Trick Time Machine into thinking that an incomplete backup is complete?

Hi all! My iMac has a failed hard drive, so I went out to get an external hard drive to make a backup (better late then never, eh?). I went through the process and it started making its initial backup. Unfortunately, the computer completely froze (even the beachball stopped spinning) very close to the end of the process. Am I able to convince Time Machine that the backup was complete so that I can restore it, or should I just manually copy over files that I need once we get a new hard drive?
Thanks for the help!

Charles.Melbye wrote:
I opened up Terminal on the Mac OS X install disk, went through the folders on the backup hard drive and found my hard drive's entire file system, including our Music, Photos, my code, etc. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to restore from this... Do you have any technical evidence to back your advice up?
then you might actually have a complete backup. when TM makes a backup it first creates a package with a .inprogress extension. do you see that? it basically creates the entire backup in that and only at the very end of the backup it writes it to the hard drive. there is no way TM will restore from an .inprogress package. but if it's already been written to the drive and there is no .inprogress package then it may be possible to restore. However, if it couldn't finish the backup it's very possible that some files or metadata didn't make it. there is really no way to be sure.
Message was edited by: V.K.

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TS1550 My time capsule will not back up. There is a time machine error message that states "The backup disk image "/volumes/Backup/Jane's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use. How do I correct this problem?

My time machine will not back up. I get a Time Machine Error message that reads: "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Backup/(myname)'sMacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use.
I have not been able to back up for two weeks, I think this occurred after an update to the operating system, but I am unsure.
How do I correct this problem?

Have you tried restarting the computer? Also, see Time Machine Error from this pages sidebar under More Like This.

Time Machine Keeps Thinking That it's a New Backup

We're running Snow Leopard Server on a Mac Mini, and are using an external FW drive for Time Machine backups of the server and shared data only, no client backups. Time Machine has not worked since we setup the Mac Mini, but was working well on the previous server using Leopard Server. Here are the troubleshooting steps I've taken, as well as the latest log.
Erased and re-setup the Time Machine drive using another drive name. I've encountered issues where Time Machine doesn't like to use the same drive name after a migration.
Repaired permissions
Trashed Time Machine preferences
Made sure that all updates are applied
Made sure date and time are correct on the server
Made sure that the backup hard drive was not damaged or corrupted
The error:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Graphics Backup/Backups.backupdb
Starting pre-backup thinning: 235.12 GB requested (including padding). 164.53 GB available
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Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed
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Every time it fails, I wipe the drive and the preferences hoping that something will fall in to place on the next backup attempt. This happens every time after we complete an initial new backup where Time Machine doesn't recognize that there is an existing backup for the server on the external drive and that it only needs to create an incremental. It's extremely frustrating. We're not using any type of software that is using any crazy sql databases that would be flexing while backing up. Shoot, we have it set to backup at 5AM when no one is in the office nor connected remotely (which we don't allow nor have setup anyway). We are merely using the server for a share point for our digital assets (overkill, but not my idea). Indexing of the initial backup occurs in a reasonable time. Super frustrated at this point.

Still having this issue. Now with TWO servers, two different clients. Nothing had changed prior to this error.

Can Time Machine do a Non-Direct NAS backup?

I want to be able to use a NAS on my home network.
The biggest thing for me about NAS is the potential to backup to Time Machine using other people's networks.
For example, I'll be in my college, which is a couple cities away from my home network... and I'll want to backup.
Or an even more extreme situation. I plan on travelling to Mexico and will want to backup my homework. Even though my NAS will be in Canada.
I've been told that too do this I'll need to use a FTP.
Yet nobody's seemed to talk about having experience actually doing this.
I know the obvious solution is to carry an external with me wherever I go... but I'd rather just use a NAS.
Please let me know if you find (or have) any cases where you have been able to backup onto a NAS with time machine while you're not on the same network as your NAS.

Be very careful here: just because a 3rd-party vendor claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports that configuration, or that it will work reliably in all circumstances (many won't).
Before buying one of these, carefully investigate the following:
•If you’re planning to use the NAS for other data, in addition to your Time Machine backups, be sure you can partition it (or set up separate "shares" or "accounts" via the NAS, since you can’t with Apple’s Disk Utility), or somehow limit the amount of space the backups can use. Otherwise the backups will, eventually, use all the available empty space, possibly leading to conflicts. See question #3 for details.
•Look at the setup instructions. If there’s any mention of a Terminal command involving "unsupported devices," or installation of drivers or kernel extensions to fool Time Machine into thinking it’s a locally-connected drive, use caution. These may prevent you from doing a full system restore to a new or replaced internal hard drive. This is because OSX doesn’t do a full system restore; it’s done by booting up from your Recovery HD (Lion and later) or OSX Install disc (Snow Leopard or Leopard) and using the the Installer utility on it. That utility won’t have those additions, and you can't add them to it; thus it may not be able to connect to your backups when you need them the most. (See question #14 for details on doing a full restore.)
•Consider whether the maker is reputable and likely to continue supporting the NAS for as long as you'll be using it. If Apple changes requirements, will the maker update the NAS so it will work with the new version of OSX? Many that worked on Snow Leopard didn't work on Lion without such updates. A few weren't updated for quite a while, and some never were.
For more on this go to http://pondini.org/TM/2.html

Time machine has lost a year of backups

I have time machine set to write to a Seagate Free Agent hard drive. It has 574GB spare on it, so it's nowhere near full, but I have no backups before about a month ago.
Time machine preferences say that I have backups going back to September 2009, and the timescale when I enter Time machine says the same, but the windows are greyed out and unavailable.
I haven't had any problems that I know about.
Help please?

The grayed-out windows are the clue.
What you see in the "Star Wars" display depends on how you get there and how you navigate once you're there -- if you start with a Finder window showing a folder that's a month old, you'll see all the backups that include it normally; all prior backups will appear, but be grayed-out and not selectable.
The easiest thing to do is select your Computer in the Finder Sidebar (or press ShiftCmdC before entering Time Machine), navigate to the backup in question, then see what's there.
There's a sample of this in #15 of [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Imported old computer via time machine into new 2012 macbook pro, but its still running ilife 09 instead of 11?

imported old computer via time machine into new 2012 macbook pro, but its still running ilife 09 instead of 11?

I am assuming you had iLife 09 on the old computer - when you moved everything over, that came along with it.
I also have older versions of iLife (on install disks) and just recently got a new 2012 Macbook Pro. I noticed that iMovie 11, iPhoto and Garageband (I think) are listed in my Mac App Store Purchases with a notation to "accept". So you might want to check MAS to see if the apps are sitting there.
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How do I convert a Time Capsule former Time Machine into an external drive?

I want to convert my 2TB Time Capsule (which I formerly used as a Time Machine) into an external drive. I now have a 3TB which I have set up as the Time Machine thus freeing the 2TB to hopefully work as an external drive. The 2TB now sits with the old Time Machine backup data intact but I no longer need that backup. I had it hooked up to my modem but not have hooked the ethernet up to my desktop (is that right?). Please advise how to prep the 2TB Time Capsule to be a normal external drive.

1) How do I turn the wireless on the TC on or off? Where do I go to change the settings.
Spend some time in the airport utility.. the easiest way is simply go through every screen until you are familiar with the controls.
Open airport utility.. click the TC.. click edit.
Click the wireless tab. Click on Network mode.. select Off..
2) I found the Touro 4TB and the price is quite inexpensive compared to other 3 and 4TB units. What's the reason for that? Am I missing something in the specs? They offer a Touro Deskpro and a Touro DX3. I can't tell from the description what the difference is - I can't see beyond 4TB. Is one preferable over the other?
They are competing with better known brands.. ask anybody hard disk brands they know.. and either Western Digital or Seagate come to mind. People easily forget there was hitachi (ex IBM). Although Hitachi sold their disk division but due to anti-trust laws it could not be sold entirely to WD who bought half of it.. Toshiba bought the other half. WD tries to hide the Hitachi drive name to bury it.. they bought to bury. But Toshiba keeps it alive.
I actually buy Hitachi drives (Toshiba now) in preference to the others. But everyone has their favourite. The Touro are just good value for money.. the case is not exactly the work of art.. buy LaCie for that. It is a bit over large and the plastic is plasticiky, if you get my drift. Silver plated plastic to make it look like metal is not my favourite.. but I am hardly concerned with the look..!! It looks like an external hide drive.. hide it if you find it ugly.
The difference between the Touro Pro and the Touro DX3 4TB drives is the speed of the drives, the pro is 7200rpm and the the DX3 should be 5400rpm.
I am not 100% sure of the above.. but it is likely to be different drives.. We have not seen DX3 in our market until recently.. they were all pro.
None with bigger than 4TB at this point..
3) OWC - never heard of this group - are the hard drives dependable in your experience?
Retailers who sell Touro and Toshiba and LaCie and every other brand.. sell online and to overseas.. good prices if not the cheapest.. have their own lines of shells, as well selling all the others.. have their own brand SSD but obviously bought in from elsewhere.. RAM, kits for all sorts of things.. huge catalog and very Apple orientated.
I am amazed if you have been on a Mac for more than 5min.. google ads have not flashed up OWC 20 times.. you must have good resistance to advertising.
Please google OWC.. if I post their actual URL the post will get deleted.
Look up say external drives.. they have one zillion of them.

Is there a way to combine two backups on separate disks created by time machine into one on a single disk?

Is there a way to combine two backups on separate disks created by time machine into one on a single disk? One backup is a continuation of the other and was created when I rec'd a message that the 1st disk was full. I'm using a iMac (late 2010) and both external drives are WD. Thanx.

With the timeline selected, go to File/Export/Movie and export each as a DV-AVI video.
You can then combine those AVIs into a new project with virtually no loss of quality.

HT201250 I set up Time Machine yesterday (using a WD 2T drive) and got the message that the first backup was complete. I can open every file I try except Quicken and TurboTax. What am I doing wrong?

I set up Time Machine yesterday (using a WD 2T drive) and got the message that the first backup was complete. I can open every file I try except Quicken and Turbotax. What am I doing wrong?

burgessiii22 wrote:
Thanks for the answer Linc, but how do I check to make sure the back-up process is working if I don't think I need to restore?
Create a test file with Text Edit (or any other program) and save it to your desktop.
Run Time Machine from the menu bar.
When the Time Machine icon in the menu bar stops spinning, drag your test file to the trash.
Open Time Machine and go back 1 page. You should see your test file on the desktop.

Where does time machine store content that would be found in the Finder window under "All Images, All Movies, All Documents"? Also, I have many Garageband projects and mp3 files I can't find.

Where does time machine store content that would be found in the Finder window under "All Images, All Movies, All Documents"? Also, I have many Garageband projects and mp3 files I can't find.

Easiest way to find time machine files is to open up the folder or application(works for email and iphoto) they were in - then click on time machine ICON or enter time machine from the time machine menu to go back through the files.

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 -- can't access parts of backups

Prior to upgrading my MacBook Air to Yosemite, I made a Time Machine backup, removed temporary stuff I didn't think I'd need any more, and made a bootable clone of Mavericks using SuperDuper! The upgrade went fine, but after a while I realized one of the things I'd removed (Adobe Lightroom catalog, having transferred all the image files from the MacBook Air to my desktop machine) contained some information I needed. My attempts to restore it have run into an odd problem, and I'm hoping someone has some ideas that can help me.
I have the backup disk connected, and when I start up the Time Machine application it shows the expected backups in the "ruler" along the right-hand edge of the screen. However, for the most part, I cannot "go back in time" to find the files I want from before I deleted them. What I mean is that, for most locations I select from Finder's sidebar, the "backwards and forwards" buttons are grayed-out and inaccessible. For a few locations (Desktop, and the system Applications folder) the buttons work as expected and I can access any backup date I wish. For a few others (e.g. "All My Files") the "backwards" button is available but clicking it takes me to the very first backup stored (8 months old) and "forwards" takes me to "Today (Now)". None of the intervening backups are available for that location.
I've used the Terminal app to navigate down the directory hierarchy of the backups on the Time Machine volume. I can find the files I want there, so it's not like Time Machine had failed to back them up. However, it refuses to show them. I tried using the Terminal to copy the files back under my home directory, but the filesystem ACLs and extended attributes were causing problems (Lightroom thought it didn't have write permission). Deleting the ACSs and xattrs got Lightroom to run, but it's clearly confused (shows blank thumbnails, has exif data but not captions) so something's not right.
Wondering if this is a Yosemite issue, I rebooted the machine onto the Mavericks clone and tried running Time Machine there. I get the same results.
Someone at work suggested that leaving the Time Machine app running for an extended period of time might fix the problem. I've had it running for 7 hours now and while a few more locations started working, the ones I want aren't.
Anyone know what's going on and how to fix it?

Even weirder -- the problem I described above happens only with certain windows. WIth others, I can open the earlier backups.

How to set up time machine so it can view old backup after renewal of user rights ?

I am newbie in the mac world but I am very happy to use the devices I have.
I just both and setup time capsule and did firt initial backup with time machine into account I have setup on the TC. But after while I was not able to view my user folder, so I resetup the user rights.
But now when I turn on time machine, I say that I didnt perform initial backup. In finder I am able to see and acces my folder on TC now and there is also a file with backup with name Václav - Mac mini.sparsebundle just in the root of my user folder on TC.
Can you please help me how to tell TM, that there is a initial backup that can be used for other incremental backups in the future ?
Thanks for your help.
Vaclav.

I did that. But and then reopen TM but still I dont see backup performed any suggestions ?
"Inherit" a backup
Copy the following after the prompt, and leave a space, but do not press Return yet:
sudo tmutil inheritbackup
If your backups are on an external HD, locate and open the drive in the Finder window. At the top level of the drive is a Backups.backupdb folder containing a folder named for your old Mac, per the sample. This is what you want the new Mac to "inherit." Drag that folder to the Terminal window.
(If your backups are on a Time Capsule, locate the sparse bundle containing the backups for your old Mac via the Finder, and drag it to the Terminal window):

New Logic Board - Time Machine wants to create a new backup

This has me stumped. I just got a new hard drive and logic board from Apple. Plugged my external hard drive into my computer, turned time machine off and 'Entered Time Machine' to copy files over back to my computer. All worked as advertised.
Once I had some of my files copied over, I went to turn time machine on. Time Machine informed me that I didn't have enough space on my hard drive (it wants ~94 gigs free and it has 30 free, but it should have been able to delete the oldest backup, free up some space, and we should have moved on). At no point did it ask me if I wanted to reuse the backup or not.
I then wondered if it needed to get further along the backup process before prompting me to reuse the volume or not. So, I excluded like 98% of my hard drive and made the backup ~3 gigs. The backup happened, but now in my Backups.backupdb I have a MyComputer which contains all of my old time machine backups, and a MyComputer_2 which contains this last backup.
I trashed the MyComputer_2 folder and 'Entered Time Machine'. It pulled from the correct place and I saw my backups trailing back into history, but apparently I no longer have permission to view the desktop folder as well as the other 'protected' folders in my backed up home folder. I repaired permissions on the off chance that it would fix it, but it didn't.
Something is clearly broken, do the masses have any suggestions? I found multiple suggestions for how to deal with this under 10.5, but nothing about 10.6.
Thank You,
Zac

zac850 wrote:
But what if I want to reuse my backup? How would I go about doing that? I trashed the time machine plist file (the only one i found was "Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist") in the hopes that after a restart I would be prompted to reuse the backup. No luck.
I don't know why you didn't get the "reuse" prompt, but that wouldn't prevent a new, full backup. You have a new internal HD. Even if it has the same name as the old one, Time Machine knows it's a different disk, so will back up everything on it. You cannot prevent that.
Your first problem is, you didn't transfer things onto the new drive properly (Apple Stores often give bad or misleading advice on that.)
And, you may have corrupted your backups by "trashing" the MyComputer_2 folder. Apple doesn't do a very good job of warning folks: +*never move, change, or delete anything in your backups+* via the Finder.
Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If that works, your best bet is probably to do a full system restore, per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
You obviously had a problem with your Mac; depending on what happened and when, it's possible that damaged your installation of OSX and/or some of your data. If your last backup(s) were done after that started, the corruption may have been backed-up.
If that's a possibility, and you do the restore properly, but it fails, try it again, but select an earlier backup.

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.

Trick Time Machine into thinking that an incomplete backup is complete?

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