Time Machine Interface Doesn't Show Backups

I've had my 2GB TC for about 3 months now and it has actually already saved me. I did a complete restore via Time Machine and I was back in business in just a couple of hours and it couldn't have been easier. After the restore, everything seemed to be working just fine - including Time Machine. However, just today, I happened to go into Time Machine and noticed that none of my backups were there. Even if I force Time Machine to do a "Back Up Now", the backup is not listed in Time Machine yet when I peruse my Time Machine Backups via Finder, I see them. So, it would appear that Time Machine is backing up but I can't see them through the Time Machine interface. Has it somehow lost where it thinks they are? Any ideas on what's going on?
Message was edited by: George Cutrell
Message was edited by: George Cutrell

Try the things in #E4 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.

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Time machine's pretty little interface doesn't show backups

I've had time machine turned on since october 28th. I needed to restore a corrupt itunes library yesterday but when I launched time machine it only showed me "today" as a recovery option. I actually found the file I needed by clicking down through folders on the drive I selected for backup. So, time machine is backing up just not allowing me to restore from the application directly. Anyone else had this problem? Anyone find a fix?
thx

Try the things in #E4 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.

Time machine restore doesn't show time machine

I am on OS X 10.7.0, time machine is backed up to a networked linux box running netatalk. It worked fine with snow leopard, at that time it was samba.
But now it backs up just fine, I have done a complete back up twice. But when I try to bring time machine up, it mounts it, but doesn't take me to the star wars screen.
I get no errors, the only error console shows is '8/2/11 4:28:06.574 PM com.apple.backupd: Could not resize backup disk image (DIHLResizeImage returned 35)'
If I mount the network drive, I can get into Backups.backupdb, but when I try to get into <computername> inside that folder, I get the folder "<computername>" can't be opened because you don't have permisions to see its contents'
The permisions are as follows
drwxr-xr-x 9 _unknown _unknown   374 Aug 2 07:22 Time Machine 1
drwx------ 6 <myusername>    staff      264 Aug 2 16:37 Time Machine-1
Inside of Time Machine 1 permisions are as follows
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root wheel 264 Jul 31 09:23 Network Trash Folder
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root wheel 264 Jul 31 09:23 Temporary Items
drwx------@ 8 root wheel 264 Aug 2 16:37 drivingonnine121.sparsebundle
d--------- 2 root wheel 264 May 29 14:21 lost+found
Inside of Time Machine-1 permisions are as follows
-rw-r--r--@ 1 <myusername> staff     6148 Aug 2 07:41 .DS_Store
drwx------   5 root    _unknown   170 Jul 31 09:46 .Spotlight-V100
d-wx-wx-wt@ 2 root    _unknown    68 Jul 31 09:45 .Trashes
drwx------ 61 root    _unknown 2074 Aug 2 16:17 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 root    staff      170 Jul 31 09:57 Backups.backupdb
<myusername> is the same on both the Mac, and the Linux box. Any idea what the problem, or fix is? Thanks.

youbop wrote:
I am on OS X 10.7.0, time machine is backed up to a networked linux box running netatalk. It worked fine with snow leopard, at that time it was samba.
But now it backs up just fine, I have done a complete back up twice. But when I try to bring time machine up, it mounts it, but doesn't take me to the star wars screen.
Try the things in #E4 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Could not resize backup disk image (DIHLResizeImage returned 35)'
I've never seen that one. A number of Time Machine requirements were changed for Lion, so your setup may not be entirely compatible.

Can't browse some older backups via Time Machine interface

Problem started after updating to Yosemite. I am running 10.10.1. I can find all my backups, going back to 2010 in fact, when browsing my external FW800 hard drive directly in the Finder. But if I click the menubar icon and choose "Enter Time Machine," I can see some recent backups for some folders, but I cannot access some older backups that I know are there on that same drive. The window title bars in the TM interface are totally grayed out for those older backups. But again, there are all on the same FW800 external HD, and I can search them just fine and extract the files just fine using the Finder.
Is the Time Machine interface totally broken in Yosemite?
Clearly there is nothing wrong with my external FW800 HD, otherwise I wouldn't be able to manually browse and extract files via the Finder. And yes, it makes regular TM backups every day too. It's only the "Enter Time Machine" UI that is partly broken. I say "partly" because some backups (very recent) display, but I cannot access all the backups. It's very strange.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you.

We need some clarification on what your requirements might be, since you state that you want to be able to open Time Machine and see backups that were made since you installed Yosemite.....AND....older backups on the drive that were made before you installed Yosemite.
When Yosemite is installed it is supposed to add all of the data included in the Yosemite operating system and combine that with your history of backups with other operating systems. For a number of reasons.....Yosemite does not always do this.....so what happens is that Yosemite starts a whole new "master" backup of your Mac at the time and then begins to add incremental backups since Yosemite has been installed.
When that happens, and you click Enter Time Machine from the menu bar at the top of the screen, you will only see the backups that have been made since Yosemite was installed. Other backups are grayed out on the Time Machine interface display and cannot be accessed......even though the backup data is present on the hard drive, and you can see the data or folders displayed using the Finder.
If you want Time Machine to display current backups.....AND....older backups when you click Enter Time Machine, your only option would be to try to reinstall Yosemite to see if the new installation will display current backups and older backups on the same Time Machine interface.
There is absolutely no assurance that this will be successful if you try it. Your call on that.
What might work......IF.....you can lower your requirements to have both new and old backups displayed on the same Time Machine interface.....and instead have current Yosemite backups displayed on one Time Machine interface and the older backups on another, or separate Time Machine interface.......is to try the Browse Other Time Machine Disks option.
You do not mention at all whether or not you have tried the Browse Other Time Machine Disks in this post or in your video. I assume that you tried this, since it is mentioned in Pondini's documentation and also other Apple Time Machine documentation, and it also did not work for some reason.
But, if you have not done this......and you can lower your display requirements......you might want to try.
1) From your normal Mac desktop, make sure that the "dock" , normally at the bottom of the screen, is displayed......and that the Time Machine icon is displayed there as well.
2) Control-Click.....or.....Right-Click the Time Machine icon to see if an option to Browse Other Time Machine Disks is displayed
3) Click on Browse Other Time Machine Disks
4) If an option to use another disk is displayed, click on the disk to highlight it, then click Use This Disk
What happens when you do this?

Time Machine no longer displays "Latest Backup" time

I have been using Time Machine since 10.5 came out and it worked perfectly.
I recently purchased a Time Capsule and (in common with a lot of others it seems), I have faced various issues (very slow initial backup, very long "preparing..." messages etc.) but they all seem to have been resolved (albeit somewhat mysteriously).
However, one problem occurred recently that I haven't seen mentioned before: in the drop-down menu under the time-capsule icon in the menu bar, the "Latest Backup" time is always shown as "--" Time Machine preferences shows the same, both for the initial backup and the latest backup.
Time Machine runs hourly as it should, and a cursory examination of the files in the Time Machine interface seems to show that all is in order. The "sparsebundle" disk image also passes verification.
For what it's worth, my MacBook Pro (also 10.5.2) appears to be just fine and shows the Latest Backup time correctly.
I looked in the system log but couldn't see a message that I thought was relevant.
Does anyone have any ideas about what might be up and how to correct this? I have considered deleting the Time Machine sparsebundle for the Mac Pro and starting again (since I haven't had the Time Capsule long enough to be terribly concerned about the history on the drive - yet). But I'm hoping someone has an idea what might be up and how I can correct it first.
I must say Time Capsule isn't exactly filling me with confidence. My offsite SuperDuper backups are going to be updated very regularly until my faith in Time Machine has been restored.
This only

This may not pertain to your issue, but might be worth considering if you use virus software. Time machine has been hanging, not showing time-stamps, and not giving me access to backups since I installed Intego Virus software and Leopard 10.5.2. I finally tracked down the Intego problem yesterday browsing this forum for answers. When I added my Time Machine disk to Intego Virus software's trusted items, Time Machine began behaving normally again (and other problems cleared up-such as hang on shut-down). Good luck with your issue. David

Time Machine UI doesn't display previous backups

Hi!
My Time Machine is running to a mirror disk and backing up files regularly. I can see them in the finder when I go to the backup disk. But when I "Enter" time machine, it doesn't recognize and show the files. Just "Now" and some time ago before I switched out hard drives.
Background: This occurred when I swapped in new drives for the old ones and named them the same as the old ones were named. Basically, I upgraded from 1TB drives to 2TB drives and now have this issue.

Thanks, Pondini.
I don't see any drives in grey. They are in black but in the UI I see "Now" and Oct. 23rd with nothing in between even though Time Machine is backing up every hour and I can see the backups by navigating to the backup drive in the Finder. So Finder shows there are backups, Time Machine menu and sys prefs pane says it's backing up, but the app doesn't find and display the backups.
Ideas?

Time Machine Just Doesn't Work Anymore

I was a happy Time Machine (with Time Capsule) user for months. But it just doesn't work anymore. It takes longer than an hour to do every hourly backup so it is backing up 24 hours a day. It finds hundreds of thousands of files changed every hour and tries to back them up. Finders says only tens of files have been modified all of today. I have tried rebuilding my spotlight indexes, repairing my Time Capsule with Disk Utility and starting over with a brand new backup. But it just backs up hundreds of thousands of files every hour. So I am turning off Time capsule since it is clearly broken. If anyone has any suggestions at all I would welcome them.

Marcia,
Consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412)
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can created major changes in the structure of your directories. Time Machine will backup every file that has changed since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if any of this helps.
Cheers!

Time Machine interface not working

Hi all,
I have a problem with the interface in Time Machine - it doesn't allow any item to be selected for restoration.
The disk was recently erased and a new complete backup was made hoping that it would fix the problem, but it hasn't.
The interface is slow until it gets working, then seems fine, but doesn't allow clicking onto items even if I perform 1 click and wait a few minutes.
Backups themselves work, but if they aren't recoverable then what's the point?
Any ideas guys?
Thanks,
Aaron

In the Finder, right-click or control-click the folder icon and select Show View Options from the contextual menu. In the dialog that opens, select None from the Arrange by menu. Close the dialog, enter Time Machine, and try again.

Time Machine Displays Wrong Date of Backup

My computer shows the correct date of November 9, 2008, but the Time Machine Backup displays September 14. Can this be fixed?

Actually, this does not need to be "Fixed". You are probably seeing the date the backup files were first created. Was that the date of your first backup? That is OK, +DO NOT+ change anything on the backup drive directly. If you need to delete/modify files that have been backed up, do so through the Time Machine "time travel" interface.
If you click the Time Machine Dock icon (round green clock icon), you will enter the Time Machine interface and see all the backups that have taken place since you began.
Cheers!

Why won't time machine give me access to backups?

My Macbook Pro wasn't working so I took it to an Apple store and they said the file system was corrupted and it needed be reformatted. I had a time machine backup and they said I should restore the files from it but not the complete restore or I would just recreate the problem.
So, my laptop is now up and running and it works again. But I can't get access to my old files. ACK!!!
The time machine backups are stored on an almost brand new "WD My Passport" external drive. I mounted the drive, went to time machine and selected "browse other backup disks". My old backup is there and I can select it. Then I zip into the Star Wars interface and...nothing happens. No backups ever show up as available. It just sits there and nothing happens when I click on the bar to the right or the arrows or any of the windows in the background. Nothing.
I know backups are there on the disk because there is a huge amount of disk space taken up in the partion with this backup and b/c I can "show package contents" in the finder and see gobs of files with in the "bands" folder (with meaningless names like "1a1c"). Also, I think the WD backup drive is fine b/c I can add, delete and access files from a separate (non-backup) partion on the disk. Also, I used disk utility to verify and repair all partions on the disk and they said OK.
I need these files! It's all my pictures, music and lots of important documents. What the heck!?!?!

Halbey, I understand your frustration. In the past couple of years a lot of terms updates have seemed invasive of privacy and software updates have seemed counter-intuitive. Because I don't simply blindly accept what's put in front of me, I don't enjoy "being a Mac" too much anymore either. Several years ago Apple's focus shifted from user experience to stock price, from creativity to mobile gaming, and the Mac experience began to die.
As Apple grows, it is turning into the very monster it once provided an alternative to.
iTunes has become what Internet Explorer used to be: a once great program now weighted down with years of patches and misdirection. Unfortunately Apple has made this bloated old patient both the cornerstone and connecting tissue of virtually every user function.
The reason we can't install previous versions is likely something to do with the terms of service that we're forced to agree to before installation. Remember that huge page of legal mumbo-jumbo? It's likely that some of the terms of service can no longer be supported by the old software.

Moved Time Machine drive - can't see backup.

I was having trouble with my Time Machine drive, which was connected by USB to my Airport Extreme. I moved the drive to a USB connector on my MacBook Pro to improve the speed, and after formatting the drive, made a complete, new backup with Time Machine, which took about 8 hours.
Then I moved the drive back to the AirPort and told Time Machine to use it for backup. Time Machine doesn't see the earlier backup (I can verify that it's there using the Finder) and is now doing another complete backup of my MBP.
What's wrong here? How can I tell Time Machine to use the backup it made yesterday instead of starting over?
Walt

Actually, Tech Support told me that they support only Apple Time Capsules connected to the Air Port Extreme. They most certainly do NOT support using Seagate drives such the ones I have been using successfully for over three years, on two MBPs.
I firmly believe (but Apple does not want to hear this) that my problem originated with the erratic WIFI connections since I upgraded to Lion, which has been discussed at length in the forums. Time Machine reported backups failing when the WIFI connection could nto be restored after waking from sleep.
My wife's MBP, running Snow Leopard, is working just fine on the same hardware.
Walt
EDIT: I tried "Inheriting" the backup that was made via the direct USB connection, but it still doesn't show up in the TM history. The tmutil program is interesting - it does distinguish between the "machine_directory" - the backups.backupdb folder that was made by the direct USB backup, and the sparse_bundle file that was created by the AirPort backup.

Back ups not visible in Time Machine interface

They are in the sparsebundle when I mount it I can see backups all the to 11/30/08, but when I open the Time Machine interface it shows only now.
I have tried everything I can think of and the few things Apple can suggest. I upgraded to 10.5.7 and renamed the disk in case it was the naming issue.
There are no errors reported in the Time Machine preferences and that shows that Time Machine is backing up regularly and correctly, which it is.
I tried turning Time Machine off and deselecting the disk. Then turning it back on and re selecting the disk.

Tryagin wrote:
Wow. I spent all day researching and even spoke to Apple and didn't find that anywhere! Where did you come up with it? Yes it works, but I do have to mount the disk image, and then Time Machine sees all of my backups including the most recent. So there should be a way to make it see this as the regular time machine disk and save the extra steps, no?
Probably not.
Have you had any of the following lately: hardware repairs to your Mac (if so, what); done a full restore; gone several days without a successful backup; changed your System Name (via System Preferences > Sharing)?
Do you have a Time Capsule, or a USB drive attached to an Airport Extreme?
There's another thing you need to watch for. TM may not delete ("thin") the backups in the old set of backups, which means when it runs out of room, it may delete newer ones instead.
If none of your backups appear via +Enter Time Machine,+ you're probably ok. But if recent ones do, and older ones don't, you may not be.
To monitor this, Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget from: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window.
Among other things, each deleted backup will be documented here. If the proper ones are being deleted, you're not going to have a problem. Note that many recent backups ("daily" backups) should be deleted after 24 hours, in accord with the schedule on the TM Preference panel.
More info on some of the common messages are in item 7 of the +Frequently Asked Questions+ post at the top of this forum.

Slow Time machine interface with time capsule

The complete backup of the 250GB over ethernet took me about 6 hours. The time capsule is now connected wirelessly and the backup is successfully performed every hour. However trying to recover pictures from iphoto I realized that the time machine interface is so sloooowwww that it is useless (it takes for ever to move from one time point to another). Is there a way to speed up or to use another user interface? Doesn't time machine store a catalog locally ?

I understand that Time Machine and TCD are integrated into your application-there is a thread here somewhere about it. Launch iPhoto and it is in your Apple Menu somewhere as in "browse backups",I hope that this might help,let us know.

"Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not availab

I have a Seagate 750 MB external disk connected to the USB port of my Airport Extreme Base Station. It worked fine with Time Machine under Leopard but it's not working the way it was under OS X 10.6.2. I'm hopeful someone can help me solve the problem.
Let's say the name of my Airport Extreme Base Station is "Airport." If I remember correctly, under Leopard time machine would start a wireless backup not long after I turned on the Seagate drive. That no longer happens.
I've erased and re-formatted the Seagate drive with 2 GUID partitions, one for my 24" iMac and one for my 17" MacBook Pro. Both computers are about 3 years old. In order to do the re-partitioning, I had to unplug the Seagate drive from the base station and plug it into one of the iMac's USB ports. If I didn't do this, nothing other than the iMac's drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility, although the name of my base station, i.e, "Airport" does appear in the Finder and PathFinder (a replacement for Finder that I use).
In fact, Time Machine works under 10.6.2. as long as the Seagate drive is plugged into the iMac's USB port. As soon as I plug the Seagate drive into the USB port of the base station, Time Machine no longer works. The backup is "delayed." When I click on "Back Up Now" a few seconds go by and I get the following dialog box: "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
In my Airport Extreme Base Station setup (Airport Utility version 5.4.2), the "Disks" pane sees both partitions on the Seagate drive. File sharing is enabled on the "File sharing" pane and "Secure Shared Disks:" is set to "With a disk password." "Airport Disks Guest Access:" is not allowed, nor is "Share disks over WAN."
When the Seagate drive is plugged into the base station and I click on "Airport" in the Finder or PathFinder, I'm prompted for the password I mentioned above because the shared disks are secured with a password. Once the password is typed, both partitions on the Seagate drive appear in Finder and PathFinder. When I try a Time Machine backup at this point, I get the same error I described above, i.e., "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
One last thing, I did an "Archive and Install" when I upgraded to Snow Leopard since I thought the changes were relatively minor as compared with past OS X upgrades. Normally, I do a clean install but didn't feel like it this time. I also tried deleting the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist to no avail and restarted my iMac to no avail.
At this point I'm completely stumped. As I said, Time Machine works as long as the Seagate drive is plugged directly into one of the iMac's USB ports as opposed to the base station's USB port. But doesn't this defeat the purpose of having wireless backup? Once again, the wireless backup worked fine under 10.5.8.
I hope my message is clear and a solution would be most welcome.
Thank you,
Richard

I'm having the same problem. If my TimeMachine drive is not connected, I'll get the "Time machine could not complete the backup" "The backup disk is not available" warning a couple times a day. This is extremely problematic if I'm giving a presentation. I have tried changing my TimeMachine drive, removing that drive, repairing permissions, and have not been able to solve the problem.
Please help!

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

Time Machine Interface Doesn't Show Backups

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