Filesystem cannot be fixed

[pedzsan]

I got a new MBP (M1) and so I bought a fresh 5T disk and pointed Time Machine to it. It was connected by a usb-3 to usb-c cable to a port on the laptop. It had done a backup or two.

Then, something glitched and the Mac thought I had unplugged the drive. I got the warning message. Soon it was back on the desktop with the Time Machine icon.

Just to be safe, I started Disk Utility and asked it to verify the filesystem (repair). It failed. I tried a few different times -- sometimes with it mounted and sometimes not.

Fortunately, nothing was lost so I just reformatted the drive and added it back to Time Machine but this sucks.

I slightly can forgive the glitch and the drive disconnecting. Mechanical things can do that... ok. But, I don't understand why it gets remounted AND also fails the file system check. Failing the file system check just because of a small glitch is unforgivable in this day and age.

Is this "normal" for APFS?

As a side note, Time Machine formatted the drive as AFPS so I guess this is new with Big Sur ... or am I behind the times? I thought APFS could not do all the things that Time Machine needed.

 

[Weaselboy]

As a side note, Time Machine formatted the drive as AFPS so I guess this is new with Big Sur ... or am I behind the times? I thought APFS could not do all the things that Time Machine needed.

Yeah... Big Sur now supports APFS to Time Machine. I notice it is a fair bit faster with backups under APFS.

 

[pedzsan]

Is Disk Utility too stupid to know that the disk is encrypted?

Repairing file system.
Volume was successfully unmounted.
Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk5s1
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the space manager free queue trees.
warning: Unable to read apfs keylocker ranges: No such process
Checking the object map.
error: failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdisk5: Resource busy
File system check exit code is 66.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

This is from a perfectly working, never had any complaints, disk. It mounts and unmounts just fine. Notice the "failed to enable crypto".

 

[me55]

This is a new behavior with Big Sur. File system checks on Time Machine drives are tricky, but still possible. Unmount it completely in Disk Utility, then run First Aid on it.

 

[kapitainsky]

It must be bug with Disk Utility as it works flawlessly from command line, just run:

diskutil verifyvolume /dev/disk5

where /dev/disk5 is synthesized container containing your TM volume - you can get it by running:

diskutil list

If there are any errors detected you can then run

diskutil repairvolume /dev/disk5

 

[Crowbot]

It must be bug with Disk Utility as it works flawlessly from command line, just run:

diskutil verifyvolume /dev/disk5

where /dev/disk5 is synthesized container containing your TM volume - you can get it by running:

diskutil list

If there are any errors detected you can then run

diskutil repairvolume /dev/disk5

Hiyo,

I just wanted to thank you for solving this problem for me. In my case the issue seemed to be that Disk Utility doesn't know to ask permission to mess with a removable drive. I ran DU from the command line and got a popup asking for permission. All went well after that.

Web searches were useless. I should have known to come to MR first.

 

[pedzsan]

The Disk Utility GUI seems broken now even for unencrypted Time Machine backups. The reply from kapitainsky seems to work (so far... I just now kicked it off but its not instantly failing). I'm on a M1 MBP with 11.4

 

[PhonyStark]

I realize this sub-forum is specifically about Big Sur, but I wanted to post an update to the issue reported by the OP in this thread -- I'm on 12.1 beta and this behavior still seems to be an issue. The terminal route seems to still work, though. 👍

 

[Barck005]

I know this is an old thread but sometimes I find answers to problems that someone random posts years later in a forum. I'm not a fan of archiving forum sub questions or whatever this is called because it eliminates someone who may have the answer from posting and would have to start a new question or post. granted I don't know anything about hosting forums and I'm sure open ended forum posts prob cause storage or server bandwidth issues so I assume there's a reason for it....I just don't like the reason to be just to tidy things up because of it closing a door to possible help. This is prob not possible help and it may not apply to the OP's problem, but sometimes if the USB ports are only 2.0 and you use a 3.0 or 3.1 usb cord it will give you problems w connection and since connecting to an external drive or storage requires no interruptions or else possible corruption may happen. which is what's happening. its just a thought. the USB port could be dirty too and there maybe a cord not syncing with your Mac nicely or some ish. I have a MacBook Pro that I think is 2012 runs Catalina max. I did something to one of the USB ports. unknown. but it will power my iPhone fine but no data. when I stick in my external hard on I mean drive 3.0 it reads it fine same with he usb/hdmi hub I have. but it won't read any iPhone for the life of it except it powers them fine. I literally installed the base system which I think was mountain lion and installed each OS all the way up to Catalina hoping to get a firmware install for it at some point. but no. so I know the frustration w MacBook pros and USB ports and I researched it high and low. I even tried doing some back ally ash w impregnating or inject or some word I can't remember the USB ports using some GitHub program that just turned my Mac into a hakintosh. lol. wiped that sob. started anew. then it burned up one of my oldest mechanical drives cuz I think having it in the superdrive connector has it running constantly or some crud do to the fact its supposed to be where the spin drive went except I replaced it w an adapter to run a second internal drive. always ran hot. anyways. I'm on Big Sur now w this 2014 16 gb dual graphic 2.8 ghz w out an internal drive. I just run an external drive and so far it runs fine except when I take a leap of faith on a third party app and then regret it later. I did manage to f my permissions up royally. think I copied pasted my library or home to drop box cloud then after I woke up from my nap my computer wouldn't save any settings and keeps loading the same apps over and over again. w a keychain issue. I had thought I got some malware or the likes or double clicked a fliippn trojan like a newb so I changed all my passwords which led tot he key chain mayhem. on top of the permissions mayhem. I gave up and made a new admin account. then got the bright idea once I realized it was a permissions issue and not malware or a damn horse I decided to change my log in password back to the old one and that fixed my keychain nagging at me like my gf does constantly. the permissions. I had to one by one fix. still gives me issues. but I'm still transitioning to the new admin once I can get my files off this user account. its been a female dog and usually id have back ups for days but my NAS is full and I still can't find the answer as to if I have a raid set up w redundancy do I still need an entirely separate backup of the whole file systems or can I just rely on the raid redundancy. because that would free up 4 tb of space used for the back up. but alas I gave up on that too and just let chill out. sometimes ill give it a blow with the vacuum as a courtesy reach around sort of thing. pretty sure it appreciates it. anyways I'm not hijacking a thread nor am I asking questions. I'm just bored at 3 am and I have a psycho gf so I get enough excitement everyday. but for real tho... this bit is psycho.