Something is locked and blocking my time machine backup

Thank you, but I have no idea how to do that. In Time Machine I can only exclude attacted external disks.

If i try with terminal it says:

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167

/Users/peter/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167: Error (100001) while attempting to change exclusion setting.

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ 

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ ls -l ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167

-rw-------  1 peter  staff  16777216 Nov 15 06:17 /Users/peter/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ 

OK, I have now deleted the contents of the folder ... should I also delete the folder itself? It says operation not permitted ... so i could only delete the contents manually from finder

And it seems the system instantly creates that folder agaín

You're a star Focker. Apparently deleting that Biome folder did the trick. No errors to be seen this morning.

When I woke up this morning I found TM had made backup to backup-disk-1 at 1.54 a.am. It's now 7.15 a.am and it's in the process of of "preparing to backup" to backup-disk-2 so it's not like it's hourly backups. Weird.

Well All these solutions are piecemeal. I tried them and got nothing. Mostly because find my was never in my widgets. But I noticed something. I did a Get info on Biome before deleting it and it only had two groups listed. Me, and everyone. Everyone has no access. So I deleted Biome and suddenly it has Me, Staff, and Everyone when recreated. Again everyone has no access. Staff has read only access. So I started checking all the folders that I've seen mentioned and none of them has Staff in the list of who could access it.

I went through my home folder and got info on everything then option clicked +. Then searched staff, added the group and copied permission to all enclosing items. This seems to have worked... For now. We'll see if it still works tomorrow.

At the moment I'm calling this a widespread permissions issue that only Apple can fix, especially since the fix permission utility is gone.

My iMac with Sonoma has a Seagate external hard drive as the Time Machine backup disc and it has worked flawlessly for over a year. I have just added a Crucial SSD and, in Time Machine Preferences, selected this as a (second) backup disc. As far as I can see both drives are formatted in exactly the same way. Backups to the Seagate disc has continued as normal but, although a couple of backups have been made to the Crucial SSD, there are still time when the backup stalls because of problem with certain files being unavailable and the iMac needs to be unlocked.

I am at a loss to determine why backups to one drive always work but not always to another drive. Both backup drives are encrypted but have different passwords but I wouldn’t have thought that this would cause any problems. If it is because the iMac goes to sleep, then surely this should affect backups to both drives. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Hi, I'm having the same problem despite still running BigSur on a MacAir. I added TM to Full Disc access which didnt resolve the problem. I tried the approach suggested by @Focker in Terminal and got the following:

2025-01-23 11:28:09.142827+0000 0xf85ea  Error    0xa32d9       606  0  backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] Failed to wait for snapshot deletion to complete on disk '/System/Volumes/Update/mnt1', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

So it seems a file ...mnt1 is the problem (?) but I (or the Mac) cant find this file to delete it or add it to TM exclusions - what should I do?

Thanks in anticipation.

Hi, I'm having the same problem despite still running BigSur on a MacAir. I added TM to Full Disc access which didnt resolve the problem. I tried the approach suggested by @Focker in Terminal and got the following:

2025-01-23 11:28:09.142827+0000 0xf85ea  Error    0xa32d9       606  0  backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] Failed to wait for snapshot deletion to complete on disk '/System/Volumes/Update/mnt1', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

So it seems a file ...mnt1 is the problem (?) but I (or the Mac) cant find this file to delete it or add it to TM exclusions - what should I do?

Thanks in anticipation.

I've been trying to resolve this exact issue, but NOTE that my setup might be unique: M2 Mac mini, booting off of an external TB3 NVME SSD. After a bunch of trial and failures (including double checking the logs and exclusions, disabling sleeping, cleared all local snapshots, reformat and start a new TM backup...etc), the thing that worked for me was the moment that I realized that I had, for reasons unclear to me, mounted the internal SSD "Macintosh HD." This is all the while, booting and running off of the external SSD. As soon as I ejected/unmounted the internal SSD, I was able to successfully complete a previously failed TM backup...

Somehow, with my particular setup, if the internal SSD is mounted, it confuses the OS or TM and as far as I know, I couldn't add the entire internal SSD to the exclusion list, at least via the GUI...

As a side, if you ever boot from your internal SSD, don't TM backup it on the same HDD. At least for me, that seems to confuse TM. When I boot back into the external SSD, the next TM session seems to be a full, from the scratch backup!

I've tried every method in this thread and still facing the same error, on MacOS 15.3.1.

"Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked."

I tried running:

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 4h|grep "Operation not permitted"

and the output is:

2025-02-26

11:03:15.330337+1100 0x21d5b6   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire

device lock assertion for

'/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro

(3)/2025-02-26-092819/Data/Users/u1234567/Library/Metadata/Assets/com.apple.MobileAsset.SpotlightResources.plist'

(assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain

Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

11:34:33.350983+1100 0x23a22e   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to

proactively acquire device lock assertion on lock state change

(deviceIsLocking), assertion state: <dropped>, error: Error

Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

11:34:43.252100+1100 0x23acfa   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to

proactively acquire device lock assertion on lock state change

(deviceIsLocked), assertion state: <dropped>, error: Error

Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

12:07:26.041262+1100 0x242e7c   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to

proactively acquire device lock assertion on lock state change

(deviceIsUnlocked), assertion state: <dropped>, error: Error

Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

12:07:58.789230+1100 0x241862   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire

device lock assertion for

'/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro

(3)/2025-02-26-120328/Data/Users/maclocaladmin/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/Library/HTTPStorages/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/httpstorages.sqlite-wal'

(assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain

Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

12:07:58.800165+1100 0x241862   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire

device lock assertion for

'/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro

(3)/2025-02-26-120328/Data/Users/maclocaladmin/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/Library/HTTPStorages/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/httpstorages.sqlite'

(assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain

Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

2025-02-26

12:07:58.801554+1100 0x241862   Error       0x0   

              326    0   

backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire

device lock assertion for

'/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro

(3)/2025-02-26-120328/Data/Users/maclocaladmin/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/Library/HTTPStorages/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/httpstorages.sqlite-shm'

(assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain

Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

I have tried every solution mentioned here with no luck. Just bought a new Mac Studio that's when this problem started. I had no such problem on my 2019 iMac. You would think Apple would have fixed this by now. Also Time machine does back up my hard drive. I wonder if it's a usable back up though due to the error message.

"Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “OWC Mercury Elite Pro 12tb”

Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked.

HELP!

Have you tried this? In System Settings, go to Privacy & Security and next in Full Disk Access. Add Time Machine and give it full access. I had no issues since I did this, even though Apple Tech told me my Time Machine drive should be twice the capacity of my internal SSD drive and that it would never work... Hope this helps!

Have you tried this? In System Settings, go to Privacy & Security and next in Full Disk Access. Add Time Machine and give it full access. I had no issues since I did this, even though Apple Tech told me my Time Machine drive should be twice the capacity of my internal SSD drive and that it would never work... Hope this helps!

There is only one solution but unfortunately thread is filled with some fluff, but Focker has posted the solution on the first page. First run the following command in terminal to find what directories or files TM is getting stuck on, then either use the time machine settings to exclude that directory or file from the backup or run the second command and exclude the directory or file:

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 4h|grep "Operation not permitted"

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Containers/path.to.problem.directory