Time Machine missing full backups - Need help.

I was going to restore my Imac from Time Machine, and when I went to restore, its last full backup was from December 25, 2009 and nothing from 2010. I had checked it recently and saw backups images from January. Is there anything i can do? If i restore from the 25th, will my images from January February still be there?

Are you doing a full system restore, booting from your Leopard Install disc?
If not, please explain just what you're doing.
If so, there are two possibilities:
Did you rename or replace your internal HD after 12/25? If so, those are treated as two separate disks; thus there may be two drives in the "pop-up menu" above the list of dates. See item (f) in question #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Have you excluded any System files from Time Machine backups? If so, you cannot do a full system restore (since you didn't back up the entire system).
Where are your backups, and why are you restoring? If your Mac is still functional, try looking at your backups with the Browse option, per #17 of the FAQ Tip, to see just what's there.

Similar Messages

Time Machine making full backups--not incremental

Hi,
I just installed Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro a couple of days ago, and have been using Time Machine to make backups (never used it before now). I have TimeMachineEditor installed, and have it set to make a backup daily at 3:30am. It backs up data from my 500GB main hard drive to another internal 500GB hard drive.
The first backup went without a hitch, and did a full backup as expected (everything). But the second, third, and fourth backups all were full backups as well....not incremental as they should've been. The fourth one was actually a manual backup I did to test it...I chose "Back Up Now" to see if it did full or incremental. It did a full backup.
So, after four backups, each a little over 100GB, I'm already running out of space Has anyone else run into this behaviour? Is this a consequence of TimeMachineEditor having screwed it up somehow? Even if it has, shouldn't a manual backup still do an incremental backup?
Very strange....

canadavenyc wrote:
V.K. wrote:
yes, well, if Toronto ever gets a team in any sport worth rooting for, I might stop posting on apple forums and start watching them.
lol...well, seeing as how you'll clearly be here a while then... ...perhaps I can prevail upon you to answer one last question that just occurred to me.
Let's say I have tons of TM snapshots on my backup drive, and at some point I want to delete a few to clear some space. I know TM automatically goes after the earliest ones when the drive fills up,
You should know that TM also constantly thins recent backups. It keeps hourly backups for 24 hours and then deletes all but one for every day; it keeps daily backups for 30 days and then deletes all but one for every week. it keeps all weekly backups till the TM drive gets full at which point it starts deleting the oldest ones.
but let's say I manually want to delete a few snapshots that contain, say, a massive cache file or something totally useless to keep around, which I could afford to delete and would gain me a lot more drive space.
When I go into the TM interface to do the removal, how can I figure out which snapshots to get rid of? How would you do it?
TM offers two options. you can delete an entire backup corresponding to a time point or it can delete all backups of a given file/folder. to do that enter TM and scroll back in time to some time point. select something and click on the "gears" action button in Finder toolbar. you'll see options "delete backup" (deletes the entire backup for that time point), and 'delete all backups of this item". deletes all backups of the selected item from all time points. I use the latter sometimes to get rid of backups of very large files.

Time Machine-A Full Backup

Hello
I started using Time Machine this past January. I backup every few weeks.
I have my Time Machine set to backup my entire internal HD to an external 160GB HD.
I know for a fact I haven't created 24GB's worth of files in the last two weeks.
Today when I started my backup I had about 28GB's left on that EXT. 160GB, when it was done backing up, I'm left with 4.79GB. WHY? & what is Time Machine backing up?
It blew away all the backups from Jan, & gave me a brand new back from today.
I have only used 110.44GB on my internal HD.
Has anyone else run into this?
Thanks

Sometimes creating or changing a file triggers a change and consequent backup of another, larger file.
I suggest you use larger backup drives and swap them out periodically. The 110+ GB on your startup disk is a lot more than what most people have.

Time machine cannot complete backups - please help

I hope somebody can help me - my Time Machine has been unable to complete backups for about six weeks or so.
Having read some useful information on the support forums yesterday, I verified both my internal HD and my external disk. The external disk appears fine, yesterday my internal disc needed some 'minor repairs'. I booted from the Leopard disk, but could not find where to repair disk so simply verified disk again and it was apparently fine.
I have verified both disks today and they are again fine. However when I try to back up I get this message:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
Node requires deep traversal:/Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:kFSEDBEventFlagContainsChanges|kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEven tFlagReasonFoundInDeepTraversal|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonMissedReservation|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 90.99 GB requested (including padding), 158.90 GB available
Error: (-8088) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Version Cue CS3/Client/3.0.0/VersionCueUI.framework/Versions/Current to /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Debs' Macbook/2012-10-10-125404.inProgress/FDAAD4E0-7030-4317-925F-63C9D273908B/Macin tosh HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Version Cue CS3/Client/3.0.0/VersionCueUI.framework/Versions
Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2012/30 Sep 2012/IMG_2772.MOV to (null)
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2012/30 Sep 2012/IMG_2772.MOV to /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Debs' Macbook/2012-10-10-125404.inProgress/FDAAD4E0-7030-4317-925F-63C9D273908B/Macin tosh HD/Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2012/30 Sep 2012
Stopping backup.
Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2012/30 Sep 2012/IMG_2772.MOV to /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Debs' Macbook/2012-10-10-125404.inProgress/FDAAD4E0-7030-4317-925F-63C9D273908B/Macin tosh HD/Users/macbookowner/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals/2012/30 Sep 2012
Copied 20247 files (72.6 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
I have no idea what to do.
Can anybody help? Thankyou so much

A clone is an exact bootable copy of your Hard Drive.
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

Time Machine Vanishing... need help!

Hey all, I have an external HD (2TB) that is used to back up my mac via Time Machine. It worked fine for a while (It's only just over a month old) but now when I try to use it I get an error that I am ejecting the drive improperly and it just vanishes off my screen. Basically I turn it on, wait for the mac to read it, then when it does, bam I get the error and the drive ejects. This happens every time. Problem is I thought it might have been the drive, but I booted into bootcamp (Win7) and Windows can read the drive fine. Then when I took the HD to work and plugged it into a Mac (Same OS as at home) it works fine there as well.
Any ideas why my Mac at home is having a fit with my external HD? I really need this working again, thanks for any help

jscott3985 wrote:
Hey all, I have an external HD (2TB) that is used to back up my mac via Time Machine. It worked fine for a while (It's only just over a month old) but now when I try to use it I get an error that I am ejecting the drive improperly
Most likely, Time Machine is having a problem and is force-quitting the backup and ejecting the drive as part of that.
Start with #C2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.

How can i open iPhoto Library on Time Machine after full Backup?

After i had a full backup to iomega external hard drive i wonted to see photos in iPhoto library by using Time Machine. I can see the iPhoto Library icon on
Time Machine, but when i click on an icon it does not open the folder and i can't see the pictures stored on iomega external hard drive. All other backed up
documents i can see and restore if i ineed it. Please help. Thank you.

Thank You for your help. I did what you sugested and it works. Only one more question. Just to make sure.
When you wrote: "Control-Click the iPhoto Library icon and choose Show Package Contents there will be a Masters folder with you photos inside."
Under Master folder did you mean LibraryiPhoto or something else?
Thank You

Time Machine doing full backup of external drive again

I have a Time Capsule, as well as an external data drive connected to my Mac. The external drive (named Yoda) is NOT excluded from backups. Yoda has about 703 GB of data on it.
I recently replaced the hard drive inside my time capsule. Consequently, a full backup was made, which was to be expected.
When the new full first backup was done, I disconnected the Yoda drive. A day later, I reconnected it, and now Time Machine is saying it's doing a 703 GB backup. Since the size TM indicates its backing up is ever so slightly larger than the total amount of data on Yoda, I'm assuming it's doing a full backup of the Yoda drive for some reason (the only other drive, the system drive, only has about 200 GB on it).
The files on Yoda weren't changed, certainly not all 703 GB of them. No hardware changes were made, no updates, tinkering, modifications, or anything. The Mac itself has not even been shut down or logged out. The ONLY thing that's happened was the Yoda drive was unmounted and disconnected, then several hours later it was reconnected.
Why is Time Machine repeating a full backup of this external drive? Is this going to happen every time I disconnect and reconnect the drive? Is there any way to make this not happen, short of excluding the drive (which I don't want to do)?

After posting this thread, I did find a similar thread (in the "More Like This" section) and saw your responses in it. You had suggested the same thing, as well as doing #A5 if that didn't work.
I tried #A4 and although that seemed to work in the other thread, unfortunately it didn't work for me. So I moved on to #A5, but I could not get my Time Capsule drive to show up in the Disk Utility. I didn't see a "data folder", but I did try directly dragging the sparsebundle to the left pane of the Disk Utility, but that seemed to hang Disk Utility.
At this point I'm probably going to try deleting the plist file as per #A4, erasing (reformatting) the drive, rebooting, and starting a whole new backup from scratch. It's not going to take much longer than backing up the entire external drive by itself would have, and I still have older backups (up to a few days ago) on the original Time Capsule drive in case of massive disaster.
So we'll see how that goes...

How to restore beyond time machine last full backup

I had a disk problem over the weekend and macbook pro wouldn't boot.
This has happened once before when it was within warranty period and I took it to the Genius bar and they ran diagnostics on the drive and said it was ok. Disk Warrior however was saying it had bad sectors and was failing but Apple disagreed. Apple then resinstalled the o/s and it was working ok and I restored everything back ok.
The same thing happened on Saturday and it wouldn't boot. Disk Utility said it couldn't be repaired and Disk Warrior said it was failing.
I did exactly what the Genius did and booted from internet recovery and went to restore from Time Capsule. During the restore process it listed only the full backups that had been taken so I picked the most recent but that was 6 days ago. It has completed the restore and Disk Utility says disk is fine.
So I'm asking two questions really.
1) Is there a way to restore beyond that last full backup and apply the incrementals to get it to the last hourly Time Capsule backup? When I go into Time Machine now it only has today in it and last hour so doesn't seem to be able to access previous incarnations of the backups.
2) Is there a way to run fsck or something on the disk to get any bad sectors as marked to not be used to prevent the problem from happening again?
I am toying with getting a solid state drive but not immediately.
My urgency is to get some files I was working on (Adobe illustrator) within the last week. They would have been on the incremental backup but everything is restored from that 31st March full backup.
Regards
Mike

Hi
But isn't that based on the fact that those backups are visible in Time Machine? All I see is today, not 2 days ago.
Mike

Time Machine makes full backup after permission repair.

I am struggling with this a couple of months but now I am sure. Each time I do a permission repair of my hard drive, Time Machine makes a full backup of roughly 200G. In this way my Time Machine disk can be full rather quickly. I seem not to be able to prevent this. Anybody having the same issue? Or, even better, having a solution? Thanks, Pierre

Thanks for your reaction.
No, only 10-20.
I do permission repair once every 4-6 weeks more or less as a kind of maintenance. No idea why but it happens to be like this.
This is in the log (and somewhere here the trouble occurred):
Jun 28 19:33:16 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[355]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/iMac van Pierre.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 28 19:33:16 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[355]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jun 28 19:33:22 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[386]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 19:33:22 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[386]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
Jun 28 19:33:22 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[386]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 19:33:22 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[386]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
Jun 28 19:58:02 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[355]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jun 28 19:58:04 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[355]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jun 28 20:13:30 imac-ethernet fseventsd[48]: event logs in /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (930 2 930)
Jun 28 20:13:31 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[504]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/iMac van Pierre.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 28 20:13:31 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[504]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jun 28 20:13:33 imac-ethernet fseventsd[48]: log dir: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 87C9B931-FE3E-48EF-818C-B78899942EB3
Jun 28 20:13:35 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[536]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 20:13:35 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[536]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
Jun 28 20:13:35 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[536]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 20:13:35 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[536]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
Jun 28 20:22:47 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[504]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/iMac van Pierre.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 28 20:30:28 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[504]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jun 28 20:30:29 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[504]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Jun 28 21:08:34 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[694]: Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule Disk/iMac van Pierre.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Jun 28 21:08:34 imac-ethernet com.apple.backupd[694]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Jun 28 21:08:37 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[727]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 21:08:37 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[727]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
Jun 28 21:08:37 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[727]: Mounted devices (\n "/Volumes/pierre.wolters",\n "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"\n)
Jun 28 21:08:37 imac-ethernet CleanMyMacHelperTool[727]: Wont clean Time Machine Backups because disk image
I will check your suggestions.
Once again, Thanks.
Pierre

Time Machine dong full backup all of a sudden - why?

I have had time machine going for months, from both my Macbook and my Mac Mini, and this AM I noticed that it is doing a full backup, instead of the incremental backup it normally does. Yesterday, I updated this Macbook with the latest iDVD update, and I installed iLife '11 on my Mac Mini, but that's it. My Mac Mini uses a referenced iPhoto library on a NAS, but that is a different NAS drive than the time capsule. The only thing the time capsule is used for is or backup.
Could the upgrading of my iPhoto library on my Mac Mini have messed something up?
I will see if my Mac Mini does a full backup also.
Thoughts anyone?

Hi moviewbuffking - this could have a number of reasons, so have a look at these:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2057525
Cheers
Michael

Time Machine makes full backups on dual boot MacBook Pro

Since installing Lion alongside Snow Leopard, Time Machine insists on backing up everything on the Snow Leopard side (around 190GB) and a large portion of Lion (around 35GB) each time I run it from either partition to a 2TB Time Capsule.
When I first installed Lion I just backed up everything from there but then discovered I couldn't restore files that belonged to Snow Leopard, so I started backing them up separately, and that's when the real trouble began.
Any ideas as to what to do? Should I back up each partition to a completley separate HDD?
Ivo

I have since devised my own workaround - one that I call CrissCross.
Since I have 2 Time Capsules - one for the MacBook Pro and one for a G5 Tower - I set it up so that each partition on the MBP backs up to separate TC's while the G5 shares one.
Not really a fix but it works beautifully

The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/David Witkowski's Mac Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use. Whenever Time Machine starts to backup to Time Capsuel I get the previous error message. I need some help to fix this.

The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/David Witkowski’s Mac Pro.sparsebundle” is already in use. Whenever Time Machine starts to backup to Time Capsuel I get the previous error message Where can I find this disk image?. I need some help to fix this.
Thanks,
David W

There are multiple answers and solutions if you look just to the right under the heading of More Like This.

TimeMachine not backing up, as hard drive is full. Can the time machine clear old backups and replace them with new?

Time Macine not backing up.
As the harddrive is full, Can the time machine clear old backups, and override them with new backups. For example 5 - 6 days +++ old. Backups were proformed dayly
Any help much appreciated
Many thanks,

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. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
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. 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 (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
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 this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Doesn't Time Machine delete old backups when it needs more space?

I've had time machine running for a long time now. It worked flawlessly for quite some time.
Today it gave me the error that there was not enough free space on the disk to complete the backup (the error message says something like there is 360 GB of data on the Time Machine drive already, 140 GB of free space and it would require more than that to complete my backup). I have a 500 GB Time Machine disk and my Mac has a 500 GB hard drive, so I should technically never run out of space.
The Time Machine almost acts like this is the first time I've ever backed up, which is not true. Shouldn't Time Machine delete old backups to make space for the new? What's even weirder is that if I open the "Star Wars" window of Time Machine I only see one backup from March 31, 2011, but I have been running Time Machine for well over a year now. I'm totally confused as to what happened. Any advice on how to get my Time Machine back up and running (without buying a new drive) would help!

You see only one backup in the Time Machine window because Time Machine has deleted the older backups to make space to do the current backup.
Time machine needs some working space to do its backups, and so backing up a 500GB drive onto a 500GB time machine volume is not ideal.
However, I do essentially the same thing, and what I do, when I have this problem, is exclude things from the backup.
First off, figure out what you changed. If you moved things from one partition to another, then that will cause a backup of the size of the thing that was moved. This may be why you have a large backup.
When I have this problem, I exclude large things that have changed recently from the backup. This makes the backup smaller, and means that there is less working space needed. I do this until I get a successful backup. Then I remove things, one by one, from the exclusion list, and back up after each one.
So, for instance if you just put 4 new folders on your drive, each of which s 20GB of data and they are named A, B, C and D, add all four to the exclusion list, do a backup, then remove A from the exclusion list (leaving B, C & D on it) and do a backup, and continue like this, adding 20GB of backup data each time until none of the new data is on the exclusion list and you get a completed backup.
Another possible issue, if you use multiple partitions, is that Time Machine may be keeping an obsolete backup of a partition that you previously reformatted. To see if this is the case, go into time machine (The universe interface) and go back to the most recent backup it shows. Click on your computer and see what partitions show up-- are any of them old ones that have been reformatted and renamed? You may be storing a duplicate backup because Time Machine does not realize that the disk that went away isn't coming back (because it has been reformatted as a different partition)
You can right-click on these items and remove them from your backup by sleecting "Delete all backups of...." This will free up space as well.

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all. Can someone help?

I am trying to confirm the time at which a particular backup occurred using an external hard drive that I have since misplaced. Although time machine lists the backup times for some backups, it does not list them for all, including the one in question. Can someone help?

Okay, I've sussed it. I saw a link to another discussion that hadn't turned up in any of my searches before I posted the question above.
My Tosh HDD was formatted to FAT 32 and therefore would not be backed up by Time Machine. I removed all data from it - nightmare as I hadn't enough space to put it on the macbook HDD, but, after trawling through numerous photos and deleting rubbish for hours, I finally made enough space and copied all data across. Then, after clearing the data from the Tosh HDD, I used disk utilitity to reformat it to Mackintosh OS Extended. Chose the option without kournalling because I'm not baking up onto this disk and so don't need it - according to some other discussions I found.
When it was done I check on time machine in system prefs and once I selected options, I was able to remove it from the excluded from backups list. Hey presto. Now I'm moving my photo library and my music library onto the Tosh HDD and my macbook should start to breath again. Hurray.

Time Machine missing full backups - Need help.

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