Time Machine only showing me "Today"

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Time Machine only showing me "Today"

I have an external 1.5TB Seagate drive that has been attached to my iMac since Nov 1st, 2009. TM says this:

Available: 405.81 of 1.55 TB
Oldest Backup: November 1, 2009
Latest Backup: Today, 9:54 AM
Next Backup: Today, 12:48 PM

The problem is, when I go into TM, it only shows "Today". There are no dates to go back further to other than "Today". I have had no other indication that TM wasn't working, and I have used it before. This just started yesterday. The disk does show a 1.02TB file called iMac.sparsebundle that has a "Date Modified" or Today, 9:54 AM. If I do "Backup Now", Mac mounts a "Time Machine Backups" disk and I can open that file and see all my backups, 48 folders, containing dates that go back all the way to 11/1/09.... So, I can manually grab my files, if I knew the date, but that's not making it much fun!

thanks for the assistance!

27" iMac, 3.06ghz Dual Core, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jan 9, 2010 9:15 AM

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Answer 1

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V.K.

Level 9

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Jan 9, 2010 9:32 AM in response to m7hammond1

the fact that you have a sparse bundle on the backup drive indicates that it used to be mounted differently and you were backing up over network. network TM backups are stored inside sparse bundles but directly attached ones are stored directly in a folder on the backup drive. when you move a remote drive to be directly attached TM continues backing up to the sparse bundle (not sure why) but when you try to enter TM it does not know that it needs to mount the sparse bundle first as this is normally not needed. that's why you don't see past backups. you can mount the sparse bundle by hand by double-clicking on it. then when you enter TM you'll see past backups. but this is not very convenient so you might want to change your backups arrangement. You can
1. move the drive back to network and back up remotely
2. continue mounting the sparse bundle by hand when you need to
3. trash the sparse bundle and start a new backup sequence which does not use a sparse bundle.
4. use disk utility to restore the contents of the sparse bundle to a directly attached drive and use that drive as the TM drive from now on.

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Answer 2

m7hammond1 Author

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Jan 9, 2010 9:49 AM in response to V.K.

thanks for the insight. The drive used to be attached to my mac mini a long time ago, but that has been since last summer. i would rather go with option 3 and start over. I like the functionality of TM without having to do workarounds.... thanks all!

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Answer 3

Jan 9, 2010 1:24 PM in response to V.K.

I also have the same problem. My time machine backups seem to work fine and I can see them all when I use finder. However, when I open time machine itself it shows me only today, not any previous days. Mounting the sparse bundle by hand doesn't seem to help time machine see it.

I'm pondering trying option 4, wondering if anyone else has done this successfully?

Message was edited by: FrankHoldem

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Answer 4

m7hammond1 Author

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Jan 9, 2010 1:42 PM in response to FrankHoldem

I've deleted the sparsebundle file and have started a new TM backup. The new activity on the external 1.5TB USB drive is now a folder called <tmdrive>\Backups.backupdb\iMac\2010-01-09-12810.inProgress.

I'm hoping this will give me what I want. It's going to take awhile to finish though, I have 750GB to backup first time.

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Answer 5

Jan 9, 2010 1:54 PM in response to m7hammond1

maybe I can also hope that this issue gets fixed in the next update of snow leopard.

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Answer 6

Jan 9, 2010 1:57 PM in response to FrankHoldem

Assuming its a SL fault and not one of a glitch on your machine ?

I would investigated the latter thoroughly and not assume that its something that would be fixed in 10.6.3 as only issues with a LOT of bug reports would make it in.

Have you reported the issue to Apple ?

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