Time Machine shows large "other" category, small "backup"

Checking under "About this Mac"/"Storage" I saw that the vast majority of the space on my external drive backup is listed as "other" while "backup" is minuscule.  Should I be concerned that the data I thought was being backed up really isn't? My Macbook Air's drive has 250 GB capacity.  Screenshot attached:
Thanks in advance!

Do you have other files on the drive?
Spotlight probably can't figure out what the data is.
Disk Space - Other

Similar Messages

  • Time machine shows larger hard drive, so never deletes old backups and maxed out my drive

    So I back up my Mac Pro to a Drobo Gen 2.  There is a 3tb and 3 2tb drives in it.  When Time Machine backs up, it says there is a 11.88 out of 17.59 available, which isn't true.  It actually ran out of room during a back up b/c it's putting so much stuff on there.  There is only 238.70 left. (the 3 TB drive is not used in the Drobo system, but is there in case a drive goes bad.)   My Mac Pro has 4 TB in it, and there's about 1TB left on it, so the Drobo is showing 5.19 is used, and only the 238.70 left, so all the rest is TM.  TM is suppose to delete older backups when disc is getting full.  But it's not b/c it thinks there is plenty of room.  How do I get TM to see the proper drive space, or is there a way to have TM only do a certain number of back ups then start erasing.  I'm not really tech saavy, so whoever can help and speak my language, that would be great!

    To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
    I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
    But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

  • Time Machine shows a backup this morning at 11:58 but I didn't have the external hard drive plugged in. How is this possible?

    Time Machine shows a backup this morning at 11:58 but I didn't have the external hard drive plugged in. How is this possible?

    Because the drive was disconnected Time Machine made a local snapshot on your Mac.

  • My time machine always stops at some point... It always shows this message: "Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.

    My time machine always stops at some point... It always shows this message: "Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. I have tried everything and even did time machine in safe boot as told by an apple suppoprt advisor. still the same error after 16gb

    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 that corresponds to a failed backup. Now
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    If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
    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 shows Backup Delayed

    My time capsule / time machine have been working perfectly
    Totally hands off, hourly backups etc etc
    Now I have the problem that every backup is delayed as the backup disk is not available
    Once I select the backup disk manually the hourly backups resume as normal
    When I re-start the problem is back.
    So unless I remember to manually select the time machine disk I get no backups
    This was working perfectly, before I restored some files from the time machine
    Help

    When did you start seeing this issue? Have you downloaded Mac OS X v10.6.8 and Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update? If you plan to upgrade to OS X Lion, you will need Mac OS X v10.6.8 Supplemental Update but I must be honest with you:
    Early adopters to OS X Lion, like myself, have found issues like the one you're having with Time Machine on OS X Lion. Backups are showing as "!" in the menu bar and error messages "Backup Delayed: Time Machine could not find backup disk" and Time Machine isn't keeping records of past backups. When I noticed this once installing OS X Lion at first run of using the new OS, I had to reformat and erase my external 500GB G-Drive Mobile FireWire 800 drive and the issue still hasn't been fixed.
    If deleting the corrupt preference doesn't work, try submitting feedback on Apple's Support page for Time Machine by visiting the link provided:
    http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
    The nice thing about the transition between OS X Snow Leopard and OS X Lion is the OS installs itself over Snow Leopard without you losing any of your files unless you find a way to do a "clean install".

  • Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

    Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
    In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
    So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
    It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
    Go into Time Machine.
    Select the Macintosh HD.
    Go back to one of the oldest backups.
    Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
    This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
    Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
    You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
    For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
    After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
    After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
    However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
    If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup  so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
    I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
    When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
    Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
    Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
    Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.

    Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
    since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
    That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
    Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

  • Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copy

    I purchased my iMac 24" in February.
    After I had set up the machine I configured an IceCube Firewire 300 GB (Seagate) Hard Drive as a backup volume and flicked the switch in Time Machine. All went as expected. I even restored my whole hard drive from the Time Machine volume about a month ago after I repartitioned the boot volume to set up Boot Camp. No problems.
    About a week ago I purchased a 500GB WD HDD and set it up inside the IceCube enclosure (I remembered to make it the "Master" disk too!!). I partitioned it with Disk Utility with a GUID Mac OS X (Journaled) partition for my Leopard boot partition, and as MS-DOS FAT32 for my Boot Camp external partition. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all the Windows files across from Boot Camp to the new FAT32 partition and set up Time Machine to make a backup of the Leopard boot partition.
    After several hours Time Machine stopped with the error message above. ("Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup").
    I have spent days formatting the new WD drive, repairing permissions on the boot drive, excluding large files and cache files from the backup in Time Machine to no avail. Every time I get the same message. I even set up another 200GB firewire drive to see if it was anything to do with the enclosure of WD HDD. Same result!!
    I have searched these forums for any ideas, and have done wide searches with Google but nothing has worked.
    I can not understand why my Mac worked perfectly with Time Machine before I installed the new Western Digital Hard Drive.
    What have I missed?

    I keep getting the Time Machine backup error too, like many others. Was fine until just the other day, now, nothing. Although my husband's backs up just fine. I assume it's the 10.5.3 bug everyone else has. I've tried reselecting the drive, running the disk utility, shutting everything on and off... help!
    Here's the console log- anyone know what this means?
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Starting standard backup
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Network mountpoint /Volumes/Library not owned by backupd... remounting
    Jun 10 08:37:27 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Network volume mounted at: /Volumes/Library-1
    Jun 10 08:37:43 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Disk image /Volumes/Library-1/Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)_001b63baf698.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)
    Jun 10 08:37:43 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)/Backups.backupdb
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Failed to create progress log file at path:/Volumes/Backup of Tiffany Danko’s Computer (2)/Backups.backupdb/Tiffany Danko's computer (2)/2008-06-09-065427.inProgress/.Backup.234797868.792920.log.
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Error: (-36) Creating directory 77B4FA27-3E65-4B81-897C-610DEE7BB187
    Jun 10 08:37:48 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Failed to make snapshot.
    Jun 10 08:37:53 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Backup failed with error: 2
    Jun 10 08:37:58 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
    Jun 10 08:37:59 Tiffany-Dankos-computer-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1683]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

  • HT3275 Time Machine error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. Tried restarting, remounting external WD drive. Still cannot backup.

    Time Machine quit backing up files. Bought a new WD external drive. Worked for awhile, then quit backing up. Tried restarting computer, remounting drive. Message: Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred when copying files. Suggestions?

    Thanks so very much for your help!! I'm boggled by it and now just about ready to dump the whole idea of Time Machine and backup using a cloning program. Maybe TM is only guaranteed to work well with Time Capsule these days?
    Today there again was no backup. I did as you suggested, looked into Console. It showed many lines of "(Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup" and also repeatedly "(Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch...".
    So I created a marker and attempted to initiate a backup, keeping Console open and refreshed. Here's what I got:
    8/19/13 5:18:40.385 PM Console:  Marker - Aug 19, 2013 5:18:40 PM
    8/19/13 5:19:48.844 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.484 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.484 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.484 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.494 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.502 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.506 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Error) DiskStore: No block in wakeup
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:37ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:37ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:37ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:37ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.507 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:37ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.508 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:38ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.510 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:40ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.511 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:41ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.511 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:41ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:00.511 PM mds: (Warning) DiskStore: Ignored bogus fetch for <MDSQueryWithBlockTask: 0x7fd15ce03400>{taskID:0x0000103a age:41ms} (not live not complete) _kMDItemQueryPath=418546
    8/19/13 5:20:20.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58091.976          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:20:51.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58122.985          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:21:22.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58153.992          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:21:53.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58185.  2          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:22:24.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58216. 14          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:22:55.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58247. 25          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:23:26.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58278. 41          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:23:57.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58309. 51          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:24:28.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58340. 59          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:24:59.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58371. 68          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:25:30.275 PM xpchelper: for uid: 501 -- timeout while waiting on FSEvents flush; clearing cache.
    8/19/13 5:25:30.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58402. 82          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:26:01.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58433. 96          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:26:32.027 PM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/TMBackups/Backups.backupdb
    8/19/13 5:26:32.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58464.112          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:27:02.653 PM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/TMBackups/Backups.backupdb/David’s iMac size:37
    8/19/13 5:27:02.657 PM com.apple.backupd: Error: (22) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.HostUUID path:/Volumes/TMBackups/Backups.backupdb/David’s iMac size:37
    8/19/13 5:27:03.000 PM kernel: USBF:          58495.121          AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800a927000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfd, timing out! (Addr: 7, EP: 1)
    8/19/13 5:27:12.668 PM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 2
    During this 9-minute timeframe Finder also was inoperative - according to Activity Monitor: "Not Responding".
    I'm thinking it's the standalone Buffalo backup drive not waking up, and so everything comes to a screeching halt. Do you also think I should abandon TM and just do manual backups every day using a clone program?

  • How does Time Machine handle alias files on the backup volume?

    I have been trying to find some info on how Time Machine handles alias files on the backup volume, but can't find anything on that topic. Neither here in this discussion or at the Apple support pages.
    My concern is if an alias file on the backup volume is backed up »as is«, or if it is resolved and the original file is backed up? The last would be most annoying as this will make the size of the backup much larger.
    Even though I do not know of folders having been renamed (which will cause that folder and all its content to be backed up again) Time Machine often backs up a surprisingly large amount of data, so I suspect that alias files could be resolved.
    Any info on this will be appreciated.

    Alias files are NOT followed, AFAIK.
    For more info on how TM works, see this ars technica review.
    Good luck!
    Message was edited by: joshz

  • 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.

  • Time Machine on a NAS - Avoiding "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups....."

    I use Time Machine to wirelessly backup my MBA to a Buffalo NAS. It will work fine for weeks or months, then I will see the dreaded "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” error. Of course this means I lose all my backups.
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    Thanks.

    I have a Synology 1511+ and had the same issue. Except my backups would only corrupt every month or two.
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  • HT201250 Is there any way to schedule backups on Time Machine?  I hate it that backup happens every dang hour.  I would like to have it back up at night.

    Is there any way to schedule backups on Time Machine?  I hate it that backup happens every dang hour.  I would like to have it back up at night.

    Richard Campbell2 wrote:
    I hear you, I do.  But the problem is that with my Mac, I have to stop and postpone whatever project I am working on while the backup occurs.  It just slows down my computer.
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    If the backups are much larger than they ought to be,  see #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
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  • Getting this error: Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.

    I keep getting this error on my new Macbook Pro w/ Retina.
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    Connected to a wifi network and QNAP storage system.  There are 5 computers on this network, and each backs up just fine.  The issue is isolated to this one machine.
    This error shows up every week or so.

    A third-party NAS is unsuitable for use with Time Machine, especially if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want. I know Time Machine accepts the NAS as a backup destination. I know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and I also know that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
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  • Time machine always propose a new fresh backup

    Hi all,
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    Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.
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    Let me just add that I was NOT having such problems when running Mavericks on the very same iMac...
    Is there any reported problem of this kind? What does it depend from? Is there any possible solution to this?
    Any help would be very welcome!
    Thanx, best regards
    Stefano

    Start with C13 in the 1st linked article.
    Time Machine Troubleshooting
    Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

  • Time machine volume does not appear but backup works..

    Hi. I have a Sno Leo server used for Time Machine backups. When I try to add a bew user to the backup, the backup volume does not appear (Time Machine Prefs > Select disk). The backup clients that have been previously set up work as normal.

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