Did I make a mess of my Time Machine backups?

[Speed38]

Equipment: 2020 iMac, SSD, macOS 13.6, dual OWC dock with two 1 TB HDDs for Time Machine backups.

I realized my Time Machine HDDs, which have been running for just over one year, were not encrypted and decided to encrypt them. I did so by Control Clicking on each HDD on the desktop and selecting [Encrypt]. I input a password and clicked on encrypt.

Several hours later, I came back to this alert [Backup Not Completed. Time Machine couldn't back up to "TimeMachine 1"].

Opening TM in System Settings and clicking on the Info circle revealed [An error occurred while starting the backup. Anti-Virus software may be preventing Time Machine from writing to the backup]. While I do have the Malwarebytes.app in my Applications folder, it is not set to run in the background. I use it only when I download software from sources other than the Apple Store.

Did I make a mess by encrypting these HDDs? Any suggestions?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Any suggestions?"

You asked, so I'll give my standard "there he goes like a broken record again" advice:
Stop using time machine.
START using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

Both are free to download and try.
I suggest you try BOTH of them, and choose which you like best.

They both do essentially the same thing:
Create cloned backups that are mountable "right in the finder" like any other drive.

 

[ignatius345]

Equipment: 2020 iMac, SSD, macOS 13.6, dual OWC dock with two 1 TB HDDs for Time Machine backups.

I realized my Time Machine HDDs, which have been running for just over one year, were not encrypted and decided to encrypt them. I did so by Control Clicking on each HDD on the desktop and selecting [Encrypt]. I input a password and clicked on encrypt.

Several hours later, I came back to this alert [Backup Not Completed. Time Machine couldn't back up to "TimeMachine 1"].

Opening TM in System Settings and clicking on the Info circle revealed [An error occurred while starting the backup. Anti-Virus software may be preventing Time Machine from writing to the backup]. While I do have the Malwarebytes.app in my Applications folder, it is not set to run in the background. I use it only when I download software from sources other than the Apple Store.

I think this could be Time Machine reacting poorly to a drive that's in the process of being encrypted (which can take a very long time). I think the anti-virus thing is probably a red herring.

You could try this: turn off Time Machine for now so you don't keep getting errors, and then go into Terminal and confirm the drives are being encrypted and see what the progress is. This might help:

How to view progress when encrypting a disk?

Mountain Lion allows one to encrypt any disk by right-clicking on the disk in the Finder and selecting Encrypt from the contextual menu. Is there anyway to check on the progress of this encryption

apple.stackexchange.com

You should see a percentage complete, and from that can infer how much longer it'll take. I did the thing you did at one point -- encrypted a Time Machine drive I'd already been using -- and it was looking like it would take many days to finish. I didn't have a very long backup history on the drive, so I just wiped it and started over. This time, I chose the encryption option while first setting up Time Machine, and that worked very smoothly.

 

[Speed38]

"Any suggestions?"

You asked, so I'll give my standard "there he goes like a broken record again" advice:
Stop using time machine.
START using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

Both are free to download and try.
I suggest you try BOTH of them, and choose which you like best.

They both do essentially the same thing:
Create cloned backups that are mountable "right in the finder" like any other drive.

OK. I was a paid-up user of CCC for many years but stopped upgrading when Apple switched to APFS and making clones became a bit of a PITA. My version of CCC is 6.1.4.
I use TM because of its ability to go back in time and recover a lost file or folder and to make upgrading from one Mac computer to another simpler and more sure-fire.
Is it possible, with CCC 6.1.4, to set it up so it does saves your documents over time like TM?
I did a quick search and found nothing.

 

[Speed38]

"Any suggestions?"

You asked, so I'll give my standard "there he goes like a broken record again" advice:
Stop using time machine.
START using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

Both are free to download and try.
I suggest you try BOTH of them, and choose which you like best.

They both do essentially the same thing:
Create cloned backups that are mountable "right in the finder" like any other drive.

Searching for CCC forums, I found this https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/upgrading-your-backup-strategy-from-time-machine-ccc which has good instructions for how to do what I want to do. Is this what you meant by use CCC instead of TM?

 

[Speed38]

I think this could be Time Machine reacting poorly to a drive that's in the process of being encrypted (which can take a very long time). I think the anti-virus thing is probably a red herring.

You could try this: turn off Time Machine for now so you don't keep getting errors, and then go into Terminal and confirm the drives are being encrypted and see what the progress is. This might help:

How to view progress when encrypting a disk?

Mountain Lion allows one to encrypt any disk by right-clicking on the disk in the Finder and selecting Encrypt from the contextual menu. Is there anyway to check on the progress of this encryption

apple.stackexchange.com

You should see a percentage complete, and from that can infer how much longer it'll take. I did the thing you did at one point -- encrypted a Time Machine drive I'd already been using -- and it was looking like it would take many days to finish. I didn't have a very long backup history on the drive, so I just wiped it and started over. This time, I chose the encryption option while first setting up Time Machine, and that worked very smoothly.

1. I shut off TM last night when both lights on the OWC were blinking madly but in the desktop menu bar, TM icon revealed that a backup was not being prepared or in progress.
2. Sorry to have to trouble you with another question but while I have used Terminal from time to time, I am not sure what part of the command inside the brackets I should cut and paste and run in Terminal. Could you help me out here???
Sorry to be a bother and thanks for your advice.

 

[Speed38]

I think this could be Time Machine reacting poorly to a drive that's in the process of being encrypted (which can take a very long time). I think the anti-virus thing is probably a red herring.

You could try this: turn off Time Machine for now so you don't keep getting errors, and then go into Terminal and confirm the drives are being encrypted and see what the progress is. This might help:

How to view progress when encrypting a disk?

Mountain Lion allows one to encrypt any disk by right-clicking on the disk in the Finder and selecting Encrypt from the contextual menu. Is there anyway to check on the progress of this encryption

apple.stackexchange.com

You should see a percentage complete, and from that can infer how much longer it'll take. I did the thing you did at one point -- encrypted a Time Machine drive I'd already been using -- and it was looking like it would take many days to finish. I didn't have a very long backup history on the drive, so I just wiped it and started over. This time, I chose the encryption option while first setting up Time Machine, and that worked very smoothly.

I followed your link and ran diskutil apfs list command.
I first turned on the TM backups, had to input the password I had chosen.
After they mounted, I ran the Terminal Command diskutil apfs list, and here were the results.

APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk5s2 (Backup)


Name: TimeMachine 1 (Case-sensitive)
Mount Point: /Volumes/TimeMachine 1
Capacity Consumed: 916602585088 B (916.6 GB)
Sealed: No
Encryption Progress: 1.0% (Unlocked)

and...


APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s2 (Backup)
| Name: TimeMachine 2 (Case-sensitive)
| Mount Point: /Volumes/TimeMachine 2
| Capacity Consumed: 931678470144 B (931.7 GB)
| Sealed: No
| Encryption Progress: 22.0% (Unlocked)

So, TM2 is 22% encrypted and TM1 is only 1% encrypted.
It looks like this is going to take days and my inclination is to simply let them run unless you feel this is a bad idea.
Once they are done, I would like to try to follow Fishrrman's idea of using my version of CCC to set up CCC to backup to another 1 TB HDD I have available.

This forum is a fantastic source of help when you run into a problem like this.

 

[KaliYoni]

Any suggestions?

You should verify this yourself before doing anything, but I think Apple Support recommends removing then re-adding a drive in Time Machine Settings (on Ventura this is in System Settings > General > Time Machine) when encrypting an existing TM backup.

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I maintain backups using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are encrypted. The Time Machine drive is always connected. The CCC drive is disconnected most of the time. I do a CCC backup about once a week or before installing an OS update.

I do this for redundancy and to increase the chances of having a clean version of my entire setup in the event of a catastrophic failure or a security breach.

Since you already have two drives devoted to backups, you could easily change to using one for Time Machine and the other for CCC or SD.

More discussion:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...re-any-advantage-of-ccc.2306894/post-30156566

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ETA: I can't remember offhand where I saw this but it may be faster to encrypt a TM disk at setup, rather than after the disk has been in use. This is because macOS gives TM data I/O operations a very low priority and because TM uses a sprawling and convoluted data storage plan.

 

[ignatius345]

I can't remember offhand where I saw this but it may be faster to encrypt a TM disk at setup, rather than after the disk has been in use. This is because macOS gives TM data I/O operations a very low priority and because TM uses a sprawling and convoluted data storage plan.

Definitely. in my experience encrypting a drive when setting up is vastly quicker than encrypting a drive already full of data.

 

[ignatius345]

I followed your link and ran diskutil apfs list command.
I first turned on the TM backups, had to input the password I had chosen.
After they mounted, I ran the Terminal Command diskutil apfs list, and here were the results.

APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk5s2 (Backup)


Name: TimeMachine 1 (Case-sensitive)
Mount Point: /Volumes/TimeMachine 1
Capacity Consumed: 916602585088 B (916.6 GB)
Sealed: No
Encryption Progress: 1.0% (Unlocked)

and...


APFS Volume Disk (Role): disk3s2 (Backup)
| Name: TimeMachine 2 (Case-sensitive)
| Mount Point: /Volumes/TimeMachine 2
| Capacity Consumed: 931678470144 B (931.7 GB)
| Sealed: No
| Encryption Progress: 22.0% (Unlocked)

So, TM2 is 22% encrypted and TM1 is only 1% encrypted.
It looks like this is going to take days and my inclination is to simply let them run unless you feel this is a bad idea.
Once they are done, I would like to try to follow Fishrrman's idea of using my version of CCC to set up CCC to backup to another 1 TB HDD I have available.

This forum is a fantastic source of help when you run into a problem like this.

I don't think you have anything to lose by just letting it run -- except that any files you're creating/modifying are not getting backed up. I'd check back periodically to see if progress is being made. It really could be many days unfortunately!

 

[Speed38]

Just to bring this thread to a close, I began it 8 days ago and this morning, for the first time, the lights on my two TM backup HDDs stopped blinking, both disks are marked as encrypted, and backups have resumed. Encryption only took place when the Mac was awake so I would guess that it took something on the order of 32 ~ 40 hours to complete the encryption of two 1TB HDDs that were about 80% full.

 

[ignatius345]

Just to bring this thread to a close, I began it 8 days ago and this morning, for the first time, the lights on my two TM backup HDDs stopped blinking, both disks are marked as encrypted, and backups have resumed. Encryption only took place when the Mac was awake so I would guess that it took something on the order of 32 ~ 40 hours to complete the encryption of two 1TB HDDs that were about 80% full.

Quite a long haul! Definitely worth the peace of mind to have everything encrypted, though.