Mojave time machine back up failing

I thought all was well with my Case Sensitive drive. Completed multiple Time Machine backups up till today. Now it's locking up again when Time Machine attempts a back up.

I turned off Time Machine. I have at least one good TM backup, so I'll rely on my documents backing up to iCloud (not sure how much I should trust any of it right now).

As we enter 2019, it is amazing how Apple has become the case study of a "company in trouble" (plummeting stock, questionable product strategy, struggling sales, buggy software). Some of it is because Apple is an easy target, but this experience has made me question my confidence in the company as well.

What makes me feel worse about this is that my support case with Apple was dismissed as being Western Digital's problem. I think their view of these threads is that its a place for whiners to hang out and complain about their self-inflicted problems -- which may be a little true :) -- but they refuse to acknowledge that if there are multiple people reporting similar issues, maybe, just maybe, it's actually something that requires Apple to look into.

Like so many people, I am having Time Machine trouble. I am afraid a great deal of this thread is beyond my technical knowledge, but I am concerned (as I have already said in earlier posts in this thread) about the formatting of the drive (strictly, the partition of the drive) I am trying to back up to. At the moment It is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but I have seen suggestions that it should be APFS. The document reached by the link below seems to suggest HFS+.

I have found this statement: 'Important: You can back up from an HFS+ or APFS-formatted disk to an HFS+ disk; however, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS-formatted disk. If you select a back up disk formatted as APFS, Time Machine offers to reformat it as HFS+.' (my italics). It comes from https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac. I should welcome comments, including any about case-sensitive formatting.

To show willing, I posted a simple description of the TM problem in the Bug Reporter, https://idmsa.apple.com/IDMSWebAuth/login.html?appIdKey=77e2a60d4bdfa6b7311c854a56505800be3c24e3a27a670098ff61b69fc5214b&sslEnabled=true&rv=3a, a couple of weeks ago and updated it just now, adding a sysdiagnose file as requested by the Apple engineers (this facility being the especial advantage of the Bug Reporter). Earlier today I also posted a description in https://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html. Please, everyone affected by the TM difficulties, post in both these places and thus apply a little pressure on the Apple engineers. Strength in numbers!

Had this problem and was out of town, away from my Time Capsule last week. When I came back over the weekend, the backup proceeded and while it took awhile, backing up seems to have worked overnight Saturday night. Yesterday and last night it got stuck verifying but as of this morning, it believes it is backed up and has continued to do the interim hourly backups today pretty consistently. All of this started when I upgraded to Mojave in early December and immediately was unable to use TM on my TC. Happy to see that the bug is fixed but I don't know how, when, or what changed.

Anyone else have the same experience?

As I said in my last post on this subject, I do not think ordinary users of Mac computers (even experienced ones who are not in principle against some technicalities) should have to follow paths like fopsy describes, or perform elaborate procedures described by others in this string, in order to do routine backups. Computer users should be encouraged to do regular backups as routine security procedures, not discouraged by the need for extensive and technically complex procedures.

Today I installed the Supplemental Update to MacOS 10.14.3 and tried doing a Time Machine backup after turning my other backup software off in accordance with Bug Reporter advice. After c. 90 minutes, TM began backing up. After c. 3 hours it stopped backing up. The backup was once again incomplete.

I have again reported this to Bug Reporter, attaching a sysdiagnose file.

I also did a Carbon Copy Cloner backup. It took a little over an hour and is, to the best of my knowledge, complete. What is more, the resulting drive constitutes a bootable startup drive.

I

Frequently we have seen that TM doesn't interface well with other programs. Perhaps you have found a reason why. My Mac air is updated to Mohave and TM works perfectly. But, its a plain vanilla machine with no extra software and the external hard drive used exclusively for backups is still Journaled HFS+.

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 just performed an entire reinstall of macOS Mojave and the backup still failed.

Apple needs to address this.

Do you have backups - older ones - from TimeMachine?

Which machine you have?

Using Vallum Firewall which is outgoing. Assume that others (Little Snitch, Hand Off, etc) would behave the same, but might not. Just assuming, haven't tested.

Would you please look at this screenshot and tell me if mine is like yours.

Add the folder to Time Machine exclude list.

There is the guide

https://nektony.com/mac-app-cleaner/troubleshooting

If you do not have App Cleaner your issue is caused by another reason.

Thanks to everyone that shared info about the App Cleaner problem. It fixed the problem and I am able to do my Time Machine backups once again.

this solved it for me https://nektony.com/mac-app-cleaner/troubleshooting

Might be worth posting in the Apple Bug Reporter, too. They don't reply there, either, but they do read posts.