Time Machine Stuck on 'Preparing Backup' and Then Stops

[Aniruddh]

Hello,

Ever since I have upgraded to High Sierra, I have never been able to successfully backup my MBP via Time Machine.

It gets stuck on 'preparing backup' for around 30-40 minutes and stops automatically. Not sure what happened.

 

[Frankfurt]

This happened to me when moving to a new MacBook Pro. The only way to get TC/TM working again was to delete the OLD back-ups on the TC, i.e. erase them and then started completely fresh. Hence, suggest you try this, but ONLY AFTER you made another back up of your files.

 

[Aniruddh]

This happened to me when moving to a new MacBook Pro. The only way to get TC/TM working again was to delete the OLD back-ups on the TC, i.e. erase them and then started completely fresh. Hence, suggest you try this, but ONLY AFTER you made another back up of your files.

I had to switch to a new external HDD for time machine backups.

 

[Dave00]

I have a similar issue with 2012 rMBP after upgrading to High Sierra. It does eventually back up, but takes forever to get past "Preparing". I tried excluding the Time Capsule from Spotlight. It seems a little faster, but still nothing like before.