Level 2

203 points

Missing Time Machine backups post Catalina Upgrade

My upgrade to Catalina on my 2013 iMac has not been smooth. Glitches with OneDrive resulted in significant data loss that I am attempting to recover with my previously stable and reliable Drobo Time Machine backups.

Catalina Time Machine reports backups available going back to May 16, 2019 with the last successful backup completed at 11:00 today (10/10). However, when I enter Time Machine to recover files I am only able to see backup snapshots kept locally on the mac, which only span a few days. Backups captured prior to my upgrade to Catalina appear to have been dropped.

In looking at the Drobo I have a Time Machine Share with 4 TBs of available space. Within that folder I now have a iMac.backupbundle at 1.3 TB which does not capture my full system backup at ~2.43 TB with apps and few exclusions.

There is a second file, iMac.purgeable that shows the May 16th date noted in the System pane for TM, but no size is returned.

Over the years I know TM will create new backups when verification fails and in this instance I can't recall the last time my iMac backup required a new file.

Anyone else running into this?

my upgrade wasn't simple, like a few people my system hung up on the "Setting up" screen requiring that I force a reboot AND I had issues with Apple ID credentials on my keychain, resulting in what seemed like a loop of login request, which resolved. Outside of the OneDrive data loss and this TM issue I haven't noticed any other issues.

Anyone else run into this or have a suggestion on how I may be able to recover? This is a significant data loss for me.

Thank you

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 10, 2019 3:42 PM

Similar questions

34 replies

Jason Golden Author

Level 2

203 points

Oct 17, 2019 2:38 PM in response to Jason Golden

For those of you following this thread, I wanted to link to a related thread re: "Time Machine gets stuck at end..."

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250747673?answerId=251437770022#251437770022

I've extended my experence with this thread and asked a few clarifying questions. If you get a chance it may help to share yours as well. I've listed a few questions I thought might narrow the search, feel free to contribute.

h_bakken

Level 1

8 points

Oct 25, 2019 10:49 AM in response to Jason Golden

Just got off the phone with Apple senior service advisor specializing in Time Machine support.

When you attempt Time Machine backup from Catalina, it renames the sparsebundle extension as a backupbundle.

Apparently this is to prevent access to individual backups in Finder which could corrupt data if one attempted to delete an individual backup since all backups are linked.

My understanding is that with Catalina Time Machine, you cannot access individual files from Finder like in the past, however, you can still access them in Time Machine app.

All I had to do was change the extension back to sparsebundle and am now able to see my old Mojave backups on the Finder (and I presume from within Time Machine as well).

You can apparently go back and forth by changing the extension without risk of corrupting anything.

I will then keep this old sparsebundle backup by renaming it, at least for a week or so until I am sure I have all the old data I want to save.

When I do a new Time Machine backup from my Catalina OS it will generate a new backupbundle file which can only be accessed through Time Machine app, although I understand I can convert back to sparsebundle and access backups and individual files from finder if I want, as long as I change the extension back to backupbundlen after I am done, so Time Machine will continue to work from Catalina.

I am now dragging across missing data from my old folders, looks like my problem is solved.

Also I had interrupted my initial attempt to do a Time Machine backup from Catalina, so I deleted this file as I am cleaning up a lot of old data that I don't want any more.

Hope this helps you.

Hans Bakken

Jason Golden Author

Level 2

203 points

Nov 6, 2019 7:35 PM in response to Jason Golden

Quick update:

Apple has reached out and requested logs produced by a terminal job that runs and collects information on Time Machine, I'm forwarding that over today.

If you've opened a ticket ask if this step is needed and ask for guidance on producing similar data for Apple. Today's lates update again "reset" the snapshots I have access to via the TM interface, yet the image suggest I have data going aback to May 2019 I can only see snapshots for the hours AFTER today's update.

Something to watch.

Jason Golden Author

Level 2

203 points

Nov 12, 2019 5:40 PM in response to Jason Golden

Update: its been about a week since I sent my computers logs to Apple via the Feedback Ticket I created. Since then I've installed all recent macOS updates as they come through and review my issue each time before and after a reboot.

The machine continues to complete backups successfully to my Drobo, but still only displays snapshots going back to the previous day (local snapshots).

At point point I activated the TM UI and was able to see my backups going to May of 2019, but that went away after I rebooted the machine reverting back to last 48 hrs available only.

I am seeing more activity around this topic in my Google Alerts, hoping the attention will help.

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Missing Time Machine backups post Catalina Upgrade