How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

Hi Blkcat,

If you are having issues with Time Machine not performing a full backup, you may find the following article helpful:

Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275

Regards,

- Brenden

System Preferences/Time Machine/Options - is your drive in the excluded section? If so, select it and click on the minus sign.

Can you run EtreCheck and post the results of the Time Machine section? I recently added the section on Time Machine and I specifically look for a situation where only the user's home directory is getting backed up. It looks like you may be in that situation.

Download EtreCheck from http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck, run it, and paste the results here.

Disclaimer: Although EtreCheck is free, there are other links on my site that could give me some form of compensation, financial or otherwise.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:

Time Machine:

Skip System Files: NO

Mobile backups: OFF

Auto backup: YES

Volumes being backed up:

Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB

Destinations:

Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)

Total size: 999.86 GB

Total number of backups: 64

Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000

Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000

Size of backup disk: Too small

Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)

Time Machine details may not be accurate.

All volumes being backed up may not be listed.

/sbin excluded from backup!

/usr excluded from backup!

/System excluded from backup!

/bin excluded from backup!

/private excluded from backup!

/Library excluded from backup!

/Applications excluded from backup!

Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?

Thanks,

Darcy

System Preferences/Time Machine/Options - select the item and hit the minus sign.

Fortunately I temporarily fixed the issue by trashing the com.apple.timemachine.plist file in /library/prefs and restarting . The problem is these exclusions are not listed in the system preference pane.

I have similar request about how to do complete TM backup manually. The reason I need this is from my recent Mac OS update from Mavericks to Yosemite. I had clean installation first. Then I used Migration Assistance to get my main account. For the migrated account, I have experienced slowness issue. I went to Apple Store and phoned Apple Care several times. The issue could not be resolved.

Anyway, what I was told is to roll back to my previous OS. The only way I can do it to reboot my Mac in recovery mood and from there I can restore from TM. However, the restoration from there only lists complete backups and my latest one is in Nov 2013, about one year lap! After I did restoration, my iMac was restored to Mountain Lions OS.

My story tells that my TM auto-backs has not been able to do complete backs for very long period of time. I really need to find a way to force TM doing complete backup, in case of any updates. I could erase TM disk and do a complete backup but this will lose all my history data. From TM UI, I could not find a way to do complete backup.

Try section C in the 1st linked article.

Time Machine Troubleshooting

I think I found a easy non-technical solution. (My backup drive was unstable so I wanted a fresh start on a new drive)

If you change your computer name (in sharing preferences) Time machine will do a full backup.

Go to System preferences - sharing and alter/edit computer name in some way.

After doing this I did a restart- (not sure if it was necessary) but then when I went into time machine- it did a full backup.

Hope this is helpful to others.

The progress reporting from Time Machine is so poor, the only way to know if its doing a full backup is to look in the Console - cmd space, type "console". Once in console, type "backup" into the filter field

Look for the text "Forcing deep traversal"...

com.apple.backupd[431]: Forcing deep traversal on source: "Macintosh HD" (device: /dev/disk1 mount: '/' fsUUID: 58A5EE2F-1A7E-3BC7-BBE1-9586F99D131A eventDBUUID: F54D9F07-2C66-4421-8697-97F862DD7A31)

I had tried a number of things which didn't seem to work, then found this tip to prove it was working. It then took 24 hours to backup 73Gb to a local hard disk. These are the steps I took to force a full backup (initial snapshot) to a USB external hard disk...

1. Opened Time Machine preferences, and switched Time Machine OFF
2. Initialised local USB hard disk, using "Disk Utility", selected disk, "Partition" tab, chose a partition layout of 2 partitions making sure one of the partitions is twice the size of my hard disk with format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Click on "Apply" - it took 20 minutes
3. Ejected the disk in Finder, then pulled out the USB cable from my mac.
4. Deleted file "/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist"
5. Renamed my Mac - System Preferences - Sharing. Computer Name: Mike-MBP. I think its important to have a single short word.
6. Rebooted into Safe mode - hold down shift key whilst rebooting
7. Rebooted normally
8. Stood on one leg, put index finger to nose and pointed west.
9. Plugged in USB cable from hard disk.
10. OS X Yosemite detected the disk and asked if I'd like Time Machine to use the disk for backups - clicked on "Use as Backup Disk"
11. The backup automatically started but completely unconvincingly saying "Backing up: 350 bytes of 73.08Gb". I went in to console and there was an entry for "Forcing deep traversal on source". Why don't system programmers speak plain English?

Over the next 24 hours the number slowly increased to "Backing up: 410.6Mb of 73.08Gb" etc... till it eventually got there.

You can probably miss out a number of steps above, but I wasted so much time on this (Time Machine!) I wanted to be 110% sure Sir Alan.

I had initially tried Time Machine to a network disk, but it failed numerous times so decided to start again. But that would mean I wanted to use my Mac pragmatically which is against the Apple ethos of detached conceptual beauty... I love it really, just got a bit frustrated.

As far as I remember, you can connect usb device and wait for some time before attaching power cable to mac.

Then, when you attach power cable, TM starts back up.

Wait for some time say 30 min. Thereafter, connect again and disconnect for 2 to 3 times. Then leave it on for long charging. This by default makes some how full backup.

Basically, interrupting multiple time charging makes things happens for me.

May be works for others too, If so have fun.

A liitle bit late, jut for the records:

tmutil (a commandline tool) is your friend. e.g. in my case (no /usr, no /Applications ... included in the backup, but no signs of this in the exclusion list in timemachine preferences)

tmutil isexcluded /usr

really shows [Excluded], now:

sudo tmutil removeexclusion -p /usr

switches this back to [Included], "-p" means "path exclusion", otherwise the exclusion would stick to the file or directory, even when ist gets moved. I guess the the exclusion in my case was such a "path exclusion".