MacBook Air, Sonoma, new Time Machine user with an issue

Question

MacBook Air, Sonoma, new Time Machine user with an issue

I recently started using Time Machine. I created my first backup and it took only 3 or 4 hours. Then over several days I re-connected the external Hard Drive twice to save the incremental back ups.

I then selected "decrypt" on the ext HD and later realized I did not want that. So I worried that I may have corrupted my Time Machine backup on the ext HD by selecting "Decrypt"

So I erased the ext HD so that I could do a fresh start with Time Machine. Now its taking a very long time to back up to my ext HD. I ran it over night and it's still only at 3.9 GB out of 169 Gb, saying 29 % done, which is a huge contrast with the first time I ran it.

I need some help - is it possible to erase all Time Machine records and start fresh, as I was trying to do, or is there something else I could or should do?

I'm concerned that I may have some corruption issues which I caused. Thanks for any help from the community.

MacBook Air 13″

Posted on Feb 19, 2025 9:07 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ExpertOpinionValued Author

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4 points

Feb 19, 2025 6:19 PM in response to ExpertOpinionValued

Good news, my fellow Apple users. I discovered that if I eject the ext

HD, and then go into Settings, Time Machine, I can then select the ext

HD and right click to command Time Machine to "Forget" that existing

back up hard drive. You cannot do this if the external HD is still

plugged in, it has to be ejected. That allowed me to restart my Mac,

erase and re-named (to a different name just to be sure) my external HD,

and it is now working so much faster. Looks like a complete back up

will take only 2 hours.

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Answer 2

Feb 21, 2025 8:39 PM in response to ExpertOpinionValued

While it sounds like you’re all set, you might find this a useful reference for the future:

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Especially the section on how to restore.

(It’s FAR better to learn “how” now … before you NEED to do it for real)

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