Time Machine backups causing issues for some Apple Silicon Mac users

An unknown number of macOS Monterey users are reporting that Apple's Time Machine is failing on its initial backup of a drive and it's not clear why.

According to posts on Reddit, it is specifically related to the first time that the Time Machine solution attempts to backup a drive. Not only does it fail to complete the backup, but it nonetheless takes up storage space.

"I was performing my first TM backup on Monterey," wrote Reddit user Muhdakmi. "Everything seems fine and it loads the backup onto the disk and taking up storage. But when it was completed and showing 'cleaning up' suddenly it shows 'Oldest Backup: None" [and] 'Latest Backup: None.'"

"And on the Menu Bar, it kept showing 'Waiting For First Backup To Complete,'" continued the user, "and when I check the disk backup at Finder, nothing is there yet storage is filled up."

Some users, as spotted by MacRumors, are finding the same issue with macOS Big Sur.

A solution that has worked for some users, is to perform a fresh installation of macOS Monterey. Other users report the same issue after a clean install.

AppleInsider cannot confirm the issue. One staffer with a directly-connected SSD had no issue restoring, and a second with a still in-service Time Capsule plus a Time Machine volume configured on a Network Attached Storage appliance — both obviously connected over a network — confirmed the integrity of their backups.

Apple has yet to comment on the matter. At present, there doesn't appear to be an increase in calls to Apple support regarding the matter, but that may only mean that the problem is very new, or customers aren't seeking help for the issue.

Time Machine is Apple's own backup system, included with all Macs. However, there are third-party alternatives. AppleInsider suggests examining your Time Machine backup, and perhaps using a third-party utility to "clone" your important data.

31 Comments

CheeseFreeze 1334 comments · 7 Years

About 2 years ago

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots, but Time Machine still uses the legacy pre-APFS approach and has been proven to be incredibly inefficient compared to third-party solutions.

I know Apple is focusing on services so they actually rather want us to back-up on their cloud VS locally, so why aren't they just EOL'ing this thing altogether, and instead support third-party developers in providing a back-up solution?

And who in their right mind is still "travelling back in time" by traversing through Finder or app time instances (the latter only working with a few 1st-part apps) in 2021? I mean, the Steve Jobs-era visualisation of using Z-depth for time is novel, but hardly practical.

foregoneconclusion 2836 comments · 12 Years

About 2 years ago

CheeseFreeze said:

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots, but Time Machine still uses the legacy pre-APFS approach and has been proven to be incredibly inefficient compared to third-party solutions.

What third party solutions are more efficient for free?

libertymatters 44 comments · 3 Years

About 2 years ago

CheeseFreeze said:

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots, but Time Machine still uses the legacy pre-APFS approach and has been proven to be incredibly inefficient compared to third-party solutions.
I know Apple is focusing on services so they actually rather want us to back-up on their cloud VS locally, so why aren't they just EOL'ing this thing altogether, and instead support third-party developers in providing a back-up solution?

And who in their right mind is still "travelling back in time" by traversing through Finder or app time instances (the latter only working with a few 1st-part apps) in 2021? I mean, the Steve Jobs-era visualisation of using Z-depth for time is novel, but hardly practical.

Time Machine can use APFS disks for backup as of Big Sur.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac

athempel 3 comments · 7 Years

About 2 years ago

CheeseFreeze said:

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots

How would an APFS snapshot on the same physical disk save your data from the failure of said disk?

elijahg 2823 comments · 18 Years

About 2 years ago

libertymatters said:

CheeseFreeze said:

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots, but Time Machine still uses the legacy pre-APFS approach and has been proven to be incredibly inefficient compared to third-party solutions.
I know Apple is focusing on services so they actually rather want us to back-up on their cloud VS locally, so why aren't they just EOL'ing this thing altogether, and instead support third-party developers in providing a back-up solution?

And who in their right mind is still "travelling back in time" by traversing through Finder or app time instances (the latter only working with a few 1st-part apps) in 2021? I mean, the Steve Jobs-era visualisation of using Z-depth for time is novel, but hardly practical.

Time Machine can use APFS disks for backup as of Big Sur.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac

@CheeseFreeze isn't talking about APFS backup destinations, but using a filesystem feature of APFS rather than the ancient HFS+ hard links (and their equivalent in APFS) that Time Machine uses now. New Time Machine backups stored on networked disks do now use APFS disk images rather than HFS+.

athempel said:

CheeseFreeze said:

Why aren't they retiring this antique approach to back-ups? I mean, they now have a filesystem that supports snapshots

How would an APFS snapshot on the same physical disk save your data from the failure of said disk?

It wouldn't. However, snapshots don't technically have to be stored on the source drive. Whether APFS supports this right now, I'm not sure.

@CheeseFreeze is completely right with his comment. TM is archaic and inefficient. A snapshot stores only the block-level difference between files, whereas Time Machine copies the entire file across again even if there's one single bit changed. For a 1kb file that doesn't matter, but nowadays with file sizes ballooning, 1GB+ files are pretty common. Change the title of that file and the entire thing gets copied across again, without the other file being deleted on the backup. So wasting 2x space for one identical file.

Also TM is sluggish on networked disks and the UI is pretty awful. I'd much rather pick a file, see a list of previous versions of that file with previews, and maybe a diff, all integrated properly into the Finder. Not the outdated full-screen TM UI that we have now.