Time Machine Lost its Way!

Hello!
All seemed right with Time Machine until it stopped showing the date and time of the various backups on the bottom of the screen. The bar between CANCLE and RESTORE shows up all white. The functionality of the program seem to be working okay, but there is obvious some problem. Does anyone have any suggestions to restore the date info?
Rick

Try turning the Time Capsule off/on.
See item C12
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Instead of having to buy the application Pacifist, you can use an Automator workflow.
Airport Utility 5.6.1

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HT203177 I had to get a new hard drive in my 27 in IMac. I used time machine to get everything back on my computer. I just turn on time machine and its says it's preparing over 800,000 items to back-up, it never back-up, it stop and starts the process ove

I had to get a new hard drive in my 27 in IMac. I used time machine to get everything back on my computer. I just turn on time machine and its says it's preparing over 800,000 items to back-up, it never back-up, it stop and starts the process over again.

Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then repair the backup/TM drive.

Access the local Mac's Time Machine without its external USB HDD?

Hello.
Is it possible to access the local Mac's Time Machine without its external USB HDD? Or is the external backup HDD required? This is assuming Mac OS X 10.8.5. I am not sure if the newer versions can do it.
Thank you in advance.

Eric Root wrote:
Those are local snapshots. The best thing to due is backup Time Machine and then access it.
Local Snapshots on Portable Macs
How do I access these local (one/1)s without the external HDD connected? I do not get the TM icon option in my top menu bar.

Time machine backups take way too long

Greetings,
Having trouble with Time Machine backups taking way too long. (No, it's not the first backup after some momentous event, as 90% of what I read about slow backups mentions; it's _every_ backup.)
20" iMac purchased Oct 2008. OS 10.6.8. 500 GB internal hard drive. 3 TB external backup drive. Was tested at the local "Genius" Bar, but they found nothing wrong with it. The best they could do is to recommend a restore from Time Machine, and if that didn't work, start clean and reload the OS and then copy my stuff back. I don't think so. I actually did a full Time Machine restore for a different reason, and it didn't help (except that I gained a few GB of disk space!).
My Time Machine backups now take about 39 minutes to complete. I have a 500 GB internal drive and this problem happens regardless of which external drive I use. (I have 3: 2 WD hard drives and one [noisy!] G-drive.) My current backup drive is a 3 TB WD drive with 2 TB of free space.
These are small incremental backups, typically about 35 MB. It doesn't take half an hour to copy 35 MB!
All phases take a long time, but the most irritating one is where TM appears to get stuck for a long time at the beginning and end of the copying phase. For example, at one point it will say something along the lines of Backing Up 7 KB of 34.4 MB. And it'll be like that for minutes on end. Later it will say something like 35 MB of 35 MB and hang there for minutes on end. During these periods the write I/O rate will go up and down, and CPU usage will often be very high (with backupd using 90 - 100%, in addition to highly elevated System CPU usage). In one particular backup the I/O write rate for one part of it looked like a heartbeat on an EKG! I should have taken a screenshot.
At the beginning during the Calculating Changes phase, backupd is using between 90 and 100% CPU.
There is also high CPU usage during the next phase, Preparing. And the number of items being prepared is in the thousands.
It always goes in two rounds because it finds that the root directory (/) has been modified.
I've Googled and searched Mac forums and found nothing useful. I started with a new .plist file and nothing's changed.
Can anyone help? Thanks!
I wrote the above Jun 28. Yeah, finally getting around to posting it. Since then it's gotten worse. I now do a manual backup once a day and it takes almost an hour. I tried re-indexing Spotlight. No good.
Can anyone help? Again, this is not a "first backup." It is _every_ backup.
Thanks!
AEF

Thanks for your efforts. Here are my answers, comments, and further info:
I believe I have repaired permissions on my drive as part of my troubleshooting. And I'm sure I checked SMART status, which came up with a thumbs up, so to speak. I'm trying again. I don't see any useful messages in any logs on the console. I'm looking at "All Messages" and there is so far nothing useful. Oh, I think you must mean repair as in "Repair Disk," not "Repair Disk Permissions." I believe the "genius" at the Apple store did that or something just as good. The machine checked out fine according to them.
Checked SMART status just now: passed. Ran Quick Drive Test: also passed.
Oh, I installed "Time Machine Buddy". Occasionally, and only occasionally, I get a "deep traversal needed message" like this (I copied this from .Backup.log):
Running preflight for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
        Scanning nodes needing deep traversal
        Node requires deep traversal: /Users/alanfeldman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|
        Calculating size of changes
        Should copy 2919 items (27.8 MB) representing 7116 blocks of size 4096. 546805181 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
Time elapsed: 1 minute, 39.000 seconds
But the vast majority of the time I do NOT get this message. But if there's something wrong with this apdb file, what can I do to fix it?
Note that there is usually, if not always, a lot of CPU activity or I/O (disk) activity, but not a lot getting done.

The display on my 4 year old iMac has horizontal lines and gradations of gray. Is my machine on its way out? Can I fix the screen?

My four year old iMac has developed horizontal lines and gradations of gray over the last month. Is my machine on its way out? Is there anyway to fix the display?

If you live near an Apple Store, make a Genius Bar appointment to have the computer tested. Supposedly there is no charge for testing.
Genius Bar Reservation

Is Time Machine the best way to backup two external drives?

I only have the most basic understanding of Time Machine. I hook up an external drive to my MacBook Pro, click "backup now" on Time Machine, wait a while, and forget about it because I've never had to use it to retrieve a file - thank heaven.
Now I also have two external 2TB portable drives that are close to full and which need to be backed up. I just bought a 4TB drive that I haven't taken out of the box yet. Is it a simple matter to create two Time Machine files on the 4TB drive ... one for each of the 2TB drives?
And is Time Machine the best way to do this? Or is there some other system that makes more sense for backing up on this scale and with two drives?
-JOHN

No Time Machine is not the only way.
You can use one of the drive cloning softeare programs to clone your internal drive to an external or you can use OS X Disk Utility to do basically the same thing, IE Clone/Copy your internal drive to an external.
But in your case it look as if the upgrading of the iPhoto database has wiped out alll your images. What you are actually asking about is "Can you now get back those photos without first doing any backup of any type".
And the answer to that is No you can not.

Time Machine - Lost Data

Embarrassingly, I am seeking assistance to retrieve lost data which was originally backed up with the use of Time Machine on my external hard drive.
In an effort to clean my iMac (2008) to make it go faster, I backed up its entire contents with the use of Time Machine and proceeded to delete all of its content - I very likely went about this the wrong way.
Anyhow, I was able to access these back ups for weeks before I mistakenly clicked a button within a Time Machine pop up window asking if I wanted to start a new back up (I forget the exact wording), which I accepted. Since then, my series of backups have disappeared and I can no longer access the content that I need. Is the Time Machine capable of permanently deleting previous back ups? Thanks in advance!

Time Machine does delete old snapshots to make room for new ones, but it never deletes the last snapshot of any volume. There should still be at least one snapshot from before you erased the startup volume.
While in Time Machine, press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible. Select the one you want and navigate to the files you want to restore.
If you need to restore from a backup of the hidden user Library folder, first select a snapshot, then press shift-command-G. A Go to Folder dialog will open. In it, you'll enter the path to the folder. The dialog will help you by automatically completing the parts of the path when you start to type them.
The path begins with slash character ("/"). Enter that. The rest of the parts will be separated by slashes.
The next part is the date and time of the current snapshot. Enter a "2", and the rest of the date should be filled in automatically. Press the right-arrow key to jump to the end of the path. Enter a slash to start the next part.
Next is the name of the volume (usually "Macintosh HD" unless you gave it a different name.) Start to type that, then jump to the end and enter a slash.
The next part is "Users", followed by a slash.
Next is your (short) user name, which is also the name of your home folder.
Finally, enter "Library", then press return. You should now be in the Library folder. From there you can get around as in the Finder.

HT201250 I'm using Time Machine. Its Full. Deleting older backups as it goes. My desktop Mini is full. I want to delete all files on my computer. How will this affect Time Machine?

I'm really wanting to make room on my Mac Mini. I have about 70 gb left. I'm not sure what to do. I'm using Time Machine to regularly backup my computer and its already full and deleting older backups. I used to, in the past before Time Machine, just drag and drop files into an external hard drive and empty the file from my computer. Should I follow a similar procedure here? If I have time machine backup up, and I remove all my files from the computer, will Time Machine begin to backup a "clean" machine onto the external drive and begin deleting past backups? What would be the best way to approach my backups, remove all my files from my computer since a variation of them are already on time machine, and not lose viable backups? Thank you.

If you erase the hard disk and you install a new Mac OS X copy, Time Machine will start a new backup and will stop using all backups you made in the past.
One option you have is to reinstall Mac OS X and restore a Time Machine backup, but restoring only some files: for example, instead of restoring everything, restore only your user files, and not your applications, so you will have more free space. Also, doing this, Time Machine will continue backing up to your old backup, because Time Machine will detect that you have "the same computer with the same files and the same Mac OS X version", but it's not.
If you have more questions about Time Machine, see this site > http://pondini.org

Time Machine lost all old backups

I have an iMac 24" with a 750GB drive that only has about 200GB full. I have been using Time Machine to do backups onto a 400GB hard drive, and it has been working fine for a few weeks. Last week I copied 250GB of material onto my Mac's HD (as a backup of an external drive), but set that folder NOT to be backed up in TM (this worked fine). Then yesterday I renamed that folder... and Time Machine tried to include it in the next backup... and that backup failed, of course, since there is now more that 400GB of material to backup. Ooops... I have put that renamed folder onto the exclude list.
BUT, in the process of failing to backup, Time Machine appears to have deleted all of the previous backups from the 400GB Time Machine drive. The weeks of backups are gone. THAT was very disappointing. I thought Time Machine wasn't supposed to delete old backups without warning me (I have that option checked). Why did it do that??
(Happily, I have also been making backups manually onto other drives, and my main drive is still happy, so no files were lost... but I want to understand what happened before I trust my backups to Time Machine. I realize that I accidentally asked Time Machine to do an impossible thing by suddenly dropping that extra 250GB folder into its world, but why did it fail so ungracefully and delete all my old backups? This could be very bad if it happed to someone who was counting on Time Machine.)

This is TRULY a serious software design bug IMO and should be reported to Apple via their Feedback procedure. I also have seen this bug and I've reported it to Apple. You should also to add more weight to the bug report and to hopefully have Apple resolve this soon for all of us.
TM does fail to alert the user with a request that to free up backup space some older backups will need removing. Not only this but it silently removes the oldest backups trying to free up space only to find there's still insufficient space. This is clearly a very serious problem as you've discovered.

Time Machine - lost incremental backup

The preferences panel for Time machine says it keeps
* hourly backups for the past 24 hours,
* daily backups for the past month,
* weekly backups until your disk is full.
I notice that the reduction of hourly backups to one backup for a day appears to keep the earliest (incremental) backup for that day and deletes the rest.
To test this, I created a small file on the desktop on 13th Oct 2008 at 18:30, let time machine back it up at 18:45 and I then moved the file from the desktop to the trash at 19:00.
I checked that the file existed in the time machine backup for 18:45.
As I suspected, Time machine has only kept one backup for 13 Oct timed 12:01 am. The file is not in the backup for the 13th or 14th Oct (it is now 15th Oct). The original file is still in my trash.
If this had been an important file that I had deleted accidentally, I would not be very happy.
For the record I am using a MacBook running OS 10.5.5 using a 500Gb Seagate FreeAgent drive connected via firewire.
Shouldn't Time Machine consolidate all the incremental backups for one day into the one backup that it keeps (and eventually consolidate the daily backups into the weekly one that it keeps) so that files are not 'lost' in this way?
Arthur L.

Welcome to Discussions.
[This|http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2007/12/howleopardtim.html] explains it well:
"As Apple presents the Time Machine filesystem view, you can see your system approximately:
As it was at the top of each hour today
As it was each day for the past 30 days, starting yesterday
As it was each week, starting 31 days ago, going back as far as disk space permits
A distraught user might only be interested in the amount of data he may have lost:
If you accidentally deleted a file today, you lose up to an hour's work
If you deleted it between yesterday and 30 days ago, you lose up to a day's work
If you deleted it more than 30 days ago, you can lose up to one week's work, or all of it."
Hopefully the file you've lost took longer than an hour to create than the example you tried.
/p

Is Time Machine an easy way to revert to 10.7?

I want to try the new iTunes but feel strongly that I probably wont like it. Can one easily revert back to 10.7 using Time Machine? Why is no one doing this??

=Downgrading from iTunes 11 to iTunes 10.7=
You may be able to go back with Time Machine but this may involve restoring other items too (https://discussions.apple.com/message/20441404). Alternatively:
Back up your computer first, in case the unexpected happens.
Get iTunes 10.7. Apple does not keep many old versions on its web site. I always install iTunes by downloading the installer and then keep it on my archive drive so I can have access to old versions. This one is no longer openly linked on Apple's site:
iTunes 10.7 for OS X http://appldnld.apple.com/iTunes10/041-7195.20120912.d3uzQ/iTunes10.7.dmg
Replace the iTunes 11 application with iTunes 10.7. Lion (OSX 10.7) and newer systems have iTunes integrated into the operating system and deleting is a bit more involved. The two ways I can think of to do this are:
1. Use the shareware Pacifist utility (http://www.charlessoft.com/) to install iTunes 10.7 including all associated system files. Details at http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=16400819&postcount=6
2. Check this reference on how to delete the iTunes application itself:
Delete iTunes in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion - http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/13/delete-itunes-in-mac-os-x-10-7-lion/
After deleting the application there may be other files that need downgrading too. See the note about error -42408 at the end of this post. You may want to tuck these away somewhere safe until you have completed the installation of iTunes 10.7. I have not tested this but ideally if newer versions are not found then the installer will put in the old versions. This may include these files in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ which apparently get updated by iTunes 11:
AirTrafficHost.framework
CoreFP.framework
DeviceLink.framework
iTunesAccess.framework
MobileDevice.framework
After doing one of the two procedures above you will have to rescue your old iTunes library from your iTunes > Previous Libraries folder and rename it "iTunes Library.itl" (replacing the existing one in the iTunes folder) because a newer version of iTunes irreversibly updates your library file. Note, this will revert your library to version at the time of the upgrade and you will have to update any changes made since. See:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20401436 - turingtest2 11/2012 post on rebuilding empty/corrupt library from previous iTunes library file after upgrade/crash.
iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451
Other issues:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20432309 - solution to mobile devices saying they need to be restored after downgrading
If you encounter error-42408:
iTunes: Advanced iTunes Store troubleshooting - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3297 > Specific Conditions and Alert Messages: (Mac OS X / Windows) - including specific error codes.
Alternatively, check https://discussions.apple.com/message/20441424 which requires you have a Time Machine backup (though possibly if you remove the newer version of these files old ones may be installed with the iTunes 10.7 installer - untested). A variant of this is at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/20448184

Time Machine lost old backups :(

I thought I would try doing Time Machine over wireless connected to my AE base station so I connected my existing Time Machine drive to the AE and tried to make it pick up where it left off, which it would not do. It wants to start fresh, which I do not want since I don't want to lose all my old backups. I tried to reconnect it the old way and it doesn't pick up where it left off anymore. I can view my old backups but now I cannot add to them. It wants to start fresh this way too now. Is there any way to fix this? I want to pick up where Time Machine left off.
Message was edited by: Matt Petruzzelli

-(.)^(.)- wrote:
To answer why connecting your USD HDD to your AirPort Extreme doesn't allow you to continue your Time Machine backup, well the backups to a NAS (effectively what you are doing by attaching the HDD to AXBS) are saved as a sparsebundle as opposed to your current file structure.
To use your HDD connected directly to your Mac, try opening TM Preferences and Change Disk. Can you select the USB HDD now?
Thank you. That explains where this odd folder on my HD came from, but it has a little red "x" in the corner. When I tried switching to backing up off of the AirPort Extreme base station I selected Change Disk. I used Change Disk again when I connected it back with the FW800 and it lets me view my old back up, but neither method (shared or wired) allows me to continue my old backup. I don't have enough space on the drive to waste another 80GB on another full backup AND keep my old backups, which happened to come in handy recently, the reason I wanted to switch to the shared drive so I could do it more often.
I'm still unable to continue where I left off. It still wants to do a new full backup
Message was edited by: Matt Petruzzelli

Time Machine lost connection after Lion update

Wanted to see if anyone lost the time machine connection after the latest 10.7.1 update released yesterday? My system couldnt find the drive for it and I had to re-set my time machine and then I could connect.

Some more info might help one of us with possible steps to resolve your problem. Is the external drive firewire, usb or network through airport, port-powered, etc?
What basic troubleshooting did you try?
Does it show up in System profiler? If it does there may not be too serious a problem.
While there are some who've had problems with the latest updates many of us have had no problems but we do empathise with those who have.
Neville

Time machine lost backups.

LAte last yea, I had to remove data from my MacBook to install new software. So I checked my time machine and ensured all my data was backed up before deleting anything. Sure enough it all looked good with backup as old as two years. Today, Imhave to recover a file from last year, opened up Time Machine and guess what? Oldest backup available is Feb 25, 2015.
Where did my backups go? Why did I spend all that money on a backup system if it doesn't keep my data?
PLease tell me there is a way to recover.......

You misunderstood how Time Machine works.. you must never delete files from your Mac that you expect to be held by Time Machine.. because at some future point the TM will realign the backup to the current state of the Mac.. you maybe upgraded or patched the OS.. and at that point a very large backup happened.. and that will tend to wipe old files.. once gone files are gone for good.
The files should have been copied to a location and stored.. even to the TC on a different folder would work.. but inside a backup they are not going to last.
Please read how TM works.
http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html
And what happens when you delete files on the Mac.
http://pondini.org/TM/20.html

Time machine lost all but one backup

I ran apple software update yesterday. Today Time Machine says disk is too full to run backup and shows only one backup. I used the finder to look and sure enough, only one backup is there.

I don't think there's any need to "re-establish" your TM drive.
In a stupid interface move, even if you check "Warn when old backups are deleted" in TM options, it doesn't always do that - it usually tells you after the fact, when it's too late to get rid of some big files, or certain backup dates, etc; whether you get the warning or not has to do with the size of the last backup, the space left, and whether TM thinks it can squeeze in another backup, but it seems to make that decision based on the size of your last backup; if the current backup is unexpectedly large, it just erases old backups without telling you.
You may be backing up space-hogging items that you don't really need to back up: the Trash for instance; the legendary giants Entourage and PC-emulators on an IntelMac; the Downloads folder (which gets piled up with stuff that you don't need to keep, or you have copies elsewhere, or it's a movie you already watched...); maybe you don't need a System backup, but just your User folder/Documents assiduously copied...
There's lots of ways to trim what's being backed up so you can use a smallish drive to back up the most important things from your main drive.

Time Machine Lost its Way!

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