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Time Machine could not create a local snapshot to back up from.

How can I fix this problem

Posted on Nov 1, 2021 12:28 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 1, 2021 12:52 PM

Start with this...


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 1, 2021 12:52 PM in response to kiana kasaei

Start with this...


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Nov 19, 2021 2:50 PM in response to Apps6

Oh, Holy Cow, that is it!


You need at least as much free space as you have RAM plus how much RAM all the Apps you run use up!


And that will be cutting it close!!!


You're in danger of loosing everything!


Have you emptied the trash lately?


Terminal code to clean DocumentRevisionsfolder…

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313102/what-will-occur-if-the-documentrevisions-v100-folder-is-deleted

macos - What will occur if the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder is deleted? - Ask Different (stackexchange.com)


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253231342?answerId=256043117022#256043117022

System Memory OS 10.12.6 Sierra - Apple Community


Look for iOS backups…

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/


Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates. 

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html


tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /  # deletes all the snapshots

Time Machine could not create a local snapshot to back up from.

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