I upgraded to High Sierra yesterday and started a backup over an hour ago and it's still showing "preparing backup." Is this normal? I have a terabyte hard drive with 449 gigabytes available.
Mac Pro, Quad-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
The normal operation of Time machine uses a shortcut called the File System Event Store, a list of recent folders that have changed. Users who do a major upgrade, as you just did, find that the File System Event Store is overwhelmed by the changes, and not usable by Time machine for computing which files need to be backed up. This forces Time Machine to do "deep traversal" which can take all afternoon, before it can begin the actual copying of files.
It is likely NOT stuck. It is likely operating as designed. You just have to wait it out. Eventually it will have its list ready and will start copying files.
The normal operation of Time machine uses a shortcut called the File System Event Store, a list of recent folders that have changed. Users who do a major upgrade, as you just did, find that the File System Event Store is overwhelmed by the changes, and not usable by Time machine for computing which files need to be backed up. This forces Time Machine to do "deep traversal" which can take all afternoon, before it can begin the actual copying of files.
It is likely NOT stuck. It is likely operating as designed. You just have to wait it out. Eventually it will have its list ready and will start copying files.
You are absolutely right, Grant! It took about 1.5 hours of "preparing" and then it started backing up. I'm so relieved! It's always a bit scary upgrading to new system software. However, I should know better, that Apple has their act together. 🙂
Thank you!
Time machine is stuck on preparing backup after High Sierra upgrade
