I had been assuming that my time machine was working and automatically backing up. After a repair I noticed I had lost my quicken, so checked backups and there are none. I have a MacBook Air 2018 on Big Sur. My back up disc is an ATC. The ATC has a folder for time machine backups. I've just done a manual backup and there is a sparse bundle, but outside the folder, but the time machine preferences still continually say preparing backup. I would really like to set everything up to do automatic backups so that I don't have to worry. Can anyone advise me please?