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Macintosh101

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 23, 2017
687
1,180
For anyone with the new M1 MacBook Pros running Monterey, are you having problems creating a time machine backup? It seems completely broken.

The first backup seems to complete but then says “waiting to complete first back up” (this never changes). In the Time Machine preferences it also says “oldest backup: None” and “latest backup: None”. None of the files are accessible in finder either, even though space has been used up on the time machine disk. I even tried creating up backup in Safe Mode which led to the same thing.

There is a big thread about it over in the Monterey section, and its also being reported on the discussion boards at Apple, reddit, etc. I just thought I would flag it up here for everyone and see if others with the new M1 MBPs were experiencing the same thing.

 
It seems to be a bug: just trigger a manual time machine backup and it'll show the times correctly and run / work as expected after that. Can access files either through the normal interface or directly through Finder as expected.
 
It seems to be a bug: just trigger a manual time machine backup and it'll show the times correctly and run / work as expected after that. Can access files either through the normal interface or directly through Finder as expected.
What do you mean by "manual backup"? If you mean me triggering the backup myself (click Time machine in menu bar and click "back up now", I tried this multiple times and had the same issue.
 
I received my 16 in. M1 Max MacBook Pro on October 26, 2021. From the first day I have observed the following issues with Time Machine: TM backs up the entire MacHD then reports in the TM menu bar “Waiting for TM to finish”. In the Finder TM shows no files whatsoever. clicking on Apple>About This Mac>Storage shows > 300 Gb on the TM drive.



i have tried the following, but NONE of these steps corrected the issue: I erased and reformatted as APFS my TM disk. I replaced the USB 3 WD 4TB TM disk with a new USB 3 Seagate 5TB HD formatted as APFS. I created a new Test User. I reinstalled Monterey. I selected TM in the Menu Bar and selected Backup Now. The described TM issues persisted throughout all of these changes. I have now disabled automatic TM backups since TM is not working properly.



I have spent more than 6 hours with Apple Support attempting to solve the problem without success. My active case has now been escalated to Apple Engineers and I am waiting to hear back from them. These TM issues are not unique to my M1 Max. They have been reported on two other Mac forums, and users on those forums have reported that erasing their MacHD and reinstalling Monterrey did not solve the TM issues.



i will report back on any further help that I get from Apple Engineers.
 
I received my 16 in. M1 Max MacBook Pro on October 26, 2021. From the first day I have observed the following issues with Time Machine: TM backs up the entire MacHD then reports in the TM menu bar “Waiting for TM to finish”. In the Finder TM shows no files whatsoever. clicking on Apple>About This Mac>Storage shows > 300 Gb on the TM drive.



i have tried the following, but NONE of these steps corrected the issue: I erased and reformatted as APFS my TM disk. I replaced the USB 3 WD 4TB TM disk with a new USB 3 Seagate 5TB HD formatted as APFS. I created a new Test User. I reinstalled Monterey. I selected TM in the Menu Bar and selected Backup Now. The described TM issues persisted throughout all of these changes. I have now disabled automatic TM backups since TM is not working properly.



I have spent more than 6 hours with Apple Support attempting to solve the problem without success. My active case has now been escalated to Apple Engineers and I am waiting to hear back from them. These TM issues are not unique to my M1 Max. They have been reported on two other Mac forums, and users on those forums have reported that erasing their MacHD and reinstalling Monterrey did not solve the TM issues.



i will report back on any further help that I get from Apple Engineers.
Yup, this about sums it up - I have followed similar steps. Apple need to get this bug fixed asap.
 
No problems restoring or backing up with Monterey and TM, but then I run TM on https://truenas.com

1. Backed up old '14 MBP before trade in
2. Restored new '20 M1 MBP from backup
3. Upgraded to Monterey
4. Been backing up successfully since
 
What do you mean by "manual backup"? If you mean me triggering the backup myself (click Time machine in menu bar and click "back up now", I tried this multiple times and had the same issue.
Yep, that's what I did and it worked fine after that. Sorry, can't help further if that didn't fix yours - maybe there's more than one bug?
 
I'm having the same problem. I get the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" message, even though it has repeatedly seemed to do the backup from 0 to 100% (over hours of copying). It just finishes and lists "Oldest Backup: None" and "Latest Backup: None". Backing up to a disk completely reformatted (APFS) for the purpose of using for time machine. If this is a Monterey issue, I hope they fix it quickly.
 
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