Time Machine “Waiting to complete first Backup”

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Level 1

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Time Machine “Waiting to complete first Backup”

Hi, I know this question has been posted many times before, and I have tried all the fixes I could find. Apple Support said they couldn't help me unless I update to Ventura. I am on the latest Big Sur 11.7.1 My previous Time machine external drive died so I am trying to start a new Time Machine external drive but after each backup it say “Waiting to complete first Backup,” “Latest Backup: None,” there are no backups in the Time Machine folder, and with each subsequent backup attempt it eventually fills up the entire drive which it never did before.

I have tried all the fixes i read about on Apple forums:

In Terminal searching for the Time Machine errors and trying to exclude those folders from the backups (all of the errors were Deleted Users Local Snapshots that I could not even find on the computer). All of the errors were different entries for this location 2022-11-06 02:08:16.933 E backupd[656:f286] [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/[USER] MacBook Air M1/2022-11-06-020815/Data/Users/Deleted Users/[USER]/Library/Metadata error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

In recovery mode running disk utility repair on both the computer drive and Time Machine drive,

booting into safe mode,

In Sharing, changing the name of the computer,

using Terminal to find and delete previous Time Machine snapshots.

Thank you for your help.

MacBook Pro 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Nov 6, 2022 12:33 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tesserax

Level 10

152,013 points

Nov 8, 2022 5:50 PM in response to Dbs40

To get a more accurate picture of what is going on during a Time Machine process would be to review the Time Machine logs. An excellent free utility for that is Mints by The Eclectic Light Company.

With it, you can run a backup. When it fails, you can then use this app to review each log entry which will directly relate to the numerous TM processes to see where it failed. Local snapshots are a part of the TM backup process, but sometimes, then can get corrupted. Another issue may be too little space available on the source drive.

I suggest giving the following articles a read before trying this app out for yourself:

Time Machine 17: Using utilities to solve problems - The Eclectic Light Company
Time Machine 16: Reading a normal backup in Catalina using Mints - The Eclectic Light Company

Hmm, I also find it interesting that Apple would refuse to assist you unless you upgrade to Ventura.

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Answer 2

allen_31

Level 2

325 points

Nov 7, 2022 2:07 AM in response to Dbs40

Time machine is a main backup utility for mac users offered by Apple. But sometimes time machine unable to backup your data and shows error like Time machine backup failed, or Time machine unable to complete backup etc.

Here are few DIY fixes to resolve the time machine backup failure issue:

1. Check external hard drive’s file system.

2. Check free disk space on external hard drive.

3. Check for junk files or other unwanted data as it might be causing problem.

4. Check if the Mac software is updated.

5. Try restarting your Mac.

6. Check if the mac and the backup drive connected to the same network.

By checking the above issues, you might resolve the time machine backup failure issue.

Hope it helps!

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Answer 3

Dbs40 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2022 10:40 AM in response to Dbs40

I found a long thread on MacRumors with more suggestions about how to add the exclusions to Time Machine preferences that are found in the Terminal error log, and I re-added all my exclusions and some general ones and it worked now. I did it all at once so I don't know which one was the right one, will have to determine.

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Answer 4

Dbs40 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2022 10:46 AM in response to Dbs40

One of them was this folder /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ which only appears while Time Machine is backing up, and I specifically added it (through Terminal, the only option) while Time Machine was backing up so it successfully added to the list without an error since it only existed during the Backup. That was probably it.

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Answer 5

Dbs40 Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2022 6:07 PM in response to Tesserax

Thank you, it seems just deleting the folder with my name in Deleted Users has fixed the problem. I don’t even need any more exclusions in Time Machine anymore.

It was frustrating they would only jump right to updating the OS without looking at the causes I found that seemed to indicate a different problem.

I’ll look at that site thanks.

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Time Machine “Waiting to complete first Backup”

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