M1 + Monterey Wont Backup. "Waiting to complete first backup"

I backed up my MacBook Pro 14" and two external hard drives yesterday using Carbon Copy Cloner (secondary backup to Time Machine), and had a similar experience as with the Time Machine backup. My external Seagate One Touch 5TB external backup drive was formatted as APFS with GUID Partition, and I had created three volumes, one for each hard drive (one internal and two external).

The backup from the first two hard drives completed successfully. The backup from the third hard drive (5TB Seagate Backups Plus) completed with errors. I also received a message that the disk had ejected improperly. All hard disks were connected via a UGreen USB C to USB A four port hub.

When I tried reconnecting the backup One Touch hard disk, it wouldn't mount, nor show up in DIsk Utility or System Report. I connected it to my old Mid 2012 MacBook Pro Unibody, and it was recognized. I then plugged the backup One Touch hard disk into a Sabrent USB C to Ethernet plus 3 port USB A hub, which was connected on the left side USB C port. Carbon Copy Cloner could not complete the backup from the third hard drive (5TB Seagate Backups Plus, which contains mainly pictures, including two large Photos libraries).

After reviewing some troubleshooting tips on Seagate's website, I booted the 14" MacBook Pro into Recovery mode and ran the Carbon Copy Cloner backup from the third drive (5TB Seagate Backups Plus), and the backup completed successfully.

Then I formatted another Seagate One Touch 5TB drive as APFS with GUID Partition and created three volumes (this is a CCC offsite backup disk). The disk was still empty, aside from any files related to the formatting and volume creation. I had stepped away for awhile, and came back to the "hard disk ejected improperly" error message.

After doing some more research, I found a suggestion to tick "Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off," and also "put hard disks to sleep when possible." These options are found in Monterey under User Preferences, Battery, Power Adapter. There are separate options for Battery mode, but since I only run backups with the power adapter attached, I didn't change those.

All of this makes me think that perhaps the backup hard disks were improperly ejected when Mac OS put them to sleep while the backup was running, be it Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner. It didn't seem to happen after booting in Recovery mode, so perhaps the sleep options are turned off there? I don't know for sure if this was an issue with the backups not completing properly, but it's possible.

I had also verified that Time Machine wasn't backing up the CCC backup disks, and that Sophos Antivirus wasn't scanning the backup disks. I did see a suggestion to disable all antivirus programs while backups are running, but this is not practical. The laptop should be protected from viruses at all times, and there was no issue with it running on Catalina with the 2012 MacBook Pro.

I should know more after my CCC offsite backup completes, but this may take a day or two, so thought I'd share my findings so far.

DonH229 wrote:

... All hard disks were connected via a UGreen USB C to USB A four port hub.

When I tried reconnecting the backup One Touch hard disk, it wouldn't mount, nor show up in DIsk Utility or System Report. I connected it to my old Mid 2012 MacBook Pro Unibody, and it was recognized. I then plugged the backup One Touch hard disk into a Sabrent USB C to Ethernet plus 3 port USB A hub ...

I had also verified that Time Machine wasn't backing up the CCC backup disks, and that Sophos Antivirus wasn't scanning the backup disks. I did see a suggestion to disable all antivirus programs while backups are running, but this is not practical. The laptop should be protected from viruses at all times, and there was no issue with it running on Catalina with the 2012 MacBook Pro.

You have a complex setup and would need to simplify some things to figure out what the root cause is for your anomalies.

(1) Uninstall Sophos Antivirus completely, even if just temporarily. Antivirus software interferes with normal MacOS operations. It might be related to your slow, interrupted backups, etc. Yes, the laptop should be protected from viruses at all times, but it already is, without Sophos Antivirus. The Monterey MacOS is on a read-only area of the disk and cannot be modified by you nor by any nefarious software you might be running. So a virus cannot get into your system. Sophos Antivirus is superfluous and can cause harm by interfering with normal operations.

(2) Try running without the USB hub. Even if you can only connect a subset of your drives, see if they behave normally without the hub.

(3) If you are using the Seagate bundled disk software/utilities, uninstall and remove it from both the Mac and the drives. That can also interfere and cause unexpected disk behaviors.

The idea is to get into a configuration that works properly with ZERO anomalies. Like most people have, most of us just use Time Machine and cloning software with multiple external drives and have no such issues. Once you get your setup into a clean state, you can then add things back slowly and test to make sure they have not returned.

Also, you will get a lot of additional eyes on your problem by downloading and running Etrecheck and posting the results here using the Additional Text button below that looks like a piece of paper with one corner folded over. Anything else that interferes with normal MacOS functions will likely show up in the report and someone will be able to flag that for you to address.

M1 + Big Sur Wont Backup. "Waiting to complete first backup"

I have a mac mini (Nov 2020), new, and a SanDisk Extreme Pro 2TB portable hard drive (January 2022), new. I can run TM, space is taken on the external drive. But the information in the menu bar/TM states "Waiting to complete first backup". Finder reveals no data in the external hard drive, and no mention of future scheduled backups. I placed a test Pages file on the desktop, noting the time. Waited 3 hrs. Went into TM, went back to 3 hrs ago, selected the file, restored it--no problem. Is this just a case of the icons, system pref TM, and Finder info simply not recording the work that is in reality being done? Regardless, I run backups so I dont lose data so I will abandon TM and run CCC and/or SuperDuper! Both of these backup programs in the $30 range will backup your data, but not whole APFS systems that are bootable. Kudos to them for trying to work with Apple OS and don't begrudge them charging for a download. Clearly a case of Apple getting ahead of themselves and failing to give us viable options and solutions while they work it out (anybody missing HFS+?). And developers options and solutions...

steve626 wrote:

Even if you reformat the drives and wipe them, if you installed the drive manufacturer software on your Mac (like I suspect you did for the One Touch drive at least), it is still there potentially impacting the drives' functions. The only way to troubleshoot this is to remove those tools completely (uninstall).

Turning Sophos "off" is not enough, it should be 100% removed/uninstalled. If the problems go away, you can always try installing it again but it has installed a slew of items and permeates your system. And it's crashing, repeatedly, a sure sign of a problem.

One of your Seagate external drives is APFS format 5 TB HDD and it appears to be running off USB 2? That is a slow interface, plus HDD + APFS is an extremely slow combination. This combination could bring things to a halt, literally, plus your antivirus is trying to inspect every byte to/from that HDD, making it even slower! This looks like a horrible combination to me. It could slow any system down to the point of freezing (which could cause a disk to eject).

What are those many dozens of other things, are those music programs? There are scores of them, are they all compatible with Monterey?

No, I've never installed any hard drive software on my laptop. The first thing I do after opening the box is plug in the drive and reformat it using disk utility, no program installs, so this shouldn't be an issue.

I have removed Sophos using the Sophos Home Removal package, and it completed the uninstall successfully.

All hard drives are USB 3.0. The hubs are also USB 3.0, but perhaps one was operating slower for some reason?

As for the installed programs, most of those are music plugins that run with Ableton Live and Logic Pro. The ones that haven't yet been rewritten for M1 Silicon should run using Rosetta. Since many are from bundles, it's just going to be trial and error testing them out and deleting or disabling ones that don't work.

I upgraded my mid 2012 Macbook Pro 15" Unibody to the Macbook Pro 14" since the 2012 laptop was running hot using Ableton Live with only a small number of plugins. The OS was also no longer supported after Catalina, which was one of the worst Mac operating systems for music production and may have contributed to the problems.

Now for the current update:

I reformatted a Seagate 5TB Backups Plus disk last night as APFS / GUID Partition and started another Time Machine backup. This disk is intended to be kept as an offsite backup. I plugged the disk directly into the first USB C port on the left side of the laptop using an Apple USB C to USB A adapter cable.

After letting the backup run overnight, Time Machine has been showing "Waiting to Complete First Backup" for at least the last six hours, however. I followed a suggestion above to run a "device lock assertion" log from Terminal, and that resulted in a whole page full of errors (attachment: "Time Machine Log - Failed").

I also ran another EtreCheck report and have attached it. This contains a lot of old information, so only items with dates 7 January 2022 or newer would relate to the new Time Machine backup.

I really don't know how to go about fixing so many errors, so will try reformatting the backup disk again as APFS / GUID Partition, rebooting into Recovery Mode and running the Time Machine backup again. That worked for my onsite Time Machine backup, so maybe it will work again with the offsite one. Will update again with the result once it finishes.

DonH229 wrote:

All hard drives are USB 3.0. The hubs are also USB 3.0, but perhaps one was operating slower for some reason?

<Time Machine Log - Failed.log>

Your earlier Etrecheck report had this ... note the 480 Mbits/s USB which is USB 2, hence I asked about that. I don't see that in your more recent Etrecheck report. You mentioned multiple hubs, I think they are complicating the situation here and some of their ports might not be USB 3. Have you tried a "clean" Time Machine setup, remove all Time Machine disks from the Preferences, reformat a clean external drive, then use it for Time Machine plugged in directly to your Mac (not through a hub)?

disk4 - Seagate One Touch HDD 5.00 TB

External USB 480 Mbit/s USB

disk4s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk4s2 [APFS Container] 5.00 TB

disk5 [APFS Virtual drive] 5.00 TB (Shared by 4 volumes)

disk5s1 - O****************p (APFS) (Shared - 975 KB used)

disk5s2 - O**************************B (APFS) (Shared - 695.77 GB used)

disk5s3 - O****************************B (APFS) (Shared - 308.63 GB used)

disk5s4 - O********************************e (APFS) (Shared - 1.28 TB used)

To DonH229,

Yep, but if you want to use Time Machine now--bypass the, in your case, FindMy folder by listing it in SystPref/TimeMachine exclusions. The trick lies in finding out what is creating the conflict with TM making a full backup. Everybody has a different conflict, whether with FindMy, Metadata or presumably and exasperatingly a long list of alternatives. All revealed via a line in Terminal: log show --info --style compact --predicate '(subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine") && (eventMessage like[cd] "Failed * acquire device lock assertion*")' --last 48h

The other "solutions" like running FirstAid, plugging in the ExDrive directly to your machine, booting in safe mode, emptying the trash, using USB-C drives, not using a hub,... are not that useful (more hopeful than anything).

Save yourself a lot of time, uninstalling antivirus is a nightmare and not required. And this is not an iCloud problem either. I don't use it.

I agree that the problem lies solely in the software (not which hardware external drive or transfer speed from which you suffer otherwise) Apple OS interface with TimeMachine due to APFS changes, and we're being experimented on like lab rats, but rather than vent I'd rather resolve. So I thank those who introduced me to the above command line. Please, Apple, resolve the issue for BOTH Big Sur and Monterey users. Thank you.

Or, maybe it's "working too well." I found an article on AppleInsider that explains how Time Machine makes "Local Snapshots" on the "Primary Drive," one each hour for the last 24 hours. If a large number of files have been changed (likely the case here, since I was doing my best to free up space on the drive as it looked full), the "Local Snapshots" can be large.

The oldest of the "Local Snapshots" is deleted when the drive is full. The suggestion to clear the "Local Snapshots" was to turn off "Backup Automatically" in Time Machine, wait awhile, and then re-enable automatic backup.

So I have turned off "Back up Automatically" and will re-enable it later tonight. The article also discusses some other Terminal commands that can be used to view and delete the "Local Snapshots."

I don't quite understand why these "Local Snapshots" are on my external drive rather than the system drive, unless Time Machine just writes them onto whatever drive has the most changes?

In summary, it appears that I was in a "continuous loop" of deleting and moving files off my external drive to free up space since it was nearly full, yet doing this created larger "Local Snapshots" which filled up the free space that I had just created. And I've been trying to "downsize" the drive for at least a week now, yet it always shows nearly full after right-clicking and choosing "get info." The folder file size doesn't show up when looking at the drive using "Finder," but using a third party disk analyzer showed me the storage space used by each folder, and also the huge amount of "Inaccessible Disk Space." I really hope that I'm onto something here and this is not another dead end, as this ordeal has been exhausting!

Here's the article from AppleInsider in case it helps anyone else:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/26/how-to-delete-time-machine-local-snapshots-in-macos

FYI: Updated 12.1 to 12.2. I again ignored doing Safe Mode stuff but had to do first TM backup using my owners

user.

Also for kicks I did the following:

(this is your stuff which I stole to post elsewhere)

Here's the article from AppleInsider in case it helps anyone else:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/26/how-to-delete-time-machine-local-snapshots-in-macos

Backups are moving right along.

I would have turned off Time Machine Auto Backups and do one per day!

I believe the problem stems from in prior releases time machine would write a pointer labeled "Latest" for .backupbundles

that contained pointers ot changes for the last TM cycle. That pointer isn't being written so TM don't believe it's ended

so "let's keep write data".

[Edited by Moderator]

DonH229 wrote:

<Etrecheck Report 20220104.log>

Many thanks for the suggestions, I have run Etrecheck and attached the report, looks like something keeps crashing with Sophos. I have read a few articles about whether antivirus protection is advisable for hardware running MacOS, and some said yes, but suggested running AVG or MalWareBytes to prevent malware/adware.

After turning off the hard drive and system sleep options, my offsite Carbon Copy Cloner backup completed successfully. The third external drive, which was about 1.2TB full, took a little over 16 hours to back up though.

I also excluded the backup drive from the Spotlight Search by dragging it to the Privacy List. The list remains blank after the drive was added, but the drive no longer shows up under "Locations" on the left side in Finder, so it must have worked. I have created a separate discussion post here regarding the Spotlight Search Privacy List, might be a bug or something.

Since I reformat the backup drives as APFS with GUID Partition, Disk Utility erases everything on the them, so there's no third party software installed. I still need to run a Time Machine backup to keep offsite, so will turn Sophos off before doing that, but wanted to leave it on for now so that the Etrecheck report would include any errors from it.

Even if you reformat the drives and wipe them, if you installed the drive manufacturer software on your Mac (like I suspect you did for the One Touch drive at least), it is still there potentially impacting the drives' functions. The only way to troubleshoot this is to remove those tools completely (uninstall).

Turning Sophos "off" is not enough, it should be 100% removed/uninstalled. If the problems go away, you can always try installing it again but it has installed a slew of items and permeates your system. And it's crashing, repeatedly, a sure sign of a problem.

One of your Seagate external drives is APFS format 5 TB HDD and it appears to be running off USB 2? That is a slow interface, plus HDD + APFS is an extremely slow combination. This combination could bring things to a halt, literally, plus your antivirus is trying to inspect every byte to/from that HDD, making it even slower! This looks like a horrible combination to me. It could slow any system down to the point of freezing (which could cause a disk to eject).

What are those many dozens of other things, are those music programs? There are scores of them, are they all compatible with Monterey?

Many thanks for the detailed suggestion. Before doing anything else, I'm going to reformat the backup drive APFS / GUID Partition, reboot into Recovery Mode and run the Time Machine backup again.

This is a second Time Machine backup that I will keep in an offsite location. The first Time Machine backup, my onsite one, didn't complete ("Waiting for first backup to complete"), so I ran it again once in Recovery Mode and it's been ok for over a week now.

Now whether backing up in Recovery Mode is advantageous over excluding certain files, I don't know. But my thought is that I haven't (to my knowledge) created these widgets, so Time Machine should do it's thing and back them up properly. Of course, if the backup fails again, then I'll try excluding those files.

As for the USB 3.0 vs. 2.0 speed, this laptop is a new MacBook Pro 14" that arrived fresh from China in late November 2021. The hubs (UGreen USB C to 4 port USB A adapter, and Sabrent USB C to 3 port USB A plus Ethernet adapter) are brand new. The cables all came with the USB 3.0 external drives and haven't been switched or replaced. So everything should, in theory, operate at USB 3.0 speed. I even double checked the specs for the hubs, since some brands throw in an odd 2.0 port, but these are all USB 3.0 ports.

My old USB A 7 port powered hub wasn't compatible with the USB C ports of the MacBook Pro 14", so it has taken quite some time to find a solution since I still need USB A ports for my audio interface, wireless mouse, three hard drives, Traktor and Ableton Push Controllers, and an external webcam. And the WIFI with Vodafone here in Berlin is not stable, so I also need an Ethernet adapter. It's been all but impossible trying to find a USB C to 7 port USB A hub, but I believe these two hubs are working ok so far.

And on that note, the clock has just struck midnight here in Berlin, so I'll provide any further updates after the backup tonight. And I'm all for the beer, but just got a corona booster shot a few days ago and am supposed to wait a week. But I'll have two of them in a week to make up for it!

TM is taking Snapshots every hour. May not start deleting until drive is full.

(Now that I have stated the obvious I have no solution for removing snapshots)

To keep this from continuing to happen explore unchecking 'Back Up Automatically' and using "TimeMachineEditor".

It gives you options for controlling backups/snapshots. Have used for years and it continues to work across releases!

Happy Time Machining!

I unearthed a five year old post about this "purgeable space" issue, and one Apple Developer solved it by unticking "Back Up Automatically" in Time Machine Preferences, rebooting, and again ticking "Back Up Automatically."

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/50126

I just tried it, and can add that this didn't resolve the issue for me. Anyhow, seems that this is nothing new, as five years ago was long before the introduction of APFS format with Time Machine hard drives. One person talks in the above thread about how he spent hours with Apple Support getting nowhere. Here we are five years later, same story!

SmokenSound wrote:

• So i encountered this issue with my newly purchased M1 MBA as soon as i updated to Monterey :

New MacBook air M1 (originally Big Sur) -> updated to Monterey out of the box -> transferred user files and folders via Migration assistant from another M1 mac (was already on Monterey)

After successful transfer:

Fresh 2Tb backup drive was dedicated to TimeMachine backup and started backing up with no issues (approx 700Gb Backup size)

•

After successful run finishing 100% of backup, time machine showed - Last backup (none), Previous Backup (none), TimeMachine icon on top bar said "Waiting to complete first backup", Time Machine preferences pane said next backup .. this time ..

Waited until next backup, it backed up a bit more from 20 to 100% , but same result. "Waiting to complete first backup", next backup is .. .

Clicking backup now ended in another full 4hr backup run with same result.

-Important to mention that space on backup drive was used (after second-third run 1.5TB) but if i open the drive - its empty. No backup folders, no structure)

-4th run of "backup now" ended in message that drive is out of space ... duh, but still no files or folders on backup drive

-Did it with two different drives (last one was SSD to save time) - same results

Temporary solution was found with help of Apple Support :

Boot into safe mode and then perform backup from there.

This time it was a success and finally i have completed visible backup on external drive.

Hope it will help anyone who encounters same issue, and we will be able to find a true solution to this problem.

At this time i will probably perform my next backups in safe mode also, so it wont "corrupt" my current good backup. So its not really a long term solution.

Trouble Shooting Time Machine

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/time-machine-troubleshooting-mh15653/mac

I’m having trouble backing up on Time Machine with my new computer

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252851367?answerId=255366265022#255366265022

I have had the same problem, on a new 2021 MBP M1 Max that was installed as a new device (i.e., no migration from older device). After erasing a new 4TB external drive (APSF format), and setting up Time Machine, the back up looks like it is occurring normally, but at the end I have "Waiting to Complete First Backup" perpetually in the menu bar, and "none" listed in System Preferences under "Oldest backup" and "Latest backup".

I tried booting into safe mode, where I again erased the external drive (APSF Case Sensitive format) and set up Time Machine. Again, looked like it backed up normally, but still having the same errors. Disk Utility shows 500 GB used on the drive, but Finder shows no files in the drive (with hidden files shown, there is a small ".Spotlight-V100" folder that takes up a few KB).

I'm hoping my computer doesn't crash.

[Edited by Moderator]