Time machine seems to work, but only backups up 10 files

Problem: Time machine creates backups, but for the last two weeks, it's only backed up a few files each time. I know I've changed a lot more than that!
MacOSX 10.6.7. 15" macbook pro (early 2011). 2.3 Ghz Intel Core i7, 8gig ram.
TM backup disk: A 750G partition of a LaCie 1.5Tb D2 drive (firewire 800). I only use that partition for time machine.
I do NOT leave the backup disk attached all the time; I only connect it periodically, when I want backups.
Here's a simple summary of the backups:
$ cd /Volumes/1.5Tb-2b/Backups.backupdb/wdr-i7mbp
$ sudo grep Copied */.Backup.log
2011-03-09-095832/.Backup.log:    Copied 261469 items (25.4 GB)
2011-03-22-150617/.Backup.log:    Copied 198893 items (56.6 GB)
2011-03-29-140959/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-04-05-103402/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-04-14-150213/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-04-21-135500/.Backup.log:    Copied 9957 items (670.0 MB)
2011-04-21-135500/.Backup.log:    Copied 832 items (93 bytes)
2011-04-28-145344/.Backup.log:    Copied 12826 items (856.3 MB)
2011-04-28-145344/.Backup.log:    Copied 663 items (93 bytes)
2011-04-29-095747/.Backup.log:    Copied 7410 items (184.9 MB)
2011-04-29-095747/.Backup.log:    Copied 752 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-02-145742/.Backup.log:    Copied 95 items (107.1 MB)
2011-05-05-144828/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-13-140259/.Backup.log:    Copied 91301 items (16.3 GB)
2011-05-13-140259/.Backup.log:    Copied 1386 items (152.5 MB)
2011-05-16-143554/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (19.9 MB)
2011-05-17-163153/.Backup.log:    Copied 95 items (95.9 MB)
2011-05-19-140114/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-20-140448/.Backup.log:    Copied 96 items (23.7 MB)
2011-05-23-152447/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-27-145134/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-27-152601/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
2011-05-27-153800/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
Latest/.Backup.log:    Copied 10 items (93 bytes)
Apparently it was working okay until May 13, but after that it failed to back up the files I changed.
Any ideas? I've gone into the backup disk, and sure enough, files that I know I've changed recently are *not* there.
Unless ... May 13 was a Friday. Could there be a relation???

williamfrommurray hill wrote:
unless I'm in a big hurry, after restarting, I always have Disk Utility do a Verify on the startup disk.
Unless you suspect trouble, there's usually no reason to do that very often.
So I rebooted, this time without verifying the startup disk. Sure enough, when I connected the backup disk, Time Machine dumped 18 gigs.
Great!
I gather this bug was reported to Apple in November 2009, and Apple still hasn't fixed it??? GRRRRR!!!!!
Agreed. And it looks like 10.6.8 (now in testing, according to the rumor sites) may be the last update to Snow Leopard -- sure hope they fixed it.

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Time Machine on intel MacBook Pro: only backup from today is available

Hi all,
I use 500M TC for two computers - old iMac G5 on PowerPC and newer MacBook Pro on Intel. iMac works with Time Capsule pretty good, I can navigate between several dates with the arrows on Time Machine 'star' interface. But I can't do the same on my notebook. Every time i enter Time Machine the only choices available to navigate is TODAY and NOW. This does not mean that MacBook is not backing up. For example, I can reach old data on Time Capsule if go through 'Backup of MacBook Pro' from Finder's device tab on left toolbar. Simply from Finder windows I can open&save files which are on Time Capsule hard drive. But can't do the same on Time Capsule nice interface.
Appreciate for the help of the community in solving a problem.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
It sounds like TM has started a new "sequence" of backups, as if you'd gotten a new Mac.
To see these "other" backups, you may need the (badly named) +Browse Other Time Machine Disks+ option. It's available by holding down the Option key while selecting the TM icon in your Menubar, or by control-clicking (right-clicking) the TM icon in your Dock.
You'll see a selection screen showing all the disks/partitions that have TM backups on them. Select the one you want, and you'll be taken to the normal TM "Star Wars" interface, where you should see all the backups on that disk/partition.
You may have to manually mount the sparse image for your MacBook (there may be two of them) to get this to work.

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With the forthcoming Leopard nearly upon us, I'm wondering whether Time Machine will be the only form of backup required?
Once my files are backed up to an external drive by Time Machine, if my current Mac dies a horrible death, would another mac plugged into that hard drive be able to access those backed up files?
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Any thoughts or facts?
All anybody knows is what Apple have published on their website.
Anything else would be pointless speculation.

Time machine has deleted/hidden *all* my backups.

At the moment I'm using two 1TB external hard drives connected to my mac, one as storage and one just for time machine. Yesterday the storage drive died on me, so I replaced it with another 1TB drive.
Time machine has been backing up everything on the main computer and the storage drive for several months now so I thought it would be an easy fix, just restore what was lost from the storage drive and I'm set.
After connecting and formatting the new external hard drive I tried restoring the lost data but couldn't figure out a way to have it restore from time machine directly to the new drive. Instead, I went into the Backups.backupdb folder on the time machine drive, found the most recent backup of the files I needed from Feb 9th and just dragged and dropped it into the new drive.
It comprised of some 550GB of data, so I left it copying overnight. Checking on it this morning, it seems that a little less than half of the data has been copied across and what's worse - time machine no longer shows any backups made before this morning. Checking in the drive contents, it seems that the backup folders no longer exist either.
Now, I don't actually think the data has gone missing since the time machine drive is still showing that it has some 700GB of data still on it, it's just not viewable for some reason.
I've been through Disk Utility to see if the drive needs repairing, but I'm being told that there's no problem with it. I've also checked to see if the data has somehow found its way into the trash can, but it's not there either.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what happened and how to recover my lost backups?

pheadlessg wrote:
Thanks for that. It's backing up again now but the old backups are still missing.
I have no idea what went wrong with the drag and drop. It should have copied your data (likely with a zillion permission problems), but shouldn't have affected the TM data. There might be something in your logs, but that probably won't help now.
Your old backups are probably hosed (pardon the technical term <grin>).
You might be able to give yourself read rights to the .Trashes folder, and see if there's anything in it, but I doubt you'll see anything.
To do so, select it, then +Get Info.+
Click the padlock at the bottom of the pane, then enter your Administrator's password.
Then click the plus sign at the bottom; you should get a selection screen for yourself. Click it.
That should give you read rights.
A very long shot, but worth a try.
Most likely, you're going to end up erasing the drive/partition and starting over.

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Hi there. just bought a TC, installation was succesfull, but time machine won't work. can't select Backup disk. get transferred to TC install again. Called Apple, 25 min. later no succes, have to call on monday again!!!! Can anyone help me? Thanks a lot.

See #Q1 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.
If you have a problem, please tell us exactly what, and on which step there.

What to do when time machine seems stuck on "Preparing Backup"

This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos. This means that the only backup will be for the system, profiles, and the app. I have been running this for a few months andhas been doing OK until up to now.
My problem is that my time machine seems to get stuck on "Preparing Backup". The latest backup was done last Nov 8, 2011, whcih is about 11 days from now. I am also aware that the time machine drive has only about 200 mb space left, but I am not worried at all because I've always TM to delete the oldest backup to free up space. My oldest backup was still Sept 8, and I'm ok if that will be deleted.
So I'd like to find out why it still stuck on "Preparing backup" ,and I am wondering if deleting a backup can solve it. Can it? what do I do to solve this?
Also, I use my computer alot , so it is basically running for about 18 hours a day, but still time machine didn't quite work well. I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.

Comments inline below.
Pondini wrote:
joshua raphael wrote:
This issue is happenning on my macbook pro, mid 2010. My drive setup is that I have a partition which I dedicated to time machine backups. The total size of my drive is 500GB, and I partitioned about 100GB for time machine. The reason for that is I only needed a few space since I setup time machine to include only the system and the apps, and NONE of the libraries such as itunes or photos.
You may want to revisit that strategy:
A backup on the same drive isn't very secure -- when (not if) the HD fails, you risk losing everything.
In most cases, if there's a problem with OSX the best way to fix it is to just install a fresh version. But you can't do that from that backup.
Indeed!
Backing-up apps that way will also be useless in some cases. 3rd-party apps that came with their own installers put other files in other places (and sometimes "helper" apps as well). Unless you know what and where they all are, and restore them, too, the restored app won't work properly, if at all.
I think you're confusing each other with terminology. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are NOT "Libraries", which has a specific meaning when it comes to OS X. "Libraries", in OS X normally refers to /Libraries and ~/Libraries folders. This is not where iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored. iTunes music and iPhoto pictures are stored within ~/Music and ~/Pictures, respectively.
I have tried reparing the disk using disk utility, but that didn't help.
Disk Utility changed a bit in Lion. When you select an entire disk, it only repairs the partition map, not all the volumes. You must repair each one separately.
Wow, good to know. (What a stupid change to make, for backwards compatibility, if for no other reason!)
See #D1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to figure out why the backups are hanging.
Whew. This editor makes it so hard to make comments inline. The key thing when time machine seems stuck is patience. Sometimes it needs to be left to run overnight. Unfortunately, it doesn't log or report it's progress very well.
Opening Time Machine settings in Preferences plus a command like this left running in Terminal.app is how I monitor progress. And even so, there is very little logging indicating progress.
sudo tail -f /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/My\ Computer/2012-07-11-133352.inProgress/.Backup.363731632.496216.log
The parts in italics will need to be adjusted. Tab completion makes this easy, e.g type
sudo tail -f /Volumes/
and hit tab, type the first few letters of the relevant volume name, hit tab...
Also, I have a hypothesis which needs testing.
I know that Time Machine gets confused if one deletes large files from a backup - specifically, Time Machine doesn't recognize that the size of the backup has changed.
I know because this made restoring a thinned out time machine backup ("thinned out" by deleting files from within the GUI while inside the Time Machine) to a small SSD harder than it should have been. I had to restore to a big disk and then clone that volume to the SSD - even though the SSD had enough space, Time Machine didn't think so; it didn't "understand" that it had been thinned.
My hypothesis is that Time Machine also gets confused if the Time Machine partition is resized. I shrunk a Time Machine partition (no it wasn't on my main disk!) and about that time, Time Machine stopped working. After thinning the volume, it started working again.

Used Time Machine to Restore system but now wont recognise original backups

Hello Everyone,
I've had a read through some of the older posts, but I wasn't able to find a answer for my issue.
I've recently restored my system using a Time Machine backup - Everything works wonderfully now, except for Time Machine itself, which is now refusing to use/display my original backups.
I have selected the correct disk, but rather than using the backups on it, it creates a new folder in the Backups.backupdb folder called 'Peter's iMac 2'. I have deleted this new folder several times already.
My actual backups are stored in the 'Peter's iMac' folder.
I can browse my backups using the 'Browse Other time Machine Disks' function, but it does not seem to want to use them as my primary backups.
I do not have the room to hold both my old backups, and a separate new backup.
Does anyone have any idea how I can force/trick/entice Time Machine to accept my old backups?
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aussie,
*_Time Machine Always Performs a Full Backup After a Full Restore_*
Actually, this is normal. It's not that any of your hardware has changed, it's that you reinstalled the operating system again. Consider the following according to the KB article below:
*Full Backup After Restore*
Bear in mind that in all cases Time Machine will perform a full backup after a full restore. This is normal. Time Machine will resume incremental backups after the full backup has completed. To view previous backups, Control-click or right-click the Time Machine icon in your Dock or Option-click the Time Machine menu extra and Choose "Browse Other Time Machine Disks," then select your previous backup volume. You will enter Time Machine and be able to browse your previous back ups and restore files. [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338]
So even on unchanged hardware, if you reinstall your system software and restore your user data, Time Machine starts anew, and you will not be able to resume backing up with the same history as the previous backups.
While there may be ways to fool/hack Time Machine into recognizing previous backups without performing another full backup, they are likely rather elaborate.
Ultimately, though, in a couple of months, all the effort to preserve old backups may seem pointless. After all, Time Machine will eventually purge away that data anyways as it replaces it with new files.
It may simply be easier to begin a fresh series of backups while saving the previous backups until your satisfied that you have enough history built up. Then delete the old backups.
Hope this clarifies some things.
Cheers!

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Hi
My time machine hard drive has stopped working after the latest update and the Disk Utilities says,:
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
How can I back up my files before reformatting when I can't even open the drive's folder?
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I think my time machine is not working correctly and I dont know how to get it back... I really need to get back my photos!!!!!
Exactly this was the way I USED to make restores of files and photos..
but know I CANT!!!!
When I am inside iPhoto y click on the Time Machine icon at the Dock and it goes to this...
at my right side there are the backups but when i click them nothing happens they are like NOT CLICKABLE...
PLEASEE!!! Help me!!

If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space, I mean I have to delete mu hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using to with new information?

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If you delete a file from your disk it will eventually be deleted from your TM backup without any notice to you.
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