Does Time Machine verify backup

Do you know if there's a way to get Time Machine to verify backups? I've always used backup programs in the past which verify the backup after it's done. But Time Machine seems to stop once a backup is completed.
Also, after the first backup, is there a way to find out what's been backed up in the subsequent backups? When I clicked on the folders for the hourly backups, all the usual subfolders were there. I was wondering if there's a way to get Time Machine to create a log so I wouldn't have to click through the subfolders to find out which ones had new files added.
Thanks,
Elllen

Elllen wrote:
Do you know if there's a way to get Time Machine to verify backups? I've always used backup programs in the past which verify the backup after it's done. But Time Machine seems to stop once a backup is completed.
There is no way.
But generally, if it doesn't throw any errors at you, it's fine.
Also, after the first backup, is there a way to find out what's been backed up in the subsequent backups? When I clicked on the folders for the hourly backups, all the usual subfolders were there. I was wondering if there's a way to get Time Machine to create a log so I wouldn't have to click through the subfolders to find out which ones had new files added.
No, AFAIK.

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Does Time Machine bundle backup sets when it deletes a month's daily sets?

I'm asking this question to find out if I can delete the all but the last week in a month, each month, in order to extend the useful capacity of my backup drive.
In some backup systems, a periodic "bundle" is made when previous sets are deleted, so for instance, the last backup of the month has the cumulative hourly changes of that month. In this way, transient files which appear and disappear within the month are retained in the monthly backup.
Is this true of Time Machine? Exactly what does Time Machine do? Does it simply wipe out the daily sets and chose the last one to be the "weekly backup?" Or something more sophisticated and useful?
Thanks for any insight!

I've devised a little experiment to discover Time Machine's behavior in this regard:
On my Time Machine's backup schedule, August 27 corresponds with the end of a week. So, on August 26 at 9:15AM, I created the following [folder]/file structure:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10AM of that day I removed
[Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10 the next day, August 27, I removed
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
On August 28 at 10:30AM, acheck today of the earliest backup of this structure reveals only the following:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
I draw the conclusion that transient files within a time period are not subject to a "roll-up" mechanism that displays all changes after out-of-date files are deleted by Time Machine. Thus, for instance, any file that appeared and disappears during an hour will be lost in Time Machine's daily history. Similarly, files that only persist for a day will be lost in the weekly history. And, presumably, if one wanted to choose a week which represented an accumulation of transient changes during the month it would be impossible to do so.
Even so, if one wants to manage only one backup volume, rather than accumulating a stack of them over the years, one might well think about selectively deleting all but one week per month in the earliest backups available, as the projected remaining time approaches less than a few weeks. BackupLoupe's Statistics gives an estimate of remaining time left for backups on a volume, and I would suggest using that as a forecast, unless others have experience to the contrary.
Hope this is useful. It certainly is to me.

HT201250 How does Time Machine allocate backup data.

I have over 150GB to back up with time machine and only 256GB HD to use, does Time Machine back up all files each time or only files updated after the last backup?

Time Machine first makes a full backup, and then, it makes incremental backups backing up only the files that have changed since the last backup. When the Time Machine drive gets full, Time Machine will start deleting old backups in order to be able to make new backups. If you want more information about Time Machine, see > http://pondini.org

Time machine: "verifying backup" has been going on for days

I have an MBP that backs up to a 2 TB time capsule over wifi. For the last few days time machine window says: "verifying backup." The line is alive and seems to be moving. it is now ~4/5 full and was ~ 7/10 yesterday. So it does not appear to be hung up. I have about 350GB of data on my 500 GB hard drive. Mac OSX Lion. This has never happened before. I've had this system for almost three years, and this is the first time I've seen this happen.
I am keeping all my data on the cloud, so I am not too concerned about crashing but this makes me wonder if my Time Capsule is ok or, perhaps, I ahve a bug somewhere.
Advice is welcome.
FG

Start by having a look here...
http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Does Time Machine make Backup obsolete?

I am a relative novice to the world of Macs, but I have been a big fan of Backup. Now that I have Time Machine, I am wondering whether or not I even need Backup anymore. Any advice/guidance would certainly be appreciated.
Thanks.

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TM is best seen as an elemental backup solution easy enough for anyone to use in order to encourage more users to create backups in order to avoid data loss.

Time machine--verify backup is grayed out on the menu.

When I go to the Time Machine menu and hit option to get the Verify Backup command, "verify backup" is grayed out. How do I verify backups?
I'm using a G-Drive Mini ext hard drive with a Mac Lion 10.7.2 machine.

I see mine is also greyed out but I know it's backing up by looking at the message as described in my first post and also by launching TM to see the backups.
If you are attempting to test the integrity of your drive you can try the Verify Disk and Repair Disk features in Disk Utility. This will work, you can also get third party applicaitons that do more in-depth checks, Drive Genius comes to mind.
I have been using TM for about 4 1/2 years, it works fine. If you want to learn more about it then I'd recommend Pondini's Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting articles.

Does Time machine not backup iCal data?

My MacBook Pro battery charger has failed, so I did a latest Time-Machine backup, and then connected the backup drive to my Mac Mini.
Imagine my delight when I found that the backup disk, with ten backups on it, contains none of the iCal filels, e.g. Home.ics or Work.ics
What am I supposed to do?

Hi John,
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Once again, this seems to behave in an anomalous way; the heading "Original:' doesn't appear in the 'More info' box. I made an alias of a file taken at random on the Mini drive, and sure enough there, in the 'More info' was the 'Original:' heading followed by the address of the file for which I'd just made the alias. The icon for the alias has a little arrow pointing North-east, just like the one in my backup file.
I don't know whether it may be indicative, but the headings in the 'Calendars Info panel are:
Kind: Alias
Size: 4 KB on disk (464 bytes)
Where: /Volumes/My Passport/Backups.backupdb/User's MacBook Pro/2011-05-03-103202/Macintosh HD/Users/tonyjackson/Library
Created: Thursday 9 September 20010 22:58
Modified: Thursday 9 September 20010 22:58
This in the backup folder called:
2011-05-03-103202
Which seems a bit peculiar?
Best regards, Tony J.

Does Time Machine keep backups of my emails?

I was wondering if Time Machine keeps a backup of all my stored emails and the folders I created in Mail.
Anyone know about this?
Thanks

I gave up on TM as a worthwhile backup solution, but dee if the gree demo of BackInTime can help...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/backintime.html
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http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Does Time Machine fully backup iPhoto 09 photos, events, faces, etc.? Mtn Lion

I'm going to the Apple store this afternoon. I believe I'll end up reinstalling the system and need to be sure everything is backed up.
Problem is iPhoto 09 (yep, I have an OLD version). It's going nuts - making sounds like a fast, loud, constant drumbeat, flashing, won't let me do anything except force quit.
I backup to Time Machine /external drive automatically and it seems to be backing up iPhoto. I don't want to open the iPhoto program from Time Machine to check since I'm afraid it might be something in the computer that could screw it up. I have thousands of phtoos in iPhoto and don't want to lose them.
Since the external drive I'm using wth Time Machine shows a backup today including iPhoto, should I feel comfortable that iPhoto is backed up appropriately, or do I need to back it up in some other way?

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Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner
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Time machine verify backups sticks at 69%

Mac os mountain lion 0s 10.8.2 No longer a disk image on the desktop but backup seems to be working. Verification sticks on 69% Any help appreciated

I don't know how much you know about your Mac, so I'm trying to include all the details.
Open a Finder window. (Click on an empty spot on your Mac's "Desktop", then invoke the menu option File > New Finder Window.)
Look for your Time Capsule in the "sidebar" on the left. If you don't see it, pull down the Finder menu and select Preferences. Click on "Sidebar" in the toolbar. In the "Shared" section check "Connected servers".)
Click on the Time Capsule icon in the sidebar. The "Data" volume should appear in the main part of the window. Double-click on it. If prompted, enter the password you declared when you configured the Time Capsule.
You should now see a "sparsebundle" file. That's where Time Machine stores the backups for your Mac. Double-click on it. It should mount.
Now pull down the Time Machine item in the menu bar and select "Back Up Now".
If you have trouble with these instructions, report which step failed and exactly what messages you saw.

Since installing Lion why does Time Machine shows backup was delayed?

Ever since we stalled Lion after we backup with Time Machine the display quickly changes to the alert symbol that backup was delayed how can I change this. I have backed up four times.

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Does Time Machine support backups via SMB (NAS mounted volumes) on Lion 10.7.2

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Does time machine automatically backup external hard drives?

Hi
I have 4 external disks connected to my macPro and a 5th which I am using to backup too. In the TM prefs I have selected the drives & specific folders that I DON'T want backed up. Can I assume it will back EVERYTHING ELSE up, including the external drives?
I conducted an experiment - I unmounted one of the external drives (my main Logic projects disk), then entered TM. I COULDN'T FIND the Projects disk even though the BackUp disk was still mounted! So if there was a problem with the Projects drive HOW would I access my backed-up projects?
I don't have much faith in TM at the moment.
Cheers
Chris

Hi
Time Machine will back up the files for all users, as well as the system files.
best,
Matt

Does Time Machine backup sparesebundle?

Hi, I'm a newbie mac user and a little paranoid about backups. I tried searching under support and forums, but did not seem to find the answer to my question:
Does Time Machine automatically backup a separate partition that has been created:
1) I created a separate sparsebundle where I store my iPhoto library/files in order to be able to share the library between multiple users based on this Apple knowledge article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198.
2) The sparsebundle is located under Users -> Shared -> and named "iPhoto Library.sparsebundle" and automatically set to mount at login.
When I go into Time Machine, I don't see the mounted partition, but it looks like the sparsebundle under the shared directory is backed up. Just want to confirm that if my machine goes down, I can restore the backup of my iPhoto files from the sparsebundle even though the partition does not show as mounted.
Apologies if this is a basic question, just making sure that there is not another setting I need to specify for additional partitions that have been created.
Thanks in advance!

george in sf wrote:
Hi, I'm a newbie mac user and a little paranoid about backups. I tried searching under support and forums, but did not seem to find the answer to my question:
Does Time Machine automatically backup a separate partition that has been created:
1) I created a separate sparsebundle where I store my iPhoto library/files in order to be able to share the library between multiple users based on this Apple knowledge article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198.
2) The sparsebundle is located under Users -> Shared -> and named "iPhoto Library.sparsebundle" and automatically set to mount at login.
When I go into Time Machine, I don't see the mounted partition, but it looks like the sparsebundle under the shared directory is backed up. Just want to confirm that if my machine goes down, I can restore the backup of my iPhoto files from the sparsebundle even though the partition does not show as mounted.
yes, you can. the sparse bundle is backed up by TM unless you specifically exclude it from backups.
Apologies if this is a basic question, just making sure that there is not another setting I need to specify for additional partitions that have been created.
Thanks in advance!

Does Time Machine Backup When You are NOT logged in?

I do not normally leave myself logged in since there are multiple people in my family and they have their own accounts.
Does time machine run backups when I am not logged in?
Does it wake the computer from sleep to run a backup every hour? Day?
If TM does not backup when I am NOT logged in, should I leave myself logged in by switching users back to the login screen?
(On a side note:) Is there a way to make it so that when a screen saver activates, and someone hits a key, it goes back to the login screen instead of the desktop?

Mike Delaney wrote:
I do not normally leave myself logged in since there are multiple people in my family and they have their own accounts.
Does time machine run backups when I am not logged in?
Don't know
Does it wake the computer from sleep to run a backup every hour? Day?
No
If TM does not backup when I am NOT logged in, should I leave myself logged in by switching users back to the login screen?
(On a side note:) Is there a way to make it so that when a screen saver activates, and someone hits a key, it goes back to the login screen instead of the desktop?
Yes, in System Preferences->Security check "Require password to wake...."
You can also tick "Log out after x minutes of inactivity" which would require a new login.

Does Time Machine verify backup

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