Time Machine "Preparing" Message

[fenway824]

I started backing up on my external hard drive yesterday. Worked fine, but slow. Computer crashed late in the day. I reconnected external hard drive today. For an hour now I've been getting this message from Time Machine Backup saying "Preparing..." but nothing is happening. Any ideas?

 

[AlMac24]

Although I didn't have a system crash, as you did, Time Machine did crash on me first time. To rectify it, I told Time Machine to use 'No Drive' (or similar, I'm not at my Mac just now so this is from memory). Then I erased my external drive and re-selected it in Time Machine. On this occasion, the OS gave the drive a specific icon (which it didn't do first time round) and after a (max) 1 minute 'preparing' it started it's first backup.....

Hope this helps you!