Beware Monterey Time machine problems

jks


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I have downloaded the last version of Monterey and it has backup problems.
I have been running beta for a few months and no problem. If you backup then your backup cannot be seen on the backup disk and you cannot use it to restore although disk utility shows there is something on the disk. I have been in touch with Apple and they agree that this may be a sofware issue and are looking at it.
 
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Monterey 12.01 here and Time Machine seems ok to me.

My back up disk is formatted APFS and the back ups show fine in Finder and also if I 'Enter' Time Machine.
 
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I don't seem to have this problem but all the more reason to have a second backup scheme available. I use Carbon Copy Cloner in addition to Time Machine.
 
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Are you still running the beta version of Monterey?
 

IWT


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@jks

FWIW, here's my pennyworth.

Firstly, I assume you formatted the Time Machine External Hard Drive (EHD) APFS? That must be pretty certain as it's not supposed to work with anything else.

My second thought was that the TM backup was presumably used for macOS 11 Big Sur (BS) or whatever you had before Monterey beta, then continued to be used with Monterey beta and now Monterey proper - and if that is so and if you did not reformat between each upgrade, then it doesn't surprise me that the BU failed.

My advice is to wipe the TM BU and reformat it APFS and start a new backup.

Ian
 
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jks


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@jks

FWIW, here's my pennyworth.

Firstly, I assume you formatted the Time Machine External Hard Drive (EHD) APFS? That must be pretty certain as it's not supposed to work with anything else.

My second thought was that the TM backup was presumably used for macOS 11 Big Sur (BS) or whatever you had before Monterey beta, then continued to be used with Monterey beta and now Monterey proper - and if that is so and if you did not reformat between each upgrade, then it doesn't surprise me that the BU failed.

My advice is to wipe the TM BU and reformat it APFS and start a new backup.

Ian
Done all that. Still doesn’t work.
 
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Just curious, do you have an external monitor attached? I found with Big Sur and now Monterey that if I have my external Thunderbolt Display connected and enter TM the screen on the MBP goes black, but no TM appears. I think it's there, I just cannot see it. If I disconnect the TB Display, then enter TM, it all works just fine. I was sorta hoping Apple knew about it and was going to fix it in Monterey, but it's still there.

So, do you have an external monitor? Have you tried entering TM with that monitor disconnected?
 
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Ah, well, worth a try.
 
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jks


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I don't seem to have this problem but all the more reason to have a second backup scheme available. I use Carbon Copy Cloner in addition to Time Machine.
I have tried that and am going to go for it.
 
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Hey, there is something up with Time Machine on Monterey here also. So what I use is Apple's Time Capsule and I have an app called TimeMachineEditor to force backups to be done only once daily.

My 2019 iMac, which runs 24/7, showed the last backup was yesterday at 4 in the morning when that should have been this morning. Most likely culprit is incompatibility with TME, so ok, no problem. I ran a manual backup and despite it seemingly finish up just fine, once said and done, it still claimed my last backup was yesterday at 4a. So a short while later, I ran a manual backup again, and it now shows my last backup was that second backup. If I go into the Time Machine UI to browse my backups, BOTH of the manual backups I did are in fact there. The menubar Time Machine item for whatever reason failed to show that the earlier manual backup was successful.

This is even more pronounced on my 2020 M1 MacBook Air. It shows the last backup was done 2 days ago. I've run the backup manually a few times now, and even though it told me the backups were successful; even though I can SEE those backups in the Time Capsule; and furthermore I can see I actually HAVE backups in between my manual ones and the "last" reported backup; the Time Machine UI still claims my last backup was 2 days ago. Now, TME may need an update to so the backups get done on my schedule once again, but there's no good reason to believe it's impacting the reported date of the last backup, manually or otherwise.

EDIT: I went ahead and uninstalled TME on my MBA; rebooted; and initiated a manual backup. Despite that manual backup very much existing on the Time Capsule, the app stil insists my last one was 2 days ago. So TME very much was not the culprit.
 
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Hey, there is something up with Time Machine on Monterey here also. So what I use is Apple's Time Capsule and I have an app called TimeMachineEditor to force backups to be done only once daily.

My 2019 iMac, which runs 24/7, showed the last backup was yesterday at 4 in the morning when that should have been this morning. Most likely culprit is incompatibility with TME, so ok, no problem.
LIAB, I use TME to run TM twice a day and it's working fine on Monterey for me. My backups are all there, just as I expected. I can see the times in Finder and when I open TM, all of them are there as well. So there is no systemic incompatibility with Monterey, TM and Monterey. Must be something in your setup. I'm backing up to an SSD formatted APFS.
 

chscag

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Time Machine running normally here also and I'm on Monterey. I just checked my backups and they appear to be okay.
 
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LIAB, I use TME to run TM twice a day and it's working fine on Monterey for me. My backups are all there, just as I expected. I can see the times in Finder and when I open TM, all of them are there as well. So there is no systemic incompatibility with Monterey, TM and Monterey. Must be something in your setup. I'm backing up to an SSD formatted APFS.

Yes, it may be specific to the Time Capsule. For the uninitiated, that's the Apple router with a hard drive built-in. Still, it's a problem with Monterey since this wasn't a problem with Big Sur and prior. How can the Time Machine software do a backup, then fail to make a note that it did do the backup? It's a bug, and not from 3rd party software. But you are missing the point. The OP is having a problem. I'm having a different but related problem. The common denominator? Monterey.
 
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Nope, I got that, LIAB. I don't have a solution for the OP. But I responded to your comment about TME not being compatible with Monterey. You said, "Most likely culprit is incompatibility with TME, so ok, no problem." That was what I responded to. Sorry you missed that.
 

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