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My 2015 Intel Macbook Pro successfully backed up to TM. Huzzah! I have no idea why our how but it went through with a second one as a test for good measure. Wishing you the same good fortune!
To clarify: I also have a 2019 MBP Intel i9 16". This one was upgraded to Monterey the day it was released and Time Machine works flawlessly on this one. The issue is with the 2021 M1 Max. The 2021's only OS option has been Monterey, This is the one with the issue. Set up as a fresh system
 
Yeah, it's the 2021 macbooks I think. Which is probably why they don't have a mass reported problem yet since many folks haven't gotten theirs yet.

I have now:

-erased all content and settings, reloaded a new monterey, migrated everything manually. didn't work.
-reloaded monterey and ran TM first in safe mode before touching anything else. didn't work.
-tried multiple different SSD drives - all new. Didn't work.
-deleted TM plist in library. restarted. tried again. didn't work.

What's even stranger is that even after I untether the drive from TM, reformat the drive, and eject the drive from the computer, TM is still seeing backup snapshots internally from the time I tried the run TM and it failed.

8 days I have been at this. Kills me that Apple has its users essentially beta test out of the box. Not the experience I wanted from a 5K dollar new piece of what appears to be good hardware.

Done with this until they figure out what is going on and release a new version of monterey that actually works.
 
Yeah, it's the 2021 macbooks I think. Which is probably why they don't have a mass reported problem yet since many folks haven't gotten theirs yet.

I have now:

-erased all content and settings, reloaded a new monterey, migrated everything manually. didn't work.
-reloaded monterey and ran TM first in safe mode before touching anything else. didn't work.
-tried multiple different SSD drives - all new. Didn't work.
-deleted TM plist in library. restarted. tried again. didn't work.

What's even stranger is that even after I untether the drive from TM, reformat the drive, and eject the drive from the computer, TM is still seeing backup snapshots internally from the time I tried the run TM and it failed.

8 days I have been at this. Kills me that Apple has its users essentially beta test out of the box. Not the experience I wanted from a 5K dollar new piece of what appears to be good hardware.

Done with this until they figure out what is going on and release a new version of monterey that actually works.
For now I am running two SupeDuper drives on two schedules. In the past the App has proven to be a solid backup. May invest in Carbon Copy if this is not resolved soon, so I have two backups via two methods. The Senior advisor helping me is off for a couple of days so I hope he follows up over the weekend. Other than that the M1 Max is performing great,
 
Hey guys, I don't remember if we've talked about this earlier in the thread or not, but has anyone looked at console, when time machine has not functioned correctly ? e.g. hanging on completion, or the other problems experienced?

Just wondering if there would be any meaningful messages logged, that would give a clue.
 
Reposting my message from Apple Forum:

I also have new MacBook Pro with M1 Max and macOS 12.0.1 installed. I attached my T5 Samsung SSD to start fresh TM backup, even formatted it properly using disk utility. Backup finished copying all 500 GB from my machine, but then same thing: it shows None/None for me too, saying Waiting to Complete First Backup. What?

Another strange thing is that backups do not appear in Finder. Visually my backup disk is empty, but this is simply not true, because I see it has 500 GB of space taken. Then it become more funny. I installed FileZilla, given it an access to all folders and disks and what I see in my backup disk is a backup.inProgress folder. So clearly backup finished but then something bad happen so finder cannot show it as I assume .inProgress folder is hidden.

Browsing the forum looking for similar problems I found a command than can trace recent backup and show full log:

Code:
clear; printf '\e[3J' && log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 48h | grep -F 'eMac' | grep -Fv 'etat' | awk -F']' '{print substr($0,1,19), $NF}'

From this log I found that backup copied successfully but then it couldn't proceed because considered my TM backup unmounted (but it was mounted all the time), and also there were bunch of errors related to not having permissions to write and read. Regarding permissions: I cannot set a read/write access to backup volume, because TM Backup application simply formats my disk in APFS (You can only read) and you have to stick with it, there is no even an option to add user/rights in Get Info menu, it just says "You can only read".

I spend entire day trying to fix it but couldn't succeed. I just formatted my disk into APFS and using it as a regular external drive and I don't have any issues with it (moving/storing files). I hope it is a bug in TM backup either in 12.0.1 or somehow related to these new MacBook Pros with new chips, so it can be fixed later.
 
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Result for above command after backup (encrypted this time):

Code:
2021-11-04 20:01:36  Finished copying from volume "Macintosh HD - Data"
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Saved back-up-later cache (Protected:13) at /Volumes/TM Backup 1/2021-11-04-184236.inprogress/.reservations.plist
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Records for BULRecordType
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Failed postflight for destination <APFSDestination /Volumes/TM Backup 1>
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-184235/Macintosh HD - Data'
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-11-04-184235.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-184235/Macintosh HD - Data source: Macintosh HD - Data
2021-11-04 20:01:37  Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)

After that all next backups fails as well, and looks like there is no merging happening (e.g. TM will backup all my 500 GB for the second time, like there were no copy before. Usually it suppose to copy only differences from previous backup).

P.S. I run this command couple more times and found more failed statements:

Code:
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople/Data/Library error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople/Data/Documents error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople/Data/tmp error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/Library error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/Documents error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"
2021-11-04 20:12:49  Failed to acquire device lock assertion for /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/vancoder/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetIntentsPeople/Data/tmp error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

Code:
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-201229/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-184235/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-035549/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-04-014803/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-03-231431/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-03-221138/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-11-04 20:25:06  Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-11-03-204729/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
 
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I received my 16 in. M1 Max MacBook Pro on October 26, 2021. From the first day I have observed the following issues with Time Machine: TM backs up the entire MacHD then reports in the TM menu bar “Waiting for TM to finish”. In the Finder TM shows no files whatsoever. clicking on Apple>About This Mac>Storage shows > 300 Gb on the TM drive.

i have tried the following, but NONE of these steps corrected the issue: I erased and reformatted as APFS my TM disk. I replaced the USB 3 WD 4TB TM disk with a new USB 3 Seagate 5TB HD formatted as APFS. I booted my M1Max in Safe Mode and ran TM. I created a new Test User. I reinstalled Monterey. The described TM issues persisted throughout all of these changes. I have now disabled automatic TM backups since TM is not working properly.

I have spent more than 6 hours with Apple Support attempting to solve the problem without success. My active case has now been escalated to Apple Engineers and I am waiting to hear back from them.

i will report back on any further help that I get from Apple Engineers.
 
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I thought I would post an update on my situation. As you know I initially created this thread based on my situation with TM being extremely slow on a late 2015 27" iMac. But after reformatting and starting fresh without an encrypted disk, got TM to function normally. Well, today was the first day I needed to depend on that new backup as I goofed up a VM i was using so wanted to quickly restore from the TM backup. Well, everything went as expected. I entered time Machine, chose a recent date of the file, and clicked restore. Took a bit over 20 minutes to copy a 39 GB file, but everything worked. So there are some TM successes with Monterey.
 
I received my 16 in. M1 Max MacBook Pro on October 26, 2021. From the first day I have observed the following issues with Time Machine: TM backs up the entire MacHD then reports in the TM menu bar “Waiting for TM to finish”. In the Finder TM shows no files whatsoever. clicking on Apple>About This Mac>Storage shows > 300 Gb on the TM drive.

i have tried the following, but NONE of these steps corrected the issue: I erased and reformatted as APFS my TM disk. I replaced the USB 3 WD 4TB TM disk with a new USB 3 Seagate 5TB HD formatted as APFS. I booted my M1Max in Safe Mode and ran TM. I created a new Test User. I reinstalled Monterey. The described TM issues persisted throughout all of these changes. I have now disabled automatic TM backups since TM is not working properly.

I have spent more than 6 hours with Apple Support attempting to solve the problem without success. My active case has now been escalated to Apple Engineers and I am waiting to hear back from them.

i will report back on any further help that I get from Apple Engineers.
Do another manual backup from time machine menu bar. It'll backup another time fully and it'll show the time when it's done and it's gonna be fixed. Both of mine are fine backing up now
 
I tried the first aid on the mac drive but didn't help. What did help is Safe Mode, then start backup. I then got the message after the incremental backup was done, Congrats on your first TM backup! yay! Now at least in safe mode it is working. I have yet to try normal mode as a follow up, but will try that later tonight.
 
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I tried the first aid on the mac drive but didn't help. What did help is Safe Mode, then start backup. I then got the message after the incremental backup was done, Congrats on your first TM backup! yay! Now at least in safe mode it is working. I have yet to try normal mode as a follow up, but will try that later tonight.
Time machine backup from safe mode didn't work for me unfortunately :(
 
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Time machine backup from safe mode didn't work for me unfortunately :(
Try this: first turn off auto backups in TM prefs screen. Then run disk utility first aid on the mac drive, (and then on the TM drive too just for the heck of it) then, reboot into safe mode, then click the TM menu icon to start a backup and see if anything works when that finishes. Those are the steps I took.
 
Try this: first turn off auto backups in TM prefs screen. Then run disk utility first aid on the mac drive, (and then on the TM drive too just for the heck of it) then, reboot into safe mode, then click the TM menu icon to start a backup and see if anything works when that finishes. Those are the steps I took.
Thanks for the tip. I spent 3 hours this afternoon following these steps and... unfortunately the issue persists for me. Certainly a bug in Monterey of some sort.
 
I've had some success today.

Thanks to @bkh I decided to try safe mode.

  • I booted into safe mode and then into Disk Utility.
  • I ran Disk First Aid on both my Macintosh HD and my External Time Machine USB Drive.
  • I then started a Time Machine backup whilst in safe mode and it completed successfully. The files were visible in Finder too.
  • Finally, I restarted my Mac and initiated another Time Machine backup which completed without any problem and the files were still visible in Finder.
So far so good...

I am now trying to do a Time Machine backup to my Synology NAS. It says "about 4 hours remaining" so I'll update this post when it has finished.

Hopefully this will help some of you with your TM problems.

**UPDATE**
The Time Machine backup to my NAS gave the same "Waiting to Complete First Backup" error on completion.
I then booted into safe mode again and started another backup to my NAS. That completed quickly and successfuly.
I restarted my Mac and did another backup to my NAS which also competed successfully.

I have no idea what is causing the problem but, for now, it seems to be working.

I'll report back if I have any further problems.
Hi Berno, been trying out your solution but I’m not figuring out how to start a Time Machine backup while in Safe Mode (ran first aid on each of the drives though). My google searches came up with nothing. Any way you could say how you were able to?
 
Hi Berno, been trying out your solution but I’m not figuring out how to start a Time Machine backup while in Safe Mode (ran first aid on each of the drives though). My google searches came up with nothing. Any way you could say how you were able to?
Same way you would normally. Click the Time Machine symbol in the menu bar and choose "back up now". To be clear, you enter Safe Mode by going into Recovery Mode, when you see your disk you press Shift key and "start in safe mode" will show up or something similar.
 
Hi Berno, been trying out your solution but I’m not figuring out how to start a Time Machine backup while in Safe Mode (ran first aid on each of the drives though). My google searches came up with nothing. Any way you could say how you were able to?
As @Macintosh101 said: Click the Time Machine symbol in the menu bar and choose "back up now"

Hope this helps.
 
Yep, got it — learned something new today. Unfortunately Time Machine still isn't working for me and is stuck on the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" message
Is the "Waiting to complete backup" message specific to Apple Silicon macs ? When I've done backups on Intel machines, it usually goes through the percentage copied, and time remaining, then says cleaning up, and then displays last backup time and when the next one will run. I've never seen the message you keep referencing on any time machine backup / Mac.
 
The "Waiting to Complete First Backup" appears to be an M1 issue with Monterey. It may be more specific to M1 Max or Pro. Not sure. I use another backup solution called Super Duper which in addition to backing up has the option to make the external drive bootable (have not tried Carbon Copy yet). When choosing the bootable option, after a successful backup of the drive, it needs to "bless" the drive.This process requires erasing and mounting the drive. This fails. From messages in this thread and viewing the contents of the TM drives with PathFinder, it appears that is where the issue is. Neither TM Nor Super Duper seem able to mount the drives. This is either an OS issue, or a USB issue that is affecting the M1 machines. In my case an M1 MAX 16" running Monterey V. 12.0.1. I have been working with a senior advisors as have others, but so far looks like Apple is gathering information. I think it will be helpful if we identify the MAC, the processor and the OS that results in the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" TM situation.
 
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The "Waiting to Complete First Backup" appears to be an M1 issue with Monterey. It may be more specific to M1 Max or Pro. Not sure. I use another backup solution called Super Duper which in addition to backing up has the option to make the external drive bootable (have not tried Carbon Copy yet). When choosing the bootable option, after a successful backup of the drive, it needs to "bless" the drive.This process requires erasing and mounting the drive. This fails. From messages in this thread and viewing the contents of the TM drives with PathFinder, it appears that is where the issue is. Neither TM Nor Super Duper seem able to mount the drives. This is either an OS issue, or a USB issue that is affecting the M1 machines. In my case an M1 MAX 16" running Monterey V. 12.0.1. I have been working with a senior advisors as have others, but so far looks like Apple is gathering information. I think it will be helpful if we identify the MAC, the processor and the OS that results in the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" TM situation.
Well if you think back to the hub reports with Monterey and the USB issues, and I think Thunderbolt may be included there as well, don't recall off the top of my head. Anyway, part of that problem was drives randomly unmounting, or otherwise unreliable when it comes to I/O functions. It sounds like this Time Machine problem could be part of that because I keep hearing in reports of people saying that time machine is reporting the drive not mounted, or readable, writable ,etc. Sound like to me, it's a driver issue, or otherwise storage problem in the OS, that could be showing up with Time machine because Time Machine does intense data activities. It could be that it's because TM is so sensitive, and precise with what it does, it's picking up on the OS inconsistencies regarding mass storage. (Especially externally connected.) Either way, that issue was mostly with Apple Silicon hardware relating Monterey as well.

Just something to consider while the troubleshooting process moves on.
 
The "Waiting to Complete First Backup" appears to be an M1 issue with Monterey. It may be more specific to M1 Max or Pro. Not sure. I use another backup solution called Super Duper which in addition to backing up has the option to make the external drive bootable (have not tried Carbon Copy yet). When choosing the bootable option, after a successful backup of the drive, it needs to "bless" the drive.This process requires erasing and mounting the drive. This fails. From messages in this thread and viewing the contents of the TM drives with PathFinder, it appears that is where the issue is. Neither TM Nor Super Duper seem able to mount the drives. This is either an OS issue, or a USB issue that is affecting the M1 machines. In my case an M1 MAX 16" running Monterey V. 12.0.1. I have been working with a senior advisors as have others, but so far looks like Apple is gathering information. I think it will be helpful if we identify the MAC, the processor and the OS that results in the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" TM situation.
I had the "Waiting to Complete First Backup" message on my MacBook Air (M1, 2020) running Monterey 12.0.1
 
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