Time Machine index; Backups not visible in TM

I have a problem with Time Machine. It seems to make backups without problems. New recently dated folders are created inside the sparse bundle directory "Backups.backupdb", but when I enter Time Machine I can't see any backups.
I can see that the process mds is very busy and recently I had disabled indexing for Backups.backupdb, but is now enabled.
Could it be that Time Machine is dependant on an index for this directory in order to display backups in the Time Machine? If it's not related what could be the reason that the backups are not visible in Time Machine? The backups are on an external drive connected by USB.

I've got Time Machine configured to backup to a sparse bundle. It used to work before, but changed behavior to this after having used Lion for some time. Backups can still be restored by going into the file directory, but entering Time Machine fails without any error message. I prefer to use a sparse bundle as opposed to the official setup of using the whole partition for Time Machine as it is more flexible in terms of space usage. Has anyone found a solution to this?

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I desperately need to access my User Library folder in Time Machine (Lion so = not visible).

Hi. I installed Lion a few months ago and got a new external drive to back up Time Machine.
Nobody told me the User Library would be made hidden in the new OS. I have been backing up regularly in the belief that all my work, settings and so on was safe.
Yesterday my iMac (27" 2.8 Ghz Core it with 4 gib memory) suddenly went mad. Message saying finder had quit whilst trying to restore windows. Desktop was flashing, no icons clickable, no external disks readable. Could access some progs and terminal, but nothing else. Could not get into the history folder to trash various plists and so on as the folder is hidden and the alt Go wouldn't work. The Finder just wouldn't do anything.
I have sorted it out BUT I have lost my address book entries, my browser booksmarks, my desktop shortcuts and my iCal entries. I need to access my User Library on my Time Machine. Is there a way?
I cannot believe I have been religiously backing up my stuff but Apple has made it so I can't access my backup of one of the most important folders on my Time Machine???
Is there anyway of getting into this from Terminal or something? I will never be able to get back all the bookmarks and stuff I've been researching for years. I have it backed up on two different hard drives, both of which have 'invisible' library folders. I have make the folder visible now, for future backups, but it's after the horse has bolted. I am furious, and just feel like bursting into tears because of all the time it's going to take me to get all my work back. I can't tell you how stupid this was, Apple.
If someone could help I'd be really grateful. I've got older backups but they are so old they won't get back my recent stuff.
Thanks.

select Finder
hole option key and select Go in the menu
Select Library
Enter Time Machine
You should be seeing all the versions of you Library folder.

HT3275 Time Machine Indexing Backup has been taking an extremely long time following a Single User launch. How can I fix this?

My MacBook Pro has not been launching properly and in addition has suddenly gone to a blue or white screen countless times. I am preparing to take it to the apple store but first I need to back it up as I have not done so since two weeks ago. In order to make it start properly, I launched the computer in Single User Mode, then ran time machine. It has been about 15 hours and time machine still says that it is indexing the backup. How can this be fixed? Surely it shouldn't take this long. Thanks in advance.

Hi jonathanfromjericho,
If you are having an extended index period during a Time Machine backup, you may find the following article helpful:
AirPort Time Capsule: Initial backup is interrupted
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1176
Regards,
- Brenden

Time machine automatic backup not working.

I have just setup my time machine backup and it works fine when I initiate manual backups. but i have noticed that, after every hour auto backup doesn't start. i can always do a manual backup, but for some reason next backup time is increased by an hour every time for auto backups. there are no error messages. Can you please help me with this. I am on os X mavericks.
I also checked the system logs after seeing some other topics and I only see messages about manually started backups there.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the 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.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time machine (older) backups not recognized after renaming the drive

Hi all.
For quite sometime I've been backing up my data (in my Mac Book Pro) using the time machine to an external drive.
Recently I changed the name of the drive I was backing up to from Finder and now I see the older backups using Finder but they're not recognized in Time Machine mode.
Is there anything I should do to make it know that those older files are actually in the same drive? I'm guessing changing a couple of lines in a text-only file (such as an XML file) where there's a file mapping will fix the issue but I'm not sure which file and where exactly that is.
Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the valuable online resource you shared.
There's a lot of critical information there. Bookmarked.
Back to the issue… Before taking any action I created an additional user in Mac OS. This had nothing to do with the awkward behavior of the TM, it was just something I should have done long ago.
After I created that user I wanted to make sure that the problem persists before doing anything. So I logged of the new account and switched to the admin account, and for the one last time I entered the TM mode. Guess what? While managing users the system must have corrected something and it finally decided to recognize my older backups! This is pretty awkward but it just happened and I'm seeing all the backups in TM mode now.
Thanks again for the help and the link

Time machine Auto Backup not working with Maverick OS

When I boot up my iMac Desktop my Time Machine desktop icon stays yellow and doesn't auto backup and turn green like before. I have reset the Preferences several times to try and fix the problem but it still has to be manually backed up. Is there a fix available?

I have had success with the following.
I removed the backup drive from the Time Machine system preferences.
Shutdown
Disconnect the drive from the Mac
Reboot
Connect the drive to the Mac
An automatic dialogbox came up asking me if the drive I just connected should be used for Time Machine.
I selected Yes (or whatever the affirmative was)
I let the backup run.
Ever since then I have been whatching the automatic backups work successfully.
YMMV but I wish you the best of luck.

Time Machine "Latest Backup" not showing up

I am using a Western Digital 1TB Mybook as a TM Backup on my G5. It has been connected since October 2008 and still has 163Gb of free space. It is still backing up hourly and when I enter TM I can access all backups.
However, when I click on the TM icon in the menu bar, it shows "Latest Backup: --" so I can't quickly scan up there to see when it last backed up.
I've run Onyx and TTools on the G5.
Any thoughts?
Steve

Sounds like a corrupted preference file to me!
Before doing anything after this line, make a note of any exclusions you've made in TM's preference pane.
In Finder, click on "Macintosh HD" then Library then Preferences. Find the file com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and move it to the desktop or delete it. Log out of your account & back into it or restart the computer.
See if things work properly after that.
~Lyssa

Time Machine backups not visible

I've got a problem where Time Machine does backups like it should, but when I enter into Time Machine to view my backups, none of them are visible. Its a bit odd... in Time Machine I see bars on the right (indicating the backups) but there are no dates listed next to the bars (apart from the one at the bottom that says "Now"). If I move my mouse over the bars, they expand to indicate that I'm selecting them, but clicking has no effect.
I have seen this notice from Apple regarding the problem:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760?viewlocale=en_US
When I first set things up, I had spaces in my computer's name... but Time Machine worked back then. At some point I changed the computer name to a name that did not have spaces and contained only characters that were with Apple's designated list. I've never gone into Time Machine to view backups since I've done that until yesterday, so I don't know when my problem started happening.
I've tried renaming my computer name back to the original name (with the spaces) just to see if the backups would show up again. No luck. I've now renamed my computer back to a name with no spaces to fall under Apple's guidelines. Still no luck.
One thing that is interesting is that I can manually mount the sparsebundle image and see all of the backups and the files that are in there. It does indeed look like the backup part is working.
I've run Disk Utility's repair on both the external drive and the disk image and they seem to be in good shape.
I'm considering just reformatting my drive and starting the backups all over from scratch, but this seems to be a drastic approach. Further, it lowers my confidence in relying on Time Machine. Any suggestions on how I might fix this?

I have a similar problem, my computer name has non ASCII characters, the backups are there but don't show up when I time travel. I need to get some files from one of the backups, so I can't just reformat and begin again, but your message makes it seem that changing my computer name to a valid name won't allow me to access the backups that were made with the invalid name.
It would be nice if the Apple document you reference would give some help to solve the problem rather than just tell us what we did wrong.
Surely there is a way to access the backups that are on the drive.

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

Time Machine thinks backup disk is full but its not

I just purchased a new 1 Terabyte hard drive for backup. In the past I backed up both my internal Mac harddrive (250 Gb with 8gb free) and an external iOmega archive drive (DRIVE H 320Gb with 41Gb free) to a 500Gb Lacie drive. I purchased an iOmega 1 Terabyte drive (DRIVE G) because the Lacie drive was full. I went into Time Machine and changed the backup drive to the G one terabyte drive and did a full backup of my internal hard drive. When I did this I did not have the external H archive drive attached so Time Machine didn't back that up. I did it that way because I wanted to first backup the internal drive then do some work and then go backup the external archive drive over night. I plugged the H archive drive in, so it show up in the finder and then told Time Machine to Backup Now. It started the back up but right after doing the initial computations when it actually started backing up I got the standard error message that "the backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly..." I've double checked that the backup disk is set correctly in Time Machine to the 1Tb G drive and when I do a Get Info on the G drive it shows Capacity: 1TB, Available: 713.54 GB.
Is it possible something is wrong with the new drive? Can I test that?

Its funny how sometimes asking a question can prompt your thinking. As soon as I finished posting this I thought "of course Disk Utility". I ran a check disk and got the following error message:
Unused node is not erased (node = 107)
I did a restore which corrected the error. Turned Time Machine back on and its backing up the rest of my data now.

Time Machine options are not working. I am unable to schedule automatic backups.

Time Machine options are not working. I am unable to schedule automatic backups. The On-Off button is grayed out. I can perform a backup manually.

Thanks for responding. I have an external disk with plenty of room. It is used only for backup of my computer. I get a backup by clicking on the Time Machine icon at the top of the page and select "Back Up Now." When I click on Time Machine Preferences, there is a box labeled "Options" which allows me to exclude items from backup and notify after old backups are deleted. There is no option to schedule a backup. The "OFF/ON" box is gray. For "Next Backup:" it says "Automatic backups off." I would like to turn it on.

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

Has the backup been working ok??
If that is the case simply reboot the TC.. or if that fails, reboot the whole network, restarting in correct order..
modem.. wait 2min
TC.. wait 2min

Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created

Iet up my new time capsule day and it's working great. Now that I've got everything sorted out, I'm ready to do the initial time machine back up on it. I went into preferences, changed the backup location to my TC and clicked 'back up now'. Very quickly I get a message that the backup failed: "Time Machine Error - The backup disk image could not be created".
I've searched the apple support area but haven't been able to figure this one out. Can anyone help, please? This is an initial backup. (FYI, it worked great on my old external drive.)
Many thanks

I had the same problem. I installed my Time Capsule, fired up Time Machine and got an error that said "The backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 436.8 GB but only 182.2GB are available."
Coincidently, these are the same sizes as the space used and the space available on my iMac's drive.
I looked in /Volumes and saw that the sparsebundle was being created on the local disk and not on the main disk. Trying to backup again gave me the "Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created." message.
I poked around the forums, and found a post about the machine name setting in sharing. I decided to give it a look, and lo and behold, I did not have a machine name. So I gave my box a name, kicked off Time Machine again, and it worked.

Time machine icon does not rotate and back up icon on desktop does not show during backup session.

Time machine icon does not rotate and back up icon on desktop does not show during backup session since I installed Maverick. Why? How do I fix it?

That's the new look of it. No way to change it other than file a complaint with Apple. If ENOUGH people do thst they may "fix it".
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

HT3275 time machine back up not completed due to backup disk image "/volumes/data/.....imac.sparsebundle" is already in use. How do I fix?

time machine back up not completed due to backup disk image "/volumes/data/.....imac.sparsebundle" is already in use. How do I fix?

Pull the power cable from the back of the Time Capsule
Wait a few minutes
Insert the power cable back in the back of the Time Capsule
This will fix the problem 90% of the time. If no luck, see #C12 in this great support document by Pondini:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine index; Backups not visible in TM

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