Time Machine Only Shows Today's Backup

Xildenafil wrote:

Repairing my external drive in Disk Utility did the trick! Thanks guys! Does anyone know why this issue happened in the first place?

Lots of possibilities, unfortunately. 😟

A system crash, abnormal disconnect of the drive (ie, without ejecting it first), power failure (even a momentary "blip"), loose plug, bad cable, or the drive beginning to fail.

And on another frustrating note, now my Time Machine GUI seems to be acting very sluggish. I can select individaul files and move backwards by clicking on old Finder windows in the background, but the Timeline doesn't have that "woosh" effect anymore and I can't select old backups through that method. Anyone know how to remedy this? Thanks!

That might be another sign of a problem with the cable, or the drive beginning to fail. Try items #9 through #14 in the green box in section #B2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

An old thread but nonetheless helpful today. Thank you.

According to that, you have seven snapshots, the oldest from February 2012. Only one of them is visible in the time-travel view? The others don't show at all, not even grayed?

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.

Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:

tmutil listbackups

Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

If any personal information appears in the output, edit before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of this exercise is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account. Enable guest logins and log in as Guest. For instructions, launch the System Preferences application, select Help from the menu bar, and enter “Set up a guest account” (without the quotes) in the search box.

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your personal files or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem(s)?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault in Mac OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

Xildenafil wrote:

Nope, they are not visible at all. The odd thing to me is that when I access Time Machine via Mail, all the old backups up to February 2012 do show up.

So they do exist, and are identified to your Mac, user account, etc. 🙂

When you're starting via the Finder, do you see a "cascade" of Finder windows, and backups listed in the TimeLine on the right, but faded-out so you can't select them?

If so, most likely your Finder window is displaying something that either didn't exist at the time of the backups, or was excluded.

If in doubt, select your Computer in the sidebar (or press Shift+Cmd+C) before entering Time Machine. Then you should be able to select the backups.

If not, try the things in #E4 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

I'm surprised that directory corruption can cause the symptoms you've described: snapshots listed in the TM index, and visible in Mail, but not visible at all, even grayed, in the Finder.

Directory corruption is nearly always caused by a hardware malfunction. It may sometimes be transitory, but if there's any other evidence of impending drive failure, the drive should be considered suspect, at least. In your case, not only is the drive apparently slowing down, but you also have far fewer snapshots than you should have. If you've been backing up automatically, once an hour, then most of your backups have failed.

I had this same problem, but eventually found the solution. I've added to this old thread for search engine purposes (and I couldn't see it in Pondini's guide):

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=60925

I accept this may only affect ReadyNAS, but in summary the permissions were wrong on the backups.backupdb folder. The link above was written by a Frenchman; when he refers to "staff" the correct translation is "Administrators".

Good luck!