Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark - Problem and Fix

My MacBook over the weekend upon awakening from sleep showed that the Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark. The external drive showed as mounted in the finder but repeated tries to Back up Now ended in Latest Backup Failed. Hmmm. Never saw that before. Did a restart and ran Disk Utility Verify Disk on the start up disk and it came out OK. So I then ran Disk Utility on the external FW backup drive and as soon as it reported that the FW disk was fine, Time Machine started up on it's own and did a back up and all is back to normal after leaving the TM drive attached the remainder of the weekend. All backups are back to working fine with no repeat of the problem.

If for some reason the computer has trouble communicating with the drive it will report a failure when TM tries to back up, and will display that question mark. It's good you were able to fix it and get TM running again.

Similar Messages

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    Time Machine seems to be dead, since I'm unable to reset it. As soon as I try  anything, it goes to back to the "OFF" Position. Would appreciate any Help, to get my external Hard Drive to work. Adolffrom Peachland!
    Product, 2012 IMac 21.5"

    There's an apple store in my city but it is about a 20 minute drive and I do not have apple care. Do you think they would still help me?

  • Time machine icon in menu bar doesn't spin anymore in Mavericks

    On three separate machines, new iMac, MacBook Pro, and Air, menu bar Time Machine icon no longer spins when backing up.

    Maybe it has to do with Maverick's memory/power usage techniques. By not having the Time Machine icon spin it save one processing and power. That's my uneducated guess.
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    Cheers, Andrew.

  • Time machine icon in Menu bar no longer rotates during backups

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  • The time machine Icon does not does not show up in my menu bar

    The time machine icon does not appear in my menu bar. The desk top icon for the external hard drive is green. I've checked preferances and the time machine is turned on and the box is checked that has the icon appear in my menu. I've turned off the time machine and rebooted and then turned it on and rebooted again. Nothing seems to work. I'm running Mavericks and I have an Intel I5 processor.

    the box is checked that has the icon appear in my menu
    Uncheck it and check it again. Any change? If not, see below.
    Please read this whole message before doing anything.
    This procedure is a test, not a solution. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
    Step 1
    The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account.
    Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”
    While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your personal files or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.
    Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?
    After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.
    *Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac” is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.
    Step 2
    The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
    Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.
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    Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
    The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
    Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
    After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of Steps 1 and 2.

  • Why is the Time Machine icon in menu bar not spinning when backing up? It stop working when I changed to Maverick.

    Why is the Time Machine icon in menu bar not spinning when backing up? It stop working when I changed to Maverick.

    my imac came with lion and don't think it ever span with lion and mtn lion and now maverick not sure if it's a setting

  • Missing time machine icon

    My time Machine icon in the tool bar had a 'Question mark in it' what does that mean?
    I reformatted the drive and deleted the icon, now I cant find the icon anywhere in applications how do i restore the icon?
    Time Machine is still there in the top menu bar but not in my lower toolbar

    the Time Machine application should be in the Applications folder. The ? in the dock icon means the application is not there. If you have a Time Machine backup that included the system, you should be able to fine the application there, using Finder

  • In Yosemite time machine icon does not indicate when saving.

    I am using an iMac (20 Inch), early 2008, 5 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Recently I updated from Snow Leopard to Yosemite OS X 10.10.2.
    In Time Machine I can back up to an external drive however the Time Machine icon in the Menu Bar does not spin to indicate that it is backing-up as it did with Snow Leopard. What can I do to restore it to its previous behaviour?

    Joh,
    Since the release of Mavericks, Apple removed the rotation animation.
    There is no user capability to change that behavior.

  • Clicking the Time Machine icon does nothing.

    So I have backed up to an external hard-drive, and would like to confirm my backup. But clicking the Time Machine icon does nothing.
    Is anyone else experiencing this?

    Thanks all. I had used my external hard-drive on a PC previously, and thought that Time Machine would reformat it correctly, but erasing the external hard-drive with Disk Utility seems to have addressed the issue. I can now open Time Machine by clicking the icon in the dock, just as I was trying to do before... in vain.
    So that problem being solved, I now have a question: If I have a Boot Camp partition (I do), will it be backed up by Time Machine as well? How can I check? I.e. how can I open that partition from Mac OS / Time Machine?

  • In my Macbook Pro, on a few occassions, the apple menu bar blacks out. its displayed as a negative image. The desktop wallpaper get greyed out and i get a blank screen as wallpaper. No idea why this happens. I reset the system and issue gets resolved.

    In my Macbook Pro, on a few occassions, the apple menu bar blacks out. its displayed as a negative image. The desktop wallpaper get greyed out and i get a blank screen as wallpaper. No idea why this happens. I reset the system and issue gets resolved.

    AshwinVC wrote:
    I reset the system and issue gets resolved.
    How? 

  • HT201250 i can't find the time machine icon on my dock?

    I need to restore a file - can't find the time machine icon on my dock?

    Is it in the Applications folder?
    If so you can open it from there.
    If it is you can get back on the Dock by dragging it there from the Applications folder again.
    Allan

  • Hard Drive Showing up with Time Machine Icon

    I have two hard drives in my Mac Pro. I use one as the time machine backup drive. When I set that one up it changed the icon to the Time Machine icon. Today when I logged into my computer my normal drive changed from the regular hard drive icon to the time machine icon. Any ideas?

    FYI...
    The problem was that before I started using Time Machine, I had used the FW portable drive to back up my laptop using Carbon Copy Cloner (which makes a bootable copy of your HD). I didn't erase the drive before using it as my Time Machine backup disk so both the FW drive and the HD had the same disk ID associated with them so the time machine icon ended up being associated with both of them.
    I erased the portable HD completely (yes, I lost my TM backups but that's a reasonable loss) and then reviewed the Startup Disk under System Preferences. Only the boot drive was listed there correctly (before the erasure, both drives showed up there).
    I did a complete backup using TM overnight and then rebooted the system this morning....all is well now. The boot disk now has it's correct icon associated with it.
    Regards,
    Vicki

  • TIME MACHINE icon is not showing correctly

    Time machine icon is not showing the circle around the clock arms.......it´s only showing the little "sticks" no circle around it.
    Works fine, but it does not seem right

    now it's in jpeg
    No, it's not the animation.....look at the icon: does not have the circle that forms the clock

  • HT1721 My computer turns on and displays a folder icon with a question mark in it

    What should i do if my computer's screen is grey and displays a folder icon with a question mark in it?

    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440
    Not covered in the article is a possible hard drive failure.

  • Time Machine icon does not rotate

    Hello,
    The small Time Machine icon in the upper right hand corner of my iMac no longer spins while it's backing up. Is this something I should worry about?
    Tom

    Look at the icon closely and if it's backing up there will be an arrow head at both ends of the circle.
    Otherwise there's only one arrow head. (Bring a magnifying glass to the job to make it easier to see. )

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