My Time Machine is stuck on preparing backup for both my Western Digital external drives. This is a recent issue and I don't know it's related to the recent IOS update to Big Sur. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I've erased one of my backup drives in hopes that starting fresh would help, but so far no luck.
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.0
Hours is ok following a macOS upgrade, even a day perhaps, for each backup drive. Subsequent backups should take about as long as they always have though.
Don't interrupt it unless you want to wait for hours again.
This may be an indication the drive is failing. Please open Disk Utility (Applications - Utilities - Disk Utility) and run First Aid on it 2-4 times and if any errors appear, that would confirm my hunch.
Thank you all for your advice. I ran first aid on all devices several times and then was just patient. It took about 15 hours total. Just so different than I had experienced, I thought my drives were failing. Thanks!!
Stuck for how long? If Time Machine remains in the "preparing" stage on Mac - Apple Support
WD drives are considered the Yugos of external HDs. I would strongly recommend the 3TB version of:
Hours - it usually takes about 30-60 minutes at the most.
Time Machine stuck on preparing backup
