MacBook M1 16” time machine failure

Hi Pengranger,

I think I ran into the same issue as well when starting a new set of Time Machine backups. My M1 MacBook Air was running macOS Monterey 12.0.1, but each time the first backup went to completion, the status changed back to "Waiting to Complete First Backup". I was able to solve this error by reformatting my backup disk, and completing the first backup while booted into safe mode. Subsequent backups complete perfectly fine without safe mode.

Hopefully this helps!

I ran into the same problem setting up my MacBook Pro 14" M1 (Monterey 12.0.1, Drobo 5N2). The initial backup seemed to work at first but never finished ("Waiting to Complete First Backup"). Time Machine rescheduled the next backup for a few seconds later, backed up a couple of hundred MBs more but never completed. I let this commence over night to see if it might eventually finish but it never did.

Here's how I finally got it to work:

• Set up a new TimeMachine volume on the Drobo using Dashboard 3.6.1
• Mount created volume through Drobo Dashboard
• Activate Time Machine and select the volume on the Drobo
• Log in with the credentials for the Drobo
• Immediately shut down the Mac before first backup starts
• Boot into Safe Mode
• Let Time Machine do the initial backup in Safe Mode (finished fine, seemingly backup was larger than before, Drobo reported less unused space on the volume than after the other unfinished initial backup)
• Reboot
• Unmount Time Machine volume through Drobo Dashboard if it's automatically remounted
• Let Time Machine do another backup to make sure it still finds the volume and finishes properly

Subsequent hourly backups worked fine so far...

Hope this helps!

Sebastian

I, and others, have experienced the same problem with our M1 MacBook Pro's. I spent many hours on the phone with Apple Support regarding this issue. The Apple Senior Specialist that I worked with collected a bunch of diagnostic on my M1 Max and sent it to Apple Engineering. They reported back the next day that this was a known issue and that they were working on it. I posted a thread on this forum regarding this. Until this is resolved I have turned off Automatic TM backups and I am using Carbon Copy Cloner to make daily backups of my M1 Max 16 in. MacBook Pro.

Tom

Same problem here, at least we are not alone it seems. I will add that my hard drive information would reflect that a backup was in fact achieved, just the “last backup“ status does not update accordingly.

I’m expecting a call from a senior specialist any moment now and will update the thread if there’s any ETA on the fix.

Hi I managed to fix the issue for myself as well - I just had to re-partition my hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in Disk Utility and that seemed to do the trick, everything working well now.

No word back from the senior advisers lol.

Oh man I have been struggling with this again!

First drive mentioned above was a Seagate 2TB and erasing and reformatting, rebooting in safe mode, and then backing up worked. Now I have a second identical drive and the same process is not working.

I'm starting to wonder if it's trial and error. I sure don't want to reinstall Monterey.

Has anyone tried actually restoring from their finally successful backup?

I hope we aren't in for a surprise then as well. . .