Time Machine does manual backups but not automatic.

Time Machine skips automatic hourly backups but will do a backup if I click "Backup Now". Any idea why automatic backups are not working and how to enable them? Thanks.

Jan 14 04:10:17 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Copied 16.0 GB of 17.4 GB, 462725 of 509959 items
Jan 14 04:16:21 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Copied 504166 files (16.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jan 14 04:16:26 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: 839.3 MB required (including padding), 253.24 GB available
Jan 14 04:16:46 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Copied 1570 files (310 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jan 14 04:16:50 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Starting post-backup thinning
Jan 14 04:16:50 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Jan 14 04:16:50 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Backup completed successfully.
Jan 14 04:16:54 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jan 14 04:16:54 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[18614]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jan 14 05:11:18 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/Client%20Backups
Jan 14 05:11:20 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Client Backups-1 using URL: afp://[email protected]/Client%20Backups
Jan 14 05:11:39 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Jan 14 05:11:42 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Disk image /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jan 14 05:12:58 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Client Backups-1
Jan 14 05:13:14 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Disk image already attached: /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Jan 14 05:13:16 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19152]: Disk image /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jan 14 05:48:50 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Starting standard backup
Jan 14 05:48:50 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Client Backups-1
Jan 14 05:49:07 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Disk image already attached: /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Jan 14 05:49:09 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Disk image /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jan 14 05:49:09 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jan 14 05:49:13 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: 536.7 MB required (including padding), 251.29 GB available
Jan 14 05:49:38 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Copied 1913 files (30.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jan 14 05:49:39 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: 500.4 MB required (including padding), 251.29 GB available
Jan 14 05:49:43 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Copied 185 files (128 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jan 14 05:49:44 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Starting post-backup thinning
Jan 14 05:49:44 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Jan 14 05:49:44 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Backup completed successfully.
Jan 14 05:49:47 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jan 14 05:49:47 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jan 14 05:49:55 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/Client%20Backups
Jan 14 05:49:57 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Client Backups-1 using URL: afp://[email protected]/Client%20Backups
Jan 14 05:50:17 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Jan 14 05:50:19 myclienthost com.apple.backupd[19287]: Disk image /Volumes/Client Backups-1/My MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Note, there are no backup log messages for the last few hours even if I put new files or change files on the client.

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When time machine does a backup I get an error message

Added a new Seagate 3T external as a backup drive Every time Time Machine does a backup I get an error message that the disk was not ejected properly, no bid deal just a pain. System 3.5GHz Intel Core i7... 16GB DDR# memory ... OSX 10.8.4. How do I get rid of this error??

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Tim Machine: no error messages but not backing up

My Time Machine does not seem to back up any more as it should.
There are no error messages, Time Machine is switched on, spinning once an hour, there is enough space on the external HD. I can enter Time Machine and browse through the history.
However,
• When I go back to 14 JUN, it shows me files modified today (17 JUN). Shouldn't this be impossible?
• When I go to the corresponding folder on the HD, I can see a version of the file in question that was modified on 11 JUN, the day of the very first initial backup. I definitely know that it was modified on13 JUN, though.
Does anyone know what the problem is? Any fix?
Btw, I am switching back and forth between two different external HDs for Time Machine, which worked fine for a long time before things went funny a few weeks ago. Then I completely deleted the whole external HD and started Time Machine over but it seems this did not work (except for a successful initial backup).
I'm on Mac OS 10.6.8 on an iMac 7,1.

I'm having this too, Nokia 6681 and most recent iSync... Contacts are working fine, Calandars are not.
Note that before latest revision Calandars were no problem...

Time Machine, does it backup the MacOS too?

I haven't played around with TM.
Does TM work like cloning the entire machine including the OS? So like if I erased the entired HDD and have a TM backup, will it TM bring back the mac OS together will all the personal stuff I have there before I erased and formatted it?

From Apple:
"Time Machine automatically backs up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on any given day—so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past."
However, you cannot boot from a Time Machine backup. You use it to restore your entire system, if necessary.

Time Machine won't backup – but no error message

Hi community,
I'm using TimeMachine with MacOs Version 10.6.8, on an iMac with an 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 Processor.
Actually, I was pretty happy with it for several months, never had any error messages.
But suddenly, TimeMachine started to backup the same files over and over again. It created new folders with the current and correct date, but in the folders there are no "new" files, even if there are numerous of new files on my hard drive.
So I thought, perhaps there's not enough space left on my external drive, so I bought a new one. Same problem here. It backed up correctly a few weeks, then it started to back up the same files over & over again.
My hard drive has a capacity of about 1 TB, my USB drive is a Samsung with 600 GB Capacity, formatted with MacOS Extended (Journaled)
Space used on my hard drive: 417 GB, free space on my USB drive: 252 GB > haha, that's probably the problem, but I thougt TimeMachine erases the older files on the external drive if there is no more space left?
And: why isnt't there an error message, then?
Hope anyone can help! Thanks in advance!
Verena

hi eric,
thank you for your quick answer! what the console says is the following (extract):
Post-back up thinning complete: 5 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.13 GB requested (including padding), 206.20 GB available
Copied 744 files (2.7 MB) from volume [myvolume].
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.13 GB requested (including padding), 206.20 GB available
Copied 67 files (93 bytes) from volume [myvolume].
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/[myvolume]/2011-10-05-170346: 206.20 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/[myvolume]/2011-10-05-110315: 206.21 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 5 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Actually, this time it really backed up my data … but why now and a few days ago it didn't? (Console also says "Backup completed successfully." for this date.)
Hm anyways, seems to work now, but I don't like the thought that I can't rely on it … would like to understand what this machine is doing … :-)

Time Machine doing full backup of external drive again

I have a Time Capsule, as well as an external data drive connected to my Mac. The external drive (named Yoda) is NOT excluded from backups. Yoda has about 703 GB of data on it.
I recently replaced the hard drive inside my time capsule. Consequently, a full backup was made, which was to be expected.
When the new full first backup was done, I disconnected the Yoda drive. A day later, I reconnected it, and now Time Machine is saying it's doing a 703 GB backup. Since the size TM indicates its backing up is ever so slightly larger than the total amount of data on Yoda, I'm assuming it's doing a full backup of the Yoda drive for some reason (the only other drive, the system drive, only has about 200 GB on it).
The files on Yoda weren't changed, certainly not all 703 GB of them. No hardware changes were made, no updates, tinkering, modifications, or anything. The Mac itself has not even been shut down or logged out. The ONLY thing that's happened was the Yoda drive was unmounted and disconnected, then several hours later it was reconnected.
Why is Time Machine repeating a full backup of this external drive? Is this going to happen every time I disconnect and reconnect the drive? Is there any way to make this not happen, short of excluding the drive (which I don't want to do)?

After posting this thread, I did find a similar thread (in the "More Like This" section) and saw your responses in it. You had suggested the same thing, as well as doing #A5 if that didn't work.
I tried #A4 and although that seemed to work in the other thread, unfortunately it didn't work for me. So I moved on to #A5, but I could not get my Time Capsule drive to show up in the Disk Utility. I didn't see a "data folder", but I did try directly dragging the sparsebundle to the left pane of the Disk Utility, but that seemed to hang Disk Utility.
At this point I'm probably going to try deleting the plist file as per #A4, erasing (reformatting) the drive, rebooting, and starting a whole new backup from scratch. It's not going to take much longer than backing up the entire external drive by itself would have, and I still have older backups (up to a few days ago) on the original Time Capsule drive in case of massive disaster.
So we'll see how that goes...

Time Machine looking for backup disk/not finding

Time Machine backed up the HD on my 2009 20" iMac up till Feb. 4 when I downloaded Since then there have been no new backups of my HD and there have been problems wihen I have Time Machine "on" with other applications (TextEdit, Pages, Adobe Bridge CS4) opening or not responding after being open and with Finder not responding. I have also had grey screen freezes multiple times so that I have to use the power button to shut the computer down. When I take TM off of the Automatic backups, most of the problems with applications quitting and the grey screen freezes stop happening. (Although I believe I've had at least one or two grey screen freezes even then.)
Today I've run Verify Time Machine Backups. It completed that. Then I turned on Automatic Backups again. But then it showed "Looking for Backup Disk". So I selected the Backup Disk. Then I checked back in a while and it still showed Looking for Backup Disk. I removed the selected backup disk, shut down and rebooted, and reselected the backup disk. It is still showing Looking for Backup Disk.
The Time Machine is a 1 Terabyte size. My iMac is using 203.6 Gigabytes of its 319.21 G space.
In looking at what my Finder is showing as the name of my Backup Disk, I see that it is showing my Backup Disk as Virginia's Computer (3). It should be showing my Backup Disk as Virginia's Computer. If this is the source of the problem, how do I get my Backup Disk named back to Virginia's Computer? Is it possible to get it changed back?
My TM is used as a router for two iMacs and up through Feb. 4 I was sharing files between both computers. When the problems started, I turned off File Sharing in the other computer (Jim's iMac). I had noticed that frequently my computer's name as shown on the other computer would be changed to Virginia's Computer (2) or Virginia's Computer (3) and I would change it back when I noticed. Perhaps this is how the problem started.

I finally contacted Apple Support. Three support people and seven and a half hours later Time Machine began working correctly. Multiple things were tried. The Time Capsule ended up getting erased. Many files and folders were deleted from several places on my hard drive. It seemed that the final ones that made a difference after the Time Capsule was erased were files that were in my Keychain.
I have to thank Apple's Support people for persistence, especially Jim who is the one who got things back to normal as far as the Time Capsule & Time Machine goes. I have to keep watch to see if anything acts up now on my hard drive and then the solution will go further. But the issue with the Time Capsule and Time Machine appears to be resolved!
Thank you, Apple Support!!!

Internal Time Machine "looking for backup disk" (not time capsule)

Hello,
I have the infamous "looking for backup disk" issue. My Time Machine drive is an internal drive, NOT a time capsule. It is mounted and visible, and the backups show up on it in the Finder. When I select to enter the Time Machine "starfield" UI, all my previous backups are browsable. But when it comes time to actually back up... it just says "looking for backup disk" forever. I've tried leaving it like that for something like 40 minutes, no joy. This is not a huge disk, there are about 700 GB of backups on it. The HDD activity light on my computer is NOT showing any activity when I am idling but it is "looking for backup disk," so I don't think it's scanning the drive or anything.
I have tried turning TM off and on, removing the drive and re-selecting it, unmounting it and remounting it, deleting the TM preference plist file from the library, rebooting, and all manner of combinations thereof. Nothing seems to work.
Anyone have any advice? This is on OS X 10.8.2 by the way. The TM backup worked fine through 10.8.1 and 10.8.2 with no problems until now. I don't recall doing anything specific to mess up TM or the disks in any way, although I may have turned TM during a reboot cycle prior to this happening (don't recall if this is actually the case, but in any case it shouldn't have caused such an error, no?).
Thanks in advance,
—Gabriel

[Just a note, TM only works on OS X Journaled drives (i.e. HFS+ drives). TM does not back up your FAT drive.]
Isaac:
If you unloaded the NTFS and FAT kexts, your TM backups might (might!) work again, but of course in that case you would not be able to see your FAT or NTFS drives in OS X, and if you removed the FAT kext then a lot of USB keys would be unreadable in OS X - not a good solution.
The kexts are specific to OS X, so removing them should not affect Windows... but may affect boot camp, I don't know how boot camp is programmed (which would be a problem). Luckily if your Windows drive became inaccessable from boot camp with removed kexts, it should be easy enough to simply boot back into OS X, restore the kexts, and then Windows should work again.
I would recommend not mixing partition types on drives with shared OSX/Win functions, it seems to "tempt fate" as it were with possible errors. I don't know what has precipitated this error in your case, if it was the MSE or disk error or something else, and unfortunately I don't have a real fix to offer beyond trying things with the kexts removed and seeing if they work.
NOTE THAT THIS IS AT YOUR OWN RISK, messing with kexts is not a very recommendable practice since these files enable core functionality in the OS. Make a backup before if you can, and consider your options carefully. In OS X, navigate to /System/Library/Extensions and you'll find a bunch kext files. The two you need are msdosfs.kext and ntfs.kext. Copy ntfs.kext into a backup folder (e.g., on your desktop). Delete the original ntfs.kext from the S/L/E folder. Reboot and see if you can still access windows. If so, reboot into OS X and see if Time Machine works again. If you're good on both those points, then consider going without ntfs.kext on a permanent basis – it is rare that you need to read an NTFS drive while in OS X. On the other hand, if this does not fix your problem, you may try restoring ntfs.kext, and backing up / deleting msdosfs.kext to see if THAT is the culprit. Unfortunately, if msdosfs.kext is causing the TM error, you're kind of out of luck, since going without FAT access will be pretty annoying any time you need to use a drive to swap files between Windows and Mac (using a USB key).
Ultimately I don't have a solution, as I have noted, so much as I've narrowed down where the error is occuring in some peoples' cases (like my own). Good luck!

Time Machine Error: The backup was not performed because an error occurred

G'day (from Queensland, Australia)
Not for the first time Time Machine has broken down - originally in September 08 (I just can't recall how I fixed it!!).
Now it has failed after 14 months of faultless performance.
There seems to be little help available, but searching for solutions finds plenty of problems.
I get the message "The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying to the backup disk.
The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair you backup disk."
(I have a Time Capsule as my backup disk)
Disk Utility runs and finds-
Verifying volume “Backup of xxxxxx’s iMac”
2010-01-25 12:16:09 +1000: Starting verification tool:
2010-01-25 12:49:21 +1000: The volume Backup of xxxxxx’s iMac appears to be OK.
2010-01-25 12:49:21 +1000: Repair tool completed:
So I search and find "Fix for broken Time Machine backups under Snow Leopard"
(http://www.andrewgrant.org/2009/09/22/fix-for-broken-time-machine-backups-under- snow-leopard.html) - downgrading to 7.4.1 of the Airport Extreme / Time Capsule firmware.
But still have the same Time Machine error!
On to http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=103919&highlight=TimeMachineError
and try-
"... suggesting would be something like renaming the existing TimeMachine file on your backup disk - e.g. add a date to the end of it.
And then go onto Time Machine preferences and set it up as if it were the first time you used it. (Renaming the file on the backup disk should make Time Machine think that you are starting fresh.)"
So, using Finder, I opened my Time Capsule and renamed "xxxxxx’s iMac_00224135e6fb.sparsebundle" as "091222xxxxxx’s iMac_00224135e6fb.sparsebundle091222"
And finally, this worked - I have my backups to 22 December and a complete backup as at today and hopefully for at least another 14 months!

pjh42 wrote:
G'day (from Queensland, Australia)
Not for the first time Time Machine has broken down - originally in September 08 (I just can't recall how I fixed it!!).
Now it has failed after 14 months of faultless performance.
There seems to be little help available, but searching for solutions finds plenty of problems.
On the contrary. At the top of this forum are four *User Contributed Tips,* including one on Troubleshooting that would have saved you a great deal of time.

Time Machine reporting "The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk". Anyone have any idea what's gone wrong?

After months of working OK Time Machine is reporting "The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk". Anyone have any idea what's gone wrong?

asknrobson wrote:
Wierd!
I followed #C3 and loaded Time Machine Buddy, which was defnitely helpful, then deleted the file that the backup failed at, but after 3 more attempts I stopped deleting or excluding files as this wasn't improving the situation.
The recommendation is to exclude those files from being backed-up, not to delete them!
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required:
Yes, that's a bit misleading. It just means that will be done, if it's required, which it isn't on your backups.
I have no idea if anything actually was changed however just when I had given up and walked away, TM has started working after a week of failing.
It probably did find and fix something. Just for reference, Disk Utiltiy usually shows the progress and repair messages in the center part of the window, but often doesn't when repairing a sparse bundle on a network. You can see the messages at any time by clicking the Log icon in the toolbar, or select Window > Show Log from the menubar.
Anyway, glad it's sorted out!

Time Machine Appears to Backup but Cannot Retrieve Files

I'm having problems with my Time Machine setup and I hope someone can give me some tips to get it working properly.
A few weeks ago I took my iMac into the Apple Store for some repair work. They created a Time Machine backup of my hard drive using a WD Elements 2TB external USB drive before performing the work. After the work was completed, they rebuilt my hard drive with my existing data. Only bad thing is all of my data now has the creation date of November 30h. Okay, I'll survive that part.
Now that I am home I decided that I want to start using Time Machine in my daily workflow for the first time.
Here's what I know:
1). TM appears to be backing up properly. My oldest backup is November 29th, which corresponds to the first backup the Apple Store did.
2). My last backup was less than an hour ago, as it should be.
3). When TM is mounted and backing up I can see 'Backups.backupdb' mount. I can also look inside of it and view each consecutive backup, both hourly and daily. (no monthly backups have taken place yet).
4). When TM completes the back up, 'Backups.backupdb' is unmounted, again as it should be.
Here's what happens:
1). If I go into Time Machine as if to retrieve a file it defaults to the top level and not the folder I may be in. On the right side, instead of all of the previous dates, all I see is 'today' and 'now.'
2). I created a test folder, placed some files inside it, deleted a few, and tried to retrieve them with no luck. I can locate the folder in its current state but cannot go back to find the deleted files.
Here's what I've done so far:
1). Read many of the helpful posts and files from pondini:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2057525
2). Followed the instructions here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
3). as well as done a full reset as explained here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html
Is there something else that I am missing? If someone could point me in the right direction to solve this issues, I'd be grateful.
Thanks

Thanks for clarifying my monthly backup comment. I went and downloaded the Widget as requested. Here's what I found. I pasted the results from the three most recent backups. Let me know if you need additional information.
Thanks for your help!
Chris
=======
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.23 GB requested (including padding), 264.94 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 1972 files (48.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.18 GB requested (including padding), 264.94 GB available
Copied 658 files (786 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.38 GB requested (including padding), 264.96 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 6102 files (178.2 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.20 GB requested (including padding), 264.96 GB available
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Copied 359 files (22.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb/Christopher Nalty’s iMac/2010-12-26-141215: 264.94 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Starting standard backup
Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine/admin’s iMac_001b63998cf1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.22 GB requested (including padding), 264.98 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
Copied 2212 files (38.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.18 GB requested (including padding), 264.97 GB available
Copied 153 files (33 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of admin’s iMac/Backups.backupdb/Christopher Nalty’s iMac/2010-12-26-131206: 264.97 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
###

I can't seem to set up time machine. Time machine window for backup but no window to pic back up volume

I can't seem to set up time machine. I open time machine preference and check hard drive, but I get no window to set backup volume. so I get an error message no backup volume has been selected.

If you want to back up to an external HD (USB or Firewire, directly connected to your Mac), see #21 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
If you want to back up to a Time Capsule, see #Q1 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.

Restore from Time Machine: "last complete backup" is not last backup

I'm trying to restore a backup to a new hard drive.
I did a last "Back Up Now" (around 5 PM) before beginning with the restore but when I go to start the restore it asks me to choose the last "complete" backup, and that was at 9 AM in the morning.
Am I right in assuming if I choose this "last complete backup" from 9 AM it won't restore all the files that have been edited between 9 AM and 5 PM?
If so, how do I get it create a complete backup, without doing a completely new (and time-consuming) complete backup?

I've seen this too. I'm not sure how to force a full backup. you could wait a couple of TM cycles and see if the backup you want becomes available on the list of full backups. You can also try forcing deep traversal (this will make backup time much longer but it's nowhere near as long as a complete new backup). To do that reboot in safe mode (hold shift at the chime till you see the login window). reboot normally and start a backup. It should do a deep traversal and maybe that will count as a complete backup.

Time Machin does not backup automatically

First backup worked fine, and also the subsequent hourly automatic backups. But then the automatic backup stopped, and it does no longer show the next backup time. I can again manually backup but the automatic backup does not work any longer.
Who has similar problems?

I am also having problems with TimeMachine failing to continue to backup.
I have reformatted (even though disk already had correct GUID format) a couple of times.
Here are my symptoms after about a dozen hourly backups:
TM gets itself in an endless loop.
It acts like it is performing a backup
the disk indicates it is busy
a *.inProgress file is created on the backup drive
my machine slows to a crawl, and
no new backups are created.
I really like the features of Time Machine, but can't seem to find a way to make it work for more than a day.

Restore from time machine does not list all my backups. I know they exist but there dates are not present on the restore list. Any help appreciated.

Restore from time machine does not list all my backups. I know they exist but their dates are not present on the restore list. Any help appreciated. If I must use one of these older dates to restore, how do I then get the more current data off time machine?

Ok, so am i correct in saying that the steps to fix are as follows.
That's one option, but not what I meant by restoring in the time-travel view. The latter is what you get when you enter Time Machine.
is the fresh install not going to be able to "see" the time machine backups that I have at the moment.
It should, but sometimes people report that it fails. I'm not sure why that happens.

Time Machine does manual backups but not automatic.

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