFSEventID' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283593+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283619+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.PreviousSnapshotVolumeUUID' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283671+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.PreviousSnapshotVolumeName' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283705+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.VolumeBytesUsed' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283807+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.VolumeIsCaseSensitive' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283884+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.fstypename' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.283973+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to remove attribute 'com.apple.backupd.VolumeIsEncrypted' from 'file:///', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:46:18.501466+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to write unlock record UUIDs as extended attribute for disk '/', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2018-10-03 11:48:18.331864+0200 0xfe6a Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Error: (-48) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/iMac USER USER/2018-10-03-114618/Macintosh HD/Users/USERUSER/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library Application Support/App Cleaner & Uninstaller to /Volumes/LaCie Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac USER USER/2018-10-03-114618.inProgress/ABEC65F5-5398-48E4-B61A-DD494DC92AB7/Macintos h HD/Users/USERUSER/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Appli cation Support

2018-10-03 11:48:18.331882+0200 0xfe6a Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Stopping backup.

2018-10-03 11:48:18.331920+0200 0xfe6a Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/iMac USER USER/2018-10-03-114618/Macintosh HD/Users/USERUSER/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Appli cation Support/App Cleaner & Uninstaller/auth.cer to /Volumes/LaCie Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac USER USER/2018-10-03-114618.inProgress/ABEC65F5-5398-48E4-B61A-DD494DC92AB7/Macintos h HD/Users/USERUSER/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Appli cation Support

2018-10-03 11:48:18.411354+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Copy stage failed with error:11

2018-10-03 11:48:19.602984+0200 0xfd34 Error 0x0 810 0 backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Backup failed with error 11: 11

An idea? A link with App Cleaner & Uninstaller?

iMac late 2012 - 3,4 GHz Intel Core i7

After upgrade to Mojave I had to delete the Time Machine backup and start all over. Since I also use Superduper it was safe to make this move. After formatting the drive the Time Machine backup works fine however the time sequence is odd. Sometimes it runs a 3 backups in a row with a few minutes in between. Then pause for 2 hours and suddenly again 2 or 3 backups in a row. Not even the TimeMachineEditor app have any effect on the backup times. So something must be wrong or Apple has changed the sequence.

Positive thing is that going into TimeMachine and recreate a file goes much faster then in Sierra.

Same problem here, consistent failure at about the 90% point in the backup process ... but I have something to try.

After Mojave upgrade I could not get Time Machine backups to work with external USB3 and Thunderbolt connected drives on my Late 2012 iMac 27 with 3TB Fusion (automatically formatted by Mojave upgrade to APFS). I did all the usual things like trying other drives, reformatting, running First Aid drive diagnostics, etc. Then I tried backing up to my Time Capsule and it worked. But this wasn't a solution for me because my Time Capsule is needed for other Macs. Then I tried reformatting my Thunderbolt connected HDD as Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case Sensitive) and it worked! When I started digging I learned that the Time Capsule hard disk is formatted as case sensitive out of the box. This doesn't explain why it works, but at least it is a common characteristic between the two drives that do work with Time Machine and none of my other external drives, none of which are formatted with case sensitivity. Of course I passed this along to the senior advisor I'm working with who is still analyzing the data dump I sent him. Give the Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case Sensitive) format a try if you have an external disk drive that you can reformat without losing any data or previous backups.

I was able to reproduce this issue several times with apple cares, senior techs. they took a snapshot of the failure and have sent it to the engineers. I think they now have everything they need to fix this bug. it took me several hours of being persistent, but it worked out in the end. Hopefully they apply a patch soon with this info.