I have a brand new My Passport 4 TB drive. I bought it to do external Time Machine backups on my MacBook Pro when I travel. The problem is, it cannot finish even the first backup. Every time it gets hundreds of GB into the backup and then fails, with TM telling me it encountered problems copying files to the drive.
I HAVE formatted it correctly. I’ve reformatted it multiple times. I’ve run Disk Utility and it always comes up with no errors. I can copy GBs of files manually to the drive. It’s just Time Machine that keeps giving me issues.
Is there anything else I can try before I contact WD to try to get my money back?
Hello. Do you have the WD utilities installed? I have read on other threads that sometimes that prevents Time Machine from running correctly.
Also check for firmware updates for the drive.
I did not have it installed for the first several attempts but then did install it. No change.
How do I check for firmware updates please? I didn’t see that option in the utility.
There is a separate utility you download from the Western Digital website that does the firmware upgrade if needed.
You can also try running Time Machine in safe mode. Yes…Apple has one of those too.
Turn of your Mac. Press the left shift and then the power button. Keep pressing the left shift (don’t let it go) till you see the logon screen. Just one note, it takes a little longer than usual to see the logon screen.
Run the Time Machine.
If it completes there is another app that is causing the Time Machine to fail.
If it fails, I would think is the drive.
Hope this helps.
