What Files are Saved during a Time Machine Backup??

Hi,
When I carry out a time machine backup, what files are saved?
I have just plugged in my external hard drive to carry out a back up and its 56GB!, my last TM backup was only 2 weeks ago and I haven't downloaded that much data!
Many Thanks
Chris

Sorry, that wasn't typed very well!!
The TM backup is 56GB
;o)

Similar Messages

What files can I exclude from Time Machine backups?

I'm running Firefox on OS X Mavericks. I use Time Machine to back this computer. I know that Time Machine will automatically avoid backing up my web cache. But which of the files in my profile directory can I not back up? I'm particularly interested in webappstore.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, and healthreport.sqlite since these are on the large end and seem to change frequently.
I already have excluded bookmarkbackups and places.sqlite. I have the browser set to automatically export my bookmarks so if I need to restore my machine I'll get back my bookmarks but not my browsing history, which seems reasonable.

What kind of data is valuable to you?
A reset for instance preserves personal data like bookmarks (places.sqlite, JSON backups), history (places.sqlite), cookies (cookies.sqlite), passwords (signons.sqlite and key3.db), form data (formhistory.sqlite), open tabs (sessionstore.js)
See these articles about information on files:
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile

The file could not be saved in folder "Time Machine Backups"

I've tried to setup TM with several external drives (USB and Firewire) and I get the same results... the file "xxx" could not be saved in folder "Time Machine Backups". Any ideas?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
If that's exactly what the message says, it's a new one. If it's actually "An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume" or "Aborting backup because indexing a file failed," see #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If not, see #A1 there for a handy widget that shows the backup messages from your logs. Download and install it, then copy and post all the messages for one backup attempt here.

How can I make I-cloud back up only the files created since the last Time-Machine backup?

Hi everyone,
So, I wish to use time-machine to back up every six weeks or so. This means a whole range of files could be lost if my wonderfully fast but terrifyingly unrecoverable solid state hard drive packs up.
Has anyone any idea how I can make Icloud only backup files created since the last time machine backup?
Best
Danny

Automator is not the right solution.
Use a folder action script. Apple has an example here: (Auto-backup Script):
http://www.apple.com/applescript/folderactions/05.html
the steps might have been written for 10.3, so the steps may not be 100% right, but this will do what you want.

My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

Yes, I've done all "the ususal suspects.." repaired permissions, zapped pram, "reintroduced Time Machine to the backup drive by turning it off and on... etc

Are files in "Latest" folder in Time Machine backup full versions

I need to transfer several gigabytes of files from a Time Machine Backup of an older iMac to a new Mac Mini. Can I just connect the external drive with the Time Machine backup on it to the Mac Mini, open the Backups.backupdb folder and copy all of the files in the "Latest" backup? Will these be full versions of the files? I spoke with a couple of Apple Support techs and one said that all of the backups were "threaded" together, thus my concern about getting full versions when I just drag and drop from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than going through Time Machine or Migration Assistant. The other tech said yes, the files in the "Latest" folder in the Backups.backupdb would be full versions, but I'm still not convinced.
Would prefer not to go the Migration Assistant or "restoring" through Time Machine. In some of my tests I wasn't comfortable with the way it worked.
Has anybody done this before - copying files directly from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than "restoring" through Time Machine?
--Newsads

I need to transfer several gigabytes of files from a Time Machine Backup of an older iMac to a new Mac Mini. Can I just connect the external drive with the Time Machine backup on it to the Mac Mini, open the Backups.backupdb folder and copy all of the files in the "Latest" backup? Will these be full versions of the files? I spoke with a couple of Apple Support techs and one said that all of the backups were "threaded" together, thus my concern about getting full versions when I just drag and drop from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than going through Time Machine or Migration Assistant. The other tech said yes, the files in the "Latest" folder in the Backups.backupdb would be full versions, but I'm still not convinced.
Would prefer not to go the Migration Assistant or "restoring" through Time Machine. In some of my tests I wasn't comfortable with the way it worked.
Has anybody done this before - copying files directly from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than "restoring" through Time Machine?
--Newsads

What files are included in the OSX Server backup?

Hey,
I'm a bit worried about my mail database on my OSX 10.8 Server.
I'm using Time Machine all the time to backup the server but I'm not quite sure if the mail database (send/recieved/folders/users) of all my accounts are saved with Time Machine or not.
Does anyone know what directories are saved using Time Machine on a Server? Was digging through the backup but it told me I don't have rights to view the filders :/ bummer
Thanks in advance

Hello Daniel,
For the list of supported 'filetypes' which the ESA should be able to identify is when you click on attachment-filetypes on the content filter, the drop down would give a general classification as well as the list of supported extension.
If you do not see the extension within the list here, then the suggested workaround is to use regex matching for the extension file names.
attachment file info -> filename -> contains -> (?i)(\.(java|jar|js|jsx|jse|job))
Regards,
Matthew

"No such file or directory" errors on Time Machine backup volume

I remotely mounted the Time Machine backup volume onto another Mac and was looking around it in a Terminal window and discovered what appeared to be a funny problem. If I "cd" into some folders (but not all) and do a "ls -la" command, I get a lot of "No such file or directory" errors for all the subfolders, but all the files look fine. Yet if I go log onto the Mac that has the backup volume mounted as a local volume, these errors never appear for the exact same location. Even more weird is that if I do "ls -a" everything appears normal on both systems (no error messages anyway).
It appears to be the case that the folders that have the problem are folders that Time Machine has created as "hard links" to other folders which is something that Time Machine does and is only available as of Mac OS X 10.5 and is the secret behind how it avoids using up disk space for files that are the same in the different backups.
I moved the Time Machine disk to the second Mac and mounted the volume locally onto it (the second Mac that was showing the problems), so that now the volume is local to it instead of a remote mounted volume via AFP and the problem goes away, and if I do a remote mount on the first Mac of the Time Machine volume the problem appears on the first Mac system that was OK - so basically by switching the volume the problem switches also on who shows the "no such file or directory" errors.
Because of the way the problem occurs, ie only when the volume is remote mounted, it would appear to be an issue with AFP mounted volumes that contain these "hard links" to folders.
There is utility program written by Amit Singh, the fella who wrote the "Mac OS X Internals" book, called hfsdebug (you can get it from his website if you want - just do a web search for "Mac OS X Internals hfsdebug" if you want to find it ). If you use it to get a little bit more info on what's going on, it shows a lot of details about one of the problematic folders. Here is what things look like on the first Mac (mac1) with the Time Machine locally mounted:
mac1:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac1:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 48
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 12 me staff 442 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 104 me staff 7378 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 19 me staff 850 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac1:xxx me$ hfsdebug Documents/ | head
<Catalog B-Tree node = 12589 (sector 0x18837)>
path = MyBackups:/yyy/xxx/Documents
# Catalog File Record
type = file (alias, directory hard link)
indirect folder = MyBackups:/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135
file ID = 728505
flags = 0000000000100010
. File has a thread record in the catalog.
. File has hardlink chain.
reserved1 = 0 (first link ID)
mac1:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac1:xxx me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac1:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
total 17720
135 drwxrwxrwx 91 me staff 3944 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 5 me staff 204 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
146 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 68 Feb 17 2009 .parallels-vm-directory
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
148 drwxr-xr-x 2 me staff 136 Aug 28 2009 ACPI
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
So you can see from the first few lines of the "ls -a" command, it shows some file/folders but you can't tell which yet. The next "ls -la" command shows which names are files and folders - that there are some folders (like ACPI) and some files (like A.txt and A9.txt) and all looks normal. And the "hfsdebug" info shows some details of what is really happening in the "Documents" folder, but more about that in a bit.
And here are what a "ls -a" and "ls -al" look like for the same locations on the second Mac (mac2) where the Time Machine volume is remote mounted:
mac2:xxx me$ pwd
/Volumes/MyBackups/yyy/xxx
mac2:xxx me$ ls -a
. .DS_Store D2
.. Documents D3
mac2:xxx me$ ls -lai
total 56
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 .
282780 drwxr-xr-x 13 me staff 398 Jan 17 14:03 ..
286678 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 21508 Jan 19 10:43 .DS_Store
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 Documents
729750 drwx------ 217 me staff 7334 Jan 15 14:17 D2
728506 drwx------ 25 me staff 806 Jan 14 09:19 D3
mac2:xxx me$ cd Documents
mac2:Documents me$ ls -a | head
.DS_Store
.localized
.parallels-vm-directory
.promptCache
ACPI
ActivityMonitor2010-12-1710p32.txt
ActivityMonitor2010-12-179pxx.txt
mac2:Documents me$ ls -lai | head
ls: .parallels-vm-directory: No such file or directory
ls: ACPI: No such file or directory
... many more "ls: ddd: No such file or directory" error messages appear - there is a one-to-one
correspondence between the "ddd" folders and the "no such file or directory" error messages
total 17912
728505 drwxrwxrwx 116 me staff 3900 Jan 7 02:53 .
280678 drwxr-xr-x 6 me staff 264 Jan 20 01:23 ..
144 -rw-------@ 1 me staff 39940 Jan 15 14:27 .DS_Store
145 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 0 Oct 20 2008 .localized
147 -rwxr-xr-x 1 me staff 8 Mar 20 2010 .promptCache
151 -rw-r--r-- 1 me staff 6893 Dec 17 10:36 A.txt
152 -rw-r--r--@ 1 me staff 7717 Dec 17 10:54 A9.txt
If you look very close a hint as to what is going on is obvious - the inode for the Documents folder is 152 on the local mounted case (the first set of code above for mac1), and it's 728505 in the remote mounted case for mac2. So it appears that these "hard links" to folders have an extra level of folder that is hidden from you and that AFP fails to take into account, and that is what the "hfsdebug" shows even better as you can clearly see the REAL location of the Documents folder is in something called "/.HFS+ Private Directory Data%000d/dir_135" that is not even visible to the shell. And if you look closely in the remote mac2 case, when I did the "cd Documents" I don't go into the inode 135, but into the inode 728505 (look close at the "." entry for the "ls -la" commands on both mac1 and mac2) which is the REAL problem, but have no idea how to get AFP to follow the extra level of indirection.
Anyone have any ideas how to fix this so that "ls -l" commands don't generate these "no such file or folder" messages?
I am guessing that the issue is really something to do with AFP (Apple File Protocol) mounted remote volumes. The TimeMachine example is something that I used as an example that anyone could verify the problem. The real problem for me has nothing to do with Time Machine, but has to do with some hard links to folders that I created on another file system totally separate from the Time Machine volume. They exhibit the same problem as these Time Machine created folders, so am pretty sure the problem has nothing to do with how I created hard links to folders which is not doable normally without writing a super simple little 10 line program using the link() system call - do a "man 2 link" if you are curious how it works.
I'm well aware of the issues and the conditions when they can and can't be used and the potential hazards. I have an issue in which they are the best way to solve a problem. And after the problem was solved, is when I noticed this issue that appears to be a by-product of using them.
Do not try these hard links to folders on your own without knowing what they're for and how to use them and not use them. They can cause real problems if not used correctly. So if you decide to try them out and you loose some files or your entire drive, don't say I didn't warn you first.
Thanks ...
-Bob

The problem is Mac to Mac - the volume that I'm having the issue with is not related in any way to Time Machine or to TimeCapsule. The reference to TIme Machine is just to illustrate the problem exists outside of my own personal work with hard links to folders on HFS Extended volumes (case-sensitive in this particular case in case that matters).
I'm not too excited about the idea of snooping AFP protocol to discover anything that might be learned there.
The most significant clue that I've seen so far has to do with the inode numbers for the two folders shown in the Terminal window snippets in the original post. The local mounted case uses the inode=728505 of the problematic folder which is in turn linked to the hidden original inode of 135 via the super-secret /.HFS+... folder that you can't see unless using something like the "hfsdebug" program I mentioned.
The remote mounted case uses the inode=728505 but does not make the additional jump to the inode=135 which is where lower level folders appear to be physically stored.
Hence the behavior that is seen - the local mounted case is happy and shows what would be expected and the remote mounted case shows only files contained in the problem folder but not lower-level folders or their contents.
From my little knowledge of how these inode entries really work, I think that they are some sort of linked list chain of values, so that you have to follow the entire chain to get at what you're looking for. If the chain is broken somewhere along the line or not followed correctly, things like this can happen. I think this is a case of things not being followed correctly, as if it were a broken chain problem then the local mounted case would have problems also.
But the information for this link in the chain is there (from 728505 to the magic-135) but for some reason AFP doesn't make this extra jump.
Yesterday I heard back from Apple tech support and they have confirmed this problem and say that it is a "implementation limitation" with the AFP client. I think it's a bug, but that will have to be up to Apple to decide now that it's been reported. I just finished reporting this as a bug via the Apple Bug Reporter web site -- it's bug id 8926401 if you want to keep track it.
Thanks for the insights...
-Bob

What's The ETA On A Time Machine Backup After Mavericks Install?

Installed Mavericks and all is fine, albeit took forever to install, I updated from Mountain Lion.
The Time Machine backup is taking forever, over an hour and still "Preparing Backup", any thoughts?
I re-mapped the HDD in time machine preferences, and since Mountain Lion killed acces to my WHS, I have an external HDD hooked directly to my MBPro via USB.
Details:
- MB Pro mid 2010
- 4 GB Memory
- WD 1TB External HDD hooked up to the MB Pro via USB
Thoughts?
Thanks.

Well, round 2 now....I fully realize time is dependent on the amount of data to back up, but given my backups are frequent this is a bit too long.
If they overwrite past backups that'll stink, but that's were redundency comes in on the users part.
I now realize I wasn't getting the 'new' icon look, so I turned time machine off and back on...now I got the "new" icon...So I will wait and see, it's been 30 minuntes so far and still "preparing backup".
We'll see what happens.

Where can I find mail messages I saved in the time machine backup

I am trying to retrieve e-mail messages I had saved in folders from my time machine backup. Where do I find them ?

Put the icon in the menu bar (if not already there) ->System Preferences->Time Machine->Show Time Machine status in menu bar.
Then, while in Mail, click the icon, and select "Enter Time Machine"
Locate the emails in Time Machine, then select Restore.

Why are excluded folders in Time Machine Backups?

I have my top-level Virtual Machines folder excluded from Time Machine Backups. Yet, they are there, granted, only back to the top of this month, 4 days ago, but, there they are.
Why is this?

No, it has been in the exclusion list since June 2013 when I got the AirPort Time Capsule. (and even before that, when I got VirtualBox)

Magic Mouse Unusable during Wireless Time Machine Backup

Hello,
I have had the 500gb model Time Capsule for some time which I am using for Time Machine backups. Since its release I have had a Magic Mouse and every time a Time Machine backup is initiated it interfere's with my Magic Mouse and renders it unusable until the backup completes. I have been holding out for a update/fix but none have worked, I would even settle for the ability to configure Time Machine only to backup over night. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards,
- LzK

Take a look at this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12814835&#12814835

What SPECIFIC files are backed up by Time Machine?

I'm running os x leopard server on a mac mini. (WE HAVE A VERY small SHOP HERE.) I am practicing a TM backup with a G5 iMac to the server. TM on the iMac says it is backing up about 11.5 GB wirelessly to the mini. I know for a fact that there is no more than 5.9 GB in the user account on the iMac, as I burned a DVD before using TM. The admin account on the mini has no user data. Data is define as word, excel, etc. I excluded system files & applications from the TM backup. So what is going on here? I'm toying with going back to DejaVue, which seemed to work fairly well. I'm only interested in backing up the word, excel and mail file types of things, none of the system restoration crap. Suggestions welcome

Unless you have excluded something in Time Machine prefs, I believe it backs up everything except cache files and scratch files.
However, I believe that when TM indicates it is backing up X MB of data it is including everything it might possibly have to back up, without regard to exclusions.
The best way to determine how much is actually backed up is to go in the Finder to the TM backup drive, and in the backupdb folder select the name of the source computer and one of the folders with a date and time as its name, and do a "Get Info" on that folder.
And bear in mind that even though each dated snapshot folder will report in Get Info as being a certain size, that is not accurate as to the total amount of drive space used because TM uses hard links so only one copy of a (version of a) file is stored on the backup drive.
I am using Time Machine to back up my entire startup drive and it is operating quite efficiently. It's nice to know that if necessary I can restore my system with just a couple mouse clicks.

What are the stages of Time machine backup

I often leave my Time Machine to back up and am never really sure where it is in the process. For example, where does "Indexing backup" come in the process? Is it almost done when it's indexing?
I've seen many others have problems with this stage lasting a long time. What happens if I stop the backup during indexing? Are my files already backed up? Would I be able to restore from the un-indexed backup?
Thanks

If you see indexing for more than a few moments, and especially on a number of backups, there's likely a problem of some sort. Just what depends to some extent on what version of OSX your Mac is running.
If you cancel a backup before it completes normally, you cannot view or restore anything from it.
You can always tell if a backup has completed successfully, by clicking the TM icon in your menubar and/or going to System Preferences > Time Machine. If it shows a recent date & time for Latest Backup, that's when it was done.

Can't copy some files from FileVault Sparsebundle in Time Machine backup

I've got filevault turned on for my mac Mac Mini (10.6.2). I'm using Time Machine to back up to a firewire drive. There's plenty of space - my Mini hd has 250 Gb of 500 used, and I'm backing up to a 750Gb partition on the external drive. The initial backup went OK, and when I logged out it backed up my filevault-protected home directory. When I logged back in, I was able to browse the Backups.backupdb on the external drive, go to the users directory, and open the sparsebundle that was my filevault-protected home directory (after entering the password). I can browse through this backup of my home directory. However, when I try copying files from the backup of the home directory, I get an error:
The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "(filename)" can't be read or written. (Error code -36).
I get this error for some files, but not all of them. I've tried running BatChmod to reset permissions on all files in my home directory, and then erasing the backup drive and having Time Machine recreate the backup. However I'm still having this problem.
I have also tried restoring the entire hard drive (to a 3rd external HD) by booting from the 10.6 DVD and going through the full-restore process. All of my files are fine when I restore using this method.
Is there something I should do so that I can restore individual files from the backup of my filevault sparsebundle? It is extremly inconvenient to have to do a full hard drive restore if all I want is a file or two, and of course if the motherboard on my mini dies and I can't get a close enough replacement computer, then I could really be up a creek.
Thanks,
John F
New York

feinberj wrote:
I've got filevault turned on for my mac Mac Mini (10.6.2). I'm using Time Machine to back up to a firewire drive. There's plenty of space - my Mini hd has 250 Gb of 500 used, and I'm backing up to a 750Gb partition on the external drive. The initial backup went OK, and when I logged out it backed up my filevault-protected home directory. When I logged back in, I was able to browse the Backups.backupdb on the external drive, go to the users directory, and open the sparsebundle that was my filevault-protected home directory (after entering the password). I can browse through this backup of my home directory. However, when I try copying files from the backup of the home directory, I get an error:
The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "(filename)" can't be read or written. (Error code -36).
I get this error for some files, but not all of them. I've tried running BatChmod to reset permissions on all files in my home directory, and then erasing the backup drive and having Time Machine recreate the backup. However I'm still having this problem.
I have also tried restoring the entire hard drive (to a 3rd external HD) by booting from the 10.6 DVD and going through the full-restore process. All of my files are fine when I restore using this method.
Is there something I should do so that I can restore individual files from the backup of my filevault sparsebundle?
Don't try to restore files individually by hand using finder. TM backups are protected by very restrictive ACLs and are not designed to be accessed that way.
you can restore the whole sparse bundle with the home directory from TM interface. you should be logged in as a different user when you do this. the easiest is to be logged in as root so as not to deal with any permissions issues.
another thing you might try is doing it from command line instead of finder. this is also not the designed way but might work where finder copy doesn't.
to do this run the following terminal command after you mount the sparse bundle with backups of the home directory
ditto --noacl path/to/source/file /path/to/target/directory
here path/to/source file is the path to the file in the sparse bundle you want to restore and path/to target directory is the path to the folder where you want to copy it to. an easy way to get the path to an item is to drag that item to the terminal window. make sure that you have all the spaces correctly in the command.
It is extremly inconvenient to have to do a full hard drive restore if all I want is a file or two, and of course if the motherboard on my mini dies and I can't get a close enough replacement computer, then I could really be up a creek.
Thanks,
John F
New York

What Files are Saved during a Time Machine Backup??

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