Time Machine short term back ups?

HI
I've had some Time Machine problems for a while now - I have a 2 TB drive I use and I back up to this using TM. The problem is when I enter Time machine it only shows back ups up to about 2 or 3 weeks ago...? Why would it do that - where are my back ups from a month or two ago???
Any help is much appreciate.
thanks
Rob
iMac 24 running Lion.
2.4ghz intel core 2
4gb ram

I've got to say figuring out what hardware to purchase for original archiving AND Time Machine backups—for that and one laptop have been a nightmare. First we went the NAS Synology route as recommended by an Apple Store employee. Then last week found out that this would corrupt our huge 150 gigs iPhoto library (if not now at some point). So, have been reading boards, calling apple and spent another two hours in the Apple store today. Two hours (with my family)! Far too many hours wasted on what should be a simple user experience to explain/help users with.
Unfortunately this is what I learned...
Every Apple employee has a different take. I've spoken in person with four Apple Store employees on two different occassions, read the board "experts" here and phoned Apple but get different insight/answers each and every time.
We were prepared to walk out with a Time Capsule (for Time Machine) and one HD for our need—but two employees today said we didn't need a Time Capsule. Instead they both suggested two HDs (with one acting as a dedicated Time Machine) because we had an Airport Extreme. And we could do wifi backups no problem—and the HD would be accessible via wifi (when plugged into the Airport Extreme). So, we walked out with the a 2T and 3T Seagate HDs—and have spent hours on reorganizing yet again.
And now I am reading that not only does Mountain Lion not support this usage—and I must manually plug in both HDs (the Time Machine and original archive) for backups on a laptop. Or rather to ensure Time Machine backups (that contain the external HD content) are not deleted.
THIS RATHER MANUAL SCENARIO DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF A LAPTOP (free of teathering and wires—it's stored on a coffee table not desk). I don't get it?!? So-so annoyed.
There should be a way to "lock" the external HD data so this doesn't happen.

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HT201250 must I keep the computer on all the time for time machine to do back ups

Must I keep my computer on at all times to get the time machine to do updates ? If not how do I go about updateing time machine on a regular basis

It depends on how much backing up you want. Time Machine will do backups if you have it turned on (in Time Machine Preferences), and if you have your computer connected to a backup drive (either wired or wirelessly, like a Time Capsule), that is specified in TM Preferences, and is also turned on. So, for example, I keep my two macs turned on all the time, and I keep Time Machine turned off. When I am not using my macs they sleep. I have external USB drives for backup via Time Machine, but I don't keep them on and connected all the time. When I think of it, which is about once a week, I'll hook them up, power them on, and do a manual backup: I turn Time Machine on and tell it to backup. When I have more critical documents, I keep them backed up on Dropbox, or iCloud, so I know that every time I finish using them and close them they are backed up. If you want to have more complete backups, then you would keep your computer always connected to your backup drives, and the drives would always be powered on and time machine would always be turned on. You could either have all of these turned on all the time, or just when you are using them and power them all down when you are not using them, or have them powered on all the time, but set the computer to sleep when you are not using it. It just depends on what you are comfortable with in terms of backups.

Retrieve Time Machine old deleted back-ups

Hi,
My disk was running out of space as time machine was backing up but it also 'deleted old back ups' Is there any way to retrive these ?
Thanks
Ken

I've got to say figuring out what hardware to purchase for original archiving AND Time Machine backups—for that and one laptop have been a nightmare. First we went the NAS Synology route as recommended by an Apple Store employee. Then last week found out that this would corrupt our huge 150 gigs iPhoto library (if not now at some point). So, have been reading boards, calling apple and spent another two hours in the Apple store today. Two hours (with my family)! Far too many hours wasted on what should be a simple user experience to explain/help users with.
Unfortunately this is what I learned...
Every Apple employee has a different take. I've spoken in person with four Apple Store employees on two different occassions, read the board "experts" here and phoned Apple but get different insight/answers each and every time.
We were prepared to walk out with a Time Capsule (for Time Machine) and one HD for our need—but two employees today said we didn't need a Time Capsule. Instead they both suggested two HDs (with one acting as a dedicated Time Machine) because we had an Airport Extreme. And we could do wifi backups no problem—and the HD would be accessible via wifi (when plugged into the Airport Extreme). So, we walked out with the a 2T and 3T Seagate HDs—and have spent hours on reorganizing yet again.
And now I am reading that not only does Mountain Lion not support this usage—and I must manually plug in both HDs (the Time Machine and original archive) for backups on a laptop. Or rather to ensure Time Machine backups (that contain the external HD content) are not deleted.
THIS RATHER MANUAL SCENARIO DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF A LAPTOP (free of teathering and wires—it's stored on a coffee table not desk). I don't get it?!? So-so annoyed.
There should be a way to "lock" the external HD data so this doesn't happen.

What is in Time Machine's older back ups?

Okay, so Time Machine keeps a weekly version after a few weeks, rather than a daily or hourly version.
Which files is it keeping? Is it the last version of document that week? If a file was trashed and deleted early in the week, does it show up in that week's backup?
Is there a document somewhere that says how Time Machine makes these calls?
Thanks

Time Machine progressively deletes the hourly backups it makes, keeping the first backup (if any) of any day for about 30 days and then the first backup of each week thereafter until the disk is full.
Knowing which backup will be held as the 'daily' is easy enough but, in my experience, if Time Machine doesn't make a backup on the day that would otherwise represent the 'weekly' backup, the following 'weekly' backups become a little unpredictable for a week or to as to which 'daily' will be retained.

I want to schedule my back ups to my Western Digital Elements HDD so that it doesn't interfere with my Skype calls with clients. Operating system - version 10.7.4. The default for Time Machine is to back up every 1 hour. I'd like daily at 3am. Any ideas?

I want to schedule my back ups to my Western Digital Elements HDD so that it doesn't interfere with my Skype calls with clients. Operating system - version 10.7.4. The default for Time Machine is to back up every 1 hour. I'd like daily at 3am. Any ideas?

Time Machine Editor.
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Time Machine will not back up to My Passport Edge for Mac. How do I delete the aliases to make room?

Time Machine after running for a few weeks says 'Time Machine couldn't back up 'My Passport Edge for Mac', also new. It needs 365.05 GB only 49.94 are available.
When I click on the My Passport Edge for Mac, I see that it has alias for each file. How do I delete the alias in order to backup my Time Machine???

You do not ever delete anything on the Time Machine drive using the Finder.
Those Alias files are essential to the internal operation of Time machine, and is what allows it to keep only one copy of a file that appears, unmodified, in multiple Backup Sets. If you modify them in any way, you risk Time Machine losing ALL your data.
I expect your backup drive is simply not large enough to do what you are trying to do.
To learn about Time machine, start on this page and keep clicking on the ( next page ) links for additional pages in the linked articles:
How Time machine works its magic
Your best short term solution may be to start a new backup, which will be smaller that the multiple backups on your existing drive. In the long run a Drive 2.5 to 3 times the size of what you want to backup is recommended.

Time machine won't back up anymore after it failed? HELP!!

Hey all,
My time machine used to back up to my hard drive fine, but after it had a fault half way through a back up, i think the cable was disconnected it won't back up or start a back up again. I've looked at the help and it actually has my hard drive in the "Don't back up" section, when i select it to remove it from that it won't let me remove it.....
Really need to back up and no idea how to get this done...
HELP

Open up Disk Utility and Verify your external had drive. It sounds as though there could be some damage from when it was unplugged in the middle of writing, which is preventing Time Machine from working properly.
Try to get Disk Utility to repair the drive if it finds any errors.
If this does not work the most likely thing is that the Disk Image being written to by Time Machine is perpetually locked. In that case, it might be worth deleting the back-ups (since they are unusable now anyway) and starting a new time machine backup from scratch.

Time machine is not backing up photos in iphoto9 /Originals folder

Just figure out the reason to cause lost of my photos after restore from Time Machine Backup:
time machine is not backing up photos in iphoto/Originals folder from month ago;
Here was how I tested the problem, I don't know why TM stop doing backup folder
1) Import some new pictures from camera to iphoto library --> FINE , I can view the new imports in iphoto and also I can find the copies of imported files under iphoto Library/Originals (by Show package content)
2) I closed iphoto and I manually ask TM to backup.
3) After TM is done, I go to backup in TM, all newly imported photos are missing in the
TM backup which I just created 5 min ago.!!
No matter what, Apple need to fix this bug!!! How many people lost their precious data
because iphoto & TM???? I will go back to 3rd party software to manually import photos
and manage photos. You never know what's next bug and the result is very serious.
I knew someone lost the whole year photos. !!! Be cautious!!!!!!
AND I think somehow it is bug in the iphoto............
PLease reply if you have similar problem!

I just lost 6 months of photos! Same problem. Not sure why Time Machine did not back them up. I couldnt even get my iphoto '09 disk to install. Had to buy the new version because the system crashed.
Any thoughts on how to find the 6 months of photos that are missing? Only thing I can think of is that iphoto started saving the new photos in a new library. Is that possible? If so where would I find it in my TM back ups?
I really dislike Apple right now... I thought they never crashed.

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. with the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see the work?

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. With the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see my page? Can I access Time Machine within an app like Pages? How do I enter Time Machine within the application? It always takes me to the Finder. I apolgise for the mumbo jumbo. I simply do not know how to use Time Machine. It makes sense when I follow the Tutorial but then I lose it.

OK. You've kind of skipped over the reason why you want to go back five hours, but my assumption would be that you've made changes to a Pages file that you want to revert.
There are two ways to tackle this. From Pages itself, open the current version of your document, and from the File menu, click Revert To, and Browse All Versions. You'll then be in the Time Machine interface for that file, and can browse back to the version you want.
Or, outside of Pages, you can select the file (or the folder it was originally in, if you've since deleted it) and enter Time Machine from the TM menu (it sounds like you've already tried this?)
best
Matt

Having downloaded Mavericks to my IMac I now find Time Machine couldn't back up to the Time Machine HDD. I am using a WD 1TB independent Hard drive

Having downloaded Mavericks to my IMac two weeks ago, I now find Time Machine couldn't back up to the Time Machine HDD. I am using a WD 1TB External Hard drive. I understand that a number of people have lost data since installing Mavericks on their Western Digital external drives. Has anyone any futher info. Or is there a better way of backing up my computer. Thanks. Lee

Check the More Like This section at the right particularly i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Time MAchine won't back up due to not enough space, but there is

TIme Machine won't back up. Displays this:
Actual capacity of the external backup drive is 999.68 GB and available is 135 gb .
The imac internal HD capacity is 999.01GB and used space is 636.321 GB.
This problem has occured periodically in the last 12 months or so, so prior to OS version10.8 install in Jul 2012.
I previously called AppleCare, as I have a contract, and tech said I just need to reformat the external drive and start over.
I did that the last time this happened a few months ago, but I don't like that option, as it eliminates all the prior backups,
What if I needed to try to recover something I deleted 3 weeks ago, for example. I couldn't do so as all backups would have been deleted, of course, by me having refomatted the drive and basically starting over. Also, I noted in another post about a person having a problem due to using a partitioned drive. Mine is not partition, as far as I can tell. See this:
Any ideas? Thanks

The solution is essentially "simple." You need a larger hard drive for these backups or you need to use a different backup solution. By this I mean using backup software that does not preserve an archive of old copies of a file, but simply erases old copies in order to replace them with the new copies. By replacing your backup drive can always accommodate the drive it backs up if it is large enough - say the same size. I can suggest:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
All of the above are capable of being scheduled. Synk Pro makes immediate backups of any changed file on the hard drive. You may configure it to archive changes (like Time Machine) or to delete prior copies.

Time machine won't back up

I just got a new MacBook Air with Lion. On my old Mac, I thought I remembered that Time Machine would only backup files that have changed since the last time I backed up my drive. I used Time Machine to transfer my old desktop to my new Air. Today when I tried to use TIme Machine to back it up, it said I did not have enough space.
I'm not clear if it's trying to back up the whole drive or just things that have changed since the install (which is all I need).
What should I do to make more room for my current back up or to instruct Time Machine only to back up items that have changed since the last backup?
Thanks.

FWIW I had this sort of problem which generally #$%^& me off. I had a brainstorm and tried somebody's MBP and it worked just as expected. So I reinstalled Leopard after erasing and formating the drive and using time machine off my external LaCie.
That didn't work worth a #$%^&
So I once again, reformatted the drive and reinstalled leopard FROM THE DVD and then used time machine as part of the migration assistant, and everything worked perfectly, and I can now use TC with my Mac Pro octo.
So something MIGHT be hosed on your system, and if you feel that you have a solid back up, reinstall off the DVD and then migrate with time machine.
Hope this helps. I spent about 2 days getting this straightened out.

Time Machine won't back up after system restore

I just restored my system after a failure, and now Time Machine won't back up my hard drive. It gets about 40 out of 90 Gigabytes done, and then gives me an error message that just says that there was an error while backing up, and doesn't give any other information. I ran a Verify Disk with Disk Utility, and there is nothing wrong with the backup drive, and there is more than 200 Gigabytes of space left on that drive.
Thank You.

zhoffmanster wrote:
Ok, so here's the thing: I tried backing up again today, and it worked just fine. Before, what would happen is a message would pop saying "an error has occurred during backup" (or something close to that). The point is, the message didn't give any detail.
No, the point is, you seem to have ignored this:
See the Time Machine - Troubleshooting post at the top of this forum.

Time Machine won't back up to drive. Five days backing up so far

A week ago I got a message saying that Time Machine could not back up to my external hard drive but that I could access my old backups. I pointed Time Machine to another hard drive and it has been backing up there for five days so far - all the time stating Time remaining 5 seconds. It is now in a cleanup mode. I have been reading about various bugs concerning Time Machine and wonder if there is a fix I can carry out so that I can use the original external hard drive again.

Stop the backup. Boot in safe mode and log in. Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including Wi-Fi on certain iMacs. The next normal boot may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin. Test while in safe mode. Same problem? After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Time Machine won't back up external drive to Time Capsule

I recently got a Time Capsule, and successfully set it up to back up my iMac's primary drive, but for some reason Time Machine won't back up my external drive to the Time Capsule.
I removed the external drive from the exclusion list in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and from what I've read this should be sufficient to make Time Machine back up the drive.
The external drive is connected to my iMac via Thunderbolt > Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adaptor > Firewire 800 input, and the Time Capsule is connected via Ethernet to my LAN.
Since I'm using Ethernet, I've disabled Wi-Fi on the Time Capusule by going to AirPort Utility > My Time Capsule > Edit > Wireless > Network Mode > Off.
The reason I believe the external drive is not being backed up is because when I click the Time Machine icon in the upper-right status bar and choose "Enter Time Machine", none of the folders on external drive show any older versions.
Furthermore, when I click Finder > Time Machine Backups > Backups.backupdb, I can see only one sub-folder which has the name of my iMac's primary drive. I can't see any equivalent folder for my external drive.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I don't see anything you have done wrong.. perhaps it does backup in a different way.
Load the widget.. A1 here... http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
That will allow you to track the log of TM to see what it is doing.
I would also try rebooting the computer.. exclude the drive again.. reboot.. and remove the exclusion.
You should be able to check the actual settings of TM in plist file.
And you can do a full reset of TM as well.. See A4. Check what is in the file. Pondini lists the location for you.
Nothing surprises me with Mountain Lion ...!!

Time Machine short term back ups?

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