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

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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
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View ▹ Show Log List
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CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
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☞ 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.

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Dear Pondini,
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John,
*_Full Backup After Hardware Change / Mac OS Reinstall_*
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Hope this clarifies some things.
Cheers!
Message was edited by: Glenn Carter
Message was edited by: Glenn Carter

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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.
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How do I fix this so the time and date of the last backup are shown instead of "unknown" can better monitor the reliablity of the backups from the Time Machine pane on the server?

I am also having the same issue. Running two machines with Mountain Lion and they report back fine, also running one machine with Lion and it reports Unknown. When I got to the machine itself though, it is saying that it is backing up every hour. I suspect upgrading Mountain Lion would fix the issue as well.

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I have had success with the following.
I removed the backup drive from the Time Machine system preferences.
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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)
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YMMV but I wish you the best of luck.

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Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
some messages from the console log:
6/22/08 6:15:23 kernel disk3s2: 0x23 (UNDEFINED).
6/22/08 6:15:25 kernel HFS resolvelink: can't find iNode87587
6/22/08 6:15:26 kernel HFS resolvelink: can't find dir_487832
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6/22/08 7:21:42 kernel AirPort: Roam (Beacons Lost)
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robrobrobrob wrote:
Aug 14 18:33:28 iMac mds[44]: (Error) DiskStore: Unable to create/find index location
While you got the same type of message as while(fork()) it's not clear to me that they represent the same underlying problem.
In your case the Time Capsule and the actual Backup seem to mount OK as seen here:
Aug 14 18:33:20 Robert-Schattners-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[301]: Network volume mounted at: /Volumes/Time Capsule
Aug 14 18:33:25 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[301]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/ iMac_001ff3543f94.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of iMac
Aug 14 18:33:25 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[301]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of iMac/Backups.backupdb
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Aug 14 18:33:31 iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[301]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
What happened after this?

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http://pondini.org/TM/17.html

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Hi philravens24!
I have an article here for you that can help you troubleshoot this issue:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
Further articles addressing Time Machine issues can be found here:
OS X Mountain Lion: Time Machine problems
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11194
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities!
Cheers,
Braden

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