Disappearing time machine

Time machine disappeared from the finder and the desk top after a recent Apple upgrade set and is not functioning. However, the external hard drive is found by the disk utility so the drive is connected properly (?). In preferences, an attempt to set up time machine gives a screen for time capsule while I have an external hard drive attached through a USB port which does not appear in the pane.

oldPaul wrote:
Time machine disappeared from the finder and the desk top
do you mean the Time Machine drive disappeared from the desktop?
does it show up in the sidebar?
after a recent Apple upgrade set and is not functioning. However, the external hard drive is found by the disk utility so the drive is connected properly (?). In preferences, an attempt to set up time machine gives a screen for time capsule while I have an external hard drive attached through a USB port which does not appear in the pane.
try repairing the TM drive. select it in disk utility and run "repair disk".

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My iphoto library disappeared. i am trying to restore my library from time machine -- from an external drive -- but everytime it tries to copy my library it tells me it can't do it because i don't have access to my iphoto library??!!! help!!

My iphoto library inexplicably disappeared! i am panicked but i do back up by time machine to an external drive and also to JustCloud. I am trying to restore my iphoto library from a back up on feb 28, 2014 and it says it's copying but then gives me a message that it can't do it because i "don't have authorization to access iphoto library"?! what does this mean? i really want to get my library back on my mac. Also if anyone knows why this happened or where my photos might be on my computer, i'd appreciate help with that, too.

Thank you Terence for your help. I was able to restore my backup from my time machine ext drive to a new 1tb seagate ext drive. so i felt sort of ok. but yesterday that older ext drive i used for time machine wouldn't open! i called applecare and they trouble shooted with me and said it's probably a goner and data is probably corrupted. it's only a few years old and i'm very careful with it. my husband accidentally dropped my new drive last night -- i know, unbelievable, i was SO upset, poor guy -- but I'm so stressed with all of this. i have 10 years of photos and videos. so now i only have the one newer drive with a backup. i have to buy another one today to backup again so i at least have two backups. i tried to delete a ton of files last night to free up the 30 gb of space i need to get my full library back on my mac. i have 90gb free and deleted 7 years worth of photos i had on picasa that were in my "pictures" folder and also a ton or random photos and videos i had in that same pictures folder and thought that would give me the 30 gb but it hardly freed up any space at all! do you know why that is? all of this stuff is really a pain and really stressful. thank god i did have a backup in the first place but now i am panicked the one i have left will somehow crash. especially after my husband dropped the drive lastnight! it didn't fall far and fell onto a wood floor and seems fine, but after my older ext drive crashed yesterday -- and i lost my entire iphoto library a fewweeks ago off my mac -- i feel cursed. any answers you have would be great. thank you.

Safari won't open. Firefox disappeared, only question mark. Mail doesn't have content. Time Machine won't turn on because sparse bundle is in use. Please help.

I had this issue about a month in a half ago and it was fixed by a local technician. I no longer have access to him and I really need some help. The issues are as follows:
Safari will not open.
Firefox disappeared. No icon, just a question mark in it's place.
When I open mail it shows I have new messages but the content is blank.
Time Machine cannot turn on because sparse bundle is in use.
New files that were made are no longer available. It's almost as if the computer jumped back in time.
The Mac Mini is running Mavericks 10.9.5

I'll assume that you have some way of connecting to this website from the affected machine. If not, ask for other instructions.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try to launch Safari. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Moved to Lion and all folders in mail disappeared. How can I restore them from Time Machine?

When I moved to Lion I had to reconfigure my mailbox and all previous folders disappeared. How can I restore them? I have backip of everything in the Time machine but cannot find the folders and do not know how to import them when I do.
Thank you so much

Se the blue box here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/15.html
Regards,
Colin R.

I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again

I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again. Any ideas?

Hmmm.. sorry to jump in but...
I Wish I had seen this before I got mine.
Mine has been doing this auto eject stuff too.
I think I just plugged it in and TM let me select it but is it possible
I should have reformatted it with DU first, like with all the WD drive problems ?
Is it too late for that ?
Or just try to return it or get rid of it ?
TIA

I recently changed from a Mac Pro to an iMac. A large chunk of emails have disappeared. Time Machine is no help. Any ideas as to how I can get them back?

I recently changed from a Mac Pro to an iMac. Despite using Migration Assistant, a large chunk of my recent emails and nearly all of my wife's emails have disappeared in transit. Strangely, emails from my distant past are still there. Time Machine is no help; the messages may be on my backup disc but they're behind an invisible icon. Any ideas as to how I can get them back?

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.
Back up all data. That means you know you can restore the Mail database, no matter what happens.
Triple-click the text on the line below to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return.
A Finder window will open with a file selected. Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have names that begin with "Envelope Index". Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Log out and log back in. Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is corrupt and that Mail has to quit. Click OK.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the file you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

I am using an external drive for a time machine backup. It has disappeared from the desktop. How do I get it back again?

My time machine backup disc, which has been working ok for a couple of years has suddenly disappeared from the desktop. The time machine program tels me it is unavailable. I have checked that the drive is working by booting up in Windows. and Windows can see it and read it ok. What has gone wrong, and how can I fix it?
I have tried unplugging it and reconnecting, but it is still apparently not seen by the system.
I could use Windows to reformat it, and start again, but this would loose all my previous backups, and I've no guarantee that the system would notice it even then.
Has anyone any ideas?

I think it's formatted on FAT 32 system, but I'm not sure. It's been working for a couple of years so far without any problems, so I think it must be compatible with Mac. The problem is that all of a sudden, the Mac doesn't acknowledge that it is present.

Menu bar and Dock disappear after exiting Time Machine

Time Machine has worked absolutely fine for almost a week. A few hours ago I clicked the icon on my dock to see how many incremental backups it had made today, and everything seemed fine. However, when I click cancel now and the desktop comes back, the dock completely disappears. The menu bar is about halfway to being functional: The shadow appears, but it does not lighten my desktop picture behind it anymore. All the menus are gone, except for those for Bluetooth, AirPort, the clock, etc. I can still open Finder windows by double-clicking the folders on my desktop, but most -- if not all -- keyboard shortcuts are rendered inoperable. They mostly just produce the default error sound, and control-F2 simply highlights a very small invisible box in the top-left corner of the screen. I can also no longer open any applications, and any applications I already had open I can't select.
The only way out was to force a shutdown, but if I try to use Time Machine in the Finder this problem keeps recurring. (It works perfectly in iPhoto.) Also, now if I try to back up Time Machine hangs while "Preparing". I have spent the last hour trying whatever I could think of and also wailing like a child. Please help!

Just a thought....this is not a problem with my MacBook on which I installed a new version of 10.5.
The problem only manifests itself on my iMac at work which I updated using a Drop-in Leopard DVD.
Do you think this could be the problem? Anyone out there having problems that did a retail 10.5 install?
I just re-installed Leopard from the drop-in DVD and first time I opened Mail and went to Time Machine it seemed to be working....it gave me the starry background and asked me to select items to restore to the Inbox. But then it failed to restore the selected messages and I'm back to where I started with a non-working Time Machine in Mail.

Time Machine HD disappeared!

I have two external hard drives connected to my computer: One is a 500 GB My Book (used for time machine backups), connected directly to my computer through firewire 400. The other drive is a 1TB My Book (used for storage of large audio and video files) that is connected through the 500 GB through a firewire 800. This configuration has always worked fine in the past, but then a couple of weeks ago, the time machine volume simply disappeared from my computer. I have tried unplugging, and re-plugging all of my connections, but it simply can't be found. The odd part is that the larger drive that is daisy-chained through the time machine volume is still available, so I know that my computer is at least recognizing the connection through the time machine drive.
My boss had a similar problem around the same time. She only has the one hard drive plugged in (500GB My Book connected through firewire 800), but one day it simply disappeared from her computer and can't be recognized anymore. And now that I'm the one that suggested we go out and spend the money to get every computer in the office an external HD for time machine, and they're starting not to work, I;m getting some serious pressure to figure out a solution.
I'm getting desperate! Any thoughts or suggestions would be MUCH appreciated!!

AmyLou2584 wrote:
Well thanks for trying to help, but nothing has worked. I selected none and turned off time machine, but then when i tried to start it again, the hard drive was still not available. Also, I don't seem to have that preference in my library.
No, not in your home folder's library. TM is a system-wide application -- the file is at the top level of your internal HD. Select it (probably named +Macintosh HD),+ then look for Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
But if Disk Utility doesn't see it, that's not going to help.
I thought maybe i was just overlooking it, so i even tried entering the preference name in the search field and couldn't find anything.
It's a system file, so the only way to find it via a search is to use a Finder Search and include system files.
I tried checking in the disk utility as you suggested, but it was not on that list either. As I said before, I know my connections are solid, because the hard drive that I have daisy-chained through the TM hard drive is completely accessible. I'm starting to fear that my HD has gone kaput.
Sure sounds like it. Does it have an "off" switch/button? If so, turn it off for a few seconds, then back on. Can you connect it to another Mac? If it's still not recognized, it's probably dead. What make is it, and how old?
Note that your boss's problem may not be the same -- use the same procedure there, starting with whether there are any recent backups, etc.

Time machine disk drive disappears

I just bought a Seagate 2 TB external hdd to use as my Time Machine Backup drive. Time Machine formatted it properly and named it Time Machine Backups. Unfortunately, it sometimes just disappears from the desktop, which I don't notice until I try to run Time Machine. It doesn't appear in Disk Utility either. I have it conntected to a USB port on the computer. Restarting the computer doesn't help, but if I unplug and then reconnect the drive, it appears again, or at least it has so far. Any idea why this drive disappears?

Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
Reset the System Management Controller
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

I have a LaCie external hard disk. I do not know how to retrieve photos from iphoto that have disappeared. I do not know how to use Time Machine

I have a LaCie external hard drive. I also have Time Machine. I somehow have "lost" almost all my 5,000+ photos from iPhoto 8.1.2. I would appreciate someone giving me directions on how to retrieve the photos from the external hard drive or Time Machine.
The last thing that I did that is different from my normal routine was to trash duplicate music tunes from iTunes. I cannot figure out how that would have caused my photos to disappear.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Marilyn

I remember being cautioned to never do anything with the iPhoto Library. Should I have clicked on the iPhoto Library and then Restore?
I do not know "how" items are being placed in the LaCie external drive, just that it shows a backup running about every hour. I have taken a snapshot of the Time Machine Preferences I would you to see. Maybe that would answer this question.
In March 2011 I had to have hard drive on my iMac replaced. I had been using a Seagate external drive for backups. However I was not using Time Machine. When the Apple guru was helping me restore all my files etc on the new hard drive he was not familiar with Seagate and recommended I purchase this LaCie and use Time Machine. I never had any problem retrieving items from the Seagate backup. It was very straightforward. As I mentioned previously, I just don't have a clue with the LaCie and Time Machine.
I hope this is not TMI.
Marilyn

External Drive with Time Machine Disappears

I use time machine to backup my hard drive to a Book Studio External Hard Drive. But after a day or two, the icon for the backup will disappear off the desktop and the system stops doing the automatic backcups.
It is relatively easily bring it back online but within a day or 2 the icon will disapper and the backups stop again.
Thanks for any help
All my best and Thank you

You are using Lion.. it is a statement almost.. but it seems lion has 10x the issues with forgetting its own name as well as every other network device.. but you can say I am in error.
There is probably no fix until apple decides it really should do something about it.. in the meantime the windows solution is the only useful one.. turn it off and on again.. !!
There was one suggestion.. which I find hard to believe.. that if you prevent the disks spinning down in the computer then it will stop the issue.. how that relates to anything I don't know but it gives you something to try.

ITunes library disappeared and cannot reinstall from Time Machine

I have searched all support threads for my problem -- updated to Mavericks and all my playlists disappeared and audio files that the new itunes didn't seem to know what to do with (meditation i.e.) I've tried to reinstall from Time Machine, but all support threads refer to itunes library and folder which I don't have anymore. I drag it to the desktop and tried to reload from there. I tried to do it directly from TM but get the error message that says something about a file instead of a folder.
Has anyone else had this

This is what things should look like:
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/13025536 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17457605

Time Machine backup disappears when iMac sleeps

Tried finding this topic but could not find the specifics. I have an Intel iMac running 10.6.7 and I use a Mercury enclosure with a Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA for Time Machine backup, connected with FireWire. Every time my Mac goes to sleep overnight, the next morning, the Time Machine icon disappears from the desktop. It's been disconnected, because when I run Check Time Machine, the log reads thusly:
<<Thu Apr 21 10:29:30 com.apple.backupd-auto Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup - time machine destination not resolvable.
Thu Apr 21 12:30:05 [0x0-0x2d22d2].backupd-helper Not starting Time Machine backup after wake - failed to resolve alias to backup volume
>>
Occasionally I'll get the error message on the Mac that a device has been "improperly disconnected" but most of the time when it sleeps the TM drive icon just goes away (even tho the backup drive is still on).
Any ideas? Can I fix this or have to live with it? Are there alternatives to TM that may work better?
Thanks for any help/suggestions.
Best,
Mike

I had the same problem as Bru-Hed, but with a Samsung G3 Station 1 TB with USB-connection. After waking up the MAC the message "improperly disconnected" appeared. Was happy with the solution you gave and changed the power save settings accordingly, the drive holds its power, but....... things did not change. Switching off the MAC and restarting gives no problems with the back-up drive, but after waking up I have to reinstall the back-up drive every time by disconnecting and connecting the USB-connector. After choosing the drive again in Time Machine, everything works properly until the next time the MAC goes asleep......
Any other solution to this problem ?

Disappearing hard drive - Time machine

I recently bought a Toshiba 3TB USB 3.0 hard drive for use with time machine for my iMac, running OS 10.6.8. Unfortunately Time Machine backups frequently fail because it can't find the disk.
When I look in finder the disk is not available, however when I run disk utility it's there, but greyed out. When I select the disk and mount it it works again for a while, however I usually find it's disappeared again by the following morning.
An unreliable back up disk is not that helpful. Can anyone tell me what's going on?
Note the disk is connected via a hub, but so are my ipod and 2nd external hard drive, and they don't suffer from this problem.
thanks,
Jamie.

Me2 i.e I also recently bought a Toshiba USB3 ext. HD and find the same behaviour. The thing goes to sleep within a few minutes. If transferring files to it, I have to make sure it is spinning before I do so, otherwise the transfer fails. Also open diskimages can unmount when it goes to sleep and cannot be remounted except after a force quit which I dislike doing.
The only reason I bought it was because I could not find a Firewire drive as that is now old tech. But I need old tech for my old iMac (2008). I have other external drives (Firewire) that work well and now think in hindsight I should have bought extra at the time.
Perhaps Jamie you need to scout around and try and find an alternative ext, drive. Go with a brand that has worked well for you in the past, if you can find something equivalent.

Disappearing time machine

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