Mojave Time Machine backups have gone sideways

Software
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1

My backup on my WD Elements 1T drive at school failed with errors, and when restarted it looked like it was going to have 380GB to back up. There should have been maybe 10GB as it is a daily backup. I figured the drive was failing, and ordered an external SSD.

Connected to my backup drive (WD MyBook 4T) at home, and the backup failed last night. Restarted this morning while getting ready for school, and it errors again, drive not available, maybe corrupt run Disk Utility.

It’s hard to believe both drives are failing, especially since the 4T is only a couple of months old.
Also, I don’t have any WD software installed.

This is scary stuff, especially with BackBlaze being somewhat sketchy lately.

Anyone else seeing problems with Time Machine on Mojave?

2

Yes, I am too. It seemed to start around the same time someone picked up the capsule so I was unsure if it was hardware or software. Starting to suspect software now.

Mine’s a Time Capsule.

3

Me too. In my case, target is a Synology
(with a size quota) and rather than delete
earliest and wraparound, it starts fresh

4

Heavy Sigh

Any ideas? This is running from the recovery partition. It doesn’t try to repair the drive.

IMG_1151

5

My tale of woe continues.
Finally got DiskWarrior working, booted from the usb created, repaired my TimeMachine backup disk. Started a backup, and it failed.
Looks like TimeMachine has just started another backup. We’ll see how this one goes.
FWIW, last night TimeMachine successfully completed a backup to the new SSD I ordered.
22%20PM

6

Interestingly, my last TM backup was 10/14, which is also the modification date of /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC . That folder is locked, and I can’t do anything to it, not even using sudo -R nouchg /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC

Apparently this folder is protected by SIP, and perhaps Mojave has a bug that doesn’t allow it to back the folder up, resulting in TM stopping with an error?

Just excluded it and /Previous System/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC (which is also locked) from the TM backup and trying it again.

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7

Another clue, and perhaps this mystery developer is the author of Carbon Copy Cloner which gets errors on these files too.
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/108348

8

Time Machine not so reliable in Mojave, apparently.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8562272

9

Looking good so far: Mojave says it’s got 4h remaining, compared to taking about 4 hours just to initiate backups before I excluded that folder.

Certainly looking like a software bug.

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10

I’m thinking about switching to Carbon Copy Cloner as my primary backup tool, with TimeMachine as a secondary system.

Ugh. I like(d) TimeMachine because it required no thought and just worked.

11

I found mention that people were having trouble with an program called App Cleaner intefering with their backups. Since CleanMyMac has a ‘complete uninstall’ function, I deleted both it and their disk eject menu bar utility, rebooted, and as I type this, it just died again. Crap.

12

I reinstalled Mojave, and Time Machine backups seem to be working normally.

13

My backup failed eventually, so I guess I’ll give this a go too sometime.

14

Did you reinstall over your current installation leaving everything intact, or did you go fresh (nuke and pave)?
And is it still working ok?

15

Installed over.
Seems to be working correctly.
I’ve backed up to the external at home that didn’t work previously, and the new SSD I bought. The backup at school started yesterday, but didn’t have time to finish.

16

Mine is working fine now, thanks for the tip.
Just in time too, I accidentally wrote over some stickers we’re working on, but was able to easily restore the originals. It’s rare that TM is useful, but it’s amazing to have at times…

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17

Glad you got it sorted.
Yeah, backups are like insurance, you don’t want to need them, but glad to have them when you do.