Can't see older Time Machine Backups

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Level 1

62 points

Can't see older Time Machine Backups

I accidentally deleted a file, and wanted to recover it from a backup from about a week ago. However, when I enter the Time Machine, and try to go back beyond yesterday, the backups show on the right hand side of the screen (the timeline), but when I click on a date nothing happens. I have tried waiting for a couple of minutes, but still nothing. Any idea what could be wrong?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 27, 2021 9:33 AM

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Answer 1

rpg25 Author

Level 1

62 points

Dec 28, 2021 7:57 AM in response to rpg25

I'm not sure what solved my problem, but it was some combination of two things:

Making sure that the Finder was pointed at the internal disk drive when I opened Time Machine. I don't fully understand this, but I have read some discussions that suggest that the Time Machine may be (mis-) aimed by the Finder's context. (If so, this seems like not a great UI choice). This would be consistent, because the directory I was looking to recover from was relatively short-lived, and I needed to find the day when it was still there.
Waiting. It took multiple minutes to get the Time Machine to respond to requests for older backups. I don't know if this is normal, but there was no indicator on the screen that it was reading the backups, which again would not be a great UI choice, since it is hard to distinguish between "there's no backup here," and "there's a backup here, but it will take TM some time to pull the older backup entries."

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Answer 2

Jack-19

Level 8

46,248 points

Dec 28, 2021 3:54 AM in response to rpg25

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities.

First, Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support and try to Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support.

If the issue persists, run First Aid on your external Time Machine drive: Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support. Also, please go to Disk Utility (Finder > Go > Utilities), and select "View" > "Show All Devices". Select each device (or entry shown) for your Time Machine drive, and take a screenshot of them and upload all the images here.

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 3

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,108 points

Dec 28, 2021 6:10 AM in response to rpg25

Open TM then use shift-command-c and it will show your drives. You may then try to go back in time and search for the file you want by opening the drive and then the folders.

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Can't see older Time Machine Backups

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