wd my cloud drive, time machine backup issues

WD's Jan 10th upgrade of MyCloud firmware to 5.19.117 removed support for AFP and now requires SMB connections. There are a number of articles on their support site. One item that I had to change is to turn on Oplocks for the share used for timemachine on your MyCloud. This fixed an issue where Timemachine would complain that the share didn't support timemachine.

I would also check if WD has a firmware upgrade for the cloud drive.. it is actually often well behind and people do experience more issues with the WD products.

For backups while travelling I would use a portable drive and just plug it directly into the computer by USB.. it is far less problematic than network backups. And if you use a low power disk or ssd it will be powered via the USB on the Mac as well.. so there is your UPS.

What Mac OS are you running?

Power outage means the inprogress file is still there.. and the Mac cannot restart the backup likely due to corruption..

The instructions for deleting the in progress file are all over the internet.

eg https://www.alphr.com/delete-time-machine-backups/

There are big changes at Big Sur (Monterey) Time Machine backup structure and I am not sure how to advise you.

Most references are prior to Catalina so even some changes in Catalina might not be reflected in those posts.

Personal opinion.. Time Machine has NOT been reliable for some time.

I strongly recommend using a different backup software eg Carbon Copy Cloner.. as a way to maintain a backup.

Also it is good idea to put network equipment including NAS on a UPS so you don't corrupt things.

Time machine sees the drive but when i try to backup it doesn't seem to be able to,( stuck on preparing. )

Since you had a power interuption, Time Machine has to run through a number of checks......including a scan of your entire backup file......before it will resume with backups.

Let "Preparing" run......even if goes an hour or more......until the backup process completes, or until you see an error message appear on screen. If you stop "Preparing", then Time Machine has to start all over again from the beginning of the check, and you get stuck n an endless loop.

If an error message appears, post back with the exact text of the message.