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Difficulty with Time Machine back-up: "Preparing backup..." appears stalled

Have set up an external SSD for Time Machine in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, the partition dedicated for Time Machine is 500GB. My files for back-up consume 192GB of the 1.12 TB Macintosh HD hard-drive. I'm running macOS Catalina 10.15.7.

The estimated size of full backup is 578GB; I am unclear on where this estimation comes from. Does Time Machine also backup Cloud files? Time Machine has been "Preparing backup..." for some hours now and does not appear to perform the backup.

Oldest backup: None

Latest backup: None

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Aug 3, 2021 8:19 AM

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Posted on Aug 3, 2021 8:56 AM

jvcw23 wrote:

Never mind, I deleted the attempted backup files and started fresh, this time it worked.

if your Time Machine back-up: "Preparing backup..."

re-appears it typically indicates a drive operating in a state of failure— your best course of action is replace the drive.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-you-need-to-create-a-new-backup-mh34042/11.0/mac/11.0

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Top-ranking reply

Community+ 2024

Level 10

188,424 points

Aug 3, 2021 8:56 AM in response to jvcw23

jvcw23 wrote:

Never mind, I deleted the attempted backup files and started fresh, this time it worked.

if your Time Machine back-up: "Preparing backup..."

re-appears it typically indicates a drive operating in a state of failure— your best course of action is replace the drive.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-you-need-to-create-a-new-backup-mh34042/11.0/mac/11.0

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Level 1

4 points

Aug 3, 2021 8:47 AM in response to jvcw23

Never mind, I deleted the attempted backup files and started fresh, this time it worked.

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Difficulty with Time Machine back-up: "Preparing backup..." appears stalled

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