Power outage during incremental. Time Machine "lost" Time Capsule

I had a power outage during an incremental backup and got a "delayed" message. "No big deal" I though since I figured it'd backup once the power came back on. it did and an hour later I noticed i still had "delayed." I forced a backup with "back up now" and nothing happened. Opening the preferences showed the backup had "failed" and a backup disk was not associated with Time Machine. I selected the TC and all was well.
This begs the question of whether this is a bug or not. If TC + TM is supposed to be "set and forget," power outages should no cause this type of behavior. Had I been less "techie" I might very well have gone weeks in the this situation.
Anyone else notice this?

Any thoughts? (If the above is unclear, say so and I'll edit it )

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Time Machine Lost Backups... Without Losing them!

Hey you guys,
I don't know if any of you met this kind of strange behaviour (looked but didn't find...): Time Machine told me yesterday that the backup had failed. I was working rather heavily at the time, trashing folders and putting some order into the main HD. I then did a Backup now and everything went fine. My curiosity was aroused, so I went into Time Machine... and discovered that my backups prior to two days ago had disappeared.
I opened the Time Machine HD: everything was there. I checked, all the info is OK. I decided to sleep over it. Well, this morning everything is back to normal and Time Machine "recovered" what it didn't see the day before.
Understand, this is a new machine with almost new hard drives, checked regularly and apparently working fine.
Did somebody encounter this kind of problem? Is there something I should check, or modify, or whatever?
Thanks for your time, and have a good day.
RTP

RTP,
I then did a Backup now and everything went fine. My curiosity was aroused, so I went into Time Machine... and discovered that my backups prior to two days ago had disappeared.
Just curious, did you attempt to launch TM while that successful backup was still going on, or had it completely finish (TM menu clock icon had stopped spinning)?
As V.K. stated, sometings TM just hiccups on one attempt, but succeeds on the next. Just for inormational purposes, the following are some other reasons why previous backups may not appear in Time Machine:
*Previous Time Machine Backups Are No Longer Visible*
There are several reasons why this might be the case. Consider the following:
If Time Machine can successfully launch into its’ “time travel” interface then the software is seeing backups. It you only have two time travel windows to chose from, “Today (Now)” and a single window behind that, then Time Machine has only performed its initial full backup. You can verify this by looking at the time scale on the right. If no dates appear other than Now and the date of your first full backup then subsequent incremental backups have not been taking place.
If it has been MORE than an 1 ½ hours since the first full backup completed, then you need to determine why Time Machine has stopped backing up. It might simply be that the Time Machine Preference has been turned off.
If, on the other hand, you look at the time scale on the right and you see multiple dates going back to the time of the first full backup, but they are grayed-out, then Time Machine knows that incremental backups have been taking place. Nevertheless, only the front most window “Today (Now)” shows content. Take a look at the Sidebar of the Finder window. Among the various Devices, Shares, and Places, what is highlighted/selected? If it is the Time Machine backup disk itself that is highlighted, then click on some other location in the Sidebar to make the former backup windows appear.
You see, the Time Machine “time travel” interface displays the historical backup state of what ever location is highlighted in the Finders’ Sidebar. Since Time Machine does not back itself up, then there will be no historical backup windows visible.
Bear in mind as well, if you have added locations and items to the Time Machine “Exclude From Backup” list, then there will be no visible history of these items either if they too are highlighted or selected.
And of course, if you are looking at a file or folder that has only recently been created, then there will not be many, or any, backup copies of it depending on how long ago it was created.
*Anti-Virus Software*
If you have anti-virus software running try disabling, launch Time Machine again, and see if you can access previously backed up data. Sometimes such programs scanning processes can interfere with Time Machine.
*File Vault*
Did that user account happen to have File Vault active?
In another thread V.K. stated: "if you start TM from a filevaulted home directory all you'll see is present. you could browse your old backups of files outside your home directory but not anything in it."
*For Time Capsule / AirDisk users*
If you are backing up to a wireless device, and you have the Time Machine backup disk image (sparsebundle) mounted on your desktop while you are trying to access it via the Time Machine "time travel" interface, you may not be able to see any files from previous backups.
You see, if the backup disk image (sparsebundle) is already mounted on the desktop (a White drive icon) then Time Machine may conclude that the disk is “in use” and fail to mount it properly. Obviously, this is not a factor when backing up to a locally connected drive.
A I said, none of it may apply to your case, but it is nonetheless helpful to keep in mind.
Cheers!

HT3275 Using time machine first time and the estimated time says 25 days. Wow! Am I able to use my Mac when Machine is doing its first backup?

Using time machine first time and the estimated backup time says 25 days. Wow!
Am I able to use my MacBook Pro when Machine is doing its first backup?
I can't be without my computer that long. I would have withdrawal symptoms (very painful).

Something WAS radically wrong, but I don't know what it was. However, using Apple's disk utility, I decided to totally erase the Seagate, which was "pre-formatted" for Mac and PC.
I first saved the Seagate software to my hard drive just in case I needed it later (which I don't),
By the way, the first time I tried Time Machine it stalled after about 3 GB. The second time I got the message saying 25 days backup time. I stopped that backup after receiving your response.
After reformatting (extended - journaled) I made my third attempt. Success!!! It took about 8 hours, but went through without a hitch..
I bought the SeagateI because a momentary power failure messed up my 1 TB LaCie external, which was divided into 2 partitions. The power glitch completely fouled one partiton and it will not reformat no matter what I try. I did not do a full reformat because I did not want to lose the backup on the good partition. Now that I have a good backup I plan to do a full 1 TB reformat (without partitions) on the LaCie.
Thank you for your response, which really did help me.

Time Machine and Time Capsule don't seem to work well together?

Reposted.
I get the feeling there are some serious problems with the combination of Time Machine and Time Capsule.
This is extremely disappointing, as the idea of a centralized backup device on the network (instead of disks attached to each and every computer we have running Leopard) seemed like such a good idea and a good way to supplement our tape-based backup that takes place with Retrospect.
In reality, it's a disaster on both Intel and PowerPC systems. All systems and the Time Capsule are fully up to date with software updates from Apple. I have two 1TB Time Capsule units. It goes something like this:
1. I have a few systems (mainly Intel) that work perfectly with the Time Capsule. There are no complaints and no issues at all. These systems just quietly run their backups as they should. They are the definite minority--maybe one or two have worked properly.
2. I have some systems that complain from time to time (mainly PowerPC) but will back up with a little encouragement. These too are the minority.
3. And finally, I have systems that are nothing but pain. These are both Intel and PowerPC systems. They are also the majority of the systems I have. The most common problem is sudden loss of the credentials needed to access the Time Capsule hardware--a user will be going along about their business when the Mac OS asks for the Time Capsule user name and password--after it's already been supplied and backups have been running. This should simply never ever happen.
Another charming behavior I've seen is corruption of the sparse disk image file that each computer creates on the Time Capsule. Time Machine will complain that it can't perform the backup, and examining the disk image file with Disk Utility shows it to be severely damaged. Turning off Time Machine, deleting the corrupted sparse image file, and starting over fixes it. For a while.
Finally, there are the machines (again, both Intel and PowerPC) that just can't seem to actually get through the first backup run. They either go so far and can't continue, or never actually manage to get started. I've checked the disks in these computers and found no problem with the hardware or file system. The installations are fresh and fully up to date.
Meanwhile, I have computers running Leopard with directly attached disks configured for use with Time Machine. One is a QuickSilver that isn't even officially supported by Leopard, with a Firewire attached disk. It doesn't skip a beat. The other is an Intel Mac mini being used with Mac OS X Server 10.5.4 and a USB external hard drive. These machines just do their thing, and I never have to babysit them.
These problems with the Time Capsule have been so severe that I've just given up on most of the computers and shut off Time Machine entirely. We have tape backups that run over the week, so it's not a huge loss. But that's not what really made me throw up my hands and say "enough"...no, that was the speed. Even with just one computer backing up to it, the Time Capsule seemed terribly slow. Watching the progress indicator was just painful.
I put in a word about all of this to my independent Apple dealer, and they say I'm definitely not the first to complain about some or all of these problems. In fact, they told me they were going to set up a test lab in their shop to see if they could duplicate these findings. I have no doubt that they can.
There are a total of seven computers backing up to one Time Capsule. They all store maybe ~40GB worth of data including the OS. There are about six computers on the other. Because of the way the network is laid out, the Time Capsule is connected to a Gigabit switch (and that is the only thing it's connected to). It cannot be used as the router, although I know Apple suggests this. The Airport section is disabled--I have no need or desire to use it. Some computers link up at 100 megabits, others at 1 gigabit. There are no network problems--we have no problems moving large amounts of data across the same network to our tape backup machine.
Is anyone else seeing these kinds of problems? Am I doing something wrong or expecting too much from Time Capsule?

I may be on to something. The Time Capsules I have live in a telephone equipment room that is indoors but not directly air conditioned or heated. It doesn't ever get too hot to be comfortable in there--the highest I've ever seen the temperature was 80 degrees (F). Most of the time the temperature is between 60-78 degrees.
I happened to touch one of them the other day while it was in use, and I noticed that the casing was hot to the touch...not dangerously so I suppose, but much hotter than I would have expected.
So I turned a small fan on both Time Capsules and have left it running. And I've noticed that not only do backups seem to complete more quickly, the reliability is also better. I am going to try some of my most troublesome computers once again just to see what happens.
I know there is a fan pointed at the hard drive in the Time Capsule, but I can't see how it does much in the way of cooling things down. In my opinion, it's just surrounded by too many heat producing devices to do much good...after all, not only is there a 7200 RPM hard disk in there, but also a 500MHz Marvell processor and radio set.

Time Machine says Time Capsule Disk unavailable

     I have the exclamation point in the menubar icon and Time Machine says Time Capsule Disk unavailable even though I have backed up to it many times before. I tried unpluging/plugging in the TC, but this did not solve the problem. Any ideas?

      However, I did have a problem periodically with computers not recognizing the TC disk before I had unclicked the "Enable file sharing" box, so I might still end up using your advice if this happens in the future.
There is a bug or several of them.. losing the disk is one thing the new 7.6.4 firmware is supposed to fix.. my deeply held suspicion is that Apple are using all of us as beta testers.. as lots of people are having trouble. But who knows it may finally fix this bug.. we are awaiting confirmation. ie people saying it is now fixed.. rather than since loading 7.6.4 my TC is now dead.. or disappeared .. or broken.. or no longer has wireless output.
Lets say maybe they fixed a bug.. and added some more.
     The reason I had unchecked the "Enable file sharing" box is because I have Mountain Lion Server and wanted to use port mapping on the TC to point to my computer as a File Server. To do this I went into Airport Utility and in Network pane tried to add File Sharing to the Port Settings. However, this conflicted with the "Enable file sharing" box from the Disks pane. Do you know of a way to have time machine backups to TC but also run a File Server from a computer networked with the TC using port mapping? Thank you for any guidance.
You only need the ports forwarded to the server to get outside access.. ie remote wan access.. Did you have wan access to the TC checked.. that will cause a conflict with AFP .. since it cannot be forwarded to multiple destinations at once.
If you do not have WAN access checked then you should be able to check "enable file sharing" since that is local lan..
Try it and tell me what happens.. I have never tried the combo you are using.
I would try simply using a different method to access if that doesn't work.. eg BTMM should work fine to the Server without needing ports forwarded in the TC.. as long as the TC is the main router.. and this whole issue is only because the TC is the main router.
You can also do it with vpn.. which is more robust and more business/pro method to access a server remotely than AFP.

Time machine and time capsule

I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and installed Time Capsule. I connected a Maxtor external drive to Time Capsule to enable me to access my photography library wirelessly. I have a 2nd external drive that direct connects to my Mac Book Pro. I have found the following problems:
1. Time machine shows backup files for the external drive that connects to my mac, however they are old files no longer on the drive. It does not backup the current drive but does indicate backup was successful. I would also like time machine to backup the external drive connected to time capsule.
2. I tried to delete the folder containing the old files and received a message saying I did not have permission.
3. I am experiencing problems entering Time Machine. It takes a long time to connect (including when I am connected via an ethernet cable) and after a few minutes I receive a message asking if I still want to enter time machine. Once I do have access, I typically only see mail and am not able to access folders.
Help is appreciated! Thank you.

rgoodman wrote:
1. Time machine shows backup files for the external drive that connects to my mac, however they are old files no longer on the drive.
Where does it show the old files, on recent backups in the "Star Wars" display?
It does not backup the current drive but does indicate backup was successful.
Are you sure it's not backing-up the new drive? Try the procedure in item #E3 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip.* It's for a slightly-different situation, but should confirm which disks were backed-up on each backup.
If you're sure the new external is not being backed-up, and is not on the +Do not back up+ list, do a "full reset" of Time Machine per item #B3 of the Troubleshooting Tip.
I would also like time machine to backup the external drive connected to time capsule.
Sorry, it won't. TM will only back-up internal or directly-attached FireWire or USB drives.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip.*

Power outage during 5.0.1 download possible to do clean reinstall?

power outage during 5.0.1 install. Now No iTunes purchased tv shows or movies will sync to touch. Error that video format not supported. They all synced and played fine before the new iOS. I have reset & restored with no success. Anyway to reinstall 5.0.1?

Hi, Toonz! Rather forgetful of me not to include the 1301, I tried another installation earlier & it popped up first, that's when my memory got a big jolt. Anyway, I figured the an uninstall/reinstall was probably going to have to be done. That's on the agenda for today, I was just hoping to get out of it. I assume that the Cleanup Utility should be run on both iTunes & QT in the list, once the uninstall is done?
Thanks for checking in,
Debbie

When I enter time machine (on Time Capsule) i see the stack of screen shots and the time line. However, when I roll over the mouse pointer, the time line does not activate. The cancel button does not get me out of the app: have to alt cmd esc. Ideas?

When I enter time machine (on Time Capsule) i see the stack of screen shots and the time line. However, when I roll over the mouse pointer, the time line does not activate. The cancel button does not get me out of the app: have to alt+cmd+esc. Ideas?

I have never seen it but then I run SL which is much more reliable than Lion..
See
http://pondini.org/TM/E4.html
Check the master guru of all TM problems.

Macbook backs up with time machine to time capsule, imac won't

I'm going nuts, and have spent hours trying to fix this. My family moved from PCs to macs a couple of years ago- we've got three Macs having varying success backing up with time capsule. 1. Our macbook backs up with time machine to time capsule- it even backed up today. 2. Recently attempted to back up the imac for the first time- it starts backing up (maybe 3%) but stops and I end up getting an error message-it has never backed up- 3. The macbook pro has backed up many times but recently has not backed up. It gets the same error message as the imac when time machine is used to back up to time capsule. As an added treat, i attempted to backup the imac with time machine to an external hard drive, it began backing up, stopped and I got the same error message: "time machine error unable to complete backup an error occurred while copying files." Little help!

dilagan wrote:
i attempted to backup the imac with time machine to an external hard drive, it began backing up, stopped and I got the same error message: "time machine error unable to complete backup an error occurred while copying files." Little help!
Yes, that message is not some of Apple's best work.
Most likely, there's a damaged/corrupted file that Time Machine is choking on. See #C3 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
If you're getting a different message from the Pro, see #C2.

Power Outage During Time Machine Backup...

Hey everyone,
I have a 1TB LaCie Big Disk+ and my someone threw the switch on the socket breaker for my room while time machine was backing up. The computer no longer can recognize the hard drive. It was partitioned and I can read it when I go to windows... but not in Mac. Is there any hope? I am a photographer and basically all of my photos are in that hard drive...
Also, the hard drive light turns on and I can still run other external hard drives through it via fire wire... it is making some noises as well... like reading or writing... not sure...
Message was edited by: Bchubak

Bchubak wrote:
Oh, yeah I wasnt using the external just as a hd for TM. I had other stuff that wasnt backed up.
That's not a good idea, as you now see. First, TM works best with it's own, exclusive partition, as explained in item #3 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.
Second, a good backup strategy makes sure there are (at least) two copies of everything in two separate places. While TM will back up another partition on the same drive as your backups, it really isn't good to trust both your originals and backups to the same piece of hardware. All drives fail, sooner or later.
But I was able to retrieve all of my stuff except for the TM backups which could not be copied via mac drive, but that is fine... the only problem now is that I am unable to format the drive.
That's going to be difficult. As posted earlier, I'm not a Windoze user, but you have to be very careful using the same drive with a PC and a Mac, especially for TM backups.
The simplest solution is to use one drive for the Mac only. It can have multiple partitions, one for TM and one or more others for other things (preferably things that don't need backups, or are backed-up elsewhere).
It's my understanding that you might be able to reformat the TM partition using the PC to MS-DOS or FAT32, then re-format that partition with Disk Utility to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You will, of course, lose the backups when you do that, but since they seem un-usable anyway, it's no great loss.

Time Machine - lost incremental backup

The preferences panel for Time machine says it keeps
* hourly backups for the past 24 hours,
* daily backups for the past month,
* weekly backups until your disk is full.
I notice that the reduction of hourly backups to one backup for a day appears to keep the earliest (incremental) backup for that day and deletes the rest.
To test this, I created a small file on the desktop on 13th Oct 2008 at 18:30, let time machine back it up at 18:45 and I then moved the file from the desktop to the trash at 19:00.
I checked that the file existed in the time machine backup for 18:45.
As I suspected, Time machine has only kept one backup for 13 Oct timed 12:01 am. The file is not in the backup for the 13th or 14th Oct (it is now 15th Oct). The original file is still in my trash.
If this had been an important file that I had deleted accidentally, I would not be very happy.
For the record I am using a MacBook running OS 10.5.5 using a 500Gb Seagate FreeAgent drive connected via firewire.
Shouldn't Time Machine consolidate all the incremental backups for one day into the one backup that it keeps (and eventually consolidate the daily backups into the weekly one that it keeps) so that files are not 'lost' in this way?
Arthur L.

Welcome to Discussions.
[This|http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2007/12/howleopardtim.html] explains it well:
"As Apple presents the Time Machine filesystem view, you can see your system approximately:
As it was at the top of each hour today
As it was each day for the past 30 days, starting yesterday
As it was each week, starting 31 days ago, going back as far as disk space permits
A distraught user might only be interested in the amount of data he may have lost:
If you accidentally deleted a file today, you lose up to an hour's work
If you deleted it between yesterday and 30 days ago, you lose up to a day's work
If you deleted it more than 30 days ago, you can lose up to one week's work, or all of it."
Hopefully the file you've lost took longer than an hour to create than the example you tried.
/p

Time Machine lost all old backups

I have an iMac 24" with a 750GB drive that only has about 200GB full. I have been using Time Machine to do backups onto a 400GB hard drive, and it has been working fine for a few weeks. Last week I copied 250GB of material onto my Mac's HD (as a backup of an external drive), but set that folder NOT to be backed up in TM (this worked fine). Then yesterday I renamed that folder... and Time Machine tried to include it in the next backup... and that backup failed, of course, since there is now more that 400GB of material to backup. Ooops... I have put that renamed folder onto the exclude list.
BUT, in the process of failing to backup, Time Machine appears to have deleted all of the previous backups from the 400GB Time Machine drive. The weeks of backups are gone. THAT was very disappointing. I thought Time Machine wasn't supposed to delete old backups without warning me (I have that option checked). Why did it do that??
(Happily, I have also been making backups manually onto other drives, and my main drive is still happy, so no files were lost... but I want to understand what happened before I trust my backups to Time Machine. I realize that I accidentally asked Time Machine to do an impossible thing by suddenly dropping that extra 250GB folder into its world, but why did it fail so ungracefully and delete all my old backups? This could be very bad if it happed to someone who was counting on Time Machine.)

This is TRULY a serious software design bug IMO and should be reported to Apple via their Feedback procedure. I also have seen this bug and I've reported it to Apple. You should also to add more weight to the bug report and to hopefully have Apple resolve this soon for all of us.
TM does fail to alert the user with a request that to free up backup space some older backups will need removing. Not only this but it silently removes the oldest backups trying to free up space only to find there's still insufficient space. This is clearly a very serious problem as you've discovered.

Time Machine lost connection after Lion update

Wanted to see if anyone lost the time machine connection after the latest 10.7.1 update released yesterday? My system couldnt find the drive for it and I had to re-set my time machine and then I could connect.

Some more info might help one of us with possible steps to resolve your problem. Is the external drive firewire, usb or network through airport, port-powered, etc?
What basic troubleshooting did you try?
Does it show up in System profiler? If it does there may not be too serious a problem.
While there are some who've had problems with the latest updates many of us have had no problems but we do empathise with those who have.
Neville

Time Machine - Lost Data

Embarrassingly, I am seeking assistance to retrieve lost data which was originally backed up with the use of Time Machine on my external hard drive.
In an effort to clean my iMac (2008) to make it go faster, I backed up its entire contents with the use of Time Machine and proceeded to delete all of its content - I very likely went about this the wrong way.
Anyhow, I was able to access these back ups for weeks before I mistakenly clicked a button within a Time Machine pop up window asking if I wanted to start a new back up (I forget the exact wording), which I accepted. Since then, my series of backups have disappeared and I can no longer access the content that I need. Is the Time Machine capable of permanently deleting previous back ups? Thanks in advance!

Time Machine does delete old snapshots to make room for new ones, but it never deletes the last snapshot of any volume. There should still be at least one snapshot from before you erased the startup volume.
While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.
If you need to restore from a backup of the hidden user Library folder, first select a snapshot, then press shift-command-G. A Go to Folder dialog will open. In it, you'll enter the path to the folder. The dialog will help you by automatically completing the parts of the path when you start to type them.
The path begins with slash character ("/"). Enter that. The rest of the parts will be separated by slashes.
The next part is the date and time of the current snapshot. Enter a "2", and the rest of the date should be filled in automatically. Press the right-arrow key to jump to the end of the path. Enter a slash to start the next part.
Next is the name of the volume (usually "Macintosh HD" unless you gave it a different name.) Start to type that, then jump to the end and enter a slash.
The next part is "Users", followed by a slash.
Next is your (short) user name, which is also the name of your home folder.
Finally, enter "Library", then press return. You should now be in the Library folder. From there you can get around as in the Finder.

My hp envy want quit saying " do not power down during update" powered down 3 times and still saying

My hp envy want quit saying " Do not power down during update" powered down 3 already still saying the same thing.

so my printer worked for a month and then it asked me if i wanted to install updates. It's been installing updates for three weeks and says not to turn off. I've turned it off several times and unplugged it a few times. No other buttons work on the screen because i can't get to them. Obviously it's a software problem but i can't find any updates to fix it. The guy on the help line said it's a hardware problem and that they'd offer me a $95 discount on a newer model, but it would still cost me over $150 and it would be a refurb. So they have a bunch of these printers that sat in a store that didn't sell and passing off printers not in a new box and then talk to me like i should be so thankful they gave me this wonderful discount for a "new" printer that nobody else wanted when i'm still stuck with a printer i paid full price for and should've been able to get replaced. Now i've really paid over $270 for a printer i'm not even sure i want that might have another bug they can't fix. It's just wrong. Anybody know a fix for this so i can cancel the order for a new printer i'm not sure i want?
thanks,

Power outage during incremental. Time Machine "lost" Time Capsule

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