Previous Time Machine backup was interrupted.

There are several reasons your Time Machine backup might be getting stuck on Preparing backup. Let’s see what are the main reasons your Time Machine backup might be getting stuck, how to prevent them, and what to do when they do happen. If Time Machine progress bar stops displaying any progress for over 30 minutes, that means your backup is likely stuck. If you schedule regular backups, they pile onto each other and don’t take much time either.įor computers with a lot of apps, files, or other info, preparing first-time backup and even follow-up backups may take a while. For us, Time Machine waiting to complete its first backup only took around 10 minutes for a 10 GB backup. Preparing backup shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes if your Mac is new and you barely have anything on it. The first backup will take a while for computers with a lot of files and apps on them. If you are wondering how long Preparing backup should take, it really depends on the size of all the files on your machine and whether you are creating the backup for the first time.

But if you are creating a backup for the first time and have a lot of files on your Mac (or you are creating an update to the Time Machine backup but after you’ve just added a bunch of large files to your laptop), your Time Machine might actually get stuck on Preparing backup. Time Machine tool is a handy built-in backup option on your Mac that you can use to create restorable copies of your whole Mac on an external drive. Get an ever-growing collection of troubleshooting apps.

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