Hi Ronnie,I think I mentioned I work away. Since the below email, I've been 
away for a swing and returned this Thursday. First thing I do is get my MacBook 
to do a backup with nothing else running just to bring it up to date in TM. I'd 
moved some video files in the time away so expected a sizeable backup and after 
about 20 minutes Preparing Backup, it set off doing that backup of around 20GB. 
Stacks of space on the backup drive (+900GB unused). Next morning I checked and 
it had 'finished' but said latest backup was in March 2016. I thought here we 
go again. Had to have some surgery (eye) today but got around to look further 
this afternoon, subsequent backups couldn't find the disc. All other MacBooks 
in the house are backing up nicely with no hiccups tothe main TM 3TB disc - all 
since I moved to Sierra and had the FileVault problem. That problem is resolved 
and not recurring fortunately. I unmounted the backup disc (it's a 2TB external 
drive connected via Hub to the 3TB TC and is unique to my MacBook in the 
house). Then remounted and restarted backup process by selecting the right disc 
again. A long Preparation period ~1 hour then it set off backing up again - 
~20GB again. Upon that 'finishing' - Latest backup was November 2015! Then I 
get warnings saying last backup was 500days ago - no kidding Time Machine!!

I have a CCC backup of the whole MacBook/external drive (800GB in all) - I am 
thinking I'll blow away the Sparesebundle file and start again. It shouldn't be 
this hard. Probably a simple fix but I have 1 backup to revert should I have a 
MacBook HD failure so little risk for me. That will be a lengthy process as the 
deletion will take most of a day and the Firsttime new backup same again for 
full pass. This would be a bit of a 'Neanderthal' approach but will work- I've 
done it before as you probably recall - in the past due to my own error  - but 
I've learnt to have kid gloves with this TM thing. I wonder if any other tips 
before I resort to the Primitive approach. 

I have 10.12.4 Sierra and a MacbookPro Retina.

Regards


Pete

> On 9 Apr 2017, at 5:58 AM, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ronnie, thanks for that. I went through the process of turning off 
> FileVault which took a while to decrypt the disc, then left to its own 
> devices, this morning it has succesfully completed a backup with a time of 
> 12:01 this morning. So it seems like it's sorted itself out. Thanks for the 
> tips.
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> Pete
> 
>> On 8 Apr 2017, at 3:03 PM, Ronni Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On 8 Apr 2017, at 9:36 am, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I did my updtae to Sierra 10.12.1 a couple of weeks ago and the MacBook 
>>> (Pro Retina) and behavious of the MacBook was fine, nothing odd. I had TM 
>>> turned OFF during the update and once the dust had settled, I turned it 
>>> back on and after some time a ~5GB backup started and finished succesfully. 
>>> 
>>> Yesterday, I saw an Update showing in the App Store and so after a short 
>>> review - I commenced the update which was to 10.12.4. 
>>> 
>>> Since then, my backups have been quite odd. I've notifications saying 
>>> "can't locate the server", "you're trying to backup an encrypted disc to a 
>>> non encrypted disc" and just now it was in the process of doing a backup - 
>>> progress bar was showing for ~6GB backup - next time I came back to it it 
>>> showed as though backup was all finished succesfully, however the panel 
>>> indicated my last backup was June 2016!
>>> 
>>> I browsed a bit and noted also that autologin is disabled when FileVault is 
>>> ON and I've normally had my MacBook set to autologin - and it has since 
>>> moving to Sierra (12.4.1) reverted to reuquiring my login upon Start up - 
>>> where prior configuration was Autologin was set ON.
>>> 
>>> Is this normal and any clues to maybe a simple setting I've not done which 
>>> the update has changed for me? Is there a Sierra default configuration 
>>> demanding FileVault ON and hence disabling Autologin and what is the 
>>> connection with my backups behaviour if any?
>> 
>> Hi Peter,
>> 
>> That error message "you're trying to backup an encrypted disc to a non 
>> encrypted disc" means that your 'Mac's hard drive is using FileVault 
>> encryption to secure your data, but the hard drive you're using for Time 
>> Machine is not encrypted.' 
>> 
>> Automatic login is disabled if your have FileVault enabled: 
>> In System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options after enabling 
>> FileVault, you’ll
>> see that Automatic Login is set to Off and dimmed—you can’t enable it. 
>> And, in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, the checkbox 
>> labeled “Disable automatic login” disappears completely when you turn on 
>> FileVault. This means you’ll always have to supply your password when you 
>> turn on your Mac, restart, or log in.
>> 
>> You can read more about FileVault at the following links:
>> 
>> macOS Sierra: Encrypt the contents of your Mac with FileVault
>> 
>> macOS Sierra: Keep your Time Machine backup disk secure
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Ronni
>> 
>> 13-inch MacBook Air (April 2014)
>> 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost to 3.3GHz
>> 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
>> 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
>> 
>> macOS Sierra 10.12.4
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Pete
>> 
>> 
>> 
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