Time Machine does not see older backups on Time Capsule

I use a wifi network to connect to the internet as well as a USB modem. The result is that my Time Capsule is not always connected.
I set up my Time Capsule (using the wifi network) and ran what I believe was a successful backup.
Now Im trying to run another backup and I have my iMac connected using the wifi network.
When I open Time Machine it show an icon on my desktop saying "Time Machine Backups" Inside this is lots of folders that appears to be some form of backup.
If I then click on "Select Disk" it give me the Time Capsule as a option to select. Once this is done it says 1.76TB of 2TB available.
Below that it says Oldest backup: None AND Latest Backup: None. Below that is the white and blue backing up bar that has been running for some time with "preparing backup..."
I have the Time Capsule connected to the iMac with a LAN cable...thinking that this will speed up the process?

vlakvarkie wrote:
Below that it says Oldest backup: None AND Latest Backup: None.
Once you're disconnected from the backups, those fields won't be shown until the next backup completes successfully. (Prior to Lion, it showed a couple of dashes -- instead of None. We've asked for either the dashes back or something like "unknown" or "not available," but so far they haven't changed it.)
Below that is the white and blue backing up bar that has been running for some time with "preparing backup..."
That can take quite a while, especially if it's been a while since the last one. See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I have the Time Capsule connected to the iMac with a LAN cable...thinking that this will speed up the process?
Yes, by all means. It should be 2-3 times faster, and much more reliable, than WIFI.

Similar Messages

Time Machine does not see original backup file on Time Capsuel after reset.

I recently moved. I have a Time Capsule which is also my airport base station. I have about 7 months worth of back-ups on the drive for an iMac and a MacBook. The local cable company would only hook up the modem directly to my iMac and would not set up through the Time Capsule as it is not one of their routers. No problem. I did it once -- I could do it again. After discovering that it was not as simple as plugging the ethernet cable into the Time Capsule (after doing so, the Time Capsule recognized it had internet feed -- the iMac recognized the Time Capsule/Airport network -- but I could not get onto the net.) I discovered that I needed to do a hard reset. The instructions said the files would not be erased. They were not. I can still see the original back-ups for both computers in finder. But Time Machine does not recognize that either computer was ever backed up. There is no history and when I try a back-up it begins from scratch and creates a brand new back-up file.
How do I get Time Machine to recognize the original back-up files? I tried "choosing disk" in Time Machine preferences but it only lets me choose the actual disk (the Time Capsule) and not an individual back-up file
Thanks in advance to the collective brain trust.
Robert

I saw a post on another discussion about this subject, and one user found this workaround:
2) Start the backup via wireless connection. Stop the backup. Unplug external HD and plug in via USB or FW (you want FW800). Time Machine appears smart enough to continue your backup in a manner that is useable by the AEBS.
This only makes sense for the first backup (or if you have a lot of data for one particular incremental backup), as it removes the whole convenience factor of wireless.
The post got this reply:
Thx for your #2 tip on using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Base Station, then switching to a wired connection. Worked perfectly.
Started the TimeMachine b/up wirelessly, allowed it to run for a couple minutes, then stopped it, unplugged the USB drive from the AEBS, plugged it into the computer directly via FW400, opened TimeMachine and it recognized the Disk. Ran TimeMachine via the wired connection, after it finished I ejected it, plugged it back into the AEBS, initiated the AirDisk in the finder, then opened TimeMachine and presto!!
Awesome tip. Note: this works for first-time TimeMachine wireless backups only. Saved me over 40 hours of wireless waiting!!
http://gizmodo.com/370017/how+to-use-time-machine-with-an-airport-extreme
Can anyone confirm that this will work?

Time Machine does not display older backups.

Running 10.6.4 with Time Machine saving to a Time Capsule, for the past year.
Opening Time Machine displays the bars for older backups but does not display dates/times against them and I cannot move backwards or forward to select an option to restore. However, it does mount the Time Machine backup disk image on the desktop and I can browse this and restore a file using Finder. So, I know that I have my years-worth of backups on the Time Capsule, but how can I get Time Machine to display them -- I'm guessing it needs a re-instal of Time Machine?
cheers
Birdflier

Hi Pondini,
I got it fixed today, thank you everyone for your help. The thing that ended up fixing it was deleting the hidden files ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" and ".002332b4a7fc" on the root directory of the time machine disk. Now my months worth of backups are viewable again!
I didn't find this on your website (maybe I didn't look hard enough). If it's not there, perhaps it would be a good thing to add to your site? Hopefully it will save a few people some frustration! Thanks for making the site - it looks like a great resource.
--Hayden

Time Machine does not recognize older backups after restore

Leopard Server OSX.5.8, Mac Mini Intel
After a severe failure I had to restore the server (I used a fresh, spare Mini to restore to) from a Time Machine backup.
Everything went fine so far.
I tried to continue the backup on the same external harddrive, but the backup history is no more recognized by Time Machine, it want to backup the whole drive from the beginning.
The disk is full which is normally not a problem, as Time Machine deletes the oldest backups to deallocate space.
I don't want to lose the old history. What can be done to make Time Machine using this backup set again?

Hi Pondini,
I got it fixed today, thank you everyone for your help. The thing that ended up fixing it was deleting the hidden files ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" and ".002332b4a7fc" on the root directory of the time machine disk. Now my months worth of backups are viewable again!
I didn't find this on your website (maybe I didn't look hard enough). If it's not there, perhaps it would be a good thing to add to your site? Hopefully it will save a few people some frustration! Thanks for making the site - it looks like a great resource.
--Hayden

Time Machine does not see my external HD

I would like to setup TM but it does not see my external HD, but I can see it on desktop in and finder. I can browse it. But time machine does not see it and forces me to use airport time capsule but I don't have it. Help please.

What format is the external drive in?
If it's formatted for Windows (either using the MBR partition table or using FAT/NTFS volumes) then Time Machine cannot back up to this disk.
The disk needs to be formatted as Mac OS X Extended using either the APM or GPT partition tables.
Life is complicated somewhat by the fact that the OS, in general, can read MBR/FAT drives, but they're not suitable for Time Machine (limitations in the disk formats prevent some of Time Machine's features from working).
You can check the current partition map/disk format in Disk Utility.app - just select the disk on the left and the information will be displayed below. If the disk is using MBR and/or FAT then you'd need to reformat the drive in order to use it with Time Machine.

Time machine does not appear to backup an external HD. how do I get that included in the backup?

time machine does not appear to backup an external HD. how do I get that included in the backup?

In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-C, or select
Go ▹ Computer
from the menu bar. A window will open showing all mounted volumes. Select the one in question and open the Info window. What is shown as the Format in the General section? If it's not "Mac OS Extended," Time Machine can't back up the volume.

I recovered my back up via a wired connection. now Time Machine does not recognise older back ups wirelessly and wants to do a first back up

I recovered a back up from my time machine via a wired connection after getting the 'white screen of death'. Now Time Machine does not recognise any back ups on the time machine when connected wirelessly and wants to do a first back up of the whole machine. How do I get my mac to recognise these older back ups? It connects to the wifi network the time machine creates fine, with the same name and password.

I recommend the following.
1. Reset the TC to factory.
Universal Factory Reset.. any model TC or AE.
Unplug your TC/AE from power or turn off at the power point.
Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. (this is often difficult without a 2nd person or a 3rd arm).
Release it when the status light flashes rapidly. If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have missed it and try again.
Note..
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations of the router.
No files are deleted on the hard disk in a TC.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
2. Rename the TC to SMB standard.
That means short names.. 2-20 characters but less than 10 is excellent. eg TCGenx (use number for x that is actual generation of the TC)
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric. No apostrophe.
3. Ensure IPv6 is set to link-local..
Do the same thing for ethernet if that is used.
4. Manually mount the TC disk in Finder.
Use Go in the top menu.. connect to server.
Type in
AFP://TCname.local (where TCname is your new short name for the TC and local is default domain .. it helps using the domain I found).
You will then find the computer either can or cannot find the network resource.. if it fails something else is wrong with the actual network and you will need to fix that.
It will request the password if it is found.. password is public by default unless you changed it.. type in the password and check to keep it in your keychain.
5. Delete current TM setup and redo it with the newly named TC.
See A4 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
If your backups cannot be found, try B6 again, now that you actually know that the disk has been properly discovered.

Time Machine does not see back-up file on Time Capsule

I recently moved. I have a Time Capsule which is also my airport base station. I have about 7 months worth of back-ups on the drive for an iMac and a MacBook. The local cable company would only hook up the modem directly to my iMac and would not set up through the Time Capsule as it is not one of their routers. No problem. I did it once -- I could do it again. After discovering that it was not as simple as plugging the ethernet cable into the Time Capsule (after doing so, the Time Capsule recognized it had internet feed -- the iMac recognized the Time Capsule/Airport network -- but I could not get onto the net.) I discovered that I needed to do a hard reset. The instructions said the files would not be erased. They were not. I can still see the original back-ups for both computers in finder. But Time Machine does not recognize that either computer was ever backed up. There is no history and when I try a back-up it begins from scratch and creates a brand new back-up file.
How do I get Time Machine to recognize the original back-up files? I tried "choosing disk" in Time Machine preferences but it only lets me choose the actual disk (the Time Capsule) and not an individual back-up file
Thanks in advance to the collective brain trust.
Robert

I recently moved. I have a Time Capsule which is also my airport base station. I have about 7 months worth of back-ups on the drive for an iMac and a MacBook. The local cable company would only hook up the modem directly to my iMac and would not set up through the Time Capsule as it is not one of their routers. No problem. I did it once -- I could do it again. After discovering that it was not as simple as plugging the ethernet cable into the Time Capsule (after doing so, the Time Capsule recognized it had internet feed -- the iMac recognized the Time Capsule/Airport network -- but I could not get onto the net.) I discovered that I needed to do a hard reset. The instructions said the files would not be erased. They were not. I can still see the original back-ups for both computers in finder. But Time Machine does not recognize that either computer was ever backed up. There is no history and when I try a back-up it begins from scratch and creates a brand new back-up file.
How do I get Time Machine to recognize the original back-up files? I tried "choosing disk" in Time Machine preferences but it only lets me choose the actual disk (the Time Capsule) and not an individual back-up file
Thanks in advance to the collective brain trust.
Robert

Time Machine does not see a Time Capsule external drive

Time Machine will not recognize an external drive attached to my Time Capsule, even though it did so last week. How do I get it working again?
Until last week, I was using Time Machine to back up to a Verbatim 2 TB drive attached to a Time Capsule. It occasionally hung, requiring me to restart the Time Capsule in order to get backups working again, so I bought a Seagate 2 TB drive to replace the Verbatim in case the problem was a flaky drive. Now I can't get Time Machine to recognize either disk when the disk is attached to the Time Capsule.
Both disks are formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Both disks work correctly when I attach them directly to my Mac. When I attach either disk to the Time Capsule, Airport Utility shows the external drive, shows that sharing is enabled, and I can even mount the Time Capsule with Finder and see the external disk with Finder. But when I try to Select Disk in Time Machine Preferences, whether or not the Time Capsule is mounted with Finder, Time Machine Preferences doesn't see the disk—the only choices of disk are My User Account on the Time Capsule, and Other Time Capsule.
Restarting my Mac and restarting the Time Capsule does not help. Software and firmware updates are (and have been) up to date. I'm running OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 and Time Capsule version 7.6.4.
To reiterate, this was working a week ago. How do I get it working again?

If nothing in your configuration has changed, you can try plugging the disks one at a time directly into your mac, run Disk Utility and perform a Repair Disk. If any errors are displayed, rerun Repair Disk until there are none. Then try them back on the Time Capsule.

Time Machine does not run automatic backups

For the last couple of days TM is refusing to run the hourly backups.
Manual backups run fine, but not the automatic ones.
Modifying the exclude list seems to have no effect on the manual backups.
It keeps using the "old" exclude list, i.e. the one I had before the problem
started.
In /var/log/system.log I find the following message every hour:
Nov 18 21:26:03 macdelta com.apple.backupd-auto[12774]: Not starting scheduled T
ime Machine backup - time machine destination not resolvable.
I checked the plist
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist
and it seems to be fine. It is identical to the one in another mac that shows no problems with TM. The same is true for the other plists related to backupd in that directory.
Question 1: What are all the plists that control the behaviour of TM
Question 2: How do I resume hourly automatic backups?

My laptop's drive is encrypted and my laptop is with me at all times. The backup disk remains at my desk and does not have a cable lock. The important thing to consider here is that even if your laptop drive is encrypted (e.g., through FileVault), the TimeMachine backups *are not* (unless you are logged out of your account when you backup--at which point, why bother using TimeMachine over a simple disk cloner such as SuperDuper!?).
Anyway, that's off-topic for now. You mention that it changed the element of the plist that identifies the backup volume, do you mean the UUID element? I noticed it changed:
10.6.4:
<key>DestinationVolumeUUID</key>
<string>040F3E3C-11BF-3AF9-8813-2B6110B200A0</string>
10.6.5:
<key>DestinationUUID</key>
<string>24E15602-063A-3930-B1FE-F2DB15865083</string>
In addition, after doing a reset (while attempting to trouble shoot this issue), the new plist is missing some things the old plist had--for example:
<key>HostUUIDs</key>
<array>
<string>00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F2C65E0C</string>
<string>25233988-B93F-56AF-B940-F386CB4442EC</string>
</array>
Thoughts?
-Chuck

Time machine does not notify re backups

Time machine used to send notifications"10 days no back-up"
It no longer happens since Yosemite installed.Can this be adjusted? Thanks

Its also saving "missed" backups to your hard-drive for later transfer to time machine - so the backup is still occurring - just not to the time machine disk (same for Icloud backups).
As it is baking up the engineers may have decided you do not need a message -- you may want to give feedback to apple (this is not the place - go to apple support - that you till would like the message because .......
If you are using a laptop - consider getting a docking port (if available) for home use - that way you can have all hardware hooked up to the docking port so the time machine drive should load up and backups continue while at home. (docking ports make it easy to hook up printers, drives, full keyboards and an extra monitor to a lap top and keeps the laptop off the desktop so it can get some air).

Time Machine does not see backups

Hello, I have started to use time machine but it only shows today and now. I can see all of the backups on the time machine drive but nothing shows up when I open time machine. I have seen the problem with the hostname but my hostname is Machintosh, so that should not be a problem. My machine is a 1.25ghz mac mini using an external drive for booting.
Thanks in advance for any help

Are you absolutely positive that your computer name in System Preferences > Sharing has been changed as Bob suggested? Fixing the computer name has, so far, seemed to fix any problems that people have posted about not being able to see their Time Machine backups. This is from the KB article about your issue:
Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine backups are not visible
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306928
Check your computer name in Sharing preferences. Make sure the computer name only includes ASCII characters from following set and is not blank (no matter which Mac OS X language version you are using):
0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Time Machine does not see old Time Capsule backsups after change in network setting?

Hi all,
Just brought our TC to our summer home for the season and have a few issues.
Instead of using it as our router, I added it to our existing AEBS network. After doing this, all of our macs did not backup for a day or so. Once I noticed this issue, I pointed them all back to the TC drive and backups have begun again.
However, 8 months worth of backups are no longer accessible via Time Machine on any of the macs. The files are there on the TC disk and they sorta show up in Time Machine. That is, they are showing up on the right hand side as dates and little lines, but these dates and little lines are dead links. (the equivalent of being greyed out and unavailable)
Why did this happen when simply changing the TC network settings? More importantly, how do I fix it so my older backups become available again?
Thanks!
Stu

The grayed-out lines mean that whatever's in the Finder window wasn't backed-up on that particular backup.
Try selecting your Computer name in the Finder sidebar (or pressing Shift+Cmd+C) before Entering Time Machine. That will show one folder representing each the volumes (disks or partitions) currently connected. Without changing anything on the Today (Now) window, click one of the backups in question. That should show a folder for each volume that was included in that particular backup.

Time Machine does not erase old backups

Hi,
I have a problem using Time Machine on my MacBook Air. I use a LaCie 500GB Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive for backup. The external drive has 3 partitions, one of which is dedicated to time machine and measures 128 Gb. It happens very often that I receive an error message saying that Time Machine cannot complete backup as there is not enough space and that I should manually remove old backups. Time Machine is supposed to do that automatically. The backup partition is of the same size as the internal flash drive which is not even full so I don't see why there should be a problem.
I also have a MacMini with an external Iomega drive and same setup (3 partitions on the external drive and the Time Machine dedicated one of the same size as the internal drive) and I never had an issue with the Time Machine not erasing old backups to make room for the new ones.
How can I fix the problem on the MacBook Air?
Many thanks in advance,
Igor

How much space is currently in use on the volume TM is backing up from? If it needs to do a large backup for some reason, there may not be space to do so without deleting so much that you are left with less than a full backup. TM needs the backup drive to be a minimum of 2-3 times larger than what is being backed up.

Time Machine does not recover old backups

Dear All,
I have a Time Machine disk for a long time (from the Leopard days) and have been using it without any trouble even after updating to Snow Leopard (iMac- intel).
However, a few days back I upgraded my system with the latest Snow Leopard release (over software update) to install the Apple Store application.
Now, today, when I put my Time Machine disk in, it correctly shows all the backup dates correctly (on the right hand side Time Machine index pane), but I could recover only files from my Snow Leopard backups. The Leopard backups, though shown correctly do not reveal anything when I click on the date.
I am feeling desperate as some of my important files are in Leopard backups. Any help would be welcome!

Madhurjya wrote:
Now, today, when I put my Time Machine disk in, it correctly shows all the backup dates correctly (on the right hand side Time Machine index pane), but I could recover only files from my Snow Leopard backups. The Leopard backups, though shown correctly do not reveal anything when I click on the date.
What you see in the "Star Wars" display depends on how you get there. If you're starting from a Finder Window, then entering Time Machine, be sure the Finder window shows something that was backed-up on Leopard.
Or, try the procedure in #E3 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If nothing helps, try Repairing your backups, per #A5 there.
I am feeling desperate as some of my important files are in Leopard backups.
Do you mean you've been deleting things from your system, counting on Time Machine to keep the backups indefinitely? If so, that's NOT a good idea. See #20 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine does not see older backups on Time Capsule

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