Some Mac users are having problems with the Time Machine backup solution in the latest versions of Monterey and Big sur, based on reports on the MacRumors Forum and the Reddit.
While some users are complaining of different issues with Time Machine on different Macs and versions of macOS that are hard to replicate, one common complaint in particular has surfaced regarding Time Machine backups not completing for M1 Mac users running Monterey 12.0.1 or Big Sur 11.6.1.
The issue seems to occur when Time Machine runs its first backup after either Monterey/Big Sur is first installed or the operating system is updated to the latest point release. Time Machine says it is waiting to complete first backup, but as it appears to be reaching its conclusion, it suddenly reports "Oldest backup: None" and "Latest backup: None", and fails to offer any notice that the initial backup has successfully been performed at all.
A member of the MacRumors forum reports.
It has been difficult to finish a first time machine on a new machine with a fresh update of Monterey. I have tried two drives, one mechanical and one solid state drive. The status is waiting to complete the first backup. A senior Apple engineer is handling my case. Trying a new backup with no encryption. Time Machine is malfunctioning.
The user reports:
I'm also having the same issue. I have been wrestling with it for a week. The time machine has never back up before. It appears that there was no backup at all. Snapshots are there, but no files in finder and the time machine is not recognized by other computers as a time machine that could migrate a backup. Apple says that this is an issue with Monterey, but they are not sure why.
jg66ue reported:
I'm having the same problem with the same setup, which is M1 Max, Monterey 12.0.1, and an external Thunderbolt 3 hard drive. It has not completed its first backup in a long time. I've reformatted and restarted twice, and the same result has not been reported.
Netnative reports on the MacRumors forum.
I would have liked to have searched the forums earlier. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to fix the problem with three different types of SSDs. Time Machine does backups but there are no notifications of their completion. Time Machine reports the oldest and latest backups. There are no files present on the SSD. GetInfo reports gigabytes of disk usage. I purchased a MacBook Pro with the intention of moving out of "Wintel". It is not going to happen.
Some users report that clean installing macOS or running the first backup in Safe mode has solved their problem, but that's not the case for everyone and a universal solution remains hard to come by for most of those affected.
Some users think that the issue could be related to a change to the APFS format that Apple has quietly implemented in recent versions of macOS. If we get more clarity on the problem, we'll update this article, but for now, the best option is to use a third-party backup solution like Superduper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.
