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

Same Here. MBP M1 Max and Monterey 12.0.1. Nothing works to correct problem. Has entirely filled my external G Force Pro Thunderbolt 3 12TB Hard Drive. Backed up entire MBP every hour and still said no first or last backup. Still shows no Time Machine Backups on G Force Drive when I go into finder and check. When is Apple going to correct these issues? This is unacceptable..

Agree - this is NOT fun to go thru these steps. I've been spending too much time to attempt several unsuccessful backups thought it's due to some issue on my end I even purchased a new external hard drive.

Hope Apple can address this issue soon and no data loss in between. :(

Re: your 3 steps (Big Sur)

(1) uninstalling antivirus as a solution: what other apps are likely to affect backups from TM to an external drive? An app that has 'full system access' (Syst Prefs/Security&Privacy), e.g. Albert (Spotlight alternative), iStat Menus, Disk Drill etc?

(2) my external drive fills one of the two USB-C drives directly (Mac Mini Nov 2020), so no joy there

(3) using Disk Utility to erase the external drive, then using TM in Syst Prefs to designate that drive (which also overwrites the Disk Utility formatting just performed), erases the entire contents of the external drive, including drive software supplied by its manufacturer on that drive, and I did not download any software to my working Mac Mini hard drive from any website, so no joy there.

Thanks for the Etrecheck reference, and your time.

Having assigned full disk access in Security/Privacy (Syst Prefs) I ran Etrecheck with no crashes anywhere or major issues. I do not run Sophos but I do run AVG. So swapping out to AVG probably would not solve anything in your situation. If there is a conflict by an app, Etrecheck did not reveal it to me. However, I do have an excess of apps that I have not used yet (new machine). So there could be plenty of conflicts.

I cannot exclude the backup drive from Spotlight Search by dragging it to the Privacy List, as you suggest. SystPrefs will not allow it.

I reformatted the backup drive as HFS+, GUID, but this was worse than APFS, GUID. The latter is the preferred, if not only, formatting for external drives on Big Sur/M1s and good for SSDs. I then used disk utility again and reformatted the external drive back to APFS, GUID.

I started in Safe Mode. I went to SystPrefs/TM and the entire screen for TM was blank (no blue TM drive logo or written options). I went to Finder and no list of folders/files after running a full backup. Again the TM icon in the menu bar continued to state "Waiting to complete first backup." SystPrefs/TM remained a blank screen before, during and after a full back up.

I am now on Attempt6 to create a recognizable first backup, having restarted the mac mini (no longer in safe mode). I reformatted as APFS in Disk Utility, SystPrefs/TM did not overwrite/alter this when I selected it as the backup drive. The result is that space is eaten from the drive, the icon still says "Waiting to complete..." and I cannot restore a single document from the completed backup.

I have CCC installed but have never run it.

Any more ideas?

Hi Old Toad,

Thanks for your interest. I posted two items, not having done this before I posted a description, not realizing you could attach the report at the same time. Realizing my error, I posted "EtreCheck Jan4 report" (with the report obviously) above the "EtreCheck Jan4" which was a brief description of the problem.

I will tomorrow remove all evidence of all antivirus software. I use that primarily for the extras that come with programs, like duplicate identification and removal, etc. I am surprised to be told that I dont need an antivirus software running ever.

Cheers.

Before launching into all the previous actions on this 'Won't Backup' trail and making yourself crazy,

look into the WhyNoSound and EarthLawQc resolution which seems best before doing lots of exotic stuff.

Wish I had before it started working!!

Well, 12.2 didn't change anything that I can tell. After letting Time Machine run overnight and again after a reboot today, Disk Space Analyzer still shows 1.27TB "inaccessible disk space" on my 2TB external SSD.

My hard drives are as follows:

Internal:

0. Macintosh HD: 2TB (356GB used)

External:

1. Seagate T7 SSD: 2TB (1.83TB used)
2. Seagate Backups Plus: 5TB (1.3TB used)
3. Seagate Backup Hub: 8TB (3.52TB used: Time Machine)

Aside from those, I have three 5TB external hard drives. Two are for CCC backups (onsite and offsite) and one Time Machine backup (offsite). None of those drives are currently connected.

Drive #0 (Internal SSD) is used for OS system files, applications, plugins, iTunes and an AIFF music library.

Drive #1 (External SSD) is only for music projects, sample libraries, etc. that are used with Ableton Live or Logic.

Drive #2 (External) is used for Photos, documents, user manuals and archived radio shows.

Drive #3 (External) is used exclusively for Time Machine

The other drives are all used for backup.

Drive #1 is my most important drive, since it contains my music projects, samples etc. which can be accessed quickly on the SSD. Unfortunately, this is where Time Machine seems to have dumped all of its Snapshots (fourteen that I can count when running First Aid on the disk).

The 1.27TB of "Inaccessible disk space" is not visible at all in Finder. It was only after I added up the disk space in the different folders, realized that it was nowhere near 2TB, and started using a disk analyzer utility that I noticed the issue. The only options that I see in Time Machine are to run it automatically and exclude certain drives or folders. The 8TB Time Machine backup disk is in the "excluded" list.

So I'm at a loss over what to do next. It's all supposed to work magically behind the scenes, except that it doesn't. Time Machine is still eating my most important hard drive for lunch by filling it up completely.

It just doesn't work.

Thanks for the info!

It confirmed my first reply.

I will forge ahead with the 12.2 install!!

P.S.

You fell into my trap. I pointed you in the right direction knowing you would do the research

I was to lazy to do. Thx again. Back to shoveling snow!!

Well, I hope some of it was helpful, anyway. I'm more puzzled than anything.

After turning Time Machine off for a good six hours yesterday, I restarted it again. In Terminal, I entered "tmutil listlocalsnapshots /" and noted that there were only four Local Snapshots. Since then, Time Machine has been doing its thing, presumably, and there are now nine Local Snapshots (see second attachment).

I've been very careful today not to add, move, or delete any large amounts of data such as sample libraries, etc. But each time I right click on my external 2TB SSD, and choose "more info," it shows 1.83TB used, never changes at all. So maybe some of the remaining Local Snapshots are so large that when Time Machine deletes the old ones, no space is freed up?

I could turn Time Machine off for a full 24 hours, and then I believe all of the Local Snapshots would be deleted from the 2TB External SSD. Then, if the drive still remains full, something would seem wrong? I also did a "Quick Look" from Finder on the drive, and it shows "1.27TB purgeable" (see picture below). This corresponds exactly to the "inaccessible disk space" shown by Disk Analyzer.

My hunch here is that the Local Snapshots are not being purged, even if Time Machine is deleting the oldest ones over the last 24 hours. Otherwise, "get info" should fluctuate and not constantly show 1.83TB used? And again, no idea why these Local Snapshots are on my external drive. I thought the idea was for Mac OS to store them on the primary internal drive, so the last 24 hours of backups could still be accessed if on the road with only the laptop, for example.

Lastly, I've attached another Etrecheck report, just in case it might be helpful to determine what's going on. Best of luck to everyone with 12.2!

Me thinks that apples snapshot processing and APPS purgeable drive space processing isn't as

sophisticated as we may think. Easier to fill purgeable then turn back to delete old snapshots etc. Snapshot

record sizes may vary. So what to do, hold the entire space.

What we also don't know is the other things Apple uses the space for.

Back to the snow!

Same problem. iMac 2017, fully loaded. A second, nearly identical iMac does not have this problem. Backup is on a NAS. I deleted my TM backup (that was a challenge, as TM does not want to be deleted, many files were "Resource Busy"). Initiated a new TM backup, having lost my backup history..... All worked well, until it did its next scheduled backup. Now, it's still "waiting to complete first backup". I tried all the tricks above, except for deleting again and running the first backup in Safe Mode. That's a problem: Safe Mode runs much slower; I have many files (first backup takes about 24 hours). Still stuck -- came here and found this is an Apple problem.

Apple: please fix this. A failing backup and lost backups is a very serious problem.

The good news:

Time Machine completed the first backup on my Seagate 5TB Backups Slim drive (OS 12.1, regular mode, not safe mode):

So now I have both an onsite and offsite Time Machine backup.

The bad news:

My external 2TB SSD, which I use exclusively for music, still appears to be full of unpurged TM Local Snapshots. This causes my external SSD to appear full when it's not, and the space used never decreases.

Again, my Time Machine backups are run using dedicated hard drives (one for onsite, one for offsite). TM is writing the Local Snapshots to my external SSD rather than the primary, internal hard drive. I can determine that the external drive is not full by either:

1) Opening each folder, writing down the total size and adding them up (tedious), or

2) Using a third party utility such as Disk Space Analyzer, which reveals 1.27TB of "Inaccessible Disk Space." Listing the Local Snapshots in Terminal shows that they are present on this drive, but the file size of the snapshots isn't indicated.

Again, I would like to know why these Local Snapshots are on my external SSD and not the primary internal laptop drive, and why they are never purged, causing my external SSD to constantly show that it's nearly full.

Congrats!!!

You have done what we have learned over the years (releases) and that is not to get on the "bleeding" edge!

Let others do the live "beta" testing for the big software houses benefit.

Like you, wait for the release fixes to roll in.

Congrats again!

SmokenSound wrote:

Thank you, but the first thing i did is go thru those articles.

reformat the drive and start a new