Time Machine UI doesn't display previous backups

Hi!
My Time Machine is running to a mirror disk and backing up files regularly. I can see them in the finder when I go to the backup disk. But when I "Enter" time machine, it doesn't recognize and show the files. Just "Now" and some time ago before I switched out hard drives.
Background: This occurred when I swapped in new drives for the old ones and named them the same as the old ones were named. Basically, I upgraded from 1TB drives to 2TB drives and now have this issue.

Thanks, Pondini.
I don't see any drives in grey. They are in black but in the UI I see "Now" and Oct. 23rd with nothing in between even though Time Machine is backing up every hour and I can see the backups by navigating to the backup drive in the Finder. So Finder shows there are backups, Time Machine menu and sys prefs pane says it's backing up, but the app doesn't find and display the backups.
Ideas?

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Thank you for your reply and the links.
I did this:
1) I have two ext. USB drives for the MBP time machine backup, did not occur to me to try the other one which is the very first disk, let's call it disk 1, I used for backup, the other one I started using after a year or so.
2) reboot with the disk 1 connected
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5) it knows I had two disk for backup and ask me if I want to use two disk for backup, click yes
6) the time machine pref. says something like initial backup (after new system installed?)
7) after it done, I can see the previous time machine back up and the time line goes back to where it was before.
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Thanks again for your help.

Time machine capsule does not show previous backups

I am unable to see the previous backups on my time machine back capsule. It does show today's backup which is not complete. With a new backup, I also receivee a message stating the disk is full. I was under the impression that TM delated the oldest backup. Thanhs for any help concerning this problem

If you have upgraded to Mountain Lion TM seems to be unable to delete older backups.. I would recommend you start over and do a fresh clean backup.. erase the TC first. If you want to keep the old backup archive it to a usb drive.

Time Machine won't see my previous backups

hi,
for some reason, TM has continually told me there isn't enough space to make a backup to my external usb hd.
it's been backing up to this hd for about 9 months. disk utility checked it out and it seemed okay.
is there a way to get TM to pickup where it left off instead of having to start afresh? i'd like to keep those backups because there's some important stuff in there.
thanks for any help!
cheers,
sean

TM may start a new backup sequence for any of a number of reasons. See #D3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window.
Navigate to the first of the backup attempt that failed, copy and post the messages here. A clue should be lurking in there.
i'd like to keep those backups because there's some important stuff in there.
That's a curious comment. Have you been deleting things from your internal HD, relying on TM to keep it's copies archived?

Time Machine - system won't recognise previous backup

Hi there,
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Very frustrating!!!
Any help/advice gratefully received.
Thanks
Ray

The disk is probably not formatted correctly for Time Machine. There's a free download on my website, 33thingsbooks.com, that describes in great detail how to format a TM disk; you might find that helpful.
sharon zardetto
author, Minifesto: Time Machine
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Time Machine wants to do a full backup. How do I point it to my previous backups so it will do an incremental backup?

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I did some more reading and I found that Time Machine would find the older backups once a new backup is completed. The backup ended up being a little larger than previous backups (2.65 GB vs typical incremental backups of several MB's) but when it completed, time machine updated the last backup time/date and the oldest backup time/date properly. So I guess, I don't have a problem.

Time machine fails to complete/maintain a backup

Time machine is driving me nuts!:
The last successful backup was one month ago. Since that time it seems to have been stuck in a perpetual loop of trying but never successfully completing a backup, no matter what I try. Here is the history:
I bought a new iMac 6 months ago with OS X Lion (1Gb HDD). Set up Time Machine over wireless network with a 1Gb WD MyBookLive attached to a new BT Homehub 3 router (UK). Lion successfully backed up my system (total size approximately 159Gb) over a two day period, but every 4-6 weeks Time Machine would tell me it needed to create a new backup. Frustratingly, this meant that the backup history never stretched very far in the Time machine 'starfield window' but at least I had a backup of some sort.
I upgraded to Mountain Lion 3 months ago, in the hope that it would fix the error and, briefly, things were going well. Time Machine didn't need to create a new backup from scratch after upgrade, and continued to add to the existing backups & history for 2 months. Then i got the dreaded 'Time Machine needs to create a new backup' message and, 1 month later, it hasn't been able to finish the process yet!
After about 6 days it was about 30% complete (just over 50Gb) which didn't sound right given how long it previously took. I stopped the backup using the TM dialog box , reset my mac, router and MyBookLive and started again. Time machine automatically started again, and after several days of crawling I got the message that the 'sparsebundle was already in use'. I followed the suggested tips regarding unmounting the drive, reset everything and tried again. TimeMachine took about another 4 days to get to about 30Gb, then stopped itself with the message that the backup had failed. I tried deleting the preferences files for TM as several sources suggest, but this doesn't seem to have helped, TM just takes days to crawl along and then terminates saying either simply that the 'backup has failed' or that the sparsebundle is already in use. About 5 days ago I used the WD browser-based administration tools to create a new, separate, share for TM (presumably because this ensures that there can be no record of any previous backups on the backup device which TM sees) and set up TM from scratch. All seemed well, it took only 23 hours to back up 103Gb - then it failed, saying that the 'sparsebundle is already in use'. I set the backup away again overnight and it managed about 12Gb before the same message appeared. TM now estimates 5 days to backup the remaining 40Gb.
Somebody please tell me what is going wrong and how to get TM to actually complete a full backup then maintain it without constant intervention!!!
Some further points worth mentioning:
1) My iMac is located too far from my router to backup using ethernet cable.
2) I have used iStumbler to determine that the signal strength is 36% (surely strong enough?) with only 3% noise. (802.11n Gigabit Ethernet).
3) WD MyBookLive plugged into the GigE port on the router, and firmware is up to date.
4) I've searched Pondini's tips, from start to finish looking for a solution, as well as the Western Digital and BT forums, but none of the common solutions seem to work.
Help! and thanks.

Thanks, Linc, for your response. I will also seek advice from the manufacturers of the other devices, however, I fear that every party will foot the blame at the door of others.
I don't agree with your suggestion that this shouldn't be my only backup, given the marketing literature of both Apple and Western Digital. Apple state on their website:
"Connect the drive, assign it to Time Machine, and start enjoying some peace of mind. Time Machine automatically backs up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents."
Similarly, Western Digital state about their MyBook Live:
"Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple Time Machine backup software to protect their data."
So where, I wonder, does the fault lie? At the end of the day I am a home user and 'consumer' - just your average Joe looking for a robust home computing solution, not an IT boffin with an in-depth understanding of the nuts and bolts. I expect both products to do what they say on the box. Not surprisingly BT (the supplier of the router) state "The wireless 'N' technology in the BT Home Hub ensures you get a more reliable wireless connection throughout your home at all times."
To me, the advantage with my set up (should it ever work) is that, should the unthinkable happen and my computer is stolen, the likelihood of my backup device disappearing with it (as might be the case with a locally attached device) is greatly reduced because the NAS is hidden away elsewhere.

Time Machine Just Doesn't Work Anymore

I was a happy Time Machine (with Time Capsule) user for months. But it just doesn't work anymore. It takes longer than an hour to do every hourly backup so it is backing up 24 hours a day. It finds hundreds of thousands of files changed every hour and tries to back them up. Finders says only tens of files have been modified all of today. I have tried rebuilding my spotlight indexes, repairing my Time Capsule with Disk Utility and starting over with a brand new backup. But it just backs up hundreds of thousands of files every hour. So I am turning off Time capsule since it is clearly broken. If anyone has any suggestions at all I would welcome them.

Marcia,
Consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412)
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can created major changes in the structure of your directories. Time Machine will backup every file that has changed since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if any of this helps.
Cheers!

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.

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

Hi..
Thanks for the reply..
My original I Phone 5 was running IOS 6.12
My I phone 5S currently runs IOS 8..When I upgraded it, it had IOS 7 on it which made the I Photo app compatible with everything below IOS 8...( which the photo app is not compatible with ) so I just connected the I Phone 5S to my computer and thinking the new phone had IOS 7 on it that these was nothing to worry about..I thought all 900 + pictures in the photo stream would transfer but somewhere in the process, I Tunes decides to just go and install IOS 8 which requires that you run a " Photo Migration App" to transfer photos from IOS 7 & below. The problem was is that I didn't want IOS 8 on my new 5S so I thought I wouldn't have to do that part..
Anyway the phone emerged with IOS 8 on it and the only photos that remained were the ones that were actually on the phone..The 900 + I had in the stream didn't transfer because the Photos that works on IOS 7 and below isn't compatible with IOS 8..I guess you have to use the photo migration app that comes with IOS 8 & I phone 6..But I didn't ask to upgrade to IOS 8...It just did it on it's own!
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but it doesn't help me..
Steve

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.

In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-C, or select
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These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
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☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
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☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
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View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
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Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
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☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time Machine only showing new Mountain lion backups

HI All,
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Is a USB external backup disk.
Have tried the method: http://pondini.org/TM/E2.html
but only seeing 1 disk to select from when choosing 'browse from other time machine disk'/
I can see the older backup files via finders but unable to move them to dektop as getting 'The operation cannot be complete as you dont have permission'.
Can any one help?
Have tried http://pondini.org/TM/E10.html
but as cannot not access it via 'Stars wars' mode unable to copy to image...
HELP please!!!
Thank you

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Time machine, did it perform a full backup?

A bit new to this. Upgraded to a new MBPro retina, mt lion from an older MBP using migration assistant.
After all was finished and all the files were on my new machine (I did not use Time machine to migrate or backup to the new mac, I used migration assistant), I connected to time machine to perform a completely new backup of the new machine. I have 295GB to copy over. So, it seemed to take forever. I was on day 2, noticed all the threads about the slowness, but then the new machine froze. It said it was around 170GB through it. I could have also had a bit of interuppted internet too in that time. I also could not access the internet on the new machine at all by that point. So, I rebooted and I assume by finding the disc and starting again, it looked like it picked back up at roughly 125GB. that took about 6 hours or so. So, I think that roughly it may have gotten the whole 250 gb but not sure.
Also, on my select disc option I have two listings for my time capsule now. Not sure if that makes a difference.
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I am a bit new to this part, so sorry if I am asking really obvious questions. I just didn't want to find out at a later time that I only have partial backups. Thanks for any advice.

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.)
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☞ 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:
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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.
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At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
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Time Machine UI doesn't display previous backups

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