List views in time machine

is there any way to display a list of, for example, all the photos on an external HD using time machine? or all movies. or all documents. the only thing i seem able to do at the moment is to see the total backup of all files in a folder which is named by the date of the backup. i hope that makes sense. thanks.

ericcartman wrote:
hi. i agree that the question wasnt expressed very clearly. sorry. but i think you pretty much understood it. i have a number of movies scattered here and there on the backup drive, which i backed up at various points over the last 12 months, and then erased from my computer.
I don't know if you've read #20 in the FAQ yet -- if not, you need to Stop deleting such things!
Here's what it says:
First, the whole point of a good backup strategy is to have (at least) two copies of everything important, in (at least) two separate places. If you delete the originals, you no longer have backups! When your Time Machine drive fails (and all disk drives fail, sooner or later), you risk losing your *only remaining copy*.
Second, Time Machine will, eventually, delete the backup copies of anything that's no longer on your system. The timing varies, depending on how long things were on your system before being deleted, how often backups were run, and how much space is on your Time Machine drive: it may be as long as your oldest backup, or as short as 24 hours.
If you're out of room on your internal HD, either get a larger one or another external HD for the overflow +*as soon as possible+* so you don't lose any more movies. Then scour your backups for them, and use the "Star Wars" display to restore them to a permanent location.

Similar Messages

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  • Time Machine doesn't back everything up

    Having a quirky issue with Time Machine - it's only backing up the 'Users' folder from the OS hard drive, not the 'Applications', 'Library' or 'System' folders. Therefore, if I ever needed it to reinstall it wouldn't have enough of the data.
    Any ideas how to tell Time Machine to back up all folders on the OS drive? Nothing I can see in Time Machine settings/preferences with such an option...
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    Just as an update, I tried deleting the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist preferences file and effectively 'resetting' Time Machine but it made no difference. I ran the diagnostic and reported it as a Bug to Apple. For your info, details of report are below.
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    20-Aug-2013 10:42 AM Andy Worby:
    Summary:
    Time Machine is failing to back up all top-level folders present on the main OS hard disc, even though they do not appear in the 'Exclusions' list within Time Machine preferences. As a result, 'System', 'Library' and 'Applications' top-level folders are not backed up. The only folder being backed up is 'Users'.
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    Steps to Reproduce:
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    2. Enter Time Machine preferences window.
    3. Select backup hard disc ( in this case, I am using an external 2TB hard disc via Firewire 800 connection).
    4. Click options
    5. Ensure that only the backup hard disc is selected in 'Exclusions' list.
    6. Click Save
    7. Commence a Time Machine backup.
    8. Allow backup process to complete.
    9. Go directly into the backup hard disc.
    10. View top-level folders that have been backed up from the OS hard disc.
    Expected Results:
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    Actual Results:
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    Regression:
    Problem is continuous, and has occurred for some time, although I do not know from which exact date.
    Notes:
    I have included the following attachments:
    1. Study iMac.tmdiagnostic.zip
    2.Screen shot 1 - this is a screenshot of the Time Machine preferences file
    3. Screen shot 2 - this is a screenshot of the top level folders within my OS hard disc

  • Restore from back up does not recognize time machine drive

    My wife's hard drive in her 2010 MB Pro decided to give up the ghost a few days ago, so I purchased a new hard drive for her, booted from the Snow Leopard Install disc that came with the computer. However, after the installation is complete, when it gives the option to "Restore from backup", it will not locate the drive with the Time Machine Backups. The drive with the time machine backups is a dedicated 500 Gig Seagate External, that is set up on the network through our Airport Extreme. When I plug the drive directly into the computer, the drive doesn't even show up on the list. When I plug it back into the router it will recognize it as the Time Machine Disk, but will say "Connection Failed" when I try to connect with it. I have watched several youtube videos and read several blogs, and it looks so easy, simply click on "Restore From Backup" and bang! You're in business, but my drive and its backups won't even show up!
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    Thinking that some of the drives were from when we upgraded to Lion, I redownloaded Lion, and it is more of the same.
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    2) Migrate the files, but actually have permission to view them; or
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    Well the first thing you should do is have a local professional image the TimeMachine drive to another drive, then you can install Data Rescue on your computer and use that to read the 1's and 0's of the imaged drive directly and recover any files out of the morrase that is TimeMachine.
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    So to be safe, get profesisonal data recovery help, and not the clueless types at the Genius bar.
    FYI, once a TM drive has been infected with Lion, you can't use it with SL.
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  • Repeated Corruption of Spotlight Database on Time Machine disk?

    I'm going to try this here since I don't seem to get much traction with this question in the Time Machine forum, and there is no forum here specific to Spotlight issues in Leopard:
    I've been seeing repeated corruption of the Spotlight database on my external, Fireware 800, LaCie drive which is used exclusively for Time Machine. The symptom is that searches done in the Finder window after entering Time Machine produce no results or partial results.
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    I received instructions from AppleCare for how to find and delete the hidden folder which makes up the Spotlight database on that drive -- an action which causes Spotlight to immediately rebuild the database on that drive from scratch -- but within days after doing that the database is corrupt again.
    An additional symptom is that errors appear in the Console during a reboot -- but only if the Time Machine drive happens to be attached during the reboot. If the drive is attached AFTER booting and logging in, no such errors appear. The errors are from the "mds" process, and indicate either that a portion of the Spotlight database's "Stores" folder is having problems "storing dirty pages", and/or that a portion of the Spotlight database needs to be "recovered". Once those error messages start to appear, they will appear (identically) on every reboot where the drive is attached. No "recovery" happens. And searches after entering Time Machine fail to produce full results as described above.
    There are no other Console complaints that appear relevant. No corrupt files during Time Machine backups, no errors when having entered Time Machine to view or restore files, no errors during searches themselves while in Time Machine.
    Attempting to rebuild the Spotlight datbase on that drive by dragging it into the System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy list and then removing it are fruitless. Spotlight indexing fires up for only a couple seconds after removing the disk from Privacy and there is no change in the search failures. And no new error message are entered in the Console. The same thing happens when attempting to use the "mdutil" command from Terminal to force a rebuild (as instructed by AppleCare). Only completely trashing the hidden Spotlight database folder on that drive suffices to get Spotlight to rebuild the database from scratch and start over in a fresh, uncorrupted state. But that doesn't last!
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    Disk Utility > Verify Disk also has no complaints about that Time Machine drive (or the main hard drive)
    And the usual panacea cures (booting once in Safe Mode, reset PRAM, reset PCU, Repair Permissions) also have no effect on this problem.
    The computer in question was an "upgrade" install from 10.4.10 and has two accounts on it -- a non administrative account for normal work and an Administrator account that is almost never used. Only the one drive, the main hard drive, is being captured by the Time Machine backups. Nothing has been excluded from the Time Machine backups. I've even done a successful "full restore" of the system from that Time Machine. I.e., this is all very plain vanilla stuff. I can't fathom why I'm having this problem.
    My Time Machine dates back to after installing 10.5.1. I've tried the process of deleting, and thus recreating, the Spotlight database several times without any luck.
    Yesterday, after applying the "Time Machine and Airport Drivers" update to my 10.5.2 system, I decided it was time for a fresh start just in case there was something about the data put onto the drive by the older, 10.5.1, Time Machine that was causing Spotlight such grief.
    So I erased the Time Machine drive and did an entirely new initial backup.
    That completed without errors.
    I then did a few incremental backups on top of that. After which I did a reboot to see if there were any Console error messages from mds. There were none, and my tests of searches while viewing in Time Machine all produced correct and complete results.
    So far so good.
    However, this morning, after I booted up with the Time Machine drive attached, I went immediately into Console and found the dreaded error messages from the mds process. And sure enough my searches inside of Time Machine now only produce partial results again. Here are the two messages I'm getting at the moment (with personal information "xxx"d out):
    3/20/08 1:48:48 PM mds[26] (/Volumes/xxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/4CE0F19E-8757-43F1-A5DD-06B1DCAD0E50)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 30
    3/20/08 1:48:48 PM mds[26] (/Volumes/xxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/ABE285E8-4E3D-45BD-A3EF-D9A5B4A149DA)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 30
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    I'm at a loss on this one. Again, the Time Machine backups themselves seem to be fully complete and fully functional. And Spotlight was perfectly happy after the new, initial backup, and a few incremental backups.
    But I just can't get Spotlight to STAY happy with this Time Machine drive.
    Any suggestions?
    --Bob

    OK I've completed the repartitioning test and the results are unexpected! Here's what I did and what I've spotted so far:
    First, the only differences between what I'm going to list here and what I've done before is the repartitioning of the drive and the fact that I decided to do things this time entirely while logged in to my Administrator account. In the past, I did this stuff logged into my "standard" account and supplying Admin passwords when requested:
    @ Rebooted with the drive attached and logged in to Admin
    @ In System Preferences > Time Machine, did a Change Disk to No Disk to turn off Time Machine backups.
    Note: In what follows, each of the several times Time Machine asked me if I wanted to use the external drive as the new Time Machine drive I selected "Cancel".
    @ Used Disk Utility to re-partition the Time Machine drive into 2 untitled partitions (Apple Partition Map since this is a Powerbook Mac, Mac OS X Extended (Journalled) formatting, Mac OS 9 drivers turned off). I then partitioned it AGAIN back to 1 partition titled as my Time Machine drive (same settings). I did this two step process to make SURE the partitioning data was actually being re-written.
    @ Used Disk Utility to Erase the single partition just created -- using the option to Write 0's to the drive to make sure all of the drive was exercised.
    @ Checked and found the Time Machine volume was now identified as disk1s3.
    @ Used Disk Utility to Verify Disk on my main hard drive.
    @ Checked in Console after all of this and there were no I/O or other errors logged.
    The next few steps were done to maximize the chances that my new "initial backup" would be as clean as possible.
    @ Shut Down the computer and rebooted once into Safe Mode to let the Safe Mode boot delete caches and do its other background maintenance tasks. Shut Down immediately from the Safe Mode login window instead of logging in.
    @ Rebooted while resetting PRAM. Just because.
    @ Logged in as Admin, and used Disk Utility to Repair Permissions on the main hard drive. No messages were generated by this.
    @ Rebooted once again and logged back in as Admin to get things into a fresh state.
    At this point I was now ready to start the new, Time Machine "initial backup". However before I did that I decided to check the Console one more time.
    Imagine my surprise when I found one each of the two Spotlight related error messages I reported above! There was one "needs recovery" error and one error trying to "store dirty pages"! (Note that normally I see TWO of each of these.)
    Keep in mind that the drive had just been freshly partitioned and then erased again. Time Machine had never been given access to the drive. And no other user applications had been run. And yet the Spotlight database was ALREADY generating errors on that drive!
    Upon checking further, I discovered that the first pair of these error messages was generated during the Safe Mode boot above. They were generated again during the boot where I reset PRAM.
    BUT, there were NO ERROR MESSAGES in the most recent reboot I had just completed!
    At this point I decided to do a 2 more reboots and there were NO ERROR MESSAGES in either of those.
    Curious indeed! Well perhaps some sort of recovery had happened.
    In any event, at this point I decide to do the "initial backup".
    @ In System Preferences > Time Machine, I selected the drive for Time Machine use and let the initial backup complete. I also had Console running during this. The backup completed without any significant messages. In fact one additional incremental backup also completed without errors before I noticed it was done.
    At this point, I entered Time Machine and tried my usual test searches which have demonstrated the Spotlight corruption in the past, and there were no problems. Spotlight was apparently good.
    I then rebooted and checked the Console and son of a gun but the Spotlight error messages were back -- this time 2 of each.
    However, when I checked searches in Time Machine -- THEY WORKED! This is the first time I've ever seen a case where the presence of those error messages during reboot wasn't accompanied by search failures inside of Time Machine.
    I immediately did another reboot -- AND NO ERROR MESSAGES!
    I've since done several additional incremental backups and several reboots, and I can't find a pattern anymore. The error messages OFTEN appear on reboot (if the Time Machine drive is attached), but not ALWAYS as was the case in the past. And up to now searches inside of Time Machine are working without problems.
    I can see several possible explanations:
    1) The error messages are spurious (or there is some sort of automatic recovery that is working now when it didn't work before) and the repartitioning above actually fixed the problem.
    2) The database is indeed corrupted, but the corruption has moved to a portion of the database that my test searches aren't exercising.
    3) I need to do more incremental backups before the database corruption will actually become visible in my test searches. I.e., the problem just hasn't had time to develop yet.
    Meanwhile I heard back from LaCie support that they have not heard of a problem like this for Time Machine or Spotlight on this particular drive. I've also pointed them at this thread for details.
    So I'll just continue to use this Mac normally over the next few days, while periodically checking to see if the Spotlight search failures reappear and to see if I can spot any pattern as to why those Console error messages sometimes appear on reboot and sometimes not.
    I'll report back when I have more info.
    Again, if anyone has any insight into what those 2 Console error messages actually mean, or if anyone else is seeing those error messages, or is having Spotlight search failures when inside Time Machine whether or not you see those error messages, please chime in.
    --Bob

  • Time machine only displays my desktop folder

    When I enter Time Machine, I want to be able to move back in time and browse my ENTIRE COMPUTER in the past - - - including the top level of my internal hard disk and see all files and folders on it.
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    Steve Holton wrote:
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  • Oldest time machine backups are inaccessible

    Hi everyone,
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    Message was edited by: Steve Finkelstein

    Steve Finkelstein wrote:
    Thanks Pondini, tip #E2 did the trick. I had to option click TM in the menu bar and select a different disk. I didn't realize that the backups deviated from each other at that point in time. It makes sense because that's around when I installed Snow Leopard.
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    Cool! That really shouldn't happen, but sometimes TM has a mind of it's own!
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  • Time Machine Backups gone since Yosemite install?

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    8:28:36 am - Deleted /Volumes/BackUp Brain/Backups.backupdb/Diarmaid’s  27" iMac (2)/2014-11-23-043709 (1.1 MB)
    8:28:46 am - Deleted /Volumes/BackUp Brain/Backups.backupdb/Diarmaid’s  27" iMac (2)/2014-11-23-033533 (868 KB)
    8:29:32 am - Deleted /Volumes/BackUp Brain/Backups.backupdb/Diarmaid’s  27" iMac (2)/2014-11-23-023006 (1.9 MB)
    8:30:28 am - Deleted /Volumes/BackUp Brain/Backups.backupdb/Diarmaid’s  27" iMac (2)/2014-11-23-012426 (1.1 MB)
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    8:30:29 am - Backup completed successfully.
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  • Restoring System from Time Machine backup - only option is older backup

    I have two drives in a Mac Pro - a system drive and a data drive. Yesterday morning the system drive died. The computer hung and when I manually restarted it, I got the circle with a line icon, and then on a subsequent restart, after resetting the PRAM, I got the ? folder icon.
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    Will Henderson wrote:
    I would really like to be able to get my system back to a much more recent snapshot than it's at now
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    pres92 wrote:
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    John Galt wrote:
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    pres92 wrote:
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