I know; the iMac M4 is less than a month old! But to get help from Apple, you first have to jump through some hoops. This will be the third time I’ll report the problem’s continuing, since it isn’t fixed yet and it happens on both ARM machines. I don’t think Apple recognizes (yet) that it’s a general problem for ARM machines.
But many system-bundled applications are not in the SSV, and they could get corrupted. I would assume that a system-reinstall (either preserving data or wiping data followed by a migration) would replace these apps with their factory-default bundles.
But I agree, this seems (to me) unlikely to actually fix the problem.
Well, I made my third call to Apple. At least they didn’t keep me waiting. The rep said to check that TM had full disk access…and it did not! Surprising, since it’s Apple software, but we’ll see whether FDA changes anything. I will go swimming around 1 p.m., so the computer will go to sleep. The rep scheduled a callback at 3 p.m. CT to see what happened…. Meanwhile, anyone experiencing the same problem can try FDA.
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I see that message occasionally when the computer has not been used for several hours and has gone into sleep mode. For example, the message was present when I went to my desktop this morning. I opened the TM and saw that the last completed backup was near when I last used the computer the previous evening. As I was checking it out, a new backup started and finished several minutes later. I’m not concerned, as the incremental activity should have been pretty low during the period when no backups were happening. Given that the hourly snapshots will die within a day or so, I’m not concerned.
It seems that the appropriate action following this message is to clear the message and open the TM settings file to let the TM know that the computer is now awake.
What did they tell you check for Full Disk Access? There’s nothing related to Time Machine that’s in my System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access.
What did they tell you to add? The Time Machine control panel or something else?
The rep said to add Time Machine, which is an app, but so far it doesn’t seem to have helped…we’ll see.
Not surprising. I wouldn’t expect adding the Time Machine app to make any difference. The bulk of the work in Time Machine backups is being done by the backupd service. IIRC all the app does is modify settings that backupd uses.
It sounds to me like that you’re talking to a front-line engineer and that their request was an admission that they didn’t have any idea what the problem is. You got the “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” response. From my corporate IT viewpoint, you should politely say “I don’t make changes – especially security related changes like full disk access – unless you can definitively tell me that will fix the problem. If you can’t, the answer is No, thank you” and “Find a way to diagnose the problem and I’ll gladly provide you with information”.
Well said!
Well, it might be a disk problem! I run Disk Utility First Aid every once in a while, and I haven’t seen this before—but I have now!
The partition map needs to be repaired because there’s a problem with the EFI system partition’s file system. : (-69766)
Apparently DU doesn’t repair EFI system partitions!
The disk is over 4 years old. I’ve ordered a replacement and we’ll see whether that was the culprit.
Did you try running Disk Utility/Disk First Aid on the container as I explained in an earlier discussion?
I already had View/Show all chosen, and had started from the bottom up (took 6 hours!). But this morning there was a new message: something like Time Machine has to erase all your backups in order to fix the problem (sadly I neglected to take a screenshot). In a fit of pique, I gave up and gave in (it negates the whole purpose of a backup).
But in light of what the latest Apple rep said (replace the disk drive), it makes sense: the disk is nearly five years old and a replacement is on the way.
I suspect this is “case closed”; I’ll confirm it on Saturday.
I got that four or five times over the life of my Time Capsule. I haven’t seen it for a long time, but Time Machine has failed to complete a full backup of my primary Mac for a long time, too. (There are three other Macs that do complete backups, and as far as I can recall, never got that error message.)
How old is your TM backup disk?
Ten years.
Wow, according to the Backblaze drive stats, you’re living on borrowed time!
Yes, I suppose so. Every Mac with a Time Machine backup on the Time Capsule has a Time Machine backup on another drive, and I use the Time Capsule for more than Time Machine. Would there be any reason to stop using the Time Capsule for Time Machine?
I’d say as long as you have redundant backups, using the Time Capsule until it fails shouldn’t be a problem. I do recommend, however, that if you have any sensitive, valuable, or irreplaceable data in your backups to augment your Time Machine backups with backups created by another backup utility (for example, CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper) on separate drives.
No…unless you want to avoid the stress of backup failure—probably at the worst possible time, when you need something from that backup! I’d replace it while it’s still good, and keep the (still-operable) disk for a few months to recover some old file in a pinch. Once it dies, it’s unusable for recovery, as well as backup.
Before replacing the disk (more complicated than I anticipated because it’s attached to my router), I wangled Disk Utility into checking the old disk. Took 6 hours, but today the old disk is backing up without the dreaded “some files unavailable” message. I’ll let it ride for a few days and report back.
Thank you. I have been doing that for years, but more as a belt-and-suspenders operation than a concern about a failing disk.
Can ordinary mortals replace a disk in a Time Capsule?