Time Machine Backup didn't take

I am trying to restore my late 2009 iMac from a recent time Machine backup. My 1 TB internal drive started to hard fail so I replaced it with a 2 TB drive. I installed 10.8.5 on it (which is what the previous one was running). I was able to start a restore from a backup about a week old. I intended this to overwrite whatever was currently on my new drive.
Since this was over Wi-Fi, it took about 18 hours to restore about 460 GB. The indication I got that it was working was a 'Copying...' dialog that showed the progress of the 460 GB. Once it finished copying, that was it. No errors. Same desktop as before. I restarted thinking that that was needed for the new installation to 'stick' but when it came up, there was no difference. Same basic installation of OSX with none of my old files. However, when I look in Disk Utilities, there is indeed about 460 GB of data used up on my drive. Where is it? How can I access it? Would Migration Assistant see newly copied files? What would I point to as a source, if I can't find the 'restored' data?
Just to give all the info, my time machine backups are stored on a Drobo FS connected to a Cisco router through wired ethernet, accessed by my iMac over wi-fi.

So the restored volume was actually placed inside the new installation, rather than replacing the new one as I had expected it to do.
As I suspected. This means you did not do the restore correctly. The link I provide will describe this in greater detail.
The first thing I tried was creating a simlink to the restore in /Volumes, hoping that I'd be able to then select it when booting holding Option. This didn't work.
As you discovered that will never work in this case. The restore needs to be done correctly.
The second thing I'm trying is to add an empty partition to my drive, and copy the restored volume iMacZilla to the new partition. This is currently in progress and I'll let you know how it goes.
Not sure how this will help. You should just cut your losses, take a look at the link I provided and redo the restore correctly. That will be the only way to guarantee the stae of the system..
good luck
regards

Similar Messages

Time Machine Backups Seem to take a long time

I'm running OS X 10.5.8 on a G5 iMac, and I've noticed some strange behavior recently when Time Machine does it's back ups. I back up to a LaCie external drive with a capacity of 465 GB and it currently has 65GB available. When Time Machine does it back ups, it seems to take a very long time, eventhough not much has changed. It might go for 30min to an hour. Sometimes the back up fails. I've tried to stop the back up, but that doesn't stop Time Machine, and also System Preferences becomes unresponsive. I can't quit or force quit System Preferences. I have to turn off the iMac to quit System Preferences by holding in the power button. I'm not sure if this is a Time Machine issue, or an issue with the external HD. I know the iMac is a bit dated, and due to be replaced. The HD is also at least 3-4 years old, and has only been used as my Time Machine back up. Any ideas on how I might fix this? Thanks!!

ELFritzen wrote:
I had problems verifiying and repairing the LaCie HD. At first the the computer would hang on "verifying" the HD. I finally got the HD verified by switching the on/off/auto switch on the HD from auto to on. At this point verification went quickly.
That doesn't sound good.
Try different port(s), cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another).
Do you have (or can you borrow) another HD you can try?
Or another Mac you can try with that drive?
As an extra measure, I tried to repair the HD, but again the program hung up and I had to reboot.
Just for future reference, there's no point to verifying an external HD -- just run Repair. They both do all the same checks. Starting with Verify on your startup drive makes sense, since, if there's a problem, you have to start from another source to repair it.

Need a external HD 40% bigger than internal for Time Machine backups??

I've heard that using Time Machine as my backup program I need a hard drive that's about 40% bigger than the source (internal) hard drive I want to backup. Some in these forums have said I need a external HD 2x or 3x as big as the internal hard drive for Time Machine backups!
What's your general rule, and does Apple recommend a certain percentage increase of the target over the source hard drive?

There is no set rule, except that the drive being used for Time Machine must be at least as large as the data (not drive) being backed up.
So if you have an internal 500GB drive, but you only have 300GB full, and with exclusions (things that you select NOT to back up), only 200GB needs to be backed up, then a 320GB external drive could do an adequate job (even though the internal drive is 500GB).
During the first backup, Time Machine will back up everything (that is everything you have set it to backup). So the external drive volume used for the backup must be at least the size of the data being backed up. After that, Time Machine creates an incremental backup states every hour, for things that changed during that hour. But because it is Time Machine and not just Backup Machine, the previous versions of the files that changed are also retained. Therefore, over time, the Time Machine backup archive will take up more and more space.
Once you run out of space, Time Machine will tell you and start deleting the oldest backup states to make room for the newest states. So if you have a really huge volume for your Time Machine backup, you can +go back in time+ further (probably back to the date you started using Time Machine) than if you have an adequate but smaller size drive for that purpose.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

The initial Time Machine backup can certainly take a long time over wireless. Days, possibly. It's impossible for anyone here to be able to predict how long it will take, and wireless environmental conditions can change at any time.
Is there antivirus software running in the background
Only you can determine that. If you're using third party AV software, anything is possible.
NAS devices may not be compatible with Time Machine, regardless of what their manufacturers may claim. Even after the Time Machine backup completes, your backup may be unreliable. You may not discover that until you need to rely upon the backup for some reason, and corruption can occur months or years from now.
Time Machine supports the following backup configurations:
A locally mounted volume
Time Capsule
A volume resident on a USB hard disk connected directly to a Time Capsule or current production AirPort Extreme Base Station.
That's it. Any configuration other than the above list places you in an experimental category. If your backup fails, you're on your own.

Time Machine backup of iTunes didn't - folders are almost all empty.....

Posted this in the iTunes forum as that's what I'm trying to restore using Time Machine, but thought I'd try here too
Here's what happened....
Having a small hard drive on my old but current eMac and running out of room I decided to move my iTunes library to my external Lacie drive (with over 80 gb free)
I checked the Apple documents for what to do and was reminded to make a backup
I ran a last back up to Time Machine, which I have used a few times for document recovery and know that it works and how to use it, and then set up my new destination folder on the Lacie and deleted my iTunes library from its original location.
Now when I go into Time Machine, and no I didn't exclude anything from being being backed up, I can find the iTunes library, and the folders with each named artist, but every folder is empty, there are no music files. (Or rather there is one named 'Unknown Album' and a sub directory called 'Unknown Artist' which has a small selection of unamed audio)
Each iTunes Music folder is at about 800mb - the unnamed audio mentioned above
I have gone all the way back (though I have not opened every backup yet) to October 2007 when I did the first Time Machine backup on installing Leopard, and every backup I have explored has empty artist folders.
'Find' also seems to work only in a limited way with the TM files - a search for 'Music' for example should logically find every 'Music' folder back to the start of TM but doesn't even though I can find them manually in each backup
Does anyone have any ideas of where or whether there might be a full backup; even from October 2007 would be better than nothing! I 'only' had about 9gb of audio, though some is custom, one off work.
My basic assumption here is that the first TM backup would have backed up everything and then only alterations and additions as they occurred
Thanks so much in advance
Stephen

Death By Media and Kiraly
Thanks so much for the ideas and suggestions - no libraries were excluded, hmmm, and only one user account....
Do I have an iPod with the songs on it?
Well I can still see all the items I have lost in Music in iTunes (all of which come up with an exclamation mark and a 'can't find, do you want to locate the library' message...) so I know what went missing
I do have a 1st generation shuffle with some tracks on it, and some burnt CDs, and some Downloads which were saved by Time Machine
Of the 9GB or so about 6GB were from CDs or vinyl that I own so no huge deal - though the vinyl takes so much time doesn't it
1GB was almost everything by a favourite artist of which about 30% were rare recordings, live shows etc (*all legal downloads I must add*) which took lots of time to find, and convert etc
Then the recordings of conferences and presentations which are irreplaceable
Then there are the 250 or so purchased songs from iTunes which I really don't want to have to buy again.....
Any other ideas where at least the original archive created by Time Machine might be hiding...?
Thanks again
Stephen
Message was edited by: Mobilizing Mouse

Time machine backups take way too long

Greetings,
Having trouble with Time Machine backups taking way too long. (No, it's not the first backup after some momentous event, as 90% of what I read about slow backups mentions; it's _every_ backup.)
20" iMac purchased Oct 2008. OS 10.6.8. 500 GB internal hard drive. 3 TB external backup drive. Was tested at the local "Genius" Bar, but they found nothing wrong with it. The best they could do is to recommend a restore from Time Machine, and if that didn't work, start clean and reload the OS and then copy my stuff back. I don't think so. I actually did a full Time Machine restore for a different reason, and it didn't help (except that I gained a few GB of disk space!).
My Time Machine backups now take about 39 minutes to complete. I have a 500 GB internal drive and this problem happens regardless of which external drive I use. (I have 3: 2 WD hard drives and one [noisy!] G-drive.) My current backup drive is a 3 TB WD drive with 2 TB of free space.
These are small incremental backups, typically about 35 MB. It doesn't take half an hour to copy 35 MB!
All phases take a long time, but the most irritating one is where TM appears to get stuck for a long time at the beginning and end of the copying phase. For example, at one point it will say something along the lines of Backing Up 7 KB of 34.4 MB. And it'll be like that for minutes on end. Later it will say something like 35 MB of 35 MB and hang there for minutes on end. During these periods the write I/O rate will go up and down, and CPU usage will often be very high (with backupd using 90 - 100%, in addition to highly elevated System CPU usage). In one particular backup the I/O write rate for one part of it looked like a heartbeat on an EKG! I should have taken a screenshot.
At the beginning during the Calculating Changes phase, backupd is using between 90 and 100% CPU.
There is also high CPU usage during the next phase, Preparing. And the number of items being prepared is in the thousands.
It always goes in two rounds because it finds that the root directory (/) has been modified.
I've Googled and searched Mac forums and found nothing useful. I started with a new .plist file and nothing's changed.
Can anyone help? Thanks!
I wrote the above Jun 28. Yeah, finally getting around to posting it. Since then it's gotten worse. I now do a manual backup once a day and it takes almost an hour. I tried re-indexing Spotlight. No good.
Can anyone help? Again, this is not a "first backup." It is _every_ backup.
Thanks!
AEF

Thanks for your efforts. Here are my answers, comments, and further info:
I believe I have repaired permissions on my drive as part of my troubleshooting. And I'm sure I checked SMART status, which came up with a thumbs up, so to speak. I'm trying again. I don't see any useful messages in any logs on the console. I'm looking at "All Messages" and there is so far nothing useful. Oh, I think you must mean repair as in "Repair Disk," not "Repair Disk Permissions." I believe the "genius" at the Apple store did that or something just as good. The machine checked out fine according to them.
Checked SMART status just now: passed. Ran Quick Drive Test: also passed.
Oh, I installed "Time Machine Buddy". Occasionally, and only occasionally, I get a "deep traversal needed message" like this (I copied this from .Backup.log):
Running preflight for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
        Scanning nodes needing deep traversal
        Node requires deep traversal: /Users/alanfeldman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|
        Calculating size of changes
        Should copy 2919 items (27.8 MB) representing 7116 blocks of size 4096. 546805181 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
Time elapsed: 1 minute, 39.000 seconds
But the vast majority of the time I do NOT get this message. But if there's something wrong with this apdb file, what can I do to fix it?
Note that there is usually, if not always, a lot of CPU activity or I/O (disk) activity, but not a lot getting done.

I have just taken delivery of a brand new 15" macbook pro, tried migration assistant from a time machine backup, music, photos, programs etc. They now take up 350gb of my hard drive but the files are nowhere to be found? can anyone help?

Set migration assistant to run whilst on a lunch break, given that it needed 2 hours or so, when i returned all programs and applications had moved across from my time machine backup of a now dead 15"macbook pro 2009 edition running snow leopard...When i look at my new system information it shows my new 500gb drive is full of music, movies and photos and has only 168gb free, not enough to run a new migration and i don't have any boot disks for Lion so really don't want to erase the hard drive. To compound the problem i'm in Vietnam where there isn't a genius bar just around the corner, or even an aasp within 700km - what should I do?

Is the HDD in the 2009 15" MBP dead? (The original source of your data) If not, you might want ot take it out and put it in an enclosure.
You might try spotlight on know files to see if that gives you any clues where your data is located.
You might down load from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper (free) and open it. It should show you all of the files you have on your MBP and enable to locate them.
Ciao.

Time Machine says it will take months for the first backup.

Time Machine said it would take over a month for the first backup on my new Mac. I figured it would get its act together overnight, but when I got up this morning, it said 160 days.
Here are my specs:
Mac mini 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 (Macmini5,1)
2 GB RAM, 500 GB internal HD
Mac OS X 10.7.2 (current on updates)
1 TB Seagate
Connected through FireWire 800
614.32 GB available
Disk Utility verifies there are no problems
I used the same drive for Time Machine on the Power Mac with no problems. And it's communicating fine with the Mac mini -- I transferred all of my music, photos, applications, and other documents very quickly. Spotlight has finished indexing -- there is no dot in the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen. Activity Monitor looks normal. Right now, the CPU is between about 70 and 95% idle, inactive memory is about 225 MB, and page outs are at 148 KB.
I started Time Machine again an hour or so ago, and it said "About 3 days" right at first, but the number is going up quickly. It isn't completely stuck -- the number of items is slowly going down and the MB backed up is slowly going up (not as quickly as the number of days is going up).
Right now, it says, "Backing up 760,527 items" and "81.4 MB of 222.37 GB – About 104 days."

Benjamin McDaniel wrote:
Disk Utility verifies there are no problems
Did you run Repair Disk on your backups, and Verify Disk on your internal HD, and both said " . . . appears to be OK"?
If so, Spotlight may be indexing your backups (Lion re-indexes everything, and that may not show the dot in the Spotlight icon).
A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. See if there are repeated "indexing" messages. If so, the index may be damaged. See the pink box in #D2 of the same link.

HT201250 Can I take my time machine backup drive and put in on another iMac

Can I take my time machine backup drive and put in on another iMac

Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC

Deleting time machine backup files manually didn't free up disk space ?

I wanted to delete some certain files from my time machine backup as i dont need them anymore. I opened up time machine and selected the drive i used for the backup job and deleted them by selecting "delete this files from backup". this should be the proper way to delete backup files manually i assume from what i've read so far.
but,
i had 30gb free space before deleting files and even after deleting around 80gb from the backup, my drive still shows that there is only 30gb free space. i checked the trash can but nothing's in there.
how on earth will i delete these files to save up some space?
* i am not going to take any backups anymore to this folder but i want some certain files to stay while some others must go

Ok, I appologize for my criticism ( I am trying to help and maybe this bunch of giberish I am laying out has some useful infomation) but that is not a good idea at all in my opinion. And here is why, (I am going to assume you are using the Time Capsule from Apple (hardware) along with the program in the system preferences called Time Machine (software)). But even if you are using lets say an external hard drive and using Time Machine, then it is still not a good idea,.... and my reasoning is this... you should not have a back up on the same hard drive as stuff you store stuff on. In case if the hard drive goes bad, you dont loose both the backup and the items on the hard drive. (sorry I am going to try to answer your question, but first I just want to say how I have my system set up.) I ocassionally do use my Time Capsule also as an external hard drive but mostly I use my Time Capsule (strictly for backing up) and I also have an external hard drive where I keep my Movies, and Music (inside my Music folder I have the folder "iTunes" folder). Now you could go to system preferences, and shut off Time Machine, and then your Time Capsule would be fully available to you as an external hard drive. If you open up your finder, and look to the left hand side column, under "shared" location you will see your Time Capsule or if you have an external hard drive connected directly to the computer, then under "devices" you will see that external hard drive. Ok, assuming you are using Time Capsule (even though you are using it as an external hard drive) there will be a folder, (most likely called: first name last name's Time Capsule) and inside that folder you will see all the computers that back up to that one Time Capsule (most likely called: computer name.sparsebundle). just select the file and and "command" + "delete" the file or drag it to the trash, and your entire backup will be deleted, then turn off backing up in your system preferences. Now as I was saying before, that defeats the purpose of the backing up. I would get an external hard drive, in addition to the Time Capsule and putting your Movies, and Music on that external hard drive, and not touching your Time Machine backups. But then your left with figuring out how to back up your external hard drive. Do you use some sort of program other than TM or is there a way to use TM for that external HD. (that I do not know). I have Time Machine for my computer, and I have an external hard drive, that i manually (once in a blue moon) make a copy of that external hard drive to another hardrive. So at any given time I have three hard drives - one Time Capsule, and two external hd's. But I would never put both backups and data in the same location.

Bought a new iMac migrated from a time machine backup and it didn't load contacts music etc

my 4 year old imac died. So we got a new 1Tb intercore i5 imac. Migrated from the time machine backup and it didnt populate itunes or contacts or photos. Am I missing something?

You should have imported the data in Setup Assistant when you first booted the new machine. If you used Migration Assistant instead, you now have another user with all the data from the old machine.

Initial Time Machine Backup Stuck on "Indexing Backup"

I have Mac Mini running 10.7.2. I just got an external hard drive and am trying to run an initial back up using Time Machine. I am running my computer in Safe Mode as it won't start in regular mode. I formatted the HD and began to run Time Machine back up. HD is connected via USB 2.0 wire.
It has now been 12 hours and is still on Indexing Backup... Is this normal for initial back up? I know it takes a long time for initial but this doesn't seem right.What do I do to correct if it isn't correct? Should I stop and try again?

Thank you very much. With your info I gave up on the back up and ran Disk and Permission Repair for the 3rd or 4th time and crossed my fingers and restarted my machine and it WORKED! I ran time Machine back up and when I woke up this morning it was all done! Yeahhhh!
I wasn't sure what was causing it not to start in regular mode and as I'm not too much of a techie I was scared that I was teetetering on the brink of losing everything. The machine would run so I didn't think it was a hard drive issue, but not knowing for sure I was concerned and after losing everythign once before years ago, I was worried. I have it backed up on line but wanted a 2nd (local) version that wouldn't entail tying up bandwidth for days. In the end it worked out!
But the short answer is, Time Machine Backup does NOT work in Safe Mode...

"No such file or directory" errors on Time Machine backup volume

I remotely mounted the Time Machine backup volume onto another Mac and was looking around it in a Terminal window and discovered what appeared to be a funny problem. If I "cd" into some folders (but not all) and do a "ls -la" command, I get a lot of "No such file or directory" errors for all the subfolders, but all the files look fine. Yet if I go log onto the Mac that has the backup volume mounted as a local volume, these errors never appear for the exact same location. Even more weird is that if I do "ls -a" everything appears normal on both systems (no error messages anyway).
It appears to be the case that the folders that have the problem are folders that Time Machine has created as "hard links" to other folders which is something that Time Machine does and is only available as of Mac OS X 10.5 and is the secret behind how it avoids using up disk space for files that are the same in the different backups.
I moved the Time Machine disk to the second Mac and mounted the volume locally onto it (the second Mac that was showing the problems), so that now the volume is local to it instead of a remote mounted volume via AFP and the problem goes away, and if I do a remote mount on the first Mac of the Time Machine volume the problem appears on the first Mac system that was OK - so basically by switching the volume the problem switches also on who shows the "no such file or directory" errors.
Because of the way the problem occurs, ie only when the volume is remote mounted, it would appear to be an issue with AFP mounted volumes that contain these "hard links" to folders.
There is utility program written by Amit Singh, the fella who wrote the "Mac OS X Internals" book, called hfsdebug (you can get it from his website if you want - just do a web search for "Mac OS X Internals hfsdebug" if you want to find it ). If you use it to get a little bit more info on what's going on, it shows a lot of details about one of the problematic folders. Here is what things look like on the first Mac (mac1) with the Time Machine locally mounted:
mac1:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac1:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 48
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 12 me staff 442 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 104 me staff 7378 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 19 me staff 850 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac1:xxx me$ hfsdebug Documents/ | head
<Catalog B-Tree node = 12589 (sector 0x18837)>
path = MyBackups:/yyy/xxx/Documents
# Catalog File Record
type = file (alias, directory hard link)
indirect folder = MyBackups:/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135
file ID = 728505
flags = 0000000000100010
. File has a thread record in the catalog.
. File has hardlink chain.
reserved1 = 0 (first link ID)
mac1:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac1:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
total 17720
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
146 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 68 Feb 17 2009 .parallels-vm-directory
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
148 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 136 Aug 28 2009 ACPI
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
So you can see from the first few lines of the "ls -a" command, it shows some file/folders but you can't tell which yet. The next "ls -la" command shows which names are files and folders - that there are some folders (like ACPI) and some files (like A.txt and A9.txt) and all looks normal. And the "hfsdebug" info shows some details of what is really happening in the "Documents" folder, but more about that in a bit.
And here are what a "ls -a" and "ls -al" look like for the same locations on the second Mac (mac2) where the Time Machine volume is remote mounted:
mac2:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac2:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac2:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 56
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 13 me staff 398 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 217 me staff 7334 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 25 me staff 806 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac2:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac2:Documents me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac2:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
ls: .parallels-vm-directory: No such file or directory
ls: ACPI: No such file or directory
... many more "ls: ddd: No such file or directory" error messages appear - there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the "ddd" folders and the "no such file or directory" error messages
total 17912
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
If you look very close a hint as to what is going on is obvious - the inode for the Documents folder is 152 on the local mounted case (the first set of code above for mac1), and it's 728505 in the remote mounted case for mac2. So it appears that these "hard links" to folders have an extra level of folder that is hidden from you and that AFP fails to take into account, and that is what the "hfsdebug" shows even better as you can clearly see the REAL location of the Documents folder is in something called "/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135" that is not even visible to the shell. And if you look closely in the remote mac2 case, when I did the "cd Documents" I don't go into the inode 135, but into the inode 728505 (look close at the "." entry for the "ls -la" commands on both mac1 and mac2) which is the REAL problem, but have no idea how to get AFP to follow the extra level of indirection.
Anyone have any ideas how to fix this so that "ls -l" commands don't generate these "no such file or folder" messages?
I am guessing that the issue is really something to do with AFP (Apple File Protocol) mounted remote volumes. The TimeMachine example is something that I used as an example that anyone could verify the problem. The real problem for me has nothing to do with Time Machine, but has to do with some hard links to folders that I created on another file system totally separate from the Time Machine volume. They exhibit the same problem as these Time Machine created folders, so am pretty sure the problem has nothing to do with how I created hard links to folders which is not doable normally without writing a super simple little 10 line program using the link() system call - do a "man 2 link" if you are curious how it works.
I'm well aware of the issues and the conditions when they can and can't be used and the potential hazards. I have an issue in which they are the best way to solve a problem. And after the problem was solved, is when I noticed this issue that appears to be a by-product of using them.
Do not try these hard links to folders on your own without knowing what they're for and how to use them and not use them. They can cause real problems if not used correctly. So if you decide to try them out and you loose some files or your entire drive, don't say I didn't warn you first.
Thanks ...
-Bob

The problem is Mac to Mac - the volume that I'm having the issue with is not related in any way to Time Machine or to TimeCapsule. The reference to TIme Machine is just to illustrate the problem exists outside of my own personal work with hard links to folders on HFS Extended volumes (case-sensitive in this particular case in case that matters).
I'm not too excited about the idea of snooping AFP protocol to discover anything that might be learned there.
The most significant clue that I've seen so far has to do with the inode numbers for the two folders shown in the Terminal window snippets in the original post. The local mounted case uses the inode=728505 of the problematic folder which is in turn linked to the hidden original inode of 135 via the super-secret /.HFS+... folder that you can't see unless using something like the "hfsdebug" program I mentioned.
The remote mounted case uses the inode=728505 but does not make the additional jump to the inode=135 which is where lower level folders appear to be physically stored.
Hence the behavior that is seen - the local mounted case is happy and shows what would be expected and the remote mounted case shows only files contained in the problem folder but not lower-level folders or their contents.
From my little knowledge of how these inode entries really work, I think that they are some sort of linked list chain of values, so that you have to follow the entire chain to get at what you're looking for. If the chain is broken somewhere along the line or not followed correctly, things like this can happen. I think this is a case of things not being followed correctly, as if it were a broken chain problem then the local mounted case would have problems also.
But the information for this link in the chain is there (from 728505 to the magic-135) but for some reason AFP doesn't make this extra jump.
Yesterday I heard back from Apple tech support and they have confirmed this problem and say that it is a "implementation limitation" with the AFP client. I think it's a bug, but that will have to be up to Apple to decide now that it's been reported. I just finished reporting this as a bug via the Apple Bug Reporter web site -- it's bug id 8926401 if you want to keep track it.
Thanks for the insights...
-Bob

Unable to recover Mavericks via Time Machine on iMac (2011). I have one Time Machine backup from this week On new Time Capsule. I already attempted safe boot and NPRAM reset. Hard drive and permissions verified as ok.

Some more history - I'm not too techie so added everything in I thought might be significant!
- Installed Mavericks on iMac in October 2013
- experienced regular low memory issues - used Memory Clean app as a workaround
- last week decided to upgrade installed memory from 4gb to 16gb. Faster loading but still running out of memory - just takes longer to do so.
- also last week purchased 2gb Time Capsule (to back up 660gb on 1TB drive)
- one successful Time Machine backup completed last weekend.
- I decided to try and clear some space, tidy my folders, old music files, delete duplicates etc (Not system files)
- then tried out 'time machine restore' just to test it out. Deleted files and folders recovered ok using Time Machine menu (the one that looks like outta space)
- yesterday, Avast Anti-Virus flagged virus detected (sorry, I didn't manage to capture details) and quarantined file, but I couldn't get any windows to respond so forced Mac to shutdown.
- attempted regular reboot , system hanging on white/ apple symbol screen.
- attempted Safe reboot - reboot stalls at mess 'BootCacheControl: unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist no such file or directory.
(I don't know if this is significant)
- attempt NPRAM reset, reboot hanging at Apple symbol still
- attempted reboot into Disk Utility. HD drive verified ok. Permissions checked and Safari permissions fixed (only)
- finally attempting restore from Time Machine Backup via Disk Utility. Stalls at 'select a backup source'. Menu is 'searching for Time Machine Backup....'
Nothing is listed, after a few mins machine just goes to sleep.
My Time Capsule and networks are all switched on. No idea what to try next!

Most of the problems like this that people report on this forum are due to bad "utilities" like Memory Clean and Avast.
Your Mac probably didn't have a virus. There has never been an OSX virus "in the wild". Third party antivirus software is of very dubious utility on Macs. Macs are not PCs. OSX has anti-malware protection built into it already.
Do you have any other third party "utilities" on your Mac, such as CleanMyMac or MacKeeper?
Is the RAM you installed the recommended type of RAM for your Mac?
Take a look at this page: Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
But your OS may be damaged beyond repair, or beyond what disk utility is able to repair.
In that case you have a few options:
There is a small chance that a (reputable) third part utility like Techtool Pro 7 may be able to fix your OS.
Try to boot into single user mode (restart, hold down ⌘S until you see a black screen with white text) and repair your hard drive. Here's a reference with directions: Repair Your Hard Disk in Single User Mode | Everything Macintosh
bite the bullet, boot into the recovery partition or internet recovery, and erase your HD, reinstall Mavericks from scratch, and start over. Your documents are probably still on your Time Machine Backup. I wouldn't reinstall the documents via a migration- you don't want to reinstall bad system files along with your documents- but you could copy them one by one back to your internal HD. And most importantly- don't reinstall any third party "utilites" like Memory Clean or Avast (or any other third-party antivirus software, for that matter).

Can i restore from a time machine backup that is not the latest one?

I am trying to restore from a May 7th time machine backup. At that time my username was michaelhood. I had a system crash and when my computer was returned to me I inadvertently set it up under a different username, thinking I would do the restore later. Between May 13 and today, Time machine did backups under the name mhoo4494. Changing the name didn't let me access my May 7 backup, nor did creating a different user account. I have erased the hard drive and am reinstalling from the Install CD. I have set up a third user name. I now want to restore my data from the Time Machine May 7 backup. How do I do that? Migration assistant saw two users -- mhoo and mhoo4494 (michaelhood was not an option). I selected them both, but got no data for either -- no docs, no music, no pictures. This procedure should not be this hard~!!

Hi uclamikey90,
It is possible, using Migration Assistant, to restore the contents of your hard drive selectively. See this article -
Mac OS X v10.6: How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from a Time Machine backup - Apple Support
In particular -
To migrate data from a Time Machine backup
In Finder, press Command-Shift-U.
Double-click Migration Assistant.
Click "Continue" and enter an administrator name and password when prompted.
Select the "From a Time Machine backup or other disk" option, then click "Continue".
Select your Time Machine backup disk or Time Capsule (enter the user name and or password if prompted), then click "Continue".
Select the Time Machine backup you would like to restore (such the most current one you just made), then click "Continue".
Select Items to Migrate, then click "Continue". Note: The "Continue" button will be dimmed until the "Calculating…" stage is complete.
A user account sheet may appear if you have a user name on your Mac that is the same user name in your Time Machine backup. You will have to give the username in your Time Machine backup a new username to avoid conflicts. Note: This will create a new user account on your Mac to hold the data from the Time Machine backup. After migration, you can use the /Users/Shared folder to transfer data files the accounts.
Migration Assistant will begin the process of transferring the items you selected to migrate. When it is finished, click "Quit" to exit.
When you reach step 7, deselect items that you do not wish to migrate. Videos, photos and music are likely candidates for this as they take up a lot of disk space. You can later put items on an external hard drive.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Time Machine Backup didn't take

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