Time machine has stopped showing backups

Time machine used to show backups back to when the machine was new in November. Now it has suddenly begun to show only today/now.
Regardless of which finder window I have opened, it always goes to 'computer' and shows the external hard drive, 'macintosh HD' and 'network' icons.
If I close time machine and open up the backups on my external hard drive, all the time machine backups are there. What IS going on?!

Does this fix help?
+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
If it doesn't make sure that the connections to your Time Machine disk are solid. You could also try resetting the PRAM.
Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Similar Messages

Time Machine has stopped making backups

Time Machine has worked fine for me fore many months, the backup disk being a 1 TB external firewire drive.
But now Time Machine will not make a backup. I keep getting the same error message: "Time Machine Error. This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 88.7 GB but only 58.5 are available."
I thought Time Machine just deleted the oldest files on the drive to make the room it needs for continued backups. So why isn't it doing that now? How do I get it to go back to doing that?
Thanks for any help!
Tom

Tom Baker1 wrote:
My Time Machine backup disk is an external 1 TB firewire drive with only one partition, dedicated entirely to TM, and it backs up the two internal drives in my G5. One of these two internal drives has about 600 GB of data on it and the other about 400, so together they would be enough to fill the external Time Machine backup drive.
Yes, that's too small. Our "rule of thumb" is, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing up. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Now I have discovered that there is something wrong with the Time Machine backups as well. I decided to go into TM to see just how far back in time the backups go, but it will only allow me to go back as far as yesterday. It acts as though there are no backups older than yesterday afternoon.
That's probably correct; your TM disk is too small, and there's just not room for more. Here's the situation: A full backup has nearly filled the disk; something fairly large has been added or changed, and there just isn't room for it, in addition to the full backup.
The 88.7 GB it's requesting means it's trying to back up about 74 GB (it adds 20% for workspace, etc., on the TM disk).
This is getting stranger all the time. At this point should I just give up trying to fix the situation, erase the backup drive, and start all over again?
That probably won't help much, if at all. To confirm what's going on, 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 last backup attempt, then copy and post all the messages for that run here.
You need to do one of the following:
Get a larger drive, at least 2 TB.
Get an additional drive; use one for TM backups of one of your internal HDs, the other for a different app to back-up the other internal HD.
Exclude a lot of stuff from Time Machine (at least 300 GB).
Use a different app, such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to back up your internals to separate partitions on the 1 TB drive. These will be exact copies only; no previous copies of things you've changed or deleted.

My Time machine has stopped backing up saying there are some read only files.

My Time machine has stopped backing up and says that ther are some read only files preventing this. What steps do I need to take to fix it?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

HT3275 My Time Machine has stopped backing up and now it errors out everytime I make another attempt.

My Time Machine has stopped working and now errors out everytime I try to re-connect ?

What is the error.. ??
We cannot help much without details.
Look at the pondini troubleshooting.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
The vast majority of issues are C12 or C17.. especially with ML.. which rather than fixing issues left over from Lion exacerbated them.

Time machine doesn't show backups

So I my logic board died and I decided to reformat my computer after it was repaired just for a fresh start. My time machine has all the backups, however, when I tried to restore from it, i opened up time machine to see that NOTHING was there. I set the drive to be the same drive used before and the drive DOES actually contain all the backups. It's just when i open up time machine to restore nothing is there. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Yes, sorry, I didn't read the initial post carefully enough.
If babolat is still at the restore stage, the best answer is to boot up from the Leopard install disk and choose Restore from a Time Machine Backup from the Utilities menu. This will get the system back where it was and may also associate the backup directory with the new hardware (not totally sure of the latter though).
The backed up data itself can be accessed using the Browse Other Time Machine Disks option in Time Machine. I believe the Migration Assistant approach will work to get the full user across, but will not associate the existing backup directory with the new hardware.

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?
Stuartyboy

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
Not a good idea though.
Solution.
1. Buy a new bigger TC.. cheaper (Than the original 500GB at least), faster and now the smallest is 2TB.
2. Plug in a USB drive.. archive the TC.. then erase it and start a fresh set of backups.. April 1st great day to do it.
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.
Very slow. much slower than the same drive plugged into your computer.

TS1550 My time machine has stopped backing up. I get a message that says it cannot complete backup due to an error that occurred while creating the folder.

How do I get my time machine to complete a backup?

Hello Dee,
http://pondini.org/TM/C10.html

Time machine has stopped backing up to my Western Digital Network Drive

I have a WD 1TB World Edition drive which pretty much worked plug 'n' play when I bought it in early Jan backing up with with Time Machine instead of the bundled software. I've had a few troubles backing up, but largely due to router problems. Time machine has worked great with the drive, as promised.
Until a few days ago, when it stopped backing up altogether. The usual backup icon stopped appearing on the desktop and it came up with error message saying the backup file cannot mount or something like that. Strangely, the shared folders on the drive still show up and I can access all the mp3 files, etc I have loaded up. So, I checked the router, cabling to the drive, rebooted the drive, resetted the drive and checked the settings using MyBookWorld. This stopped the error message showing when I tried to backup and the backup icon now shows on the desktop again. But it won't backup !!! It just stalls and in Time Machine says its configuring without doing anything. I have tried hooking up to the drive directly, still no joy.
I'm now at the end of my tether. Does anyone have any ideas? I have asked WD support and they were next to useless. Thanks !

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Time Machine does not back up reliably, if at all, to most network drives, except Time Capsules or a shared drive on another Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard on the same local network.
Here's the criteria they must meet: Disks that can be used with Time Machine. And be careful here: just because some 3rd-party hardware claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports it, or that it will work in all circumstances.
We've seen a number of problems reported with that drive. Have you downloaded the firmware update that's supposed to make it work?
with error message saying the backup file cannot mount or something like that.
The exact message might help.
Time Machine says its configuring
Is the word "configuring" or is it "Calculating changes"? "Configuring" sounds more like a message from WD, or perhaps your router, than one coming from Time Machine.
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.
You might also try to Repair the backups. I don't know exactly how you'd get to them on a NAS, but try the procedure for a Time Capsule in #A5 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Time machine has hidden past backup files

I recently did a restore using Time Machine.
1) Time Machine created a new backup folder.
2) the old backup folders are still on the drive but no longer visible or excessible.
3) the files are still there because the backup hard drive is almost full.
4) is there a way to bring back the backup files Time Machine has hidden or possibly overwritten

Thank you Pondini for jumping in on this one.
I use Time Machine to backup on an external hard for my FCP video files to another external HD. I do not use TM for my iMac. (Snow Leopard).
On Wednesday my FCP hard drive had a failure of some sort and would not allow to be written on, so I formatted the FCP hard drive and then "restored" the latest files from the backup hard drive. But, during the the process of restoring the auto backup kicked in and started to backup the FCP hard drive onto the backup HD at the same time I was restoring the FCP drive.
When all was said and done... the backup drive no longer showed the past three months of FCP files, but instead only shows Wednesday's last folder. The files are still on the backup drive because I am now getting a "failure" due to lack of hard drive space. I believe it's because the three months of files are still on the hard drive but Time Machine is no longer recoginizing the old folders. The current backup folder reads:
Backups.backupdb - with the folder inside: Admin's iMac (2) - with another folder inside: 2012-12-23-193009 - followed by a "Latest" folder that has only 4KB Alias in the Size and Kind columns.
Are you running Snow Leopard? YES
It did that when you ran a new backup after the restore, right? YES but Time Machine created a new backup folder.
Did you do a "full system restore," starting up from your Snow Leopard Install disc? YES, but after 5 hours the backup stopped with the "failure" due to not enough disk space to contine. This is not possible because the backup HD is 4T and reading 1.8T available.
I am trying to find a way to revive the original Time Machine folders that go back to November without having to reformat the entire backup drive.

Time Machine has lost all backups

I have a time capsule that was reset on 15th April when I moved the home folder on our iMac to an external disk. It needed to be reset as there was not enough free space to keep the existing backups and continue with the new external. Time machine has been running since and backing up our files.
Today I noticed that Time Machine was working hard doing a backup and when I check the status in the top bar it shows that time machine is backing up all or our data (approx 250Gb). I opened the time machine application and it only shows a backup from today - there is no history.
What could have happened? It looks like the time capsule was wiped and time machine has started from scratch again. One other thing, I updated to the latest AirPort utility this morning, coincidence?
Hope someone can help as I do not want this to happen again.
All the best
Andrew Wright.

Thanks for the link, but the answers there did not really help explain why a full backup was done. None of the reasons in D3 were applicable. I did look at the system log and found the info below. This appears to show a 'normal' backup just before 2pm then the full backup just after 3pm. The question is still 'why would time machine want to backup everything when most files were already backed up'?
Jun 17 13:55:24 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Starting standard backup
Jun 17 13:55:24 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jun 17 13:55:33 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jun 17 13:55:37 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Jun 17 13:55:40 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/MyMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 17 13:55:40 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jun 17 13:56:02 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 841.0 MB requested (including padding), 149.65 GB available
Jun 17 13:57:28 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Copied 1601 files (183.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jun 17 13:57:28 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 592.4 MB requested (including padding), 149.65 GB available
Jun 17 13:57:31 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Copied 7 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jun 17 13:57:32 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Starting post-backup thinning
Jun 17 13:58:02 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MyMac/2011-05-18-162329: 149.65 GB now available
Jun 17 13:58:02 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Jun 17 13:58:02 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Backup completed successfully.
Jun 17 13:58:06 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jun 17 13:58:06 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[746]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jun 17 15:16:12 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Starting standard backup
Jun 17 15:16:12 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jun 17 15:16:21 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Time%20Capsule
Jun 17 15:16:23 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Jun 17 15:16:26 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/MyMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 17 15:16:26 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jun 17 15:16:40 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Node requires deep traversal:/Volumes/Users reason:must scan subdirs|
Jun 17 15:17:17 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Compacting storage: 297.87 GB requested (including padding), 149.65 GB available before compacting
Jun 17 15:17:17 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Stopping backup.
Jun 17 15:17:18 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Backup canceled.
Jun 17 15:17:19 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jun 17 15:17:19 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Compacting backup disk image to recover free space
Jun 17 15:18:11 iMac-2 com.apple.backupd[425]: Completed backup disk image compaction

Time Machine has stopped working, HD errors

Time Machine has suddenly stopped working on my 2008 24" iMac. I have tried two separate drives, but neither work.
When I try and verify my internal HDD it comes back with a number of errors, and it has started to click recently. I expect the two must be linked!
I can't find my install disk to try to repair the main disk and some advice says that might be a bad thing to do anyway if the drive is physically damaged.
I have a full TM back up from two days ago, and I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my iPhoto/iTunes library separately.
My questions are:
1. What are the issues with running the iMac without TM until the disk finally dies? If it lasts, say, 6 months, can I just restore my Oct 2011 TM back up and rebuild my media libraries from CCC backups or will I lose something else?
2. Does anyone know the approx cost of getting Apple to replace the HDD? I have seen the online guides to doing it myself and don't really fancy trying!

Time Machine has suddenly stopped working on my 2008 24" iMac. I have tried two separate drives, but neither work.
When I try and verify my internal HDD it comes back with a number of errors, and it has started to click recently. I expect the two must be linked!
I can't find my install disk to try to repair the main disk and some advice says that might be a bad thing to do anyway if the drive is physically damaged.
I have a full TM back up from two days ago, and I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my iPhoto/iTunes library separately.
My questions are:
1. What are the issues with running the iMac without TM until the disk finally dies? If it lasts, say, 6 months, can I just restore my Oct 2011 TM back up and rebuild my media libraries from CCC backups or will I lose something else?
2. Does anyone know the approx cost of getting Apple to replace the HDD? I have seen the online guides to doing it myself and don't really fancy trying!

Time machine has stopped backing up to time capsule. message is that sparse bundle is in use

Time machine suddenly stopped backing up to time capsule returning this message:
The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data-1/xxnymacbooknamexx MacBook.sparsebundle” is already in use.

Complex procedure that will almost always solve this bug:
Pull the power cord from the back of the Time Capsule
Count to ten
Plug the power cord back into the back of the Time Capsule
Wait a few minutes, then try a backup again.

I am running 10.7.5. Time Machine has stopped backing up to my external drive

I am unable to get my time machine to do a backup. When I plug my external drive into the macbook, there is no message to ask me if I want to backup my laptop. The external drive mounts, but nothing happens. I have done a "repair disk" and a "verify" disk and found no problems.

Has that drive already been setup (and/or used) as a Time Machine target for this computer? If so, you can click on the Time Machine icon on the top menu bar, and click on the "Backup Now" option. If, for whatever reason, the drive cannot be used, it'll at least give some kind of error message to help in troubleshooting.
Another thing to try is to go to the Time Machine preferences and "re-select" the external drive that you're using as a target.

Time Machine has stopped backing up

Time Machine repeatedly will not backup since I started backing up to an external disk configured with Drobo. Sometimes it does backup, sometimes not. When it does not backup, I get a window that says the backup did not happen because of an error "copying the files". The last time it wouldn't backup I copied this message from Time Machine Buddy:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Drobo Large Partition/Backups.backupdb
Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.ModelID path:/Volumes/Drobo Large Partition/Backups.backupdb/Anthony Siciliano’s Mac Pro size:9
Failed to create progress log file at path:/Volumes/Drobo Large Partition/Backups.backupdb/Anthony Siciliano’s Mac Pro/2010-10-12-162007.inProgress/.Backup.308619180.303191.log.
Error: (-50) Creating directory D4108B79-DB3F-49BE-AD06-A32A14894F0B
Failed to make snapshot.
Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.ModelID path:/Volumes/Drobo Large Partition/Backups.backupdb/Anthony Siciliano’s Mac Pro size:9
Backup failed with error: 2
Any help would be appreciated.

Those are all problems writing to the TM volume.
Make sure it's set up properly (with the GUID or APM *Partition Map Scheme* and +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ or +Mac OS Extended (Case sensitive, journaled)+ Format.
If that doesn't help, a few folks have had problems backing-up to Drobos. You might want to search this forum for Drobo for possible fixes.

Time machine has stopped working.

I just noticed that the green light on my time machine has gone out. So, I checked the connections, replaced the fuse in the plug and plugged it into a different socket. It still doesn't work. I am concerned that the problem is in the time machine itself. Does anyone have an answer?

Hi Peter,
It sure would seem that it's likely failed.

Time machine has stopped showing backups

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