Time Machine not functioning with High Sierra

I tried today to backup my Macbook Pro and when I connect the external hard drive i get an error every time I try to do a backup. The external harddrive is a WD My book 3 TB and i formated it to HFS file-format and the problem is because of the incompatibility with APFS. The Macbook is upgraded to the latest MacOs which is High Sierra Developer Beta 2. Has anyone encountered this problem?

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Are you running MacOS 10.13 beta 2 version (17A291j) or

MacOS 10.13 beta 2 update 1 version (17A291m)


I’ve been backing up to TimeMachine but I’m running 17A291j I haven’t installed 17A291m yet, and there is a note in the release notes saying not to use TimeMachine.

If you’re using 17A291m then don’t worry about TimeMachine, it’s intentionally disabled according to the release notes.

Replies

Same here. I'm able to unmount the disk, remount, and get ONE backup to work. All subsequent backups fail with this error message.

Hi, I upgraded to High Sierra 10.13.1 last week and I also have not been able to do a Time Machine back up since. My external drive is a Seagate 3 MB USB3 drive. I have already verified it with Disk Utilities - nothing wrong (I can see and read just fine). Time Machine either hangs at "preparing backup" or after about 250mb (which takes hours to get to), resulting in a backup failed message.


If anyone has come up with workarounds - would love to hear it.

Ben

My problem started at about the same time, and I get an error message saying "...unable to create local snapshot to backup from...". I have a ticket open with Apple support. They had me submit logs and engineering says I have a hardware failure on input/output ports, but I am skeptical because the USB work fine for everything else -- and because you and I are coincidentally experiencing the exact same problem at the same time, and there is this whole discussion about the problem going back months. I too would like to be informed of workarounds if anyone has any.


Further details that may matter for troubleshooting:


  • When I run Disk Utility > Repair, one of the lines in the detail log says the "snapshot is invalid... unable to repair".
  • Immediately prior to installing 10.13.1, I had 142 GB free. Immediately after installing 10.13.1, free space dropped to 127 GB. I can't account for the sudden change. But it makes me wonder: Do I have an invalid Time Machine snapshot hogging space and preventing backups?

I have the same issue. Since upgrading to High Serria. I have a Backups.backup directory that never completes and a disk image of my hard drive I can never open. If anyone has an idea on how to fix I appericate.

Yes. The Apple specialist who helped me had me reboot to Internet Recovery mode with Command+Option+R (hold until the globe appears).


From the menu that appears after the session starts, select Disk Utility. On its View menu select Show All Devices. Note well: He stated the Disk Utility stuff has to be done in Internet Recovery mode because the First Aid tests are run differently there. The following steps, he said, would not yield reliable results for our purposes if done in regular mode.


Click the Mount button on the Disk Utility menu bar and mount the Macintosh HD,

Run First Aid on the first one -- Apple SSD -- or whatever your first one is -- and on the third one -- Macintosh HD -- and skip the middle one.


Although First Aid "completed successfully" with a green checkmark, the details log included lines that approximately said:


error: oms: btn: o_oid (0x0)

Snapshot is invalid.

The volume... could not be verified completely.


Based on the error and Snapshot is invalid, he said the only way to fix was to completely reformat the drive and reinstall the OS from Internet Recovery.


If you do this, you will lose all data, so you either need good Time Machine backups, or manual backup copies of your data. His advice was to avoid using the Time Machine backup to migrate fully the files from the old installation because that could bring corrupted preference files, etc., back. I used the manual data copy method instead.


As I recall -- and I'm just going by memory and my notes and I'm not an expert -- the next steps were, from Disk Utility in Internet Recovery mode, erase Macintosh HD and choose the format for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Do not select the options for Encrypted or Case Sensitive. If your drive is an SSD, the new installation of High Sierra will convert the format to the new AFPS.


From the Internet Recovery menu, select the option to install the operating system. When it completes, you can reboot to normal mode, log in, and confirm that your Time Machine works as expected. The first backup takes a longer than usual, remember. If all is successful, move your data back --manually like I did, or via the Migration Assistant app (in Applications/Utilities), and reset all your system preferences.


Good luck with your work.