Beware Monterey Time machine problems

[Rod]

Is it just me or are a lot of the problems users are currently experiencing with Monterey almost exclusively on M1 Macs?
The users who have upgraded to Monterey on their old Intel Macs, with the exception of a few devices where the T2 security chip caused issues, seem to have made the transition smoothly and are suffering no problems, like myself.

When users report that Apple Engineers are working on these issues I assume they are hardware issues at least in part. As a prospective buyer of a new M1 Mac soon it concerns me that the architecture may be flawed in some way. It seems odd in that the SoC does not seem to work as well with the macOS designed for it as much earlier devices such as my early 2015 MBP.

For all intents and purposes my old MBP seems to run better on Monterey than BS and (so far) has none of the problems users of M1's are experiencing.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Is it just me or are a lot of the problems users are currently experiencing with Monterey almost exclusively on M1 Macs?
The users who have upgraded to Monterey on their old Intel Macs, with the exception of a few devices where the T2 security chip caused issues, seem to have made the transition smoothly and are suffering no problems, like myself.

When users report that Apple Engineers are working on these issues I assume they are hardware issues at least in part. As a prospective buyer of a new M1 Mac soon it concerns me that the architecture may be flawed in some way. It seems odd in that the SoC does not seem to work as well with the macOS designed for it as much earlier devices such as my early 2015 MBP.

For all intents and purposes my old MBP seems to run better on Monterey than BS and (so far) has none of the problems users of M1's are experiencing.

It's just sloppiness if you ask me. In my case, Time Machine will do the backups when in Safe Mode, so it's not hardware. There's just no good reason for it to not be working in the regular mode. I don't even know how this COULD be hardware-related. If there was some inherent flaw in the M1 platform, then why wouldn't it have happened with Big Sur also?

 

[MacInWin]

I have an M1 MBP/Monterey and TM works just fine here. But I started it on a freshly-formatted, empty drive. From what I see, the problems seem to be coming from trying to either add onto an existing backup or reuse a drive that already has stuff on it. Might be a bug, but it's not universal.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I have an M1 MBP/Monterey and TM works just fine here. But I started it on a freshly-formatted, empty drive. From what I see, the problems seem to be coming from trying to either add onto an existing backup or reuse a drive that already has stuff on it. Might be a bug, but it's not universal.

Nah. In my case, it works in Safe Mode. I also deleted my backup and started over. No, I didn't format the Time Capsule completely since that would have wiped the existing backup on there for my iMac, but the sparsebundle is unique for each Mac. And since it works in Safe Mode just fine, I'm extremely hard pressed to believe this has anything to do with whether or not a backup existed. If I had to guess, some service isn't loading on startup in Normal Mode. As I mentioned before, MORE services are loaded for me in Safe Mode than in Normal Mode, and I'd hazard a guess that analyzing those would provide a clue. Heck, if I knew how to forcibly load one, I'd try it.

 

[MacInWin]

Ah, I'm not using a Time Capsule, just an external SSD formatted APFS. I've never had any real success with, or faith in, TM network backups. Sparsebundle is just too fragile for me.

 

[IWT]

It may be that my understanding of the purpose of Time Machine is flawed.

I have always felt that its principal use was the ability to recover data which has been inadvertently lost, corrupted or deleted.

I cannot understand why some people keep TM backups spanning years. If the data is so precious, it should be stored on EHDs dedicated to that purpose with additional backups to Cloud services. I do not think that TM is designed for long-time BU.

Working on this - possibly erroneous principal - I reformat one of my two my EHDs as APFS after each Upgrade, retaining the other until I am satisfied that all is well; then reformat the second EHD in a similar fashion.

I occasionally do this as well, after what I regard as a substantial Update.

@LIAB, would you consider undertaking a small experiment? Take a fresh EHD, reformat as APFS and see if your Mac will complete a full and normal BU in normal mode (not Safe Mode).

From my limited understanding of the current M1 problems, they seem to be related to TC or other Network systems; or adding to existing TM BUs - (I am aware that I am repeating what Jake already proffered).

Ian

 

[mfpv]

IWT is correct, TIme Machine is not an archiving tool. I keep lots of really old photo images for instance on separate duplicated portable hard drives out of harm’s way.

 

[Rod]

I too agree 100% with the last two posts and follow exactly the same strategy as IWT. At each major update or upgrade with the small variation that I have one TM and one CCC clone backup. Typically I reformat the TM backup and keep the clone of the previous state for about a month just in case I missed something. I can honestly say I've never needed to restore anything more than a year old. Things that predate that are archived on other EHD's.

 

[MacInWin]

Time Machine is an archival system. It is designed to be able to go back in time (hence the name) to a version of a file, or disk, before some change was made that is no longer needed/wanted. It is also a backup, in the sense that it does hold copy of the backed up drive in an external location. I have not had to go back more than a few weeks to retrieve a file that changed, or was deleted, that I wanted back. What I generally do with a new machine/upgrade to the OS is to start a fresh TM backup on a clean drive, hold the old one for a few weeks, then repurpose it for some other function. There probably is no need for a backup that is really old, unless you have business or tax documents that are not kept anywhere else.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

It may be that my understanding of the purpose of Time Machine is flawed.

I have always felt that its principal use was the ability to recover data which has been inadvertently lost, corrupted or deleted.

I cannot understand why some people keep TM backups spanning years. If the data is so precious, it should be stored on EHDs dedicated to that purpose with additional backups to Cloud services. I do not think that TM is designed for long-time BU.

Well i don't do "years", but it's just one drive. It deletes the oldest backups as space is needed. It's certainly a convenient thing. One item I recovered was a saved game file. I hadn't played it in several months, and somehow the existing file got overwritten with a new one and I lost all my progress. So I was able to recover an older one and pick up where I left off. The data I can recover can be completely random and not locked to a specific time period. Some backup strategies and needs make sense for cloud storage or a dedicated copy on an EHD. Time Capsule makes sense as an ongoing, rotating, and always CURRENT backup that I can dive into for older items. I rarely have a need to do it, but it does come up. I might delete something, and a couple days later realize "Hey, I need that file again" and BAM! I can grab it back. The longer time goes on, the increasingly less likely I or anyone would have such a need, but as long as space permits, it's there.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

@LIAB, would you consider undertaking a small experiment? Take a fresh EHD, reformat as APFS and see if your Mac will complete a full and normal BU in normal mode (not Safe Mode).

I had been thinking about that actually, but I didn't want to wipe my existing clone. I did just decide to partition it since I have more than enough space to spare and that is starting now. I'll have an answer this evening on what happens. I have been a bit concerned about the future viability of using Apple's Time Capsule since they don't make them anymore and these still use HFS+, although as a network device, that shouldn't matter to the source OS. I really wish Apple would release a new version of these suckers.

EDIT: So since I technically have two Time Capsules right now, it started the backup to the networked one and is failing to show it completed as usual. On the attached SSD, it's hung up on "Waiting to back up". I suspect that's due to the networked Time Capsule job failing and it can't queue up. Stay tuned... updates tonight.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Ok, I removed my networked Time Capsule as a backup option and initiated a manual backup to the EHD before heading out this morning. And the verdict? Nothing copied over. TinkerTool System shows I have 4 snapshots, the first at 9:43 which I initiated; the 2nd two, well I don't know why they are there since auto backups were off; and the last initialized just a few minutes ago when I woke my MBA up. Nothing copied to the EHD volume. So this absolutely is not limited to Apple's Time Capsule.

 

[MacInWin]

And since it works in Safe Mode just fine, I'm extremely hard pressed to believe this has anything to do with whether or not a backup existed. If I had to guess, some service isn't loading on startup in Normal Mode. As I mentioned before, MORE services are loaded for me in Safe Mode than in Normal Mode, and I'd hazard a guess that analyzing those would provide a clue.

Going back to this, maybe running Etrecheck on a Safe Boot and then on a normal boot to see what the difference is would help you see something in the way the system is loading?

Also, I think I mentioned The Time Machine Mechanic, available from Eclecticlight.co here: T2M2, Ulbow, Consolation and log utilities

Maybe run that in Safe Mode, after a successful backup and then again in normal mode after a backup try there. Again, compare the two.

Finally, does Activity Monitor show the disk activity to write, or is it all reading when you invoke a manual backup?

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Going back to this, maybe running Etrecheck on a Safe Boot and then on a normal boot to see what the difference is would help you see something in the way the system is loading?

Also, I think I mentioned The Time Machine Mechanic, available from Eclecticlight.co here: T2M2, Ulbow, Consolation and log utilities

Maybe run that in Safe Mode, after a successful backup and then again in normal mode after a backup try there. Again, compare the two.

Finally, does Activity Monitor show the disk activity to write, or is it all reading when you invoke a manual backup?

Yeah, I did that with EtreCheck and looked them over, but in the end tossed the reports. I can't do anything about it except be aggravated so I'm just biding my time hoping the next update fixes it. If not, nuke and pave. Maybe a clean reinstall will cure what ails this.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Update: macOS 12.1 has resolved my issue with Time Capsule backups not working on my M1 MBA. *whew*

 

[rbpeirce]

Just as an FYI, I have an external RAID 5 box, with a volume dedicated to Time Machine that's HFS formatted (Mac OS Extended (Journaled).) It's working fine with the Monterey (12.0.1) OS running on an M1 Mini, so APFS is clearly not required. (I believe it's only required for startup disks.)
This particular RAID is built with HDDs, for which HFS is preferable.

I have a DROBO set up the same. I also use it to back up two other machines still running Mojave. The interesting thing is when I open my Monterey generated sparse bundle it only shows the last backup and that is greyed out. However, if I click on it I get the Data directory and if I click that I get the expected directory tree. So, something is happening but I'm not sure what.

The drive attached to the computer running monterey does show all the individual backups there. Entering Time Machine I see a lot of snapshots. The whole thing is very confusing after mojave.