Time Machine Not Backing Up Recently Saved Files

I frequently work form home and need to access files that have been saved on my Time Machine Backup. The problem that I am having is that although I backup just before I leave the office, when I get home and open the file from the latest backup, it is out of date.
I have only noticed this problem with Quark files (I'm running Quark 8.162), but that might just be because this is the program that I am working in 95% of the time, so it may not just be these files.
This is a huge problem for me for this reason. Imagine I am working on a brochure in Quark at the office, I have just finished making a few last minute amends to the file before it goes to print and send off a pdf to the client for final approval. I then need to leave for the day so I do a quick Time Machine backup and go home. When I get home, I receive approval from the client to go to print so I open the most recent file on my backup and export a high resolution pdf to send to the printer. Now imagine that although the backup ran fine, the most recent Quark file on my Backup is out of date by a few hours! That is what is happening to me, and this could basically bankrupt me if I send a file to print for half a million copies and the amends that the client approved are not on the file I've used from my backup.
Please Help!

guffmuffin wrote:
I frequently work form home and need to access files that have been saved on my Time Machine Backup. The problem that I am having is that although I backup just before I leave the office, when I get home and open the file from the latest backup, it is out of date.
I have only noticed this problem with Quark files (I'm running Quark 8.162), but that might just be because this is the program that I am working in 95% of the time, so it may not just be these files.
As Thomas says, that might be some sort of quirk with the app you're using. And, if the file in question hadn't been saved to disk, it cannot be backed-up.
See #D5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for some other possibilities.
. . . so I open the most recent file on my backup and export a high resolution pdf to send to the printer.
I think Thomas is assuming you're doing that either via the Finder or the app in question. If so, he's correct that it's not the recommended way to use your backups.
Time Machine uses a complex structure, and special permissions, on the backups. Some kinds of files can be browsed via the "Star Wars" display, but to view other types of files, or actually use anything in your backups, they must be restored somewhere.
The problem with the Finder is, it's quite easy to accidentally move, change, or delete something that way, and that can corrupt your backups.
If you try to use a 3rd-party app with files on your backups, it probably can't open them, but if it can, it may alter something there, which can also cause corruption.
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It sounds like you have one computer at work, a different one at home, and are carrying a portable external drive containing your backups between the two.
If so, restore the file you need to your home computer, then make the PDF from it.
Or, make a second partition on the backup drive. Before leaving work, copy the file in question from your work computer to the other partition. Then use that version to make and export the PDF.

Similar Messages

Time Machine NOT backing up all new files

I have 3 internal disks in my Mac Pro: SYSTEM (System and Apps), DATA (all my user data), and TM (Time Machine)
i use TM in manual mode to backup my DATA disk, typically every time i copy new images from my camera to my DATA disk.
i notice that sometime the latest files i copied to my machine are NOT backed bup by TM.
Every time i run TM, it finishes really quick, i.e. seeing nothing new to back up.
I then created a simple text file, and invoked TM again - and this very latest file was backed up - but my images from the past few days are STILL not backed up (and likely never to be, it seems).
Other things i;ve tried (w/ no success):
- ran Disk Utility verify on all disks
- rebuilt Directories w/ Disk Warrior
- tried (in vain) to force a TM Deep Traversal by:
   a- restarting,
   b- starting up using my install CD
   c- restarting in Safe Mode
ps: here is an archived thread i found about this, but no solution mentioned
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11359191#11359191
help!
thanks!

G'day
Xcode is an IDE, too. It automatically excludes its "build" folders.
It's still worthwhile to take a few moments to check, via the yellow box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #11, just to rule that out.
Sorry, lack of clarity on my part. I did make the check first time around. The files are not excluded.
Yes, that's a possibility. Try making/copying a different folder.
Because this morming TM decided to copy the folders it was ignoring yesterday it is now up to date. I need to re-establish the errant behaviour i.e. wait until TM ignores a new version or two. Then I'll make a new folder and copy the contents of the IDE development folder into it. If folder damage is the issue then from then on new versions made will be copied by TM. I predict in fact this won't make a difference because I don't reckon folder damage is the issue. (But of course now that it is being watched TM will behave faultlessly and won't re-estabish the errant behaviour.)
True, but the folders should appear on subsequent backups (unless the originals were moved or deleted in the meantime). In other words, anything backed-up on Monday will still appear on the first Tuesday backup, even after all the Monday backups are deleted. You just can't tell which backup first backed them up.
Indeed. I can do a bit more analysis there. I will schedule that for tonight too.
How are you determining what's backed-up? Are you using TimeTracker or BackupLoupe,per #A2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting?
No. I simply open the Product Versions folder (that contains the copies of the developmet folder) on the desktop and then go into TM. There I step backwards through the backups. TM shows me what folders it has in in the Product Versions folder of each backup.
Without knowing the dates & timing, I agree it doesn't seem consistent. If you're getting different results at nearly the same time on the two drives, that may not be the problem. But it may be worth making some new ones to determine what's actually happening.
Not that I know I have to keep an eye on this I will be watching much more closely as I make versions during the day. To push the process along I will make versions, and associated TM backups, more frequently than normal and check each TM backup.
You might want to repair both TM drives, just to be sure, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. While you're at it, you might as well verify your internal HD, just to be sure there's not some sort of odd directory problem there.
Understood. I'll start by re-establishing the errant behaviour which I'll do via the accelerated process of development and versioning described above. You must be coming up to quitting time for the week. By the time you come in Monday morning I should have more to report. (I'm in Australia and I presume you are in the US.)

Time Machine not backing up "iPhoto Library" file

I have run some utilities to make sure that my Time Machine backups are working and noticed that my "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" file is not there in the backups. In the console I see this (paths cleaned up):
Feb 3 07:27:20 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Starting standard backup
Feb 3 07:27:20 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Backing up to: /Volumes/MacPro Backup/Backups.backupdb
Feb 3 07:27:23 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Node requires deep traversal:/{home folder}/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonMissedReservation|
Feb 3 07:27:49 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 70.30 GB requested (including padding), 522.31 GB available
Feb 3 07:27:58 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Copied 384 files (15.9 MB) from volume MacPro.
Feb 3 07:28:50 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Copied 2261 files (109.1 MB) from volume Storage.
Feb 3 07:28:51 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.47 GB requested (including padding), 522.21 GB available
Feb 3 07:28:54 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Copied 9 files (1.7 MB) from volume MacPro.
Feb 3 07:28:57 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Copied 11 files (1.7 MB) from volume Storage.
Feb 3 07:28:58 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 3 07:28:58 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Feb 3 07:28:58 macpro /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[77655]: Backup completed successfully.
You can see that it does decide that it needs to be backed up (hence 70 GB of data) then it only backs up everything else. It will now do this every time.
Notes: This machine is running Mac OS X server and I do not have my home directory on my system drive. It could be a permissions problem, but I have tried fixing that (see below)
Since this problem started I have tried:
- Erasing my Time Machine disk and letting it do a full backup
- Holding down option-command while opening iPhoto and having it do all possible rebuilding steps
- Using Terminal to make sure permissions of the main file and package contents are set to same setup as my other computers that are working

I moved it to my system drive, was able to open it up fine with iPhoto ('09 BTW) and then ran Time Machine. Same thing happened, though this time it didn't say "needs deep traversal" like it did before.
As far as exclusions go, I double checked my "Do not back up" list and nothing in there that has to do with Pictures or iPhoto. Also, found and ran this command:
sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
which output:
/{home}/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
/{home}/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml
/{home}/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates
/{home}/Music/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries/Previous iTunes Libraries/Previous iTunes Libraries/iTunes Library 2008-10-04.xml
/{home}/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/Cache
So that probably isn't it. It is weird that out of the 1.5 TB of data Time Machine backs up, it is only this file (folder)

Time Machine not backing up

Why is my Time Machine not backing up my documents, folders and files.
I have a Mac oss 10.5.4. 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1.5 GB. I have been trying to remove files as I'm running all my programs slow. I recently installed the recent ILife upgrade.
Often I would go in and turn off the hourly time machine backup because as I was working on memory intensive programs such as Photoshop I found it may have been linked to crashes. This is particularly concerning as the backups aren't accessible anyway.
Okay, this is the stupid part - on my part - I included my (House) folder in the files not to back up. I was mistaken as to this being a way not to have redundant back ups.
However; the only file now that is in the do not back up is the (time machine backups) and still nothing is saving - particularly concerning? iphoto file. see below.
Now this is concerning! I restored all photos from "March 13, 2008" - it's september. to IPHOTO from Time Machine. I don't know what changed since then(?) I thought it would add these folders into my i photo cache. This of course has involved a software upgrade since to iphoto. I was prompted for upgrade to the restore. So I said yes, to assure the photos added? where in a compatible format. However; instead it has erased all my photos SINCE. Are my photos irretrievably lost?
Why won't my files back-up for retrieval? Can I restore my settings from March 13, 2008 when my Time Machine back-up worked?
I find it horribly confusing that I no longer can access the photo cache, instead having the 'iphoto cache' icon.
This feels like PC headache. I am about to give up!

One thing you can check (using disk utility info button) is that the disk used for backing up must be in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, and must have Access Control Lists enabled. Permissions must be set so that you are allowed to use the disk, and the disk can’t be read-only. There must also be sufficient room on external disk for the entire TM backup. Since apple recommends just using TM on the disk, one thing to contemplate if having problems you can't resolve is to reformat as the above and start from scratch.

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.

Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.
Thanks in advance for any help!

For all things Time Machine see Pondini's excellent information here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Start at Troubleshooting.

Time Machine Not Backing Up New Files

Time Machine is NOT backing up my recent files.
I recently noticed that Time Machine was backing up really quickly instead of taking several minutes as usual. I checked previous backups and discovered that NONE of my recent files were backed up.
I have a very basic setup. An external usb 1 tb drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) being used as the time machine backup drive. A new i5 mac mini with OS X 10.8.4. About 200 gigs of data with one user on the internal drive.
I have followed all of the Pondini troubleshooting steps. I have restarted into safe mode to force a deep traversal. I have repaired permissions and verified all disks with Disk Utility. I have deleted time machine preferences and followed instructions as per Pondini #A4. The backup seems to run but then finishes quickly but DOES NOT BACK UP any recent files.
I have run TMUTIL COMPARE, it showed that many files needed to be backed up.
I have run TMUTIL ISEXCLUDED on some of the files that were not being backed up. It showed that they were not flagged for exclusion.
I have run a manual backup after starting up in Safe Mode, which forced a deep event scan, but then exhibited the same behaviour..
I have acquired a new external hard drive, backed up the complete main drive (using Time Machine which appeared to be successful on the first time full backup), then run a manual backup on that new drive after adding new files and had THE SAME PROBLEM.
Here's the latest console output, which is typical since I have noticed this issue. There appear to be many megabytes of new files to be backed up, but then the operation completes within seconds and no files are backed up at all.
6/23/13 7:15:16.422 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting manual backup
6/23/13 7:15:16.966 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Omnius/Backups.backupdb
6/23/13 7:15:17.916 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.277 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (375.1 MB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 845 files (375.1 MB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:20.311 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.91 GB required (including padding), 747.18 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:29.264 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 400 files (1.4 MB) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:29.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.299 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (Zero KB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.300 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 5 files (Zero KB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:29.301 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.46 GB required (including padding), 747.17 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:30.439 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 140 files (33 bytes) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:30.511 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Created new backup: 2013-06-23-071530
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting post-backup thinning
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
6/23/13 7:15:30.689 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backup completed successfully.
Please help. Time Machine is currently useless as a backup solution.

Results (username obfuscated in exclusionpaths):
   -=-=-=-=-=--
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>sourcePaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/</string>
          </array>
          <key>standardExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups</string>
                    <string>/MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/.TemporaryItems</string>
                    <string>/.Trashes</string>
                    <string>/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist</string>
                    <string>/.fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/.hotfiles.btree</string>
                    <string>/Backups.backupdb</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DB</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DF</string>
                    <string>/Network/Servers</string>
                    <string>/Library/Updates</string>
                    <string>/Previous Systems</string>
                    <string>/Users/Shared/SC Info</string>
                    <string>/Users/Guest</string>
                    <string>/dev</string>
                    <string>/home</string>
                    <string>/net</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/com.apple.backupd.backupVerification</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/efw_cache</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/private/var/lib/postfix/greylist.db</string>
                    <string>/Volumes</string>
                    <string>/Network</string>
                    <string>/automount</string>
                    <string>/.vol</string>
                    <string>/tmp</string>
                    <string>/cores</string>
                    <string>/private/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/Network</string>
                    <string>/private/tftpboot</string>
                    <string>/private/var/automount</string>
                    <string>/private/var/folders</string>
                    <string>/private/var/run</string>
                    <string>/private/var/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/var/vm</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/dhcpclient</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/Library/Logs</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Extensions/Caches</string>
                    <string>/private/var/log</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/cups</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/fax</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/uucp</string>
          </array>
          <key>systemFilesExcluded</key>
          <false/>
          <key>userExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_in</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Epsilon</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Desktop</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_out</string>
          </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Time Machine not backing up music added to iTunes since the original backup

My girlfriend has a Macbook and I decided it was time for her to back up. I used Time Machine with my Lacie external HD. The original back up got all the music, documents, etc.
This morning was the first time I had hooked up the external HD since the original back up. I manually ran it and wanted to check if it added the new music and documents. My resume, which I updated last night, was there. But when I looked in the iTunes folder the new music I had added was missing.
Will the daily or weekly back up get the new music files? Is there something I did wrong with set up? Of course I could start over but I'd rather fix the issue and make sure everything is being backed up.
Your suggestions or comments are appreciated.

Erik Griffin wrote:
My girlfriend has a Macbook and I decided it was time for her to back up. I used Time Machine with my Lacie external HD. The original back up got all the music, documents, etc.
How long ago was this?
This morning was the first time I had hooked up the external HD since the original back up. I manually ran it and wanted to check if it added the new music and documents. My resume, which I updated last night, was there. But when I looked in the iTunes folder the new music I had added was missing.
How are you verifying whether they were backed-up? Use +Enter Time Machine,+ not the Finder.
Will the daily or weekly back up get the new music files?
The labels of hourly, daily, and weekly backups are just labels. The process is the same with each. The only thing that's different is how long TM will keep them. A TM backup is a TM Backup.
Is there something I did wrong with set up? Of course I could start over but I'd rather fix the issue and make sure everything is being backed up.
First, check TM Preferences > Options. Be sure nothing is listed there that would prevent any iTunes data from being backed-up.
If you still don't see them, download the TimeTracker app, from www.charlessoft.com.
It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). That should show what was actually backed-up.

Time machine not backing up new changes

Time machine was working perfectly fine until this past weekend. Now, it seems like it's not recognizing any new changed on my hard drive. The time machine still runs successfully, but it just repeats the same back up over and over again. I've checked the logs in console (see below)
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting standard backup
Dec 15 00:35:25 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Dec 15 00:35:33 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 424.6 MB requested (including padding), 281.50 GB available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Copied 5 files (33 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Adrian Ma’s MacBook Pro/2009-12-13-233455: 281.50 GB now available
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Dec 15 00:35:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[6749]: Backup completed successfully.
I've also downloaded Time Tracker and it says that things were fine till this weekend and then everything for the past couple of days have 0 bytes backed up. Any ideas what could be the problem? I haven't done anything special or changed anything besides install Google Chrome. The external hard drive I back up to may have been unplugged/plugged but not before it's unmounted or the computer is off. I don't think I unmounted while time machine was backing up, but if I did could this be the problem?

ecanza wrote:
Solved! Thanks for the swift replies! I didn't do a Verify Disk, but I did do a Verify Disk Permissions without restarting recently.
Are you sure? Because +Verify Permissions+ doesn't do it. Only +*Verify Disk,+* or altering any partition on your boot drive.
There are some 3rd-party disk repair/maintenance apps that use the same internal OSX routine as +*Repair Disk,+* so if you used one of them, you'd have the same problem.
And by the way, there's no point to running +Verify Permissions+ -- you might as well just run +Repair Permissions.+
I just restarted and Time Machine has in fact "caught up" with the most recent changes! Cheers Pondini.
Oh, well, whatever it was, I'm glad it's fixed! And thanks for the star.

Time Machine not backing up my home directory

One day, I came in and booted up my Mac. I began my usual practice of pairing my Bluetooth mouse & keyboard, but this time, it failed to pair. The Bluetooth prefPane was acting weird (beach-balling, garbage characters appearing in the "is the name Bluetooth devices use to connect to this computer" title). I rebooted, and much to my dismay, Bluetooth was no longer detected by the system (both in System Profiler and System Preferences).
I assumed this meant the Bluetooth module was failing. I contacted Apple support, and we concluded that it was in fact the Bluetooth module that was failing, and no the connector cable. I filed a GSX ticket to have the entire display assembly replaced (since that's how these new aluminum uni-body MacBook Pros are built). The Bluetooth module has been failing intermittently, so I cancelled the GSX ticket to do more research (and to make sure it wasn't a software problem with my OS). I planned on doing an Archive & install to see if a new OS fixed it.
I ran a Time Machine backup to make sure I had the latest and greatest copy of my data, and ran an Archive & Install. As expected, the Bluetooth behaved identically in the clean OS, so I rebooted again, and ran a Restore from Time Machine, selected the most recent snapshot I had just created. After the restore completed, the machine rebooted, and an old desktop & Dock greeted me, much to my dismay. I checked and double-checked, and determined that Time Machine had been maintaining a week old copy of my home directory files, but had been continuing to update the rest of my computer (so my Applications folder was up-to-date).
I don't know how Time Machine could think that my Home directory hadn't changed in a week, but now I'm running an extended S.M.A.R.T. scan on the drive to make sure it's not failing. And yes, I made sure my Home directory was not in Time Machine's exclusion list. The reason I think the drive is failing is because when backupd tried to run after I restored from Time Machine, it ground a whole lot, and took forever to backup 90 MB. Like, a lot of grinding to get from 30 KB to 70 KB.
Does anyone know why/how this might've happened?
Message was edited by: Link Dupont
Message was edited by: Link Dupont

Link Dupont wrote:
I'd plug in and run a Time Machine backup about once a day, on average. I've been scouring the logs, and the only thing I notice is the "deep traversal" message, which I'd expect occasionally as it needs to reindex files (especially after a restore).
This also happens if the TM disk isn't dismounted, etc., exactly the way TM expects; or if there's an abnormal power-down. It means TM isn't sure about just exactly what is where, so it looks at every file and folder to be sure.
I've run long S.M.A.R.T. scans on the drive (via smartctl on a Linux LiveCD and SeaTools via a Windows installation), I've run Repair Disk (via Disk Utility) and I've defragmented the filesystem (iDefrag). All the diagnostics come back healthy, and iDefrag had little to do. My gut tells me the drive is failing, but I can't actually prove it. My next step is to reformat the drive and create a new filesystem; I'll see if Time Machine is happy with a clean start.
I'm a MobileMe subscriber, so I downloaded and set up the old .Mac Backup.app, and will be running that daily to shove my important files up to my iDisk (and probably to various other locations), in case backupd decides to choke again, at least I have a backup to my backup.
Good plan. I run CCC daily, in addition to TM's hourly backups, and use Backup to iDisk daily for fairly small stuff, plus others to DVD/RWs kept in my safe deposit box. May seem like overkill, but I've learned, usually the hard way, that when it comes to backups, paranoia is prudent!

Time Machine not backing up all documents

I have a 13-inch Macbook Pro Retina display, on which I run OSX 10.9.5. I use Time Machine to back up on an external Thunderbolt drive. I have not excluded anything from my back up through the Time Machine options. Nonetheless, Time Machine arbitrary fails to back up some 30% of my files, as I discovered when I tried recently to restore my system and files. Entire folders were missing from my desktop, one of them with 40 gigabytes of files. Other folders were incomplete. A few applications were missing as well, and, oddly, almost all my utilities, including Terminal and Console. (Luckily I had backed up elsewhere using the apparently more reliable program Super Duper.) Can anyone tell me what might be going on?

Start D10 with in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine not backing up iPhoto changes (Events, pictures, etc..)

So I finally decided to buy a external hard drive (WD) and backup some of my data to it using Time Machine. The initial backup went well with no problems but what I noticed is as I added events and pictures they were not appearing in Time Machine.
I could open time machine and view that my iPhoto had the current events when the date selected was "Today (now)", but as I went back in time the events that SHOULD of been there were not.
Browsing the folders on the backups showed the iPhoto database to be 13.5gb when actually the new size on my iMac was 19.5gb.
So why does Time Machine not detect these changes? For my backups I have excluded all folders except for the Users folder which contains the iPhoto library. Time Machine is not detecting the changes and backing it up. How can I fix this?

Yeah. At first I thought it was:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
Because I was doing that earlier. But then realized I did repair permissions, not disk. But anyways decided to reboot (because I haven't up to this point).
Once it came back up I tried doing another backup. Didn't see it. Opened iPhoto again and exited it (checked Force Quit to make sure it wasn't open). Told it to do a BACKUP NOW. This time it saw a difference of like 7mb.
After it was done, went to iPhoto -> File -> Browse Backups. Went back a couple minutes when I did the backup and my event now has a place holder within the Events but it is pure black. I double clicked the event and it opened up and saw there were 3 files in there. They had default icons and were not showing as pictures like they were. (even though they display fine in iPhoto).
Time Machine seems very flakey to me. My machine is fully updated also.

Time Machine not backing up both internal hard drives on 2011 iMac?

I have a 2011 iMac with two internal hard drives---a 2TB HDD and 256GB solid state.
I plugged in a 3TB FW800 external to use with Time Machine.
Based on adding up the used space from both drives as seen in disk utility (totalling 1537.36 GB), it doesn't appear that Time Machine is backing everything up (total backup of 1.49 TB).
Any ideas?
Thank you,
Taylor

Launch the Terminal 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 Terminal in the page that opens.
Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
sudo tmutil compare
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Time Machine not backing up full drive

On my macboook pro late 2009 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 time machine will not back up my full drive. I have 56gb use out of 250gb and only 8gb gets backup . How can i get time machine to back up the full 56gb on the first time of setup time machine? I am useing a hard drive connected to my airport extreme. I have the hard drive setup for one big parition. The size of the usb hard drive is 2tb. I have two users on my airport extreme that can access my usb hard drive. One for my macbook pro and one for my mac mini. My mac mini late 2011 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 useing time machine it can back up the full drive. On my mac mini i have 2.5gb used out of 500gb and time machine can back up 2.5gb on the first time i started time machine. But this is not the case for my macbook pro it will not back up the full used space on the first time i setup time machine. How can i fix this so that time machine will backup the full used space?

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.

Time Machine not backing up all data

Hello All,
I just bought a Time Capsule 2TB and have Macbook pro early 2011 (running Lion OSX). I wanted to do to a time machine backup. Everything went well. I got it connected good and the backup started very weel. My HDD is about 400 GB and when the time machine started back up it started with data and the progress bar showed the total data to be back up (400GB), but then it backed up only 30 GB out of 400 GB.
I have most of my files in iphoto and ivideo. Is this normal? Why didnt TIme machine did not back up all 400GB?
Any idea?

Then there are two possibilities:
The backup failed, but you didn't see the message. See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. 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.
Or, some things didn't get backed-up. A partial explanation could be iPhoto -- if the iPhoto app is open when a backup runs, Time Machine may not be able to back up your iPhoto library. It will attempt to "catch up" the next time, but in the meantime you may not have any backups of it.
That's unlikely to be the whole difference, though. Does the figure of 400 GB seem reasonable to you -- can you account for most of it?

Time machine not backing up user home directories

Hi All,
I set up my users to have their home directories on a seperate partition: /Volumes/Data/homes/<name>.
I confogured time machine to back up to an external USB hard drive. The exclude list is empty, exept for the backup disk, of course.
When i do an initial backup with TM, i notice that /Volumes/Data/homes is skipped, whereas /Volumes/Data/kits is backed up.
I also see a console message:
8/15/13 3:21:29 PM
com.apple.backupd[621]
Backup content size: 119.8 GB excluded items size: 113.6 GB for volume Data
Why is this? How can i force TM to backup all files?
Thanks for your help,
Heinrich

HeinrichFromBremen wrote:
Of course not. But there is a difference between lack of perfection and deliberately building bugs into the software.
It's not really deliberate. The number of folks who do what you are is very, very limited.
How can i know that homeis the only omitted directory?
It isn't. As noted in the other thread, dev and net are also omitted. Many other things, are, too - see the tan box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #11 for details.
With this behaviour, i simply cannot trust TM backups.
A bit of an overreaction, I think, but your choice.
What would be the alternatives? tar? ditto? dump does not seem to exist.
See #27 in the FAQ link above. As far as I know, they all omit some things.

Time Machine Not Backing Up Recently Saved Files

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