{"id":6745,"date":"2021-01-28T13:12:50","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/?p=6745"},"modified":"2021-01-28T13:28:37","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:28:37","slug":"fluffy-fix-for-big-sur-backup-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/fluffy-fix-for-big-sur-backup-errors\/","title":{"rendered":"Fluffy fix for BIG SUR Backup Errors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ok – for those of you struggling to get time machine to work after a Big Sur update – This is what I’ve tried and what finally worked for me.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Once I had updated my 2015 macbook to Big Sur I re-formatted my external hard drive to APFS – I’ve always used either G-Drives and Seagate (cheaper) – annoying as I lost all my old bkps – thanks apple!<\/li>\n
  2. I got to about 880GB of bkps when my G-Drive started making loud noises and either got “preparing backup” or “Time Machine could not backup due to errors” – thanks for the detailed error Apple!<\/li>\n
  3. I ran disk utility on all my drives including the boot drive in recovery mode. I also left time machine running all night while it “Prepared the backup” – still no joy – at this point I’m tempted to re-install Big Sur – but I can’t because I don’t have a backup of my user account because my old Catalina backup is no longer compatible! Thanks Apple.<\/li>\n
  4. I deleted some old large files on my macbook to free up space for the snapshots – still no joy. (Shame as really I wanted to back them up first)<\/li>\n
  5. Uninstall CleanMyMac X and Sophos (basically any anti-virus stuff) – reboot try again – fail<\/li>\n
  6. So I bite the bullet and buy a new 6TB Seagate drive (I’ll definitely have enough space now!) and configured it as APFS – ran the backup and got to the same point about 880GB then Time Machine starts timing out again.<\/li>\n
  7. I keep hitting the backup now button for the next 72 hours but still get the – oh so vague – “Time Machine could not backup due to errors” – warning! Thanks for the detail Apple.<\/li>\n
  8. I decided that either my macbook’s hard drive is corrupt or my external drive is corrupt – so I exclude the external hard drive from the backup and by hitting the options button in the time machine preferences and excluding that drive.<\/li>\n
  9. I still get errors, so this time I exclude my main drive. Bingo! Approximately 10 days after I upgraded I get my first backup but only fro my external drive one. Whoop.<\/li>\n
  10. Then I read somewhere that some third party Apps not found in the App store can cause Time Machine to fail – So I then go into a process of excluding folders from my my drive on my mackbook, first the “Applications” folder, then my “Systems” folder and finally “User” folder. If I exclude my “User” folder – the backup works! – Great I have a backup of everything except my own stuff!<\/li>\n
  11. So then I got through and one by one exclude each “User”, until I discover my own “User” folder is the one that makes the backup fail. Thanks Apple – surely Time Machine could have told me this!!<\/li>\n
  12. Then I have a brain wave and decide to try and copy my “User” folder over to my external drive and sure enough the copying fails and I get a very specific error, that says something like “There is a problem with your Photos Library and cannot be copied” – Bingo!!<\/li>\n
  13. After a quick search I find how to repair my photo library<\/a> – and after a couple of reboots I get my first full backup of my laptop!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So to conclude, one of the things to try if your Time Machine doesn’t work on Big Sur, if you have space on an external drive – try copying the files over manually first – to see if any of them are corrupt.<\/p>\n

    It’s ironic that it was apple’s own software ‘photos’ was the one causing me all the trouble.<\/p>\n

    I hope this helps someone and thanks Apple! It’s great when it works, but when it doesn’t – Arrrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here’s a fix that worked for me after getting “Time Machine can’t backup due to errors” with Big Sur update…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[87,65,35,62,64,1,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fluffy-fix","category-fluffy-life-hacks","category-fluffy-tech-tips","category-gaffer-tape","category-ive-got-one","category-random-mix","category-now-you-know",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}