Time Machine doesn't show any backups even though the data is being backed up

Time Machine is set to backup my Mac regularly and it seems to be doing so since the backups are being written to my backup disk.
However, when I enter Time Machine, none of the backups in the past show up on the Time Machine screen.
Is there a way to have Time Machine recognize the data it has backed up?

I restarted my Mac and all's well. Odd.

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After restoring a backup, my older backups are not shown anymore in my Time Machine. Although it's said that the oldest one is from 2010.
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thank you for helping!

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My Time Capsule/Time Machine has been showing Preparing Backup for past 48 hours continuously!

My Time Capsule reported Full the other day. I now have only 26.8MB of 497.96 GB available. Since then it seems to backing up continuously. The Time machine preferences window shows "Preparing Backup" andnothing else, and it has been doing so for at least past 48 hours. Any ideas as to the problem?
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Yes, the problem is the drive is full.
If you have other files or TM back from other computers, TM on your computer having issues will not be able to delete enough to get sufficient space to backup.
Read how to clean up and delete parts of backups.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
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Solution.
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3. Open up your old TC.. remove the 500GB drive and install a 2TB (if Gen1 a 3TB might even work). Google for how to do a hard disk upgrade.
Problem.. old power supply could die the day after and then the total cost would approach 1. Better to backup, wipe the 500GB and sell it on ebay and buy a new TC with 2 or even 3TB (2TB is better value IMHO).
4. Plug in a USB drive .. formatted to HFS+ and use that as the target.
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Time Machine Doesn't Show Previous Back-Ups

Hi,
Just reconnected a TC after a 2 year hiatus. I can connect as a shared disk and see the the contents of the TC which includes a sparsebundle - so I know content is there. But when I launch Time Machine I dont see any previous content. I haven't performed a Time Machine back-up yet.
What would be the best way to proceed? I dont want previous back ups to get wiped. Also, I take it connecting via wired Ethernet would speed up what initial back-up I might perform as much on my computer has changed in two years.

mrhifi wrote:
Hi,
Just reconnected a TC after a 2 year hiatus. I can connect as a shared disk and see the the contents of the TC which includes a sparsebundle - so I know content is there. But when I launch Time Machine I dont see any previous content. I haven't performed a Time Machine back-up yet.
What would be the best way to proceed?
What's changed in those 2 years? Any hardware repairs, especially a new logic board?
If not, try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
If that doesn't help, try the Browse... option, per #E2 there.
I dont want previous back ups to get wiped.
2 year old backups? That makes me wonder if you deleted things from your Mac, counting on Time Machine to keep the backups indefinitely. If so, 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 the +Time Machine+ forum).
After that long, Time Machine will almost certainly do a new, full backup. That, of course, will take a lot of space, so if there isn't enough room on your TC, it will have to delete old backups, perhaps a LOT of them, to make room. Depending on the sizes, it may delete all but the most recent one, then fail because there still isn't enough room.
See how much space is available on the TC. If that's less than 120% of the amount of data on your Mac (or the estimated size of a full backup under the exclusions box in +Time Machine Preferences > Options,+ backups will have to be deleted. How many is impossible to predict.
Also, I take it connecting via wired Ethernet would speed up what initial back-up I might perform as much on my computer has changed in two years.
Yes, absolutely!
If old backups have to be deleted, that can be an excruciatingly slow process, even via Ethernet. Because of the way sparse bundles work, TM must mount it, delete the oldest backup, dismount it, compact it, then mount it again to see if that made enough space. If not, repeat, repeat, repeat . . .
So, if it looks like a lot of old backups will have to go, and you really don't want that to happen, your best bet is to connect a USB or FireWire disk directly to your iMac and start backing-up to it. That's much faster and more reliable anyway. You should still be able to see and restore from the old backups via the Browse... option.
By the way, please click +My Settings+ at the right of this page, and update your Mac and OSX specs. I'm assuming you're still on the iMac, but clearly not 10.4.5 )

Logic Board was replaced - Now Time Machine does not show previous backups

Hi
Bit desperate here.
My Apple store changed my hard disk and the logic board along with it.
I'm now aware that this means my MAC address has changed - which is what your Time Machine looks for when it tries to back up.
So now the backups are failing, and I KNOW there's a HINT offered on macosxhints.com
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101&query=Time%2Bmach ine%2Blogic
- but I have absolutely NO previous experience with TERMINAL and minute I try to re direct terminal to my Time Machine Volume : it tells me there is no such file or directory. It's all gobbledygook to me. I think the person that wrote it ASSUMED some previous knowledge of using terminal.
The things I DO know are: My MAC address number, and my TM Volume is called The BIG BACKUP (not Time Machine). It doesn't
Can anyone make this clearer for me, or indeed is there an easier way.
I know I could just tell TM to change disk and just star afresh - but I'm under the impression that it's very uneccessary for me to lose all my previous backups.
Hey, many, many thanks if you can help
Simon

Hello K.V.
(I'm having to come back to this when I get a minute at the moment)
Many thanks for your suggestions so far. Several things have occured:
Firstly I did what you instructed in your last post, that seem to let me go on without any further errors - so I then when back to my desktop - dismounted The BIG BACKUP and restarted the whole mac, remounting the The BIG BACKUP. I went to the 'Back Up Now' commend to test it and it failed, sayind it could not find the file or directory.
So this evening I started in terminal from scratch - when I got to the ls -al command I noticed that my old address was no longer in the list, it was on the line before the new address before (I also punched in the wrong mac address intially but spotted it and rectified my mistake .001f5beb34e5 being the correct one) as you can see from below it now says my old address is No such file or directory.
Here is a copy of what happened
Last login: Mon Jul 21 19:27:07 on ttys000
simon-evanss-imac:~ simonevans$ cd /Volumes/"The BIG BACKUP"/Backups.backupdb
simon-evanss-imac:Backups.backupdb simonevans$ xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress "simon-evanss-imac"
No such file: simon-evanss-imac
simon-evanss-imac:Backups.backupdb simonevans$ xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress"simon-evanss-imac"
simon-evanss-imac:Backups.backupdb simonevans$ cd ..
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$ ls -al
total 104
drwxr-xr-x@ 16 simonevans staff 612 20 Jul 22:44 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 6 root admin 204 21 Jul 21:13 ..
-r-------- 1 simonevans staff 16 24 Apr 23:56 .001f5beb34e5
-rw-r--r--@ 1 simonevans staff 6148 21 Jul 19:08 .DS_Store
drwx------ 3 simonevans staff 102 24 Apr 23:55 .Spotlight-V100
d-wx-wx-wt 3 simonevans staff 102 19 Jul 09:25 .Trashes
-rw-r--r-- 1 root staff 0 25 Apr 09:23 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
drwx------ 8 simonevans staff 272 21 Jul 19:32 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root staff 102 20 Jul 22:56 Backups.backupdb
-rw-r--r--@ 1 simonevans staff 1024 1 Jan 1970 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--@ 1 simonevans staff 2 1 Jan 1970 Desktop DF
-rw-r--r--@ 1 simonevans staff 0 1 Jan 1970 Icon?
drwxr-xr-x 5 simonevans staff 170 24 Apr 23:55 MANUALS
drwxr-xr-x 5 simonevans staff 170 24 Apr 23:55 SOFTWARE
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$ sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/"The BIG BACKUP"
Password:
Access control lists are supported on /Volumes/The BIG BACKUP.
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$ sudo mv .001b639a9935 .001f5beb34e5mv: .001b639a9935: No such file or directory
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$ sudo mv .001b639a9935 .001cb37264bc
Password:
mv: rename .001b639a9935 to .001cb37264bc: No such file or directory
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$ sudo mv .001b639a9935 .001f5beb34e5
Password:
mv: .001b639a9935: No such file or directory
simon-evanss-imac:The BIG BACKUP simonevans$
Very confusing huh.
To be honest now, I guess my prime concern is if I've made any damaging changes to things I don't understand or not - and I think it may be best if I accept the Time Machine starting afresh from square one by clearing the external drive and re-directing TM to it. I could live with this I guess, so long as it worked.
What do you think?
Many thanks
Simon

Time Machine HD not showing latest backup, can't restore system

Please forgive the short story, but I'll give as many details as I can:
Last night I successfully installed XP on my MacBook Pro using Boot Camp. I decided to do the same to my iMac (21.5" 2010 Version). I used Boot Camp to initiate the partition process to create my Windows partition. It told me that I had files that couldn't be moved and I would have to:
1. Backup my startup disk (the main and only internal hard drive)
2. Reformat the hard drive I want to create the Windows partition on
3. Restore from the backup
4. Use Boot Camp to create the new partition
I completely understand why I have to do this. There's files spread physically all over the drive, and backing up and restoring is the free alternative to defragging. So I use Time Machine to back up my internal drive to an external drive. The total transfer was about 330 GB. I had to leave for about three hours and left it to do its thing. When I came back, the iMac had restarted and was waiting for my password to log on. I did so and looked in Time Machine and saw that the next back was scheduled for 10:37 pm. It was set to backup every hour. Simple math tells me the last backup - the one I had left for three hours - had finished at 9:37 pm. And that made perfect sense.
I then boot the iMac from the OSX disk and use Disk Utility to erase and reformat the main drive. I did this without any qualms since I was sure the backup worked. It wiped and reformatted my drive and I go to Time Machine to restore and.......
NO BACKUP FILES ARE FOUND
The external was spinning. I could hear it doing something. So I decided to try it manually in Disk Utility. In selecting the source of the restore Image, I navigate through the external and find, not a backup file, but a ".inProgress" file. I'm guessing that the initial backup +did not+ complete correctly and I've now just lost all of my data.
Can anyone please tell me that I'm wrong?

weerez87 wrote:
When I came back, the iMac had restarted and was waiting for my password to log on.
Unless you have your Mac set to automatically log you off after a period of inactivity, your Mac should have been as you left it. It does not shut down, restart, or log you off after completing a backup.
Could there have been a power failure?
I'm guessing that the initial backup +did not+ complete
That seems likely.
and I've now just lost all of my data.
Maybe, maybe not.
Just to be sure, check the backup drive via the Finder. Be +*very careful+* using the Finder on your backups; if you accidentally move, change, or delete anything, they can be corrupted.
There should be a single Backups.backupdb folder at the top level, containing a single folder named for your Mac.
Inside that should be a folder for each backup, named with the date and time; plus a "latest" alias, plus the in.Progress file (it's actually a "package").
If there are any named, dated folders, those are completed backups; you can restore your entire system from them. See #14 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).
If not, select the "in.Progress" file and see how large it is, via +Get Info.+ That may take a while; the larger it is, the more of your data is there. If it's over about 6 GB (your system folders), right-click it and select +Show Package Contents.+ It should contain the same folder structure as your internal HD; go all the way to the bottom and see how much is actually there (some of the items toward the end may be empty).
If it looks like most everything is there, you may be able to recover most of it, by drag and drop.
If not, +*stop using your internal HD.+* Unless you did a +Secure Erase,+ your stuff is still on the internal disk, and most should be recoverable, but it won't be quick or easy. See [Data Recovery|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Recover.html].
Keep us posted.

Time machine doesn't delete old backups when disk is full

TM disk is 750GB. It tells me there is not enough room for backup…then I look into TM and find there ARE NO BACKUPS anymore. (There were a few days ago.) All backups are gone, except for one two days ago, which was when I began getting the "no room" error.
I assume I've lost everything, as the TM disk shows only the backup from 2 days ago. True?
Do I just format and start again?
Is there a fix for this "no room" message? (It says oldest backups are deleted when disk becomes full. But it doesn't do it.)
Do people rely on this?

How much data is TM backing-up? (What's shown for +Estimated size of full backup+ under the exclusions box in TM Preferences > Options?)
Note that your Time Machine disk should, in most cases, be at least twice the size of the data it's backing-up. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
It appears that Time Machine needed to do a large backup, perhaps a full one, for some reason, and deleted as many old backups as it could (but it won't ever delete the last remaining one, as that would leave you with no backup at all), trying to make room.
If in doubt, Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages for that run here, along with the amount of data that TM is backing-up.

Time Machine doesn't acknowledge initial backup

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Of course, I expected this backup to be a rather small one, but I realized that Time Machine was about to begin another ~400GB backup! In fact, there was no information in the "Last Backup" field, so apparently Time Machine could not see the massive initial backup and was about to start all over again. Well, I am NOT about to wait another 3 days for it to do that, especially if the problem reoccurs, so I halted the backup and set Time Machine to "off."
Now, what to do? Why can't Time Machine see the initial backup? Why is it trying to do another full backup (very little data changed on my system in the 3 days)? Did my stopping the "hourly" backup somehow "break" things?
Advice? Thoughts?

I'm not sure how the sparsebundle is identified by the computer, but if it is uniquely identified by the network connection used (ethernet, airport, firewire networking, etc.) then it could very well not identify the previous sparsebundle you made via Ethernet as being the one for your computer via Airport. I dont remember this being the case for me when I had my PowerBook backing up to my PowerMac via both Airport and/or Firewire networking, but I could be wrong...it was a while ago. Even though you seem to want to lean away from this, I'd recommend remaking it and just letting it go. You can use your computer in the mean time and allow the process to run in the background. It will pause and resume as the backup disk is available until the process is complete.

Time Machine doesn't recognize old backup after logic board replacement

I recently had my logic board on my MacBook Pro replaced and when I tried to backup, Time Machine did not recognize the old backup on the drive and tries to create a new one. The drive is mounted fine.
Is there a way to continue using my old backup, or do I need to delete it and create a new one?

lissy-loo wrote:
Hi there I've just had this problem on my computer too but is there a possibly easier way to explain what is on this site...
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
I read through but got lost about half way down when it says:
"The last bit of information needed is the old MAC address. Open Terminal and change directory to the root of the Time Machine backup database, then get the old MAC address:...."
I was in terminal but couldn't work it out. Is this not a good idea to stumble around in if i have no idea what I'm doing? Seems difficult but I really wanna work it out because my Time Machine hard drive is full so I can't just get to back up everything from scratch and don't wanna delete what is already on there. Any help would be much appreciated!!
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
If you're not comfortable with the procedure, I'd advise against it. Mucking about with Terminal can cause all manner of problems.
But you can find your Mac's Ethernet Address via the *System Profiler* app. Click the Apple logo in your menubar, then +About This Mac,+ then +More Info+ to start it.
Select Network in the sidebar, then Ethernet in the upper panel. Near the bottom of the lower panel, under Ethernet, you should see *Mac Address.* It's 6 hex numbers (12 characters), separated by colons. Omit the colons when you type it into Terminal.
As noted in the Troubleshooting Tip, it's easy to do this wrong, get no error message, and have it not work (been there, done that!).
If it doesn't work, your only choices are to erase the drive and start over, or get a larger one and transfer your backups to it (see item #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
How big is your TM drive, vs. how much it's backing up? TM usually needs 2-3 times the space of what it's backing-up (see item #1 of the FAQ Tip).
Are you so concerned about not losing your backups because you've been deleting things from your internal HD, relying on TM to keep it's copies? If so, post back -- that's a terrible idea.

Time machine doesn't show non-current drive.

I had an external hard drive die. I need to restore the files, but since the drive's not there anymore Time machine doesn't list it. How do I access the files without manually finding them on the backup drive?

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Time Machine doesn't show any backups even though the data is being backed up

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