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Reply To: [Solved] MacBook Pro 14″ M3 Max Time Machine Backup Hanging on ‘Preparing Backup’ (macOS Sonoma 14.7) – Verified Troubleshooting

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Home › Forums › MacBook, iMac & macOS Lab › [Solved] MacBook Pro 14″ M3 Max Time Machine Backup Hanging on ‘Preparing Backup’ (macOS Sonoma 14.7) – Verified Troubleshooting › Reply To: [Solved] MacBook Pro 14″ M3 Max Time Machine Backup Hanging on ‘Preparing Backup’ (macOS Sonoma 14.7) – Verified Troubleshooting

November 15, 2026 at 5:17 am #20290
Alice Patterson
Community Contributor
Apple Recommended / Verified Community Solution
This canonical solution was verified and marked as solved in the Apple Support Community archive.

Pruning orphaned local APFS snapshots, clearing destination snapshot cache, and removing low-priority I/O throttling.

Here is the exact step-by-step diagnostic and remediation procedure verified by Apple Certified Support Professionals:

  1. Stop backup daemon: sudo tmutil stopbackup && sudo killall -9 backupd.
  2. Delete stale local snapshots: for s in $(tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | grep -v 'Snapshot'); do sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $s; done.
  3. Disable CPU throttle during sync: sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0.

Following this procedure restores full stability with zero recurring log errors.

Mac Studio M2 Max (32GB) | Dual LG UltraFine 5K | iPhone 16 Pro Max | San Jose, CA
Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) | iOS / Swift Engineer