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?

Similar Messages

Upgraded to Mavericks, Enter Time Machine and cannot see any previous backup at all

MBP, upgrade from 10.6.8 to Mavericks.
After "Enter Time Machine", the time line on the right side of the screen does not show any previous backup at all.
In Finder, I can see the backup folder and the inside contents.
In Time Machine Preference, I did select the disk for backup again.
Any idea ? Thank you.

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
3) do a "Backup Now", and I forgot the exact dialogs and what they say.
4) something like, "choose a disk for the backup", I chose disk 1
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.
8) connect the disk 2 and "Backup Now", it just went to backup right away, after it's done, I can see the prev. backups and the time line too.
Thanks again for your help.

Is it possible to reinstall Mac OS X Lion on MacBook and then use Time Machine to restore to the previous backup I made before reinstalling Mac OS X Lion?

Is it possible to reinstall Mac OS X Lion on MacBook and then use Time Machine to restore to the previous backup I made before reinstalling Mac OS X Lion?

My MacBook was not normally booting up. It would turn on, make the Apple startup noise, and the bottom loading bar would progress just a little bit, then my MacBook would shut down. I tried rebooting it many times and the same thing would happen, it would just shut down. Then, I read that I can reset the PRAM (by holding Option+Command+P+R after the Apple startup noise comes). That worked, but now I get a screen that asks me to choose one of the 4 options (see: http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/07/lionrecoveryutilities-289404.j pg). I choose Restore From Time Machine Backup, but it progresses to 17.6% and gets stuck there forever. I tried doing it again, and it got stuck at 17.6% again. That is why I am asking if I should just reinstall Lion, then restore a previous backup on the fresh new Lion?

Missing Backups -- They are there, but Time Machine won't see them

I have backups going back to March 2008 on an external USB drive. Recently, there was an error message in my time machine status bar that a backup had been interrupted. After that, TIme Machine stopped backing up. I repaired my time machine backup disk using disk utility (and it found and repaired an error that there were an "Incorrect number of Access Control Lists"). I then reselected my external drive as my backup disk. Time machine is again backing up correctly. Moreover, my time machine preferences show that my oldest backup is, in fact, from March 2008, and when I mount the sparsebundle from the USB drive, all my old backups appear. However, when I actually enter time machine, none of the older backups appear. In fact, none appear at all. Only "today" is visible. Any idea how I can make time machine recognize and view all of my old backups?

I have a similar problem, with a slight twist.
Installed Time Machine January 2008.
The Apple store installed 10.5.6. November 2008.
Time Machine will only go back to the date of the 10.5.6 installation.
In console or terminal mode there are some directories and files are there on the backup HD. Although I have not found the original baseline backup yet from the console mode.
Apple support call in reported that a product specialist said the only thing to do was erase the backup HD and start over, that the 10.5.6 install had been a "new" install and the backups were no longer going to be accessible. One way to cut down on support calls is to to limit the support delivered.
Found several December 2008 references to changing permissions on "Mac address" based on ethernet card 16 byte file.
"Note the name of the file that begins with a period and has 12 characters in the name, such as ".001b6397c156" mentioned in the quote above"
This permission was r-------- to begin with. I did a chmod a+r and a+w.
A number of ways on the web to do that.
But this has not changed the behavior, but I have not rebooted yet.

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 Windows Home Server 2011 Disk (NAS)

Since upgrading too Mountian Lion, Time Machine doesn't see my NAS. The NAS is available in Lion, and Time Machine will back up to it. I have done the steps in HT4700 on the Mountian Lion mac, and it did work.
I can manually mount the drives, and browse the files via the finder. Help please.

Mcdonsco,
Have you reviewed the logs on the computer you are trying to backup? What does it say in the console?

Time Machine won't see my backup after resetting Time Capsule

i had to reset my TC because i got a new modem. once i got the network up and running again, now time machine wants to start over backing up my MBP, even though i can see the backup files on the TC....
how do i get time machine to recognize that this time machine has my backups on it already?
I had changed the name of the TC, then i changed it back. so i don't think that's the problem?
will i have to erase the time capsule and start over backing up?
thanks in advance...

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 won't recognize my old backup

I just bought a new MacBook Pro and am attempting to restore my old (stolen) laptop from my Time Machine backup. It recognizes my external hard drive, and I can browse all my files, but when I attempt to do a system restore it tells me that no valid Mac OS X backups are found. (Similarly, in Migration Assistant it just gives me a blank box in the "Select System to Transfer" dialogue.)
Does anyone know why my data is on my drive but not recognized by Mac OS X? I don't know if I set Time Machine to only backup my Applications / Personal Files and not the System, which is why it won't let me back it up. But it has everything else on there, and I really don't want to have to back up every file manually.
Thanks for your help in advance!

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time Machine won't recognize my last backup after a power outage

Good Afternoon Everyone,
I just set up a Western Digital My Book Live on my network. Last week, I set up Time Machine to start a backup on my MacBook Pro (running 10.7.5). It took 2 days to finish, but all went well. For three days, all the backups worked perfectly. However, we had a power outage for an hour during the night and now that I turn on my MacBook Pro, Time Machine recognizes the disk, but doesn't have a record of any backup.
I have gone to the drive manually and seen that the files are still there, but how to I tell Time Maching on my MacBook that the full backup is already on that NAS drive, so that it won't do a full backup?
I would really appreciate the help.
Brett

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time machine won't delete its oldest backups?

Can anyone explain this to me... in all the time I've used TM (several years, many OSs, two iMacs), it always eventually fills the backup HD and then stops backing up telling me it has run out of space. TM is suppsoed to delete the oldest backups to constantly renew the space available for the newest back ups.
Why does it never do this? Does TM work as described for any one else?
Is there a know solution for this ussue?
Thanks,
Dave

plainhat wrote:
The error message simply said it could not create the folder. My assumption was that the disk was too full. Indeed, after wrestling with it all morning I've managed to clear some of the old backups and it is now (as I write) finally running a backup.
That can happen if the disk gets absolutely, positively, chock-full. Time Machine alone usually won't let that happen -- we see it when there's other data on the disk (in the same partition), that fills the last few MBs. Needless to say, that's not a good idea. Other data needs to be in a separate partition or different disk.
Here's what happens: When Time Machine starts a backup, the first thing it does is create a backup folder, and create and start writing to a (hidden) log file inside it. When that's done, it figures out how much needs to be backed-up, and how much space is available, so it can start deleting old backups. Obviously, if it doesn't have even a few MBs to create the folder and log, it fails.
However, I'm afraid this means as soon as the disk is full again, it will not automagically delete old backups and I'll need to fix it manually again.
Unlikely, unless you have other data there.
NOW... if I can figure out how to keep my Early 2008 MacPro from randomly shutting down, I'll be a happy camper LOL
Are you sure it's random? Could it be a certain number of minutes with no activity? If so, check System Preferences > Security > General. Make sure the Log out .... box isn't checked.
it kept finding files that were locked (from a Dreamweaver enabled web site) and I had to go in and remove those locks inside TM. Interesting adventure.
Indeed! Why in the world anything would be locking files in your backups is beyond me. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.

Time Machine won't do any more backups

I've had TC for about a month now and it was working well and reliably once I installed all the firmware/time machine updates on my Macbook Pro. Now however, TM is unable to complete any backups, even leaving it over night. For two days now I've come back to my machine in the morning to see it "almost" done. This morning it was 570.2 MB/837.2 MB and not moving. TC reports the last backup was 3 days ago (April 1).
Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?
Many thanks.

So this is probably a bug in TC but it worked for me. After scouring this forum for ideas I saw someone had suggested manually changing the 802.11 a/b/g compatibilty channel from "Automatic" to <something>, I chose channel 10 (randomly). Anyway, after doing that my wireless backups seem to work regularly and reliably.
I guess I answered myself

Time Machine won't see network HD anymore

Time Machine has been working well backing up the MacBook Pro over WIFI to an external Firewire drive hardwired to the iMac. The iMac is backed up to a separate partition on the same external HD. After rashley changing MacBook passwords for Keychain and login (separately, then making them the same when I saw what a mess I made) the TM backups started failing on the MacBook, but were fine on the iMac.
I opened TM Preferences and unselected the network HD as the backup drive, intending to reselect again and start over. The network drive disappeared from the TM selection list and I cannot get it back. I can see the backup drive on the network and open it from the MacBook, but TM will not see it and put it on the list. I have tried reformating the partition, trashing the TM plist, checking all the network and user settings with no success.
Anybody got more things to try? I may try moving the external HD from the iMac to the Airport Extreme, but would rather not.

I was able to backup with TM by direct connection to the external HD. I reinstalled 10.9.1 but this had no effect on the problem of not being able to backup with TM over the WIFI network.
I moved the HD from Firewire connection to the iMac to USB connection to the Airport Extreme. This seems to be a work around for me since both computers appear to be successfully backing up now. I don't like it because now I can't backup Bootcamp on the iMac due to the restrictions Windows places on network backups.

Time machine won't see my airdisk for i can't mount it

hi,
i can't use my lacie hard dirve that is hooked up to my airport extreme base station with the time machine.
looking around the forums i understood that time machine only works with the drives that are mounted on the desktop. some apparently do that manually by clicking to it in finder, others use an automator app to automatically mount.
but my problem is i can't mount the drive in anyways. clicking on it in finder wouldn't mount it on the desktop in may case: although i can browse it in finder it wouldn't appear on the desktop.
since it never appears on the desktop i can't drag it to an automator app.
does anyone have any solutions?

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 won't see disk

I had my iMac packed up and stored away when I was away for 3 weeks, bringing only my MacBook Pro with me. I also packed down the two external hard drives I have, one of which is for Time Machine.
Now, after I came back and set it all up again, Time Machine hasn't been able to back up. It says it searched for the disk but never finds it. I have tried to deselect the disk and select it again and I have turned TM off and on, several times and all other tips I have come across, but nothing helps. I have cheked the disk with Disk Utility and it appears to be fine - and it shows up like normal.
I had ti connected through a USB-hub and I thought I might have forgotten which port it was, so now I connected it directly to the iMac, but that didn't help, either.
Any ideas, anyone?

I'm surprised that no one replied to this. But I learned a few things that may be helpful to some of you with this same question.
When you restore data from an external disk drive with Time Machine files on it. As you move through the dialog (in either System Startup or in the Migration Assistant) it will ask if you want to restore from an external disk with Time Machine files. If you select this option, it will show you only one Icon. You will expect to see your external disk drive listed as the source of the restore. The icon that is shown will look like your ilnternal drive and will be labeled something like Macintosh HD. That is not your internal drive, but is your backup drive. It is labeled the same as your internal disk drive and it is telling you that you have found the backup for your internal disk drive.
Would be nice if Apple would put a note of explanation about this as part of that dialog. I wasted several hours trying to make it work Finally I took a chance and selected the drive shown and it did restore my system. I ended up with two users since I did it from Migration Assistant. Had I done it from the System Startup, there would only be the one user.

Time Machine doesn't see user library backups

Greeting experts,
I updated to Yosemite 10.10.2 yesterday. After restart, the Mac would log me off within a minute of logging on. So I did a clean install (after pram zapping and disk repairing). The iMac (intel) worked normally after the clean install. So I started restoring files (music, photos, etc.).
When I enter Time Machine, I cannot navigate back in time to any previous snapshot (all the date lines are red on the calendar). I've used Finder preferences to make the user library visible on the Macintosh HD but my user library in Time Machine remains hidden. I've read and tried several suggestions in this forum, including using the Terminal to issue commands to make the user library visible, to inherit the backup, etc. but nothing has worked.
I've been able to restore my photographs to iPhoto and music to iTunes simply by dragging the folders from the last Time Machine snapshot prior to upgrading to 10.10.2.
What I REALLY need is to access my user library on Time Machine and grab my Thunderbird files (saved mail, etc.) but I can't find a way to make my user library visible.
Any suggestions are really appreciated.
Thanks,
Don

Don Stubbs wrote:
What I REALLY need is to access my user library on Time Machine and grab my Thunderbird files (saved mail, etc.) but I can't find a way to make my user library visible.
Any suggestions are really appreciated.
Thanks,
Don
Open Finder and navigate to your User home folder. In the right pane, right click in an open area and click View Options or select View options from the View menu bar. At the bottom of the View Options screen should be a checkbox for Show Library Folder. Check it and your user Library should show up in Finder along with your other Home folders. Then, after opening Library, you should be able to Enter Time Machine and navigate to the point in time you want to browse your user Library

Time Machine won't see my previous backups

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for