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Ive been using my Time Machine for almost 3 years without any problems. It's a 3 TB LaCie. This week it has decided to stop backing up my work. I tried repairing the disk and unmounting and remounting the disk a number of times but it's not working. After remounting the disk, it runs for about 10 minutes and then stops. Each time I then try to manually run a backup it immediately gives me an error message. The initial message I get is "Time Machine couldn't back up to 'LaCie'". When I click on the details it tells me that an error occurred whilst creating the 'backup folder'. It has suggested that I verify and repair the disk, but I have done this to no avail.

I'm currently still running Mavericks on my Mac.

Is there a solution to this?

user3439894
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GeoMonkey
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  • I should also note that I have 155 GB free on the disk so its not an error caused by a full disk – GeoMonkey Aug 14 '15 at 14:47
  • I tried a few things but then the disk stopped responding completely. It's been running constantly for the past 3 years so it looks like it's reached the end of its life. I've now got a new disk and a paperweight/door stop – GeoMonkey Dec 11 '15 at 12:19

2 Answers2

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I had an issue with backups not completing and I solved it by deleting the partially created backup folder.

First turn time machine off (System Preferences > Time Machine > Off)

Navigate to /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/Backups.backupdb/COMPUTERNAME/, where you will see a list of folders dated by when the backup was created. If you see a folder with .inProgress in the name, move it to the trash.

Turn time machine back on and complete a backup. If it fails again, I'd recommend taking a look at the resources here: http://pondini.org/TM/C10.html

Ezekiel
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  • I tried deleting the '.inProgress' folder and it kept saying I didn't have the required permissions. However, I didn't do this with my time machine turned off. I will try this. – GeoMonkey Aug 14 '15 at 16:32
  • If you cannot delete it, select it in Finder, press command+i, and click the padlock in the lower-left-hand corner, and check "Ignore permissions on this volume" – Ezekiel Aug 14 '15 at 17:11
  • @EzekielElin AFAIK the padlock has always been in the lower right hand corner... Where did you see "Ignore permissions"? I'm running macOS Sierra. – Arc676 Jan 06 '17 at 08:51
  • @Arc676 Ignore permissions only shows up on volumes, and I don't know why I said left hand, sorry. – Ezekiel Jan 08 '17 at 21:47
  • have you tried: sudo rm -r directory_name. Be careful using rm -r, it could erase your whole disk. Be sure the directory name is the directory you want to delete. – Natsfan Jul 16 '18 at 01:11
  • Update: If you're unable to delete this folder, you'll need to disable Time Machine first. On the new macOS, you can turn Time Machine off by going to System Preferences > Time Machine > Select Disk > Click on the Drive you're using > then click on Remove Drive. – Matt Widjaja Feb 09 '20 at 21:39
  • This is bad advice IMO, as multiple users have complained that trashing the inProgress folder results in breaking the TM backup. – At0micMutex Jan 08 '21 at 17:40
  • @At0mic Based on my understanding of the file system, if your backup is already broken this won't do anything to erase your existing files (which can be accessed through Finder) – Ezekiel Jan 08 '21 at 17:43
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High Sierra:

I had the same problem description, and I was about to start looking at the filesystem when it went away. I would hypothesize that in High Sierra, there is some improved handling of the problem.

My details:

While checking my configuration, I had switched backup choices (before I was using the hard drive, I was using a remote volume for several years). When I switched back, and tried the hard drive again, it worked.

benc
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