SOLVED Drive won't mount for Time Machine even though it shows in Finder

[iantunnacliffe]

I have a problem that seems to be the opposite of one that I have found on other forums.

Macbook Pro M1. Sonoma 14.1.1

I have a network drive (Buffalo Link Station LS220D) plugged into my Router (Fritz!Box 7530) via a short Ethernet cable. I also have a three node mesh (Tenda AC1200) to get Wifi coverage to the nooks and crannies of the old building I live in. I have the music library that is used by my Sonos set-up on the Buffalo drive and I have historically used the remaining space for Time Machine back ups.

The problem now is that Time Machine has stopped working. It perpetually showed "Backup Delayed" and in Settings it showed that it couldn't see the drive. The strange thing is that the drive and its contents show up just fine in Finder and Sonos has no issue finding the music. On the other hand it doesn't show up in Disk Utility.

I removed the drive from Time Machine in Settings but when I go to reselect it I get the "Mounting" pop up with the correct IP address and the bouncing backwards and forwards indicator. I also get the prompt to sign in the drive which I can do. And that's it. The Mounting pop up just sits there bouncing back and forth for as long as I leave it before forcing quit on System Settings. I have tried leaving it overnight but in the morning it is still the same.

This happened around the time I upgraded to Sonoma but I couldn't be 100% sure that it was cause and effect.

I have spent quite a while scouring the forums for a similar problem but come up blank.

Does anyone have any ideas?

BTW my Mac is still happily backing up to a directly attached drive with CC Cloner so this is more of an annoyance than a catastrophe.

 

[Alan B]

I have a WD MyCloudEx2Ultra NAS plugged into my router. I had been succesfully backing up my M1 Mac using Time Machine over WiFi. On updating my Mac to Sonoma, I had similar problems to you. However I've now setup a separate Sonoma 14.2 Development Beta volume set on my Mac and the issues seem to be resolved on that system having just updated to Beta 3. So let's hope this issue is properly cleared up when the official 14.2 is released in a few weeks time. Incidentally I also maintain CCC backups to a drive connected to my Mac via a USB cable.

 

[iantunnacliffe]

Thanks Alan. That sounds hopeful.

 

[MacsBug]

There are a few things that you can try.

in the LinkStation panel check and see what protocols Time Machine share can use. Usually it defaults to AFP only. Add SMB as a protocol and then restart the LinkStation. See if that fixes it.

If that doesn’t work, it may be that your Time machine disk image is corrupt. You can create a new share and name it TimeMachine2 and then tell the prefs to use that share for Time Machine. See if it connects. If it does, then just delete the share that has your old Time Machine backup on it.

I had this happen on an older LinkStation and deleting the old Time Machine disk image solved my problem.

 

[iantunnacliffe]

I just checked the LS configuration and SMB is enabled. The weird thing is that yesterday evening the drive mounted and a backup completed. Just the one. I just asked it to "Backup Now" and it seems to have found the drive and is showing "Preparing to Back Up". It typically stays in that state for many minutes so I am on tenterhooks waiting to see if it will back up again. Is that normal for Time Machine?

 

[MacsBug]

This is normal since the Tiem Machine backup is a Diak Image that is on a network share. Usualy you will not see the Time Machine drive on the desktop unless you manuall go to the share and open the disk image. Just note that you can only do this if Time Macine isnt running in the background.

 

[ptsintx]

Sonoma 14.1.2 (just updated to 14.2.1 which didn't help) ... Time Machine stopped backing up to a network drive. The network drive is found in FINDER. Thinking the spxrcebundle file could be corrupt, I removed it and all hidden files. I can move files (PDFs, JPG, etc.) to the network drive and access them without any problem. When I go to DISK UTILITY, the network drive is not found. When I go to Time Machine to try to once again identify that drive as the backup drive, TM tells me there is no drive to select. Since I have access to the drive and can read/write from it I can eliminate mount issues (right?). As I see it, there's some sort of issue with Disk Utility and Time Machine in that both are simply not looking for external drives. Any ideas as to how to fix this, or do I just wait for APPLE to do something in a future OS update?