I don’t understand whether the backup is done or not?

[jordysak]

I don’t understand why there is a red exclamation mark next to ‘latest backup’ , I have attached the screenshot showing what it says when I click on it ..
Is this backup safe to be transferred onto a new MacBook? I don’t want to transfer a corrupted backup; oh and it’s also not allowing me to make another backup

The backup is done using an external hard drive that I also use to save my other stuff

 

[Rodan52]

It would appear that the most recent successful backup was 13 Sept 2020. The most recent attempt was unsuccessful because your external HD is full.
So the short answer is; No!
It's easy to see how much space is on the EHD, just right click on it and choose Get Info.
It is not a good idea to combine other data with a Time Machine backup. It should be a dedicated drive because its data is not filed iin the same way.
My suggestion would be to simply buy another EHD, it should be roughly twice the size of the storage on your computer and do not use it for anything else.
DO NOT attempt to use the finder to delete older TM backups to make space.

 

[jordysak]

It would appear that the most recent successful backup was 13 Sept 2020. The most recent attempt was unsuccessful because your external HD is full.
So the short answer is; No!
It's easy to see how much space is on the EHD, just right click on it and choose Get Info.
It is not a good idea to combine other data with a Time Machine backup. It should be a dedicated drive because its data is not filed iin the same way.
My suggestion would be to simply buy another EHD, it should be roughly twice the size of the storage on your computer and do not use it for anything else.
DO NOT attempt to use the finder to delete older TM backups to make space.

but using this external hard drive it still has more than 700GB left of space..also, why does it say that the last successful backup is done when it's not? Is there any way I can check if there is indeed a backup?

 

[Mike Boreham]

As well as making a backup on the actual TM drive Time machine separately creates local snapshots on the boot drive. Your message says it was unable to create a local snapshot because there was insufficient space on the source (ie Boot) volume, not the external.

You may have a valid TM backup on the external TM backup drive but it is difficult to tell from what you have told us (eg what Mac, what OS, how is TM drive connected? Free space on boot drive)

Does it make sense to you that the first and last TM backup was on 13th Sept last year?

I agree don't use Finder to do anything with TM backups but if the TM drive is locallly connected (not network) you should see the backup on the drive with Finder.

What happens if you "Enter Time Machine"?.....does it show anything to restore?

If you have the old and new macs and just want to transfer, a better option may be Target Disk Mode.

 

[Rodan52]

My apologies, I should have magnified the screen shot. Yes, it is the Source that's full. You no doubt have quite a few snapshots of the device if you haven't done a backup since September.
How much do storage do you have left on the older device?

 

[Mike Boreham]

You no doubt have quite a few snapshots of the device if you haven't done a backup since September.

Time Machine snapshots are not kept indefinitely. They are discarded as the normal TM rules. Shouldn't be more than 24 or 25. They can be quite big depending what has been deleted.