What causes Time Machine to stall during backups?

I've had no trouble with Time Machine until updating my Mac Mini M2 to OS 15.0.1. After the update, I constantly get the message "Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked." The backups seem to run fine until reaching about 80% then stall before the message appears. I've tried different ports, different USB C hubs, different cables etc. with the same result. I've scann the resources here and found nothing current or helpful on this issue.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Mac mini (M2, 2023)

Posted on Oct 25, 2024 5:25 AM

Top-ranking reply

envoy510

Level 1

39 points

Posted on Nov 15, 2024 5:47 PM

It's just lazy customer support to ask users to wipe their TM drive and/or Mac hard drives (and restore or reinstall macOS). There is obviously a NEW bug in macOS 15 that is causing this when TM kicks off and the screen is locked. Obviously. Wiping everything only papers over the problem and DOES NOTHING to find the real issue.

I say "lazy" without any guilt. I do customer support for a software company and I always want to find the real cause rather than paper over it. Look how many people are impacted by this!!! The real number is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude more! (because people don't spend the time finding a place to post their problem)

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