Time Machine

[Jonathan Cross]

I have an M1 iMac and manually use Time Machine every couple of weeks, alternating between 2 external drives.  When TM indicates that it has finished I try to eject the drive, but it always says it can't as processes are still using the drive even after a few minutes.  The drive only has TM on it.  To get round this I shut down the iMac and then detach the drive.  Alternatively after restarting it does seem that the drive will eject.

Is this normal?

Jonathan

[digitaldog]

AFAIK, what isn't normal is how you are handling TM. Manually usage, trying to eject the drive, two machines, etc.
Try setting back to defaults and leave it alone.

[tcphoto1]

I run Time Machine at least once a week and more if I busy, it's cheap insurance. I usually backup Capture One Sessions, Studio documents and Select images to two separate external drives. Then I run Disk Utility to make sure everything is as it should be and then run Time Machine. I find that it will not run if I have recently connected my iPhone or iPad as they will likely be syncing and Time Machine doesn't like other programs running in the background. I only connect the Time Machine drive when I want it to run otherwise, it will run every 15 minutes or so.

[Jonathan Cross]

AFAIK, what isn't normal is how you are handling TM. Manually usage, trying to eject the drive, two machines, etc.
Try setting back to defaults and leave it alone.

Andrew, I did have Windows machines and I always did backups to 2 alternating external hard drives.  This was in case there was a catastrophic failure while a backup was happening.  Now that I have Macs I have carried on doing this.  When using Time Machine on my MacBook Air, also running Big Sur, I do not have any problem.  After finishing a backup I can eject the ssd just by clkcking the eject instruction that appears when 2 figure tapping with the cursor over the external SSD icon.  I do not understand why this does not work on the iMac M1.

I thought I was being a wise virgin, doing backups to 2 drives alternately!

Best wishes,

Jonathan

[digitaldog]

Andrew, I did have Windows machines and I always did backups to 2 alternating external hard drives.

Sorry, I don't do windows, my TM experience is only on Mac.
I use TM on my Mac but that's not my 'main' backup schema. I have a product (ChronoSync) that does a full backup daily and automatically where the entire drive(s) are cloned. And I backup to the cloud using Backblaze. I rarely need to go into TM, it can be useful for iterations it keeps (like if I want to go back 5 versions of a document). On my Mac, TM dedicated drive is always mounted and TM just 'does its thing' as it sees fit.

[Chris Kern]

I use TM on my Mac but that's not my 'main' backup schema. I have a product (ChronoSync) that does a full backup daily and automatically where the entire drive(s) are cloned. And I backup to the cloud using Backblaze. I rarely need to go into TM, it can be useful for iterations it keeps (like if I want to go back 5 versions of a document). On my Mac, TM dedicated drive is always mounted and TM just 'does its thing' as it sees fit.

Pretty much what I do—and, actually, quite similar to the regime I had the technicians working for me implement when I was responsible for preserving the digital information assets of a government agency:

• Perform incremental back-ups on a frequent basis.  (Time Machine's hourly back-ups are optimal* in a home computing environment.)
• Perform full back-ups to a different storage medium at least once a day and whenever you make a major configuration change.
• Regularly store full back-ups offsite (e.g., in the "cloud") as a hedge against a catastrophic facility incident.

My formula for data protection is based on the premises that any hardware platform used for preservation may fail at any time; that you should always assume any software product, including back-up software, is harboring at least one bug that will someday cause an unrecoverable loss; and that lightning can strike twice in the same place.

———
*Although I also back-up recently-imported raw image files once a minute while I am performing initial culling and post-processing until they are moved to a permanent repository, using custom scripts I wrote, just in case my fat fingers delete some pictures prematurely.

[Joe Towner]

What MacOS version are you on?  There's been some issues with TimeMachine recently - an update may resolve it.

-Joe

[Chris Kern]

What MacOS version are you on?

I'm running 11.6.1 on several Apple platforms.  Can't speak for anyone else.

[kers]

I have an M1 iMac and manually use Time Machine every couple of weeks, alternating between 2 external drives.  When TM indicates that it has finished I try to eject the drive, but it always says it can't as processes are still using the drive even after a few minutes.  The drive only has TM on it.  To get round this I shut down the iMac and then detach the drive.  Alternatively after restarting it does seem that the drive will eject.

Is this normal?

Jonathan

Happens to me too , not only with timemachine... some background processes might be the cause. Not a real problem.

[BobShaw]

It backs up every hour and just let it do that. After the first one you will hardly notice it.
(I used to use a utility that let me set a back up routine when I had my data on a server, but now everything is attached)

Probably why it won't let you eject it is because it is doing routine maintenance, like deleting hourly backups from the previous day.
It keeps holy backups for 24hours, then daily backups for a week and then weekly backups until full. When full it deletes the oldest one.

I have 3 rotating drives and one is kept offsite. It will just back up to the oldest drive it sees.

Just leave it alone. it is one of life's simple pleasures.