Time capsule is stuck on "Prepairing Backup.."

[XheartcoreboyX]

Its connected wirelessly to my network, initial backup was done by ethernet..

Time machine works fine right now, but when its time to backup, its just stuck hopelessly on "Prepairing backup.." for long and it never actually starts the backup..

I tried to repair the permissions and the disk then restart but its still have the same issue..i have the latest updateds of airport utility, time machine and the latest build of leopard, everything is up to date.

thanks for any help.

 

[eerokk]

I have had this problem several times, but patience seems to be the cure. When I have been away from my Time Machine drive for a while, such as a vacation, it seems to take Time Machine a while to go through my entire directory looking for changes.

Last night it also took a while, but I was doing some significant hard drive cleanup and transfers between a couple externals, so I think this caused the long "preparing" stage.

My solution has been to start up the back up before going to bed. In the morning, the backup had completed successfully everytime.

 

[XheartcoreboyX]

^
The sad part is that i have done no changes at all to my files...i dont understand why it shall take this long?!

its the only Apple product that disappointed me for the last 4 years...

 

[Gloor]

ive had similar problems. Here is my thread

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573702/

 

[cdrtravis]

Given up on my Time Capsule as far using Time Machine goes. I've had all sorts of problems, including stuck on preparing and directory errors. If I drag and drop my home folder on the TC, it works just fine.

I've done factory resets, disk erases, deleted .plists and .inprogress files (when it'll let me). Occasionally, Time Machine will work properly only to fall over again a few days later.

The problem occurs on my Mac Pro, but Time Machine on my PowerBook is working just fine.

I see numerous people are having issues with Time Machine and Time Capsule.

 

[Batt]

I've had a Time Capsule for six months now and haven't had any major problems. I have had it appear to stick at "preparing backup", but if you just leave it alone it'll be fine. And it WILL take longer if you repair permissions or otherwise make relatively big changes to the data on your drive.

 

[icaruschris]

other option

I had the same problem - endless preparation, but no backup. When the backup volume is mounted, I see a bunch of folders with the dates that they were created. At the end of the list was a .inprogress file, which I put in the garbage can. It took a long time for the trash to cycle, but when it did, backups proceeded normally.