Time machine backs up and nothing is there. no files

When doing a time machine back up, the system goes through the process which takes upwards to half an hour and uses up the appropriate space on the external hard drive. However, when opening the external hard drive to review the back up, there is nothing there, no files, folders etc.

jhspector wrote:
When it is finished and I open the backup on the external harddrive, there is nothing there.
Your TM drive should not be empty but this is NOT how you should normally access TM. Please read [TM 101|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306681].
You can also watch this [video|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n055CqFnjyo] to see how it should work.
You didn't answer my question. What happens when you double-click on the Time machine icon in your Applications folder after you've done a backup and with your TM drive attached? This should bring up TM interface as in the video link above. Does it?

Similar Messages

I have partitioned my time capsule, but I can't get it to work as a Time Machine back up and permanent media server for both mac and PC. What format do I need to partition the drive to so that it works for both mac and windows and so that it will be visab

I have partitioned my time capsule, as I want part of it to act as a media server for both mac and windows. However I don't know what format that I need to partition it to. I also can't make it a permanently accesible drive. I want to restore the drive to the original format (which I don't know) and start again and re-partition the drive in a format that can be used for media by both mac and PC and for time machine back-ups and make the media part of it permanetly accesible so I can add and acccess my files.
Thanks

You are mixing up a couple of things here.
The TC drive cannot be partitioned without removing it.. did you do that?
If you partition it you must use a Mac disk utility and use the HFS+ ie standard Mac format. And GUID partition table not windows type.
You can select erase disk in the airport utility.. that will take the disk back to original format. No partitions. TC is deliberately not partitioned as it is not a media server.. it is a backup device for TM. Over time .. the disk will be filled with TM backups so you have a long history of file changes to your computer.
There is no media server in the TC.. it is merely disk storage.. you can serve files from it to a media device.. but the TC itself is dumb as dumb.
Now the actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. The TC offers SMB file services to the network. You can copy files to and from the TC as if it was a local disk without caring one iota about the format. The TC handles that .. it is not a local disk .. it is a network drive.
Although you cannot partition the TC. you can still copy files to it.. this does have implications for TM.. but as long as there is plenty of free space should not be a major issue.
You can create a disk image via the disk utility in a Mac.. and as stated you can create partitions if you do it on a Mac with the disk directly connected which means breaking warranty if any exists on the TC.

I just restored my Mac HD from a time machine back-up and PS 4 Will not open. I get an error code 150:30. Any Idea what I should do ?

I just restored my Mac HD from a time machine back-up and PS 4 Will not open. I get an error code 150:30. Any Idea what I should do ?

Photoshop's licensing information might have lost when you restored it to new HD. Re-install Photoshop CS4 and enter the same serial key for PS CS4 which you used before.
In case you need the download link for PS CS4, you can get it from here. Download CS4 products
Let me know in case you still get any issues.
~ Arpit

When using Time Machine, if I delete items from my computer, will they still be backed up to access later on my external hard drive? In other words, when time machine backs up again, will it delete the files from the back up?

When using Time Machine, if I delete items from my computer, will they still be backed up to access later on my external hard drive?
In other words, when time machine backs up again, will it delete the files from the back up that I have deleted from my computer?

No, I do not believe so. Time Machine would keep all those now-deleted files in previous backups, and as time goes by those backups might be deleted if you needed room, but it would still keep one backup from each day in last month, as well as one from each week forever, as long as you don't start running out of room, then just the oldest would be deleted to make room if needed.
I use a backup drive about double the size of my drive to be backed up, so I would guess it will never get to the point where deleted files being replaced by new ones being backed fill up that drive to the point where backups actually have to get deleted.

Can I use my time capsule for time machine back ups and as an external storage device?

I have a time capsule and have set it up so that my time machine back ups are saved on it, but I would also like to use it as an external hard drive. Is this possible?
I know nothing about computers so please tell me in very basic terms. thankyou!

By external hard disk we usually mean one plugged into the computer by USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt.
None of those works on the TC.. it is plugged in by ethernet or use wireless connection.. that means it is a network drive.. not an external drive. The difference might not mean much to you.. but it is totally different to the computer. In the former case the computer has full control of the disk. In the case of the network drive, the disk is controlled by the TC firmware and the files are stored and accessed by network. This has large implications.
So here is my standard response.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Time machine back up and deleting photos from macbook pro

I have a macbook pro. I need to free some space on my hard drive. As I am a keen photographer I decided it was best to have at lest to back up in the event than one fails. I keep one off site at a friends. This way if the unthinkble happens.. fire, flood theft etc I do not lose all my images. To do this I require 2 hard drives. Having purchased the second I thought it would make sense to actually do a Time Machine back up as previous back ups were only of photos.
A few seaches of different forums appeared to say that you cannot delete photos from your Mac as this will be just Mirrored on your next Timemachine back up. This makes sense as it is copying the Mac so anything not on there will not be on the Time Machine back up.
SOLUTION : On your hard drive of the time machine back up create an addition folder or folders and using finder drag and drop from your macbook. This way it will not effect your Time Machine. You can replicate with the other hard drive. Having backed up away from the Time Machine will mean the photos do not get deleted by Time Machine after you have removed them from your Mac.
I hope this makes sense! It is the first time I have posted :-)
I would like to know if others have other solutions or use this method. I should say that the hard drive I use for the Time Machine if Mac formatted. It is a 2 TB WD My Book Studio. I purchased from the Apple store. It is not an apple product but is mac of the sleek aluminum and goes well with it. Having said that I keep it at a mates house!

There are several concepts that may help you create a defense-in-depth approach to securing your valuable data.
- Your data is much more valuable than external disk drives. Do not hesitate to purchase the size and number of external drives you need for great (not just good) backup practices.
- Always maintain at least two copies of any data. This means never place live (offloaded) files on a backup volume, even in a separate partition. If the drive fails the backup and the live files will go poof together.
- Do not rely on retrieving live files from a Time Machine backup. Time Machine is for restoring files that were deleted or altered by mistake or for a full restore. It is not for offloading live files.
- Place the offloaded live files on a separate disk drive. Then you will need to backup that live volume or if that offload volume fails then poof again.
- You already some of this base covered. Maintaing two copies (one backup) is good practice. Maintaining more than two copies (two or more backups) is a better practice. Maintaining multiple copies in multiple backup formats is a great practice. Time Machine is great for restoring accidentally deleted or altered data but it is a complex system that is more prone to failure than simpler schemes such as cloning. I recommend maintaining both Time Machine and cloned backups of the internal drive and cloned backups of offload drive.
Backing up the offload disk is where partitioning the backup drive can be handy. Create one partition for your Time Machine backup and another partition for your external drive backup. Backup your internal drive with Time Machine and backup the offloaded files using cloning software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
You could tell Time Machine to backup both your internal and external live files but then it gets tricky to do a full restore so I recommend using cloning software for backing up the external drive.
When you purchase another external drive, make it a sufficiently large one so you can divide it into multiple large partitions.
A good backup/offload map (two partitions per backup drive):
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A and B.
A great backup scheme includes three partitions on the large backup drives so you can backup the the internal drive with both Time Machine and CCC/SD:
- Internal drive —> Time Machine backup partition A on the backup drives.
- External offload drive —> Clone backup partition B on the backup drives.
- Internal drive —> Clone backup to partition C on the backup drives.
- Backup drives 1 and 2 (one onsite and one offsite), each with partitions A, B and C.
A great feature of having a clone of your internal drive is if the internal drive crashes you can boot off of the backup disk while you replace the internal drive. As mentioned above it also avoids Time Machine backup/restore problems. I have had Time Machine full restores fail so I do not trust them as my only backup method but I find them very handy for restoring individual files.
Create partitions sufficiently large enough for each backup source. Time Machine should be about 50% or more larger than the volume it is backing up to leave room for the older incremental backups. The cloned backup partitions need only be as large as the volumes they are backing up, or larger if you include incremental backups in your cloning scheme. This means you may need 2 or 3 TB backup drives. (4 TB drives are not yet reliable so avoid them.)
For more information on great backup schemes see:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

Time Machine back-up and Dropbox

Being very green with Mac, I have to ask...
I've set up a Time Capsule today and everything is working just fine. But I don't know if files from my Dropbox folder is included in the Time Machine back-up. I know from PC that the Dropbox files are stored locally and only synced with Dropbox. Is this the case with Mac as well?
Since I use PC at work and now Mac at home, I find it convenient to use Dropbox. But if Time Machine doesn't back these files up then I need to find another way, because I don't want to trust Dropbox as my only back-up.
br - Torgeir

Stwerp wrote:
Not what I'm experiencing. Yes, Time Machine did initially backup the dropbox folder, but I am not seeing new changes or new files appearing in the regular backup. It just appears to be a static version of when I started time machine. Be sure to check that your file changes are being stored.
I don't have that problem...
This morning, at work and from my employer's PC, I added several new files to my Dropbox to work further with at home. When I started my Mac, Dropbox started sync.
Just now I checked my Time Machine and all the files new to Dropbox today were there - both one and two hours past.
These files came to my Mac from Dropbox sync and wasn't created on my Mac, so I checked a couple of other things in my Dropbox folder as well.
Changed data on existing files > saved > started back-up and found the file in TM with both old and new date changed
Re-named a file > saved > started back-up and found the file in TM with both old and new name
Created a new subfolder > started back-up and found the new subfolder in TM
Moved a file > saved > started back-up and found the file in TM in both old and new subfolder
Created a new file using Mac > saved > started back-up and found the file in TM
Half an hour later I started another back-up, and found again that I can rewind to how Dropbox folder looked like before all my testing.
And Dropbox in the cloud has of course also synced and looks just like my Dropbox folder...
One thing I haven't tested - what happens to Dropbox in the cloud if I rewind my Dropbox folder with TM and then sync Dropbox...? I do not want to risk that before I have researched a bit first.
I suppose I can temporary quit Dropbox app, rewind with TM, then relaunch Dropbox app. I think Dropbox then would assume the changes appeared offline and then change to how Dropbox folder on my Mac looks like. But of course it COULD just happen that Dropbox will change my Dropbox folder to how it was before I rewinded with TM...
I'll post back if I find out anything

Time machine back-up has nothing in the files!!!

My iMac 20 inch has just given up the ghost after 3 years and can't be repaired. I bought a new 24 inch iMac and planned to restore my files using the Time Machine back up I had from the old iMac. I have connected the hard drive to Airport Extreme and can see the Time Machine backups but the folders all seem to be aliases with nothing in them. What's happened and can I do anything about it?

When you connect the drive to an Airport Extreme's USB port then you need to enable File Sharing or the drive will not be accessible to any computer using the router. Furthermore, using the drive in this way is not the same as having the drive connected directly to a computer. Using the AEBS is the same as using any NAS which means TM employs a different method of storing files. TM would be looking for a sparsebundle disc image file in which the actual files are stored. What you see in the TM backup folder are simply Unix hard links (a type of alias) to the actual data stored in the sparsebundle.
If you used this drive connected to the AEBS, then TM will need to locate the sparsebundle. If it's gone or damaged, then the backup is lost.

Can I use One Hard Drive for 2x Time Machine Back Ups and another partition for all my data?

Hi Forum,
I am planning to but a RAID disc set up, but if i get a 2 disc set up, on one disc, can i have:
Time Machine back up for one Mac
Time Machine back up for 2nd Mac
Anothe partition for all my data.
then have that RAID'd to second disc?

no one?
and if this set up was on one disc, and one partition for one TM was for the Mini that has this drive attached, would TM back up this whole drive 2x TM Partitions and 1x partitions with data on, ok? it wouldn't get confused by trying to back itself up

How do I revert my iWeb published site (the actual published site in internet is up to date) the one on my repaired computer is old from a time machine back-up and out of date?

The question is above I repaired my hardrive and the iweb site is from an old time machine back-up. In the web my site is up to date and I want to update my computer stored iWeb site to the site in internet ?

You need to copy and paste the content from the published files back into iWeb and recreate any missing pages since iWeb has no import facility.

I restored from a Time Machine back up and now my Creative Suite 4 gives me error 150:30

I have the same problem when I migrated CS4 to a new Retina MacBook Pro from a Time Machine drive. I get Error: 150:30 when I try to launch Photoshop CS4. The License Recovery Tool does not seem to work with Mountain Lion. I cannot reinstall the software from disc unfortunately. That was too many moves ago and the discs are no longer available. I don't even think the installers will run with the current OS.
Any help would be much appreciated.
All the best,
Tom

I have branched this off to a separate discussion.
TomWolsky in general it is best if you install the applications instead of restoring them from Time Machine or using the Migration assistant to copy them from one computer to another. You can try the steps listed at Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS - http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/error-licensing-stopped-mac-os.html. This may allow you to resolve this difficulty.
If it doesn't I would recommend formatting and only restoring your documents and settings from the Time Machine back up. You can download a fresh copy of your installation files by following the directions listed at http://prodesigntools.com/download-adobe-cs4-and-cs3-free-trials-here.html.
You can also find the serial number if it is registered to your account by following the steps listed at http://forums.adobe.com/message/3987968#3987968?promoid=KBHJW.

Can Time Capsule be used for both Time Machine back-up and a place to store other things?

I thought I had heard that it was best to keep whatever external drive you use for Time Machine to be exclusive for Time Machine back-ups. Does Time Capsule automatically partition an area for Time Machine. Also, since Time Machine auto deletes some things when the external drive gets full, does it just keep backing up until it fills the Time Capsules 2 TB or whatever the space is? Thanks in advance for help.

It does not partition the drive but creates a sparse bundle which acts as a sealed directory.
You can store other things on the TC. Just create a new directory for your stuff.
The TC needs to have at least 2 or 3 times the space used by your hard disks in all your computers. So it can manage a full backup plus the hourly incrementals.. !! It can take a long time to fill up if you don't change stuff around much.. or it could fill up relatively quickly if you constantly load files in and out.
Remember though a TC is not a NAS, it has no mirror and if the TC is the only copy of some files you are storing on it, and the TC breaks down, then those files are lost.
I have seen others suggest it is better to use a USB hdd connected to the TC to store files you want access to. Balance between storage and backup won't be that difficult. If the TC is becoming full, make a decision about where you want to store those other files.

Does time machine back up operating system as well as files?

i was told that if i did a time machine back up then i could boot from it and even restore it onto a mac with no os. is this true? if so how do i do it?

Yes, it's true. But a Time Machine backup in Snow Leopard is not bootable. It must be reinstalled from an installer DVD.
Only Time Machine backups made using Mountain Lion can be booted from the backup drive itself. In Mountain Lion Time Machine actually puts a copy of the Recovery HD onto the Time Machine backup drive.

System Restore from Time Machine Back up and Mail

Hi
I have around 16,000 Messages in my Mail 3.2 Inbox. I use Gmail IMAP service. One thing I like about Mail is that next to all my messages there are these arrows that indicate whether I have replied to or forwarded a particular message and clicking on them takes me to my response to a particular email.
I need to reformat my MBP HD and want to do a system restore through Time Machine.
My question is, will Mail return to my current state (with all the arrows and tags) after I do the complete restore from Time Machine.
Any help on this is highly appreciated.
Cheers!

Mheck21 wrote:
I replaced the internal because I need more space, I'm not an expert, but I've done it before. I wasn't having trouble I was just running out of room and decided to upgrade?
Ah, ok, that rules that out.
I think it wasn't backing up because it was showing I had files on the external but I couldn't locate them. It's my understanding that the external must be blank to back your computer up with time machine.
No, it doesn't have to be empty (although Time Machine works best if it has its own, exclusive space). Without the error message(s), we don't know what is/was wrong.
I have run the Verify Disk on the internal and it says its all good.
Ah, good. That means you don't have directory problems.
I have not run a Repair Disk Permissions. I am not sure how to do that? Is that also located in the Disk Utility.
Yup, same window, different button.
I tried to just run the update from the update software option in the apple on the top left. I also then ran the combo that I downloaded from the apple site.
With what results? Did they compete? If not, what message did you get?

Time machine back-up and reinstalling Leopard

Hi there,
I love my mac but don't know the nitty gritty... I have backed up my files using time machine on my external hard drive but I want to reinstall Leopard going the "erase everything and start over" route. That being said, I don't want to lose all my pictures, music, etc.... If all of that is backed up in time machine and I reinstall Leopard, will I be able to access it all or will it not recognize the new install? Also, I just want my external hard drive to go back to how it was before it was formatted for time machine. How do I do that?

Hi there jobe74,
You may want to try resetting the SMC and PRAM on your computer as an initial troubleshooting step. Take a look at the articles below for more information.
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
About NVRAM and PRAM
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
-Griff W.

Time machine backs up and nothing is there. no files

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for