time machine not completely backing up certain folders

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Level 1

112 points

time machine not completely backing up certain folders

Has anyone run into a problem with their Time Machine continually neglecting to backup one or two of their folders? I know some people have problems with TM not backing up items on their desktop, but my desktop data is fine. There are just two folders (as far as I know) that TM refuses to back up (unless there are new items, then it will backup only those items). One is my 'documents' folder. And another folder I created called 'OS media'.

About my setup:

I recently set up Time Machine with my Macbook Pro (running Mavericks). TM is backing up the internal SSD along with an external hard drive that is always attached via USB. The drive they are being backed up onto is a Western Digital My Book Live via wifi--which I know is not advised as it is not officially approved by Apple, but I'm hoping that's not the cause of this particular problem. Because otherwise the MBL has been working pretty well.

More details:

Both of the problem folders happen to be from the external hard drive (not internal SSD), and in the first tier of folders. But the other folders on that tier (about five other folders) are fully entact in TM, so I don't think it's an issue with the external HD. And the missing files are not a certain file type, they are all the sub-folders and files under the problem folders.

I went into the Western Digital (Time Machine) drive itself via Finder and verified that the files are indeed missing, so it wasn't a lag issue. And I have nothing excluded from backups in TM preferences.

I noticed that within those two problem folders, if any file was modified or created within that folder since my initial TM full backup (about two weeks ago), even if it was just a modified .ds_store file, TM would begin to include that file in the backup. This make me guess the problem was something that happened during the initial TM backup. The folders were somehow missed, and subsequent TM incremental backups aren't able to detect that it's missing. So unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm just going to try to redo a full backup. I'm reluctant though, because it's going to take about two days to complete, and I really have no idea if it's even going to help.

And I don't know if this is related, but when I'm in Time Machine and I do a search for any of my files, I always get zero results.

Important sidenote:

While browsing my folders in Time Machine (Star Wars view), I found that clicking on an alias to a folder would open up that folder, but it didn't show the contents of the folder as they were in that particular backup version; instead, it showed the contents of that folder as they appeared in my computer currently. In other words, it appeared that I was looking at an old backup version of the folder, but it was actually the present time folder. This could easily mislead someone into thinking that their current data is backed up, when it is not.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 30, 2014 2:05 PM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 8

47,586 points

May 30, 2014 2:38 PM in response to oregonjoe

oregonjoe wrote:

The drive they are being backed up onto is a Western Digital My Book Live via wifi--which I know is not advised as it is not officially approved by Apple, but I'm hoping that's not the cause of this particular problem.

The reason it is not supported is so that people won't post questions just like this one. You have no idea what is going on behind the scenes to make all of that work. You don't want to trust your data to that.

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Answer 2

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

112 points

May 30, 2014 3:37 PM in response to etresoft

Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?

There are people who have problems using TM with MBL, and there are people use them without issues. Instead of assuming that the MBL is the issue, I'd like to first see if this is a problem unrelated to the MBL, that perhaps others might know about. I've already considered that the MBL may be the problem. But I'm going to take 5 seconds to entertain the possibility that it's not, before I ditch it.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,577 points

May 30, 2014 3:43 PM in response to oregonjoe

You shouldn't be using that device with Time Machine, but if you're going to risk losing your data anyway, see below.

Open the Time Machine preference pane and unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Options button. If there is one particular folder with items that are not being backed up reliably, add it to the list of excluded items. If there are many such folders, add your home folder to the list, or add a whole volume (i.e., what Apple calls a "disk.") Save the changes.

Start a backup, or wait for one to happen automatically. When it's done, open the preference pane again and remove the exclusion(s) you made earlier. Back up again and see whether there's a change.

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

142,698 points

May 30, 2014 3:59 PM in response to oregonjoe

oregonjoe wrote:

Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?

No, but you must understand that Time Machine does not support the configuration you are using.

The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:

AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected either to the source Mac, or a Mac on your local network.

That is all.

Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using third party NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless in the dire circumstances in which they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

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Answer 5

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

112 points

May 30, 2014 4:16 PM in response to John Galt

I appreciate the concerns. I do understand the risk, which is why I'm only using MBL as a redundant wireless incremental backup until I can afford a Time Capsule at a later time. I run another TM backup to a USB hard drive connected directly to my macbook weekly.

Thanks for the instructions, Linc. I tried it on the smaller of the two problem folders (the other one is way is too huge, as it contains about half of my entire data), but it didn't work--the data was still missing. I'm going to go ahead and redo a full TM backup, and hope it was just a hiccup in the initial backup. I know the track record of this thing stinks so I'm not getting my hopes up too high.

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Answer 6

etresoft

Level 8

47,586 points

May 30, 2014 4:38 PM in response to oregonjoe

oregonjoe wrote:

Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?

It is not the posting of the question that is the problem. It is the fact that your data is not being reliably backed up. That is not something that Apple or anyone in this forum can help with.

Apple published changes to its networking protocol in 2002. Then, in 2011, it decided to adopt those changes (improved security) and reject the old code. The software that you are depending on promptly broke. It has been updated since then. But the question is - are you running code from 2003 or 2013? There is a difference. If Western Digital is advertising Time Machine compatibility, then this is Western Digital's problem.

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Answer 7

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

112 points

Jun 2, 2014 2:02 PM in response to etresoft

Thanks for the details. I definitely agree, MBL or any other non-Apple-supported backup setup should not be depended on. In my case, I'm not depending on it since I have another more dependable backup. This is merely an added extra measure since I already have the drive, and a temporary measure at that.

As an update to my situation, I went ahead and re-ran the initial full TM backup with the MBL drive. Before doing so, I realized a possible connection between the two problem folders (the ones that showed up empty in the TM backup). Both folders reside on the external drive (which is always connected to my Macbook). Of course, there are other folders on the external drive that had no problem, but the other commonality was that both folders had ALIASES that pointed to them which resided on the INTERNAL ssd in my macbook. (Kind of. One of the folders didn't have an alias itself, but the three folders within it had aliases.) So my working theory is that during the initial backup, TM backed up the internal ssd aliases, and then when it got to the corresponding folders on the external drive, it assumed it already backed them up and ignored them. BUT after re-running the initial full backup (without changing anything), the folders are now backed up in TM, and everything appears to be as it should. So I guess it was just a hiccup in the first execution. Here's hoping I'm one of the lucky ones with the MBL...

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Answer 8

jencorti

Level 1

0 points

Jun 9, 2014 3:26 PM in response to oregonjoe

This is happening to me and I have a time capsule. Nothing is exculding in TM preferences. Time machine is not backing up my documents or desktop. Of course I learned of this after my mac crashed and apple care had to reinstall my operating system..... wish I knew...

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Answer 9

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

112 points

Jun 9, 2014 4:14 PM in response to jencorti

I'm sorry to hear that, jencorti. I know how frustrating it is to lose valuable data because of silly glitches, especially when it's from a software that's designed to prevent precisely that!

The missing desktop folder seems to be a highly reported issue in these forums. But I'm not sure what the cause or fix is.

In my case, the missing folders might have been due to lack of 3rd party compatibility support, but in jencorti's case, it was with all within the Apple ecosystem. I wonder how many other people have had this issue, or are about to have it and don't know it yet (including those with the missing desktop folder issue).

This leads to the obvious and necessary question: is there an easy way within TM (or another utility perhaps) to verify that every folder and file is getting backed up, before finding out too late that certain files or entire folders were missed? It might be easy enough to enter TM and manually check some of your top tier folders, but it would be a pain to have to check on a regular basis--and it would be darn near impossible to check every folder and file in your system. An automatic verification process that alerts you when things don't match up would be extremely valuable, instead of having it go under the radar until d-day.

I'm thinking the tricky issue though is TM sees what it sees, so how do we ask it to see what it doesn't see? In other words, I'm sure it would not have missed those folders if it could have helped it at all. So it would be futile to have it double check? Unless it were possible to give it some sort of independent verification process that has "fresh eyes". ?? I dunno, I'm not a programmer.

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