My backups cannot be accessed inside Time Machine; the date bars to the right of the screen are all red. My hard drive shows that all backups exist, so I am confused as to how to crack this particular nut. Is there a way to make the backups accessible again?
Thank you.
Wow! You know, I think it's all there. For some reason I'd always associate red with inaccessible/locked/deleted. As a result I'd not even attempted to restore any items...
Thanks for you valuable help! It's taught me a fair amount.
It's a USB3 drive yes, a LaCie one although I have been connecting it to my iMac with the Thunderbolt port.
I searched for my Volumes as you suggested. No drives have a 1 at the end. Do you think I should try connecting with a USB3 connection?
Thank you, but that's not quite what I had in mind. The red bars I mention refer to the bars at the right of my T.M. screen, as you can see in my screenshot. Although backups are still being taken, none of them can be accessed.
As far as I can tell the red bars mean drive not available. Is it a USB3 drive?
If a drive looses a connection during use, may not exist after a restart or Finder Quit...
In Finder's Menu, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes". (no quotes)
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra 1 on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists.
Are you sure they're inaccessible?
A bright red tick mark is a backup that can be restored now, either from a local snapshot or your backup drive. When your backup drive isn't available, only the local snapshots are bright red.
A dimmed red tick mark is a backup that can be restored from your backup drive after that drive becomes available. Until then, the stack of windows on the screen shows a blank window for that backup.
Screenshot
Is this a Networked Drive or directly connected?
Directly.
Never can tell, but I think USB3 won't help.
I further think that it must've been a temporary disconnect at some point.
In Sys Prefs>Sharing, does the computer Name have a number after it?
No, no number...
Great to hear! :)
Time machine backups present but not accessible (red bar)
