After I installed the 10.11.6 update (El Capitan) Time Machine is taking 6 hours so far "preparing backup". Before the update it worked fine. Is it a bug or is it normal to take this long?
The complete backup is less than 300 Gb.
External HD: 500 Gb LaCie connected to the FireWire port.
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7; 8 Gb RAM
I'd let it go over night or until it has finished. Then do a manual after it has finished. If the manual takes forever ... then hopefully you have a 2nd backup, and if so I'd wipe the TM drive clean; repaiar permissions on it, delete the timemacine .plist and start anew.
If it keeps "preparing" beyond your ability to tolerate it, then if you have a CCC or SD clone, I'd just wipe TM, get rid of the .plist, and start fresh.
Patience was the solution; thanks for the tips on backing up.
The .plist is in your Hard drive (probably Macintosh HD)>Library>Preferences
CCC and SD are Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper.
My preference is SuperDuper (though others like CCC).
You'll need a 2nd external or a partition on your current external for either to make sure you can roll back if any issues.
Here's the SD link ... https://www.shirt-pocket.com/
Thanks a lot. Overnight it'll be.
Couple of questions: where is the TM .plist? What are CCC and SD clones?
Time Machine "preparing backup" is taking hours
