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can't see time machine backups older than 1 day

i have a 2tb time capsule that i've been backing upto for a couple of years now. Recently i have noticed that time machine only shows me the last days worth of backups that are stored on the macbook.


time machine menu shows last back a few hours ago yet i still can't see backups from beyond yesterday.


Time capsule sparsebundle shows last modified as today and is at 1.1tb, my macbook is 500gb 400gb used so there is a healthy amount of backups on that capsules sparse bundle.


i've used disk utility to check the time capsule disk and sparsebundle, no issues and no repairs performed.


any tips for restoring the functionality?

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 14, 2020 3:15 PM

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Posted on May 14, 2020 3:43 PM

Hopefully, you are not running Catalina on your Mac, since this is a common issue.


Power off the Time Capsule

Restart your Mac

Power up the Time Capsule again

Open up Time Machine and wait.......it might be 20-30 minutes or more before everything will load if you are using a WiFi connection.


Would be great if you could temporarily connect your Mac using an Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports on the Time Capsule and turn off the WiFi on the Mac. Sometimes, it still takes 10-15 minutes for everything to load when I use an Ethernet connection.


Post back on your results.





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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 14, 2020 3:43 PM in response to chris-topher

Hopefully, you are not running Catalina on your Mac, since this is a common issue.


Power off the Time Capsule

Restart your Mac

Power up the Time Capsule again

Open up Time Machine and wait.......it might be 20-30 minutes or more before everything will load if you are using a WiFi connection.


Would be great if you could temporarily connect your Mac using an Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports on the Time Capsule and turn off the WiFi on the Mac. Sometimes, it still takes 10-15 minutes for everything to load when I use an Ethernet connection.


Post back on your results.





May 14, 2020 5:10 PM in response to chris-topher

There are no known "fixes" for the issue that you are reporting. Not all Catalina users are affected, and Apple has known about the issue since Catalina was introduced.


Wait it out to see if the backups will appear.


If you want to try an unsupported method that might help, post back. But, I would not attempt to do this unless I had another backup for the Catalina Mac, since there are no guarantees and you may lose the entire backup.


The bottom line.......Time Machine backups are not reliable for Catalina users. Take a look at Carbon Copy Cloner for a reliable backup application.



May 15, 2020 1:21 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks Bob,


i had yesterday entered time machine and left it 20 mins and not seen anything prior to the day before.


This morning i tried again, this time time machine was preparing a back up but i entered any way, came back 15 mins later and it was populated with entries back to June 2019.


i have heard/used a technique for mounting time capsule drive first and then opening time machine and you can then see the historical backups but its not ideal.


i didn't know it was a common issue, Apples Time Machine page had no mention of it and a forum search before posting provided me a bunch of old links & i didn't bother filtering for most recent assuming apple would tell me the most pertinent entries.


Checking again now first attempt saw the historical entries within 40 seconds, 2nd attempt was ~ 20 and all subsequent attempts is ~ 15 seconds.


Something is working much better.


will be taking a read and looking at T2M2 and some other tools over at https://eclecticlight.co/consolation-t2m2-and-log-utilities/ some good reading there too.


As is often the case a problem shared is often a problem resolved i suspect it was the Time Capsule reload (i've read to leave it off at least 10 seconds so it will do a disk check) that did it and a couple of successful auto backups over night.


as a recap


i had mounted time capsule and had disk utility check the disk and sparse bundles

powered off time capsule for 20 seconds

once time capsule was up i checked time machine and didn't see an improvement

on my 10.12 machine i checked its time capsule backup and could see its full history.

left macbook pro running 10.15.4 over night which completed several backups

Checked macbook pro in the morning, leaving time machine open for at least 15 minutes and saw the history, all subsequent time machine checks showed the full history in less than a minute, eventually ~ 15 seconds.


I only rebooted the time capsule, no mac's where reloaded.

May 15, 2020 10:06 AM in response to chris-topher

i didn't know it was a common issue


While Apple pretends that the issue does not exist, or will tell you that "you are the first person that has reported this" if you call them, it has attracted the attention of major publications. Example from MacWorld:


https://www.macworld.com/article/3445481/can-t-find-your-time-machine-backup-after-upgrading-to-catalina-look-for-a-backupbundle.html

can't see time machine backups older than 1 day

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