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Initial Time Machine Backup Failures Increasingly Being Reported by Mac Users

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Apple's built-in Time Machine backup solution for macOS appears to be causing problems for some Mac users running the latest versions of Monterey and Big Sur, based on a steady trickle of reports on both the MacRumors Forums and Reddit.

time-machine-initial-backup-error.jpg

While some users are complaining of different issues with Time Machine on different Macs and versions of macOS that are hard to replicate, one common complaint in particular has surfaced regarding Time Machine backups not completing for M1 Mac users running Monterey 12.0.1 or Big Sur 11.6.1.

The issue seems to occur when Time Machine runs its first backup after either Monterey/Big Sur is first installed or the operating system is updated to the latest point release. Time Machine says it is "Waiting to Complete First Backup," but as it appears to be reaching its conclusion, Time Machine suddenly reports "Oldest backup: None" and "Latest backup: None," and then fails to offer any notice that the initial backup has successfully been performed at all.

MacRumors forum member likegadgets reports:
On a new machine (M1 MAX) with fresh update of Monterey 12.0.1, set up new (not migrated from a previous machine) It has been impossible to finish a first time machine. I have tried two freshly formatted drives (APFS encrypted) one mechanical and one SSD. The backup finishes takes a couple of hours, and the status is "waiting to complete first backup". My case is now with a senior Apple engineer. Trying new backup with drive directly connected to MBP and no encryption. Something is broken with Time Machine.
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Reddit user muhdakml reports:
I'm having the exact same issue. Been wrestling with it for a week now. Time machine runs its first back up. Then appears to not have run a backup at all. Snapshots are there, but no files in finder and the time machine is not recognized by other computers as a time machine that could migrate a backup. Apple seems to be saying this is an issue with Monterey, but they aren't sure why yet.
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Reddit user jg66ue reports:
I'm having the exact same problem with an identical setup (M1 Max, Monterey 12.0.1, TM on external Thunderbolt 3 hard drive). TM has not completed its first backup and many days...reports "Waiting to Complete First Backup". I've reformatted and restarted twice with the same result--TM does not report any completed backups.
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MacRumors forum member netnative reports:
I wish that I had searched the forums earlier. I have wasted countless hours troubleshooting through two reinstalls and with 3 different SSDs. My issue with Time Machine is that it performs backups but there are no notifications of their completion. Moreover, Time Machine reports "Oldest backup: None" and "Latest backup: None". Also, Finder does not show any files present on the SSD. However, Get Info reports gigabytes of disk usage. I purchased a $2,500 MacBook Pro 14-inch with the intention moving out of "Wintel". It is not going to happen — at least not now.
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Some users report clean installing macOS or running the first backup in Safe mode has sorted out the problem for them, but that's not the case for everyone and a universal solution remains hard to come by for most of those affected.

Some users speculate that the issue could be related to an unspecified change to the APFS format that Apple has quietly implemented in recent versions of macOS, but it's still not entirely clear what's going on. We've reached out to Apple for comment and we'll update this article if we get more clarity on the problem, but for those afflicted by the error, the advice for now is to use a third-party backup solution like Superduper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Article Link: Initial Time Machine Backup Failures Increasingly Being Reported by Mac Users
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/08/time-machine-initial-backup-error/
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Still the same for me on both my Mac mini (M1, 2020) and my MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021) running macOS Monterey 12.1 Release Candidate (21C51).

Me and several others have reported this via the Feedback-app on macOS Monterey 12.0.1 and 12.1 and it's been marked by Apple as "Potential fix identified - For a future OS update" so the fix won't come with the release of 12.1.

My temporary solution is to use Carbon Copy Cloner instead.
 
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RamGuy said:
Still the same for me on both my Mac mini (M1, 2020) and my MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021) running macOS Monterey 12.1 Release Candidate (21C51).

Me and several others have reported this via the Feedback-app on macOS Monterey 12.0.1 and 12.1 and it's been marked by Apple as "Potential fix identified - For a future OS update" so the fix won't come with the release of 12.1.

My temporary solution is to use Carbon Copy Cloner instead.
Click to expand...
I'm having issues as well to a Synology NAS. Stuck on waiting to backup for a while now!
 
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Robin Bonathan said:
not having issue, long term TM user.
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One thing to note is that it seems to be strictly Apple Silicon Mac's being affected. I haven't seen anyone running Intel X86 reporting any problems. My two older MacBook Pro 13-inch models don't have any issues like this running 12.0.1 or 12.1 either. It's just my Apple Silicon systems exhibiting the issue.

I have tried all the tricks. Clean install using 12.0.1 IPSW files. Running the first backup in Safe Mode. Manually excluding all the "com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople*" files that the debug logs are complaining about doesn't fix it for me either. The only thing that works for me is to exclude the entire /Library/ folder all together but then you loose much of the point with a system backup in the first place.

It even fails straight after a complete DFU restore of my system. If I do a full DFU restore using IPSW and the only thing I do is to configure my Mac mini and head straight into Time Machine and configure my backup it fails. Only on macOS Monterey that is, DFU restore back to Big Sur 11.6 and it works, but not on 11.6.1.
 
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Stopped using Time Machine years ago as so many issues and size of backups grew out of control, most of the times can't restore anything so needed to start again and deleting the backup from my NAS took hours and hours.

Carbon Copy Cloner much better and you can create bootable images from it
 
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I have a drive dedicated to Time Machine. Last week I discovered that it was corrupted and First Aid could not fix it. Not sure what caused this. I had to wipe the drive and start again. Now it's OK.
 
No problems with my M1 MacBook Air. I created a new Synology backup to try it out and it’s progressing as expected.

Edit: Bug confirmed. It is stuck on trying to complete.

2nd edit: I left my home network and opened my Air on a new network and I have a notification saying the backup completed. I'll check it out when back home to see if this is true.

3rd edit: Yes, my backup worked so maybe closing my computer, leaving the network, and coming back solved the issue?
 
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Time Machine has been broken since Catalina. Worked absolutely perfectly before then but the Catalina did something like making the backups APFS and since then I've had endless corruptions, takes 2-3 minutes to just load the view any time you change dates, backups take significantly longer etc as well as missing options like no longer being able to delete all backups of a particular folder/file.

Apples entire OS/Software has been getting less reliable for years and a backup is the thing you can always fall back to when the worst happens. But if the backup system is less reliable than the main OS then its worrying.
 
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What people still use time machine for data backups? isn't it the end of 2021.....

I dumped TM years ago. I had a great routine for backups with 2 rotating external drives with TM. My laptop died overnight, not a good situation and I quickly ran out and bought a new machine. Hooked up my TM drive, corrupted..... Hooked up Drive 2, corrupted. Ever since I have used either google drive or iCloud to backup critical files. With regards to software I just don't care it is simpler and usually better to just install it fresh. Haven't looked back.
 
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I last used Time Machine a year ago when I was backing-up my Lion bootable volume. All went buttery smooth the first and all subsequent times and so was in Mavericks, both OS are still in use, and didn't try to plug Mojave's TM. So there we're, older is better. It's not me, it's the reality of Apple's engineering. They reverse progress and yet are constantly rumbling about it.
 
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Those running into this can do:

Code: 
log show --style syslog --last 30m  --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info --debug

(adjust "last 30m" into something like "last 4h", maybe)

…to get a lot more detail on what went wrong.

You can also do:

Code: 
log stream --style syslog  --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "TimeMachine"' --info --debug

and then start another backup to get a live stream.
 
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While I was still holding out on High Sierra, I was using Time Machine backup since that was good enough, and it was, including saving me from SSD failure and a few system irreversible slowdowns/crashes. Ever since Big Sur and Monterey, Time Machine is not playing well and my previous backup drive is also failing, and until that moment I knew old Time Machine backup could not be migrated to a new drive.

Granted, my issue isn’t strictly the same as the one shown in the article, I abandon Time Machine ever since and go with CCC. Not perfect, but at least I have more flexible backup options rather than file-based Time Machine backup.
 
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Mine is completeley borked and has been for some time. Fortunately I also use Carbon Copy Cloner, non iCloud cloud and have a robust backup plan (iCloud is not really a backup option for me though I do use it).

TM is not to be trusted now at least till seen working if there is a fix through next version of OS.
 
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I only had to re-create full backups with Apple's Time Capsule product years ago. Restores (even for single files) would fail (I suspected the volume just became corrupted). It was also really slow.

For the past 4 years, I've been using a LaCie Thunderbolt 3 RAID (2 disks in RAID 1 config) with zero issues. Doing only a single full backup when obtaining a new Mac.

Eventually I want either a 4 or 6-disk unit so I can use RAID 10. For now, full backups take around 3 to 4 hours. But that will lengthen over time.
 
My new 14" M1Pro MacBookPro has yet to complete a successful Time Machine backup since I got it. Backups are done to two NAS boxes (really old ReadyNAS NV+ and a WD MyCloud) and I inherited the previous Big Sur backups from my old 2013 13" MacBook Pro. It goes through the motions of collecting files and transferring data and then tells me that the last completed backup was 4th November (the last backup from the intel Macbook Pro).

To see if the inherited backup was the issue I removed and re-added the MyCloud drive and chose to delete the existing backup rather than inherit it and this drive is now showing as awaiting completion of first backup and has been for about 2 weeks.

Had this issue on 12.0.1 and all the 12.1 betas.

Meanwhile my wife's 2017 12" intel MacBook is on 12.0.1 and is happily backing up to the ReadyNAS as it did on Big Sur.
 
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