Another computer problem, this time on Apple Macintosh operating system. Here is the original initial request:
“Time Machine. 10.13.5 (17F77). Today.”
Here is my initial original response:
Are you having problems with Time Machine backups on your Macintosh? Time Machine should already be installed. Browse to “System Preferences” by clicking the Apple icon in the top menu.
Select the “Time Machine” icon from within “System Preferences”. Click on “Select Backup Disk”. Choose your hard disk that you want to backup data to.
You can enable automatic backups by selecting “Backup Automatically”. Continue on until Time Machine begins backing up data. The first backup may take a considerable longer period of time to complete.
Did disk utility find a problem with your hard disk? You could try erasing your disk. If you have any important files, move them from your backup disk.
Then erase the disk and see if Time Machine backup will now work. You could restart your Macintosh and try to reformat backup disk. Also, you could power off your Macintosh.
Then disconnect the backup disk. Now start your Macintosh and hook up backup disk and see if you can reformat it. I received numerous errors with this external hard disk.
I was NOT able to dismount this external drive. I received this error:
“Erase process has failed. Click “Done” to continue.”
Another error I received was this one:
“The volume can’t be ejected because it’s currently in use.”
I could NOT erase this external drive. I had to use the terminal in Macintosh operating system 10.13 which is High Sierra. However, I could not dismount this external hard drive with this command:
umount /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
I tried a different command but received the same failure:
diskutil unmount /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
This was one fucking stubborn external hard drive. I used the following commands to finally get this external hard drive to dismount:
ls /Volumes/
lsof | grep /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
There was an Apple Macintosh process that locked this external hard drive. The previous command shows all processes specific to the external hard drive. Now you want to kill all processes that are accessing the external hard drive:
killall mds
You can use the Apple Macintosh “Activity Monitor” to end all processes as well. The activity monitor has a graphical user interface. Finally, I was able to dismount this external hard drive with the following command:
diskutil unmount /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
I was able to use “First Aid” in “Disk Utility”. The first aid fixed the external hard drive problem. This allowed the client to keep their existing Time Machine Backups and continue with their automated backups.
You can find disk utility in “Applications” via the Finder tool. These instructions were written for an Apple Macintosh computer with Apple Macintosh operating system 10.13 which is High Sierra installed.
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