iMac M4 (2024), MacBook Pro M3 (2023) both under MacOS 15.2
I’m getting notifications that “TimeMachine couldn’t complete the backup ‘Time Machine’; Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked” on both ARM machines both running MacOS 15.2. The message occurs after waking from sleep. But AFAICT it doesn’t resume when the Mac is unlocked; I have to manually restart the backup.
In addition, the iMac refuses to run Folding@Home (for TidBITS!) when “idle” (asleep); my previous iMac 27 (2019 Intel) and MacBook Pro (2019 Intel), both also with 15.2, never had either problem.
I’m wondering if there’s a connection…does it have something to do with ARM vs. Intel? Or is there some system setting to allow/prohibit a process from running in the background? Neither Time Machine nor F@H is available on the list of items allowable in background, and “Log out when idle” has never been set on either machine.
You know, I’d forgotten about it, but I saw those same messages (or very similar) after updating to 15.1 or 15.2 (or possibly even both). I never interpreted the “will resume” part of the message to mean there was a backup that was pending, so I never did any manual intervention. And, as is often the case, those messages just stopped appearing after maybe a week or two, and haven’t come back. I’m on a MBP M1 Pro, TM set to run every hour.
It’s been about two weeks since I set up the iMac, so maybe there’s hope, but the MBP didn’t show that dialog in August when I got it. I was out of town for September through early December, and when I set up Time Machine again to the same disk, the dialogs started. Mystery!
Interesting. The messages also appear on mu MBP Pro M1. They have never stopped, and I have to manually intervene to make TM back up… Surely someone else is having this problem too…?
I seem to remember that I only saw the message when my Mac woke from sleep in the morning. I don’t recall seeing it on wakeup during the day. And it was not consistent: some mornings there was no message. But even when the message appeared, TM resumed operating after I dismissed the message (perhaps not immediately, but at least with the next hour’s backup). So our situations are a bit different after all. I wish I had more to say other than “it fixed itself.” I hope someone else can provide something more helpful!
Never happened on MacOS 15.2 with my Intel iMac, but it does happen with my ARM iMac also on MacOS 15.2. Never happened on my Intel MacBook Pro, but now it does happen on my ARM MBP (I think they were initially on the same MacOS version, whatever it was at the time).
Well, would you look at that: It’s back! But again, same as before: Only happens on awake from sleep overnight, and backups resume automatically as soon as I dismiss the notification. Truly weird!
Just going in this thread as it has an alarming similarity to the TM issue that is showing up on Jay’s iMac. (the disappearing files problem).
Time machine is stopping at about 61% complete saying that a certain MS file cannot be backed up. She says it has a long name. She me sent a screenshot but all I got was a grey speech bubble!.
So I’m not alone then! I can’t document the percentage complete, nor does my TM ever auto-restart. If I don’t restart TM backup, it doesn’t restart at all. For example, my TM stopped at 11:39AM yesterday, and despite my having used the computer extensively yesterday (it was not asleep), it has never resumed. I have no MS files! That’s not encouraging.
It seems to be an ARM problem, so I’m wondering whether y’all are experiencing a charging problem on ARM laptops that primarily stay plugged in: The battery icon will occasionally say “Charging on hold (rarely used on battery),” and then after a while it will charge to 100%. Eventually it will drop to 80% again and stay there for some indeterminate time, and then will charge again to 100%. Note that this is with no interruption of “shore power.” My AI (perplexity.ai) says this is a known problem with ARM Mac laptops…but doesn’t offer a solution. Siri, even with AI, is clueless.
Ooh, kudos to Apple! I just called about this problem, got a cloyingly unctuous rep who was fairly clueless, but he got me an instant callback from a higher-tier support rep. She seemed to know about the problem, and promptly had me reinstall MacOS. I’m not overly confident, but I’ll soon report whether that solves the problem.
And that Apple support call to higher-tier support that recommended a reinstall of MacOS? That remains to be seen. My TM backup has been stuck at 79.3% for over 45 minutes now. Grrrr!
I got a lot of these messages when I first set up my M4 Mac mini. I tried using Disk Utility to check backup drives, etc. Then the messages stopped (and I don’t think because of anything I did). Last week, I got the message again. I restarted, and haven’t had it since. There was a long thread on Apple Support about this.
I wouldn’t waste my time reinstalling macOS unless you are going to completely wipe (as in delete the Data volume) and perform a manual recovery (copying files back from a backup instead of using Migration Assistant). The operating system doesn’t “corrupt” any more because of the SSV signatures. The writable Data volume could have a funky preference setting, but that isn’t going to get fixed unless you nuke the whole system, reinstall, and recover without using Migration Assistant (which will only copy the problem back to the system).
And if it’s a macOS bug, i highly doubt that “reinstallation” is going to fix it.
I had this happen recently. It started after I made a bunch of changes to my system. If found that by manually starting the backup when I saw the “some files unavailable” message, things cleared up. For a while.
I backed some of changes out, and now I don’t see it any more. Unfortunately I didn’t practice good troubleshooting skills and document the steps so I could have a clue what change made the problem go away. I’m wondering if there’s a timing issue between sleep and external peripherals the might be contributing to this.