Time Machine couldn't complete backup.

[Howard Brazee]

Every morning my wife's iMac tells her:
Time Machine couldn't complete the backkup to "LACIE Time Machine"
Time machine did not finish baking up because some files were unavailable. Backkups will resume when your Mac is unlocked.

It appears that the backup finishes successfully while she's using her Mac.

Is there any way to determine which files were unavailable so I can tell Time Machine to not bother trying to back them up?
Why doesn't my Time Machine have this problem?
Can I just disable that message?

 

[MacInWin]

What iMac, what version macOS? How full is the backup drive? What are her settings for backup frequency? What are her overall settings for TM? Is she already excluding any files/drives from the backup? What are YOUR settings? Does her iMac have any external devices attached, other than the TM drive? Does she use iCloud drive? Is the setting for "Optimize this Mac" set or not?

 

[Howard Brazee]

>What iMac, what version macOS?
First generation M1 iMac, 15.0.1

>How full is the backup drive?
Capacity 2TB, Available 596.02

>What are her settings for backup frequency?
Automatic, every hour.

>What are her overall settings for TM? Is she already excluding any files/drives from the backup?
No.

>What are YOUR settings?
First generation M1 iMac, 15.01
Capacity 1TB, Available 1.77 GB
I have my external drives and some other files excluded.

>Does her iMac have any external devices attached, other than the TM drive?
No.

>Does she use iCloud drive?
Yes. She does see a shared folder that I set up.

>Is the setting for "Optimize this Mac" set or not?
Not.

One note: She has another logon on her Mac besides the one she uses. I back up some of my files to it and can login and use them (kind of an emergency backup).

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, thanks. I think what you may want is to go to Eclectic Light Company website ( The Eclectic Light Company ) and get either The Time Machine Mechanic or Mints (both are free) from the downloads section. In the zip files will be the app, plus a brief document on how each works and what each does. Right after she sees the error, run one or the other (or both, if you want) to retrieve the log entries for Time Machine and look for what the file is that has the error. It should be in the log, somewhere. Once you see the file, you can decide what to do about it.

EDIT: You can trust both of these apps from that website. The developer, Howard Oakley, is a well known expert on all things Mac.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I looked at XProCheck, T2M2, Ulbow, Consolation and log utilities and see various operating systems, but not Sequoia.

 

[MacInWin]

They run on Sequoia. What you want is T2M2 or Mints.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I'll try the T2M2 version for Sonoma.

 

[Slydude]

One note: She has another logon on her Mac besides the one she uses. I back up some of my files to it and can login and use them (kind of an emergency backup).

When her backup fails are you logged in to your Mac? Is your Mac off or otherwise unavailable?

I wonder if her TM backups may be looking for the files you've backed up to her account and can't find them?

 

[ferrarr]

Is this accurate?

>What are YOUR settings?
First generation M1 iMac, 15.01
Capacity 1TB, Available 1.77 GB

1.77GB is not enough space to do anything, when booted from that drive. Is that the internal drive or an external drive?

 

[MacInWin]

Is this accurate?

1.77GB is not enough space to do anything, when booted from that drive. Is that the internal drive or an external drive?

I took that as the space free on the TM drive. When TM runs and needs more space, it will delete the oldest backup on the drive to free space. It will then repeat that process until there is sufficient free space for the backup. So, in that case, what is left really doesn't matter. In addition, if for any reason TM cannot free up enough space, the error message will say so as the backup won't start at all. The error message that they are getting is not related to drive space. For some reason TM thinks that a file or set of files SHOULD be in the backup, but they are not there when TM gets to the process to back them up. I don't know how that can happen withough user intervention on an idle system. The log will/should show what TM is looking for so Howard can mark that file/folder to be skipped by the backup.

 

[Howard Brazee]

When her backup fails are you logged in to your Mac? Is your Mac off or otherwise unavailable?

I wonder if her TM backups may be looking for the files you've backed up to her account and can't find them?

I don't know whether I'm logged on (to my Mac, I'm not logged onto her Mac). I use utilities to copy my files to my logon on her computer. They don't run at night.

 

[MacInWin]

I don't know whether I'm logged on (to my Mac, I'm not logged onto her Mac).

You MUST be logged into your Mac. It won't operate without at least one user being logged in. You may have (probably) set your system to autolog you in at boot. That is, by the way, not a good idea in general. Logging in is not that hard, and it refreshes your mind with that password that you need to do any system changes. But I digress....

I use utilities to copy my files to my logon on her computer. They don't run at night.

What "utilities" do you use? How are the two machines connected? I don't think that it is the reason for the error, but it helps us understand what your setup is. Remember, we cannot SEE what you have, you have to tell us.

 

[Slydude]

As I was reading your answer I realized that what I was thinking was not what is probably happening. If you were accessing the files from your Mac to hers rather than copying them there I'd expect a problem.

Log in to whatever account you use on her machine and make sure that actual documents haver been copied to that backup not aliases. I don't think that's what's happening but it's worth a look.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Huh? Her Time Machine shouldn't care whether I'm logged onto my Mac. We leave our computers on at night, just sleeping. I use ChronoSync to copy files to her machine during the middle of the day.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I have tested my program with the copied files on her computer, and they work correctly.

 

[Slydude]

Huh? Her Time Machine shouldn't care whether I'm logged onto my Mac. We leave our computers on at night, just sleeping. I use ChronoSync to copy files to her machine during the middle of the day.

When I made the original sufggestion I was wondering if TM was looking for the original files for those files which are of course on your machine which wouldn't be available depending upon how you were doing things.

As I was reading your post about how you were doing things I realized in that scenario TM wouldn't care whether you were logged in when the back occurred.

 

[IWT]

@Howard Brazee

I do hope you don't take my comments below as being facetious. I'm just being practical.

You said in your first post:

"Backkups will resume when your (her) Mac is unlocked" and "the backup finishes successfully while she's using her Mac".

The struggles you are facing in trying to find out the "why" and the "dodgy Files" could surely be circumvented by having/leaving her Mac unlocked and/or when using it.

As I said, please don't take offence. There's a way round this without the headache of chasing the unknown.

Ian

 

[Howard Brazee]

T2M2 run this morning first thing:


Analysis from 2024-10-12 04:55:31 -0600 to 2024-10-12 06:55:31 -0600 for 2 hours:





Backing up 1 volumes to LACIE Time Machine (/dev/disk7s2,TMBackupOptions(rawValue: 257)): /Volumes/LACIE Time Machine


Backing up 1 volumes to LACIE Time Machine (/dev/disk7s2,TMBackupOptions(rawValue: 1)): /Volumes/LACIE Time Machine


Current free space on backup volumes:


/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine = 589.57 GB


/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine = 589.57 GB


Destination IO performance measured:


Wrote 1 50 MB file at 126.66 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.395 seconds


Concurrently wrote 500 4 KB files at 16.07 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.127 seconds


Wrote 1 50 MB file at 60.48 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.827 seconds


Concurrently wrote 500 4 KB files at 21.91 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.093 seconds


Wrote 1 50 MB file at 122.31 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.409 seconds


Concurrently wrote 500 4 KB files at 16.08 MB/s to "/Volumes/LACIE Time Machine" in 0.127 seconds





Started 3 auto backup cycles, and 0 manual backups;


no backup has been completed successfully in the period,


currently still making an auto backup,





Created 0 new backups





Created 3 new snapshots, and deleted 3 old snapshots.





Of 3 volume backups:


0 were full first backups,


0 were deep scans,


3 used FSEvents,


0 used snapshot diffs,


0 used consistency scans,


0 used cached events.





Backup results:


Finished copying from volume "Data"


3102 Total Items Added (l: 1.41 GB p: 1.43 GB)


9 Total Items Propagated (shallow) (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)


2958 Total Items Propagated (recursive) (l: 147.3 MB p: 74.7 MB)


6060 Total Items in Backup (l: 1.56 GB p: 1.51 GB)


2665 Files Copied (l: 1.29 GB p: 1.31 GB)


204 Directories Copied (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)


222 Symlinks Copied (l: 5 KB p: Zero KB)


9 Directories Move Skipped (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 2949 items propagated (l: 147.3 MB p: 74.7 MB)


11 Files Delta Copied (l: 123 MB p: 123.9 MB)


3 Files Optimized Moved (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 3 items propagated (l: 143.3 MB p: 144.2 MB)


2016 Directories Optimized Moved (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 894612 items propagated (l: 475.09 GB p: 472.71 GB)


Finished copying from volume "Data"


999 Total Items Added (l: 138.3 MB p: 146.6 MB)


3563 Total Items Propagated (shallow) (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)


902882 Total Items Propagated (recursive) (l: 476.65 GB p: 474.22 GB)


903881 Total Items in Backup (l: 476.79 GB p: 474.36 GB)


584 Files Copied (l: 45.1 MB p: 50.6 MB)


165 Directories Copied (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB)


243 Symlinks Copied (l: 6 KB p: Zero KB)


1918 Files Move Skipped (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 1918 items propagated (l: 1.3 GB p: 1.31 GB)


1645 Directories Move Skipped (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 897401 items propagated (l: 475.35 GB p: 472.91 GB)


7 Files Delta Copied (l: 93.2 MB p: 96 MB)


2 Directories Optimized Moved (l: Zero KB p: Zero KB) | 356 items propagated (l: 339 KB p: 356 KB)





No error messages found.


Scheduling system checks are disabled.

 

[MacInWin]

No error messages found.

Did she get an error this morning? If not, then it's working. If she did, and if T2M2 didn't see it in the two hours you reviewed, then try either a longer period to see if it finds the error, or wait until she does have an error and run it again then, with a longer period. Same for Mints. Your run was for two hours, but the error could have been 6-7-8 hours ago, if it's overnight.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Yes. The first thing I did was unlock her Mac and see that message. The second thing I did was run that program. I guess I need to run it for 8 hours tomorrow morning. Time Machine does back up everything when it runs during the day.