Older Time Machine backups missing

I recently upgraded my hard disk, and restored from my TM backup. After the subsequent full backup, and the (apparently) normal glitchy next few days (backups failing or preparing for ever)things seemed back to normal. However, I went to find some accidentally deleted Mail notes and discovered that no backups seem to be available from before the date of my full restore. As no new sparsebundle has been created is there any chance that my older backups are still in there somewhere, in a form where I might be able to access them?

Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to that full backup after the restore.
That should show exactly which backups it deleted to make room for more. If you're unsure of what you see, copy and post the messages here (be sure to get them all, as sometimes they overflow the small window).

Similar Messages

  • Time Machine Backup Missing?

    I have been searching for lost photos for a couple of years, and have a new MBP and want to try to finally reaarange my digital life. I had stopped time machine from making backups because I was hoping I would not overwrite the backups that may have contained the missing photos, since time machine as it marches along eventually overwrites older backups to make room for newer ones.
    So this issues has two main parts. First, I have all the missing "phtos" in its own iphoto library. Thus I can see about 900 or so thumbnails, but of course no photos to go with the thumbnails. I had hoped I could at least recover the thumbnails, but when I look in all my drives I don't see a folder associated with the thumbs - only partial thumbs that appear to be from face recognition attempts.
    My next goal was to try to restore a backup from the time machine to the brand new MBP in the hopes that the photos may be in the backup. When I navigate to my time capsule, I can see saprsebundles there, but when I try to restore from time machine several I can't select which point in time to back up from. When I look at my time machine preferences on my current mchine (running 10.6.8), it shows latest backups failed, but not because it was turned off but because it says it doesn't recognize the username or password. I have updated the firmeware, and when I go into the time capsule through airport utility it shows everything operating fine, and I can access time capsule with no problem. When I click on time machine it says no backup can be found and asks if I want to setup time capsule. Now I'm stuck because I certainly don't want to accidentally erase any backups that may exist.
    So how do I get to these time machine backups to see if indeed the lost photos are lurking anywhere? And can these thumbs somehow be found so I can at least save them? I know they won't be of much quality but at least I can see something when viewing them in iphoto.

    Not sure why you say "at least three" unless the Time Capsule is set up to Secure shared disks with accounts (per the Disks window of Airport Utility).  In that case, there may be multiple accounts on the TC; each one must log on with its name and password, and will see only what belongs to that particular account:
    If you backed-up with one account for a while, then changed to another, each would have a sparse bundle for the same Mac.
    Othewise, there should be one sparse bundle per Mac.
    Should be only one sparsebundle, but I probably copied things in the past - this is almost 3 years that I'm still coming back and hoping to find these photos on a backup somehow. When I open Airport Utility I don't even see a menu bar like your image shows, and when I go to the menu itself all options including disk are greyed out.
    Here is my finder window with the sparsebundles:
    they all seem to have the same data in them.
    They'll all have the same folder structure, but the contents should be the same as the Mac that made them.
    But if the backups are made at different times you would think the files would be different. If I have photos taken every month, shouldn't the backups from say February have additional files than the backups from January?
    The big question is are there some earlier backups lurking somewhere - I thought I had read that TM keeps earlier backups even though it may not display them.
    If you don't see them via the Finder, either there's nothing else there, or there's some sort of corruption or damage. 
    So essentially it would seem that any backups from 2009 are gone if the earliest backup from the sparsebundle is dated 2010?
    Since I see these backups through finder, would the display other tm backups display something different if I could get it to work?
    Nothing extra, unless there's damage that can be fixed.
    The sparsebundles seem to mount and open through finder, but nothing works through tm itself.
    Have you tried the things in my previous post?
    The things in the previous post seemed to apply if I couldn't mount a sparsebundle - I must be missing what to do when TM itself will not start from the dock or menu bar. I did reselect it as drive option and then turned off backups again.

  • How do I restore a system from an older time machine backup?

    How can I restore my full system from a time machine backup using a "snapshot in time" older than the most recent time machine backup?
    For context: I am doing work on my machine that required making a full backup (in time machine), working on the computer, then doing a full restore. Unfortunately, when I briefly connected the my external disk during step 2, time machine started and added a "newer" backup than the one I need to restore. Any advice?
    Thanks!

    Recover your entire system
    Time Machine – Revert to Previous OS

  • How migrate from older time machine backup (not the latest)?

    My old Snow Leopard Mac had a dying hard drive. In the last few days, files were disappearing left and right.
    I bought a new Lion Mac, but I don't trust the Time Machine backup for the last few days and I would like to migrate the backup from just before the problems started.
    I can't figure out any way to do this. Migration Assistant only offers to import the latest backup
    And the full Time Machine Restore feature, which DOES allow you to pick a backup, only works on the original machine, which will not boot any more.
    Can I somehow trick Migration Assistant by deleting the last few backups from the Time Machine drive and renaming the one I want to use to Latest? (I've made a copy of the entire Time Machine folder just in case...)
    Any other way to do this? I'm sure many people are in this situation.

    I have this same question.  My hard drive died, and the last few Time Machine backups appear to be incomplete or corrupted.  New hard drive installed now.  Migration Assistant and Setup Assistant first refuse to even recognize my backup drive, then insist on migrating data from the newest backup instead of an older (but definitely complete and reliable) backup.  So I haven't migrated anything and am still using my old (OS 10.4) computer until i get this straightened out.  Ideas?

  • Cannot access older time machine backups

    I recently installed a new SSD in my MacBook and after reinstalling OSX Mountain Lion I chose to restore from a time machine backup. Everything went smoothly and all my files were restored. However, I tried to access a backup from before my restore but it's not showing it as being available even though the Time Machine preferences confirm that my oldest backup is from June 2011 and I can still access the folders that far back via finder. But I've never had this happen. Why it because its a new hard drive? Was it because of the recent 10.8.3 software update? Was it because of the "restore from time machine backup"? Every time I had done a clean install I just copied over the critical folders such as documents and itunes from my drive, never used the restore feature. My files clearly aren't gone, but I'm curious as to why this happened. Please help. Thanks in advance.

    Have you done a new backup yet?  If not, yes, Time Machine is looking for the backups on a different disk.  As mende1 says, the procedure in #E3 should let you see them.
    Once you start a new backup, Time Machine should automatically "associate" the new drive with the old backups, only do an "incremental" backup of the changes, and treat the old backups as if they'd been made from the new drive.
    If not (ie, if it starts doing a full backup), you may be able to cancel the backup and do the "associatedisk" yourself, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, especially the pink box there.

  • Time Machine backup missing bits of iPhoto library

    I just noticed that the size of my iPhoto '09 library as seen in the Latest directory on the backup drive is a little smaller than the current size of my iPhoto library. The backup is up to date. I made sure by running Time Machine manually.
    After some exploring I found whole directories within the iPhoto package structure that are just missing on the backup drive. For example, iPhoto Library / Modified / 2009 / Sep 26, 2009 is missing. I can't understand why. TM has run plenty of times since those photos were imported into iPhoto. I found other directories missing, too.
    What's up with this? At this point I no longer trust Time Machine. If it's not backing up these directories what else is it not backing up?

    Move/backup/move back/backup did not fix the problem. TM still didn't backup the missing directories.
    I was finally able to convince TM to do the right thing by following the procedure described here:
    http://www.nzmac.com/quick-tips/time-machine/how-do-i-reset-time-machine.html
    This isn't a solution because I still don't know what caused TM to think that it backed up something that it didn't back up. But the article was suggested by a friend of mine in IT who also owns a few Macs. After following the procedure and running TM again I can see all of the previously missing files backed up on the ext drive. I also used BackupLoupe (http://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/) to browse the files that were actually copied by the last backup. I see that TM copied the directories that I knew were missing and two other directories that I did not know were missing.
    At this point I think my TM backup is complete. But now I'm on the lookout for a better backup solution. Until I find it I'll need to periodically compare backup sizes to make sure that TM keeps doing its job.

  • I cannot access an older time machine backup after installing an new hard drive.

    After installing a new hard drive I tried to access my older backups in time machine but cannot. They are there but do not light up and allow me to access them, or select them.

    First, if you're worried about the possibility of losing a backup set, then your backup strategy is inadequate. You will certainly lose those backups, no matter what you do, when the drive hosting them fails, as it will eventually. If you take data safety seriously, you should have at least two complete, independent backups of all your data, one of which is off-site at all times. I suggest you make a second backup now, before doing anything else.
    The action I suggested won't delete all the snapshots; only the selected one -- unless something goes wrong, which is always possible. Without adequate backups, nothing you do is safe.

  • Can I delete older Time Machine backups?

    I have an extensive set of Time Machine back-ups on an external drive for a machine that I no longer own. I want to keep a back-up of that machine...but just one copy, not the multiple copies that exist now.
    My first thought was to simply delete all of the backup folders except the most recent one. But I don't know enough about how Time Machine works to know if that approach will work, or if the most recent backup somehow depends on all those previous folders, and I'll end up deleting important content.
    Can I delete the older folders? Is there a way to "compress" the backups so I have just a single, last snapshot of the machine?

    As Kappy says, you can do this via the TM interface, and from another Mac, but it's rather tedious.
    +Enter TIme Machine+ won't show you the backups from another Mac. But if you hold the Option key down while selecting the TM icon in your Menubar, it will change to +Browse Other Time Machine Disks,+ that will.
    Locate the backup you want to delete via the "cascade" of Finder windows.
    Then select the "gear" icon in it's toolbar and +Delete Backup.+
    You'll see a confirmation prompt, then one for your Administrator's password.
    When you delete an entire backup, it will disappear from the timeline and the "cascade" of Finder windows, but it will not actually delete the backup of any item that's also present in any other backup. Thus you may not gain much space on any one backup. The deletion is usually fairly quick, but sometimes quite lengthy (if you exit TM, you may see a progress bar for it). Unfortunately, you cannot predict which will be quick and which won't.

  • Can you delete older time machine backups

    I recently upgraded to a new iMac.  I had been using an external drive for backing up my previous computer.  I would like to use this same drive to back up my new computer; however, I need to delete some of the older backups in order to have enough space.
    My understanding is that Time Machine backs up incrementally; therefore, I am wondering if I go in and arbitrarily start deleting the oldest BUs if I will mess up the integrity of the backups.  I am reluctant to delete all of them until I am absolutely certain I don't need anything from them.
    Any help would be much appreciated.
    Thank you.

    I would let Time Machine 'do its thing' and delete backups as it is designed to. You probably won't hurt the integrity of the backup, but you could delete something you might want. How big is the drive? You could always buy a new drive and backup both computers to that and keep backing up the older computer to both drives. Having 2 separate backups on 2 separate hard drives is desirable because hard drives do fail.

  • Complex problem - Time Machine backup missing "Applications" directory

    OK - I have a 2 or 3 year old iMac - Intel 1.83 mh / 4gb memory OS 10.5.7. System has been working fine and time machine seems to have been backing up fine. Today, we had a strange problem with the HD, probably some weird hit - it wouldn't boot, and I tried multiple times. I finally booted from the CD and used the disc utility to try and examine/repair the disk - no luck. I got an error message. I then went back to the CD and restored the entire system from Time Machine. The restore seem to work fine. The system re-booted OK --- EXCEPT --- there were no apps - and I mean zip. Aside from the finder, there was no Terminal app, couldn't find any apps in spotlight, and I couldn't see the app directory anywhere on Time Machine. I believe all of my data was restored OK. It's difficult for me to tell if somehow the apps were all deleted from time machine or they're there and just not visible.
    Anyway, I then restored the OS (10.5) from my CD, and it has restored the basic apps that come with it - mail, terminal, disk utility etc. However, I still can't see the apps on Time Machine.
    This is somewhat disconcerning since I had assumed that I could do a complete system restore with time machine.
    I'm open to any advice you might have.
    Signed - frustrated with Time Machine

    BaNzOmBiE wrote:
    I also noticed that on the time capsule there are more recent backups that I was not offered to restore by the mac os x boot disk.
    Maybe not. Did you do a full restore, by booting from your Leopard Install disc, and selecting Utilities then +*Restore from Backups+* from the menubar? If so, the list of backups you saw was not shown in your local time zone: it's in *U.S. Pacific Time,* (because you only specify your language when booting from the Leopard Install disc, not your local time zone).
    If you selected the last backup shown, then you got the last one, even if the date & time didn't seem right.
    I don't know what to do.
    Shall I start the recovery process from scratch using the same backup (and wait 13 more hours..)? Or maybe try to manually copy the applications directory on the restored mac and see what happens.
    Are you sure it's not there? I know that sounds silly, but be sure you're signed-on as an Admin user, check the top level of your internal HD, and other places. What happens if you click the Apple icon in your Menubar, then +System Preferences?+ It may be some sort of permissions problem -- if the restore utility can't restore something, it will fail, not just skip things.
    If all else fails, your best bet might be to do an Archive and Install, preserving users and settings, per the *Archive & Install* section of the Glenn Carter - Restoring Your Entire System / Time Machine *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
    Then use the normal Time Machine app to restore the other apps.

  • Older Time Machine backups not available in Mountain Lion?

    My wife relies heavily on Time Machine to restore old files that have been deleted or previous versions of a file. Recently I upgraded her Mac OS from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Today she discovered that she is unable to search and/or restore files from any point before the upgrade to Mountain Lion, although she can see dates along the timeline that indicate that there are backups present. She has backups going back almost 3 years now, so this is a pretty serious potential loss. Is there a work around for this? If not, we'll have to roll back to her Snow Leopard OS from theTime Machine.  Just FYI, her system specs are:  iMac (24-inch Mid 2007) Mac OS 10.8.x 3GB RAM

    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

  • Manually erasing some older Time Machine backups?

    I need to move a bunch of stuff from my HD to my external (I am pushing the 10% limit on my HD) but my external is getting pretty full itself. Can I delete older backups, say from September from my backup?

    TM will automatically delete the oldest backups if space is needed. See:
    About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert
    TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Data are deleted to make space for a new backup, but if TM is unable to delete enough files to free up space for the new backup, then you will get a disk full error. Normal thinning during a backup occurs during TM's periodic weekly and monthly consolidation backups. Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
    Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.
    In order to delete any files from a TM backup drive the only way it should be done is by using the TM application. Open the Finder to the file's location, then open the TM application. Navigate back in time. Then select the file. Use the Tool icon in the Finder's toolbar and select the Delete option.
    Do not delete anything from the TM backup drive manually. Use the TM application per the above.

  • How can I "Put Back" a time machine backup from the trash to my external hard drive?

    Basically what happened was I accidentally put an older time machine backup from my external hard drive into the trash on my macbook. Since then, time machine has made new backups onto my external hard drive. How can I either "Put Back" or replace the deleted backup back into my hard drive?
    Whenever I try to move it it says "A newer item named “Backups.backupdb” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?" I click replace and after a few minutes of loading, it says "Cannot replace. An item named "" already exists."

    As long as you don't delete the trash, the files should be recoverable.
    I suspect using the Put Back command could take a long time, so be patient.
    If your Time Machine backups are mixed with your daughter's backups you might want to buy a larger drive and move the Time Machine files to the new drive.
    Regarding missing photos in iPhoto...There might be options to rebuild/recover that data from iPhoto rather than trying to revert to a Time Machine backup.
    Check out this third party app, iPhoto Library Manager. It has a demo.
    http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/
    Options for a larger drive.
    I like the Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives. Works on USB 2.0 ports. They come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.
    I don't recommend Western Digital because of the boot problem with some of their drives.
    LaCie makes good drives.
    All Mac formatted drives will cost more and it’s easy to reformat with Disk Utility. Do not use the software that comes with the drives. It’s recommended that you use Apple’s Disk Utility.
    Prices vary but this gives you an idea of what you’ll find. As you notice the second and third TB is usually only $15 more per TB. Normally, you’ll find these prices but right now the 1T is more than the 2T
    Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 $85
    Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 $99
    Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB USB 3.0 $115
    I have seen the 3T on sale for $99.
    Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

  • Can I Update Time Machine Backup Without Booting From The Source Drive

    Greetings,
    Can I update a time machine backup without booting from the original source drive?
    My main Macbook Pro internal drive seemed to have died. I had not backed up in months so my Time Machine backup was old.
    I replaced the drive with a new one and settled for restoring from the old TM backup because my latest info was on the dead drive and not backed up.
    I just plugged the "broken" drive into a dock and it mounted.
    It won't boot from the drive but I can mount it and copy from it so far.
    I now want to update my Time Machine backup with the info on the 'broken" drive while it's able to be mounted.
    How can I accomplish this without booting from the 'broken" drive and running time machine.
    Recap...
    I need to update a Time Machine backup using another hard drive without booting from the source (as I cannot). Both drives are connected via USB to my MBP and I am booted from another MBP. I want to end up with the newer info from the "broken" drive updating my older Time Machine backup.
    Thank You,
    SG

    Hi
    Time Machine will only be able to backup whilst booted into OSX, so unless you can mount the drive, and boot up the OS that is installed on the disk, then no, you will not be able to run a Time Machine backup of that drive.
    You could image the drive onto another using Disk Utility
    Cheers

  • My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

    My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

    Yes, I've done all "the ususal suspects.." repaired permissions, zapped pram, "reintroduced Time Machine to the backup drive by turning it off and on... etc

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