Official: Catalina Issues

I don’t remember where I heard this: The Catalina install does something (reformat, divide into pieces for a disk ‘group’) to the installation disk. If true, does this make reverting to Mojave difficult or impossible?
 
Yes, upgrading to Catalina splits your drive into two partitions, one <mydrive> is still the name of the boot partition, and is read-only.
The second partition is named <mydrive> - Data, and has all your files/documents, and apps. It is read-write.
Unless you are certain of what you have - don't upgrade to Catalina without doing a full back up first.
Then, it would be simple to revert if you don't like Catalina. Just erase the drive, and restore from your backup.

My main issue with Catalina is the couple of apps that I use for work, waiting for 64-bit updates. Can't upgrade permanently until I sort that out (or the app publisher does that 64-bit thing :D )
 
I bit the bullet today. It took 2 hours 15 minutes with no problems. Since then, it's really working hard on the 1st Time Machine update, and something called photoanalysisd. I can guess what that is. So far so good ...
 
So far so good ...
Well, not that good. I got a notification this morning that a Time Machine update had failed. That’s it. No reasons, no data. Except that it was the 1st attempted update after the upgrade.

Q: I used to be able to watch TM activity in the Console. Now, I can’t find it anywhere. This goes back to Mojave, maybe earlier. Does anyone know where it went? How can I find out what the problems are?

Luckily I have 2 SuperDuper! clones of my system disk from just before the upgrade. Am I a good boy or what?

But I would really prefer to get TM working again ... rather than downshifting to MoJave.
 
I never found where TM activity disappeared to. I guess Apple didn't think that was important to keep. It disappeared before Sierra.

Go to TM preferences - Notice you no longer have the option to turn it off. Click on Select Disk. A new window will appear. Click on the disk under Backup disks. Click on remove disk. Now you will be able to select it as a new TM backup disk under available disks. Click on use Disk.

It will prepare the disk, and begin the back up. It may take a while, but second time may be the charm.
 
It may take a while, but second time may be the charm.
I followed your instructions, but it again failed in about the same time. So ...

I set up another USB disk that wasn’t working too hard, and started TM to it. And ...

It failed again in around the same time! What are the odds that 2 disks, different brands, bought at different times, go wonky at the same time?

I guess now I must face the extremely unpleasant likelihood that my system disk has a bad snag on it. It’s a 1TB SSD installed by an Apple certified tech a little over 3 years ago. I guess I had better contact him tomorrow, unless you or anyone else has a good suggestion.

I have only one. I can boot to Recovery and run Disk Utility’s first aid on the SSD. And/Or I can boot from one of my SuperDuper! disks and run TechTool Pro.
 
Running Disk Utility on the TM disks is a good idea. I am wondering if you may have some corrupt files on the start up drive that is preventing the backup from continuing or a 32 bit app. Try using EtreCheck to see if there are files that are incompatible with Catalina.
 
Good idea! Thanks. Meanwhile ...

While I wasn't paying attention, I got another notification that TM had failed. But on opening TM prefs, it says it's still going!? In fact, the little progress meter shows 372gb of 464gb. At my post above it was at 34gb of ...

I guess I'll wait to see if it finishes in spite of the notifications.
 
Well, I don't know whether to be happy or terrified. At 4pm yesterday, I found yet another failure notification but, on the TM preference pane, it said the oldest backup was 1:40pm yesterday and, right now, the latest is today at 8am, with the next scheduled for 9am.

Also, I just entered TM and poked around. There's an entry for every hour since the first, and all looks OK.

Can I verify it somehow? I would really like to scratch this itch between my shoulder-blades.
 
I am used to Catalina, in a way. But I would not say I miss it unless the next version is gonna be even more buggy.
Catalina is infamous for its wi fi issues. I use MacBook Pro on average up to 30 hours a week. First off, it often fails to connect to the network.
Further on, it totally refuses new network so I ended up sharing my cell traffic with my macbook.
Now, the upcoming new version's new name suggests rather new bugs than fixes, check this out https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/
 
Just prior to upgrading to Big Sur, I got a major issue with Safari overtaken by a kind of Yahoo redirect virus. The behavior was true to this description https://macsecurity.net/view/259-yahoo-redirect-virus-mac, the fixes suggested did not fully fix the redirect. In the end, Safari just did not open displaying an error report. So I enrolled my mac into Apple beta program, the updated just reinstalled Safari, which IMHO run faster in Big Sur, and no redirect issues so far.
 
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