Find files on Time Machine that weren't in the "Latest Backup"?

I restored my new Mac with the "Latest Backup" of Time Machine. I now understand that I will have to erase the whole backup harddrive in order to continue using Time Machine (I cannot get it to do incremental backups with my new computer from where I left off on the old one).
Since I deleted some files from my old computer after early backups, I presume they wouldn't be on my new computer because I backed up from the "Latest Backup", correct?
Is there any way that I can find out which files I have backed up someplace on my harddrive that are not on my computer now? That way I would be able to locate and transfer them all into a temporary folder on my computer, erase my external harddrive, do a fresh backup of everything on my computer, then I could delete that temporary folder once everything is done. That way I still won't have those files on my computer, but I will have them backed up.
Does this make sense?
Thanks a lot

Bergers wrote:
I restored my new Mac with the "Latest Backup" of Time Machine. I now understand that I will have to erase the whole backup harddrive in order to continue using Time Machine (I cannot get it to do incremental backups with my new computer from where I left off on the old one).
You may be able to get the new Mac to "inherit" the old one's backups manually. See #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
But the practice of deleting originals, assuming Time Machine will keep the backups indefinitely, is a major mistake. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #20.
Linc is correct about multiple backups -- it's always prudent. See #27 in the FAQ link for some suggestions.

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Upgraded to Mavericks, can't find files on time machine

I have an external hard drive where I backup my Macbook Pro. I recently upgraded to Mavericks and now I can't find old files on time machine. I am looking for a file around a certain date, but no matter what date I look at in time machine - the files and data seem to be the same. I hope someone has a solution to my problem!

Hi Miax1,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
I understand that you are looking for a specific file in your Time Machine backup. It sounds like you are familiar with the interface but just cannot find the file. Just to make sure you are searching in the right area, I suggest reviewing the Restoring data from Time Machine backups section from the following article. Please let me know if you need further assistance.
Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Restoring specific files or folders
Choose Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu. The restore interface appears. You can literally see your windows as they appeared "back in time."
You can use the timeline on the right side of the window to reach a certain point back in time. The timeline shows the times of all backups on your backup drive. If you don’t know exactly when you deleted or changed a file, you can use the back arrow to let Time Machine automatically travel through time to show you when that folder last changed.
Note: Dates in pink indicate the data resides on your Time Machine backup device. Dates in white indicate the data resides on your Mac. In OS X Lion v10.7 and later, portable Macs include local snapshots.
You can also perform a Spotlight search from the Finder. Simply enter a search term in the Spotlight search field, and use the back arrow to have Time Machine search through your backups to find what you are looking for.
Before you restore a file, you can also use Quick Look to preview a file to make sure its the one you want. Highlight the file and press the Space Bar to bring up a quick look.
To restore, select the file/folder and click the "Restore" button. The file will automatically be copied to the desktop or appropriate folder. If the file you are restoring has another file in the same location with the same name, you will be prompted to choose which file to keep or keep both.
I hope this helps,
-Joe

Time Machine does not display Oldest or Latest Backup details

I had previously posted this but had no luck (or replies)...
Shortly after the most recent Time Capsule software update, I had an issue where Time Machine stopped working. I was getting a"Backup volume cannot be found" message.
As per Apple's instructions to remedy this, "Time Capsule: Time Machine backups do not mount" (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170), I re-named my Time Capsule to a shorter name.
Shortly afterward, I noticed that details were missing for "Latest Backup" when I'd click the Time Machine icon in my menu bar. All that is displayed in this field is " -- ". I have also noticed that when I open the Time Machine Preferences window, the details are missing from the following fields: "Available", "Oldest Backup", & "Latest Backup". (However, when a backup is in progress, space details are shown in the "Available" field.)
I expect the missing details have something to do with changing the name of the Time Capsule, but have no idea how to fix this... Please help.

Installed Snow Leopard, and, for whatever reason the missing details are now there. Yay.

Spotlight not finding files in time machine

I Have this problem where spolight is not finding the files present on my back-up drive using time machine. The files are there, I can find them manually but when searching for the using spotlight, 0 results show up. Does anyone have any exeprience with this?

The correct search method is to do a Smart Folder search and then enter Time Machine with that as the active window. Of course this searches separately in every backup. You can't, for instance (at least so far as I know), do a global search to tell you which backup a particular file is present in (wouldn't be all that clear what you were finding anyway since similarly named files or folders in different backups might have different contents).
Is this what you were doing?

Cannot find files after time machine restore

I have reinstalled my mac mini with Lion. After installation, I have restored the files from my time machine backup, files have been copied with window showing the copying progress.
But after the copying, I can't find the files/apps in the new system that should exisit in the backup of time machine.
I have tried restore different folders but still no change can be seen.
Anything wrong or what's the problem?

Hmmm, get Find Any File...
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.
Search for some unique file or even part that should've been imported/migrated.

Spotlight doesn't find files after Time Machine re-load

So I just got a new macbook pro and transferred everything from my old laptop onto it using Time Machine, which worked amazingly ... only weird thing now is when i search in the Finder Search bar or in Spotlight, it doesn't find any files that were on my old computer. I can find them manually, for example, I can be looking at a file called "house-info.rtf" in my Documents folder, but if i search "house" or even "house-info" it comes up with 0 results.
Any new file (I've made or downloaded on my new machine) comes up fine in the search, it's just files from my previous computer moved over via time machine...
any ideas?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Time Machine does not save Spotlight's index, so your drive has to be re-indexed. It may be that it just hasn't "caught up" yet. Give it some time.
If you're pretty sure it just hasn't done it, you can usually get Spotlight to re-index by excluding your internal HD from Spotlight (System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy) for a few moments, then removing the exclusion. That should make it start over.

HT1526 I'm trying to delete files from the trash and an .InProgress file in Time Machine that cannot be moved to the trash. I cannot unmount the TM disk either. If I use the chflags -R nouchg command, I get a "Resource busy" message. Any suggestions?

I've got one or maybe two problems. Time Machine routinely crashes and there is a file in the TM folder that is an .InProgress file at the end of successful backups. Can't delete it, even using various sudo commands in Terminal. These come back with a "Resource busy" message.
Similarly, there is a Microsoft Office alias in my trash that will not delete, again including various delete or Terminal commands. Also "Resource busy"
I can't reformat the TM volume since it cannot unmount and it also cannot unmount the whole disk, which contains some other backup files I'd rather keep.
Any suggestions?
Mike

I'm not sure I can be very helpful since I was doing a lot of things and ultimately the problems went away. But one thing that definitely seemed to help was to shut down, restart, do something, shut down again and repeat. So with a clean start, try to move the file to the trash. If that works, shut down restart and look to see if it is still in the trash. Empty the trash. Shut down if it appears to empty and then restart. It seemed sometimes that the computer was doing what I wanted then something was overriding this and restoring. The shutdowns immedately after I could do something but before it engaged an override operation seemed to keep this from happening.
Sorry to not have more to offer but...

Can't Find File in Time Machine

Kind of a weird problem, usually I can figure this stuff out on my own.
Basically, I have an edited version of a video and I want to retrieve the original. I know I did the edit on that day and I know its date created. I have a weekly backup from that week and the week after. In the one for that week, neither the original nor the edit are present so I assume the end of that week was right before I moved the video onto my computer. The next backup has the editied version, but the original is nowhere to be found, so I'm assuming that I can't get at in any way, so basically my question is.
1. Does Time Machine back up the trash anywhere? The .trash file isn't in my ~/ so I'm assuming it doesn't, and the file might have been in the trash.
2. How does Time Machine compress the backups into weekly files? Is it possible that something that only existed on my hard drive for a very short period of time got "dropped" in the combining process? Or did I somehow manage to get it onto my computer and delete it between backups?

1. Does Time Machine back up the trash anywhere?
No, that's one of the things it skips automatically. See What's excluded from backups in #11 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
2. How does Time Machine compress the backups into weekly files?
It doesn't, exactly. It simply deletes the backups that have "expired." That leaves a "snapshot" of how your entire Mac looked at the time of each remaining backup.
Is it possible that something that only existed on my hard drive for a very short period of time got "dropped" in the combining process? Or did I somehow manage to get it onto my computer and delete it between backups?
Yes, it's quite possible. It depends on the timing and how often backups are run, but basically Time Machine keeps all backups for 24 hours, except the first of the day, which is kept for a month. After a month, it keeps one per week.

How to get rid of files on time machine that no longer exist

I replaced my computer several months ago when my old one died. A large amount of data which was in a partition on my old computer is still on my time machine and is taking up a lot of space and forcing time machine to delete backups much sooner than I would like. I don't know how to get rid of it. If I try to delete that folder from an individual backup, I get the message, "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified." Of course, I can't delete it from my new computer because it's not there! Any help appreciated.
Marion

The best method is to archive the contents of the TC to a disk.. archive is available via the airport utility.
Simply plug in a USB drive large enough to store all the material presently on the TC, 1TB or 2TB or 3TB.. whichever model it is.
Archive I have drawn red box around.
Once the archive has completed ..
Use the Erase disk.. just the Quick erase is ok.. takes a couple of min and then you have a nice empty drive to start loading TM backups on.

My address book is frozen in time machine even though I have the latest version of Lion.

I deleted some contacts, that looked like duplicates, on my iPad this morning. It deleted both cards, not just the duplicate. I have iCloud turned on and now I cannot restore the contacts, or in fact any previous version of my address book from Time Machine!

What is the exact message that you are getting? A screenshot, perhaps: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1070933
The Reader executable name is AcroRd32.exe

HT201250 How can I find a file on Time Machine.

The file was on my Desktop at one time but has been deleted. Typing it's name in the TM Spotlight field and clicking the Back Button (per the TM tutorial) doesn't work. Has anyone found a specific file on Time Machins that is no longer on the Mac?

First of all, I don't work for Apple and neither do most people who post here. This is primarily a user community.
The documentation is correct, even if you didn't have any success. I prefer to use mende1's suggestion, so I don't use Spotlight in Time Machine.
I understand you are frustrated, as I would be if it didn't work. Computer frustration isn’t one of my favorite pastimes.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback

Some files in Time Machine are being locked

I run Mountain Lion 10.8.4 on a Mac Mini 2012. Over the past year or so (dating back to my older iMac mid-2010, after which I transferred the data to my current Mac Mini), I've noticed that most of my files in Time Machine are getting locked. The files on my Mac are not locked, but the backed-up versions of the files are locked. The icons have a padlock icon on them. This is NOT due to the "auto-lock documents" feature, since this no longer exists in Mountain Lion.
For instance, my Firefox profile is a good example. Here are two screenshots:
1. Screenshot of my Firefox profile. Everything looks fine.
2. The same profile, except the latest Time Machine backup.
These locks appear in every single backup I have, up until the oldest one. I ran "Repair disk" on Time Machine, which took about 30 minutes, and then made another backup, and this time the newest backup did not have any locks—but all the older backups still had locks. I found this a bit strange, because why would a backup I made AFTER running "Repair disk" be fixed, but the older ones remained unaffected?
Anyway, I hoped that this would fix the problem, but every time I do this, a few weeks later, the problem re-occurs.
So, is there anything more permanent that I can do?

Hey man,
Some things I'd be looking at trying is:
---> Reset ACL's
Boot to Recovery -> Utilities -> Terminal
Then enter the following command to open the Reset Password Utility:
resetpassword
Then select the volume (normally Macintosh HD)
Choose the user account in the "Select the user account:" pop-up menu
Click Reset (ignore all the 'enter new password for user' sections and just click reset at the bottom after selecting the volume and the user
Once that is done, quit Terminal and the Reset Password Utility
Open Disk Utility
---> Verify/Repair Disk + Permissions
Click Macinosh HD on the left of Disk Utility and then click Verify Disk at the bottom right, if it comes up with green text in the white box saying 'The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK', then you DO NOT need to click Repair Disk, if it finds any errors, you should click Repair Disk
Afterwards, you should click Verify Disk Permissions, once that completes click Repair Disk Permissions (Click this regardless of what Verify Disk Permissions says)
Once that is done, I would follow HT2409 and do a Spotlight Re-Index
Attempt another backup and see how you get on
Regards
MiiCK

Erasing old files from Time Machine

I have excluded some files to not be backed up in time machine because of there size. However, I am having trouble erasing those files on by back-up drive to create more space. I was told that you could choose the file when Time Machine was open, click on the "gear" icon, and then click "delete all backups of...". I do this, it gives me the warning message that this can't be undone, and then it doesn't work. Any suggestions?

I have excluded some files to not be backed up in time machine because of there size. However, I am having trouble erasing those files on by back-up drive to create more space. I was told that you could choose the file when Time Machine was open, click on the "gear" icon, and then click "delete all backups of...". I do this, it gives me the warning message that this can't be undone, and then it doesn't work. Any suggestions?

Time Machine can't create space for new backups

For a couple of weeks my backups are failing. (Time Machine couldn't complete backup to "Time Machine Backups". The backup disk needs 156 GB for the backup but only 138 GB are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files.) I thought Time Machine was supposed to delete the oldest backups to make room for new ones? Thanks for your help.

It will delete the oldest backups, but when you have already deleted all of those, there will come a time when you will just run out of space.
If you don't think you should be at that point, tbirdvet is likely correct.

Genius Bar lost a business file. Can't seem to find it in Time Machine...Got Ideas?

Genius Bar lost a business financial file. Can't seem to find it in Time Machine. Gone back several days...Got Ideas?

You need to give me more info..
What did you take the Mac to the genius for??
What did they do to it?
Did you have TM setup at defaults doing backups hourly?
Are you using a Time Capsule? Did you ever backup the time capsule??
Please do a backup of your Time Machine backup right now.. in TC plug in a suitable sized USB drive and do an archive.. you can do nothing else while this is happening but it is crucial for you to have another copy of whatever you have.
Archive is a bit slow.. and the backup is slightly less useful.
The fastest method is plug the USB into your computer and copy and paste the backups.backupdb directly to the USB drive. It should copy at around 60GB/hr so calculate how long that will take. See instructions here. http://pondini.org/TM/18.html Assuming you are using a TC then you use method 4.. copying from a Network backup to local drive.
Never work directly from the original backup .. work just from this copy so anything you do can be reversed or recovered.
Read very carefully the methods of restoring files from TM.. it is a bit out of date but Pondini has the best details.
So Q14-17 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
You can do a full recovery of the backup to a USB drive.. and then search for your file in more normal way.
Get professional help.. and this is where you need data recovery people who are familiar with apple TM backup format. Check local apple store or perhaps better local Apple independent repair business that are used to handling this kind of event.
Also talk to the company that makes the software as they must have to deal with people who manage to lose, corrupt or in some other way ruin their data and need to recover.. see what hints they can give you.
Surely at some point you pass your info to your accountant in the form of a computer backup file from your accounting package.
I have to admit I am surprised if you never backed up your business data file to a USB stick and put it in a filing cabinet at home or a hard disk at a friends place.. Cloud storage for your business files.. Did you depend totally on TM for backups? You never planned for a fire or theft of your computer and TC?? Or what has happened.. loss of computer files and failure of the backup? No greater teacher than the burnt hand that touching hot stuff isn't a good idea. Sorry .. it is a very hard lesson.. but electronic data storage on magnetic media is ever one byte away from being gone forever.. !!

Find files on Time Machine that weren't in the "Latest Backup"?

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