Time Machine not working with Yosemite

Also Disk Utility will not repair Disk Permissions in Yosemite

Malcolm Mason

mmason@rollestonvcb.net

Re install from Time machine Backup

press cmd + R immediately hearing chime but before screen lights up, Release keys on seeing apple logo and follow prompts

Then re install from time machine.

(Time machine fully works in Recovery mode)

Hi yes thats my problem and when I performed your suggestion I was able to navigate the time machine using the ui. So thanks it appears to work well. And you right if you try to click on of the shortcuts on the left it "breaks" navigation. Thanks!

AHappyMacUser:

It is important that I go step by step through the bugs in Time Machine that have to do with the user going into Time Machine, navigating to file(s) and folder(s), highlighting them "back in time" and finally restoring them to Now. This feature does not work right in my iMac 2010.

Here is what happens. I want to restore a document I accidentally deleted, let's say for arguments sake. So, I go to the Time Machine icon in the upper right hand side of the display and I click "Enter Time Machine". When I get in, I see a row of Finder Panels going back in time. However, there is something wrong with them. That is, all except the first in line, the "Now" Finder Panel, are grey. They have no title on them and no red, yellow and green buttons on the left side of each of the panels...grey, grey, grey ancestors.

To the left on the "Now" Panel is the side panel which has about 8 Favorites like All My Files, iCloud Drive, Applications, the User Name house, Applications, Documents, etc. Sometimes in this situation, the Favorites can be clicked and you can navigate in the "now" but you cannot go into the past panels because all of the buttons and red bars with dates on the right side of the interface of Time Machine are dead, frozen. Occasionally, you can come into Time Machine and all the panels are correct, but if you start navigating through the Favorites to reach a file or folder, in a few keystrokes, all of the Finder Panels behind the "Now" panel will turn grey and all buttons including the Favorites will freeze and be useless.

A workaround for this set of bugs is to click the Macintosh HD either within Time Machine or on Finder before you enter Time Machine. Then when in Time Machine, if the Macintosh Hd is clicked, all of the grey panels in the past behind the "Now" panel will turn to the color of your desktop, whether blue or purple or whatever. Now, if you then click any colored panel of your choice, they all will turn to the correct form having a name and the red, yellow and green buttons on the upper left. You may now navigate around within the window of the panel of your choice and go to a variety of folders and /or use the back in time/forward in time buttons or red horizontal bars to the very right of the Time Machine interface. You can highlight the folder to be restored and click restore and it works fine. BUT... if during the procedure, you click any of the Favorites like Documents, or Movies or Music, they will be dead as a door nail.

The reason why I have so carefully follow through above with logical steps for this bug is because I need feed back as to whether all of you folks have the same problem(s) or bugs according to the type and year and model of Macintosh computer. Apple Engineers need this information to know how far this problem goes! My senior advisor and I logged the problem and made a QuickTime Movie of the whole procedure and sent it by email to Apple Developers. On Thursday, 23, 2014, my advisor will call me in the afternoon to tell me what the engineers have to say. I will tell him what you all have replied and reply to you with what he has to say.

The Backup feature of Time Machine must work well or one can lose his or her data forever. This is one of several reported problems with Time Machine. We can get Apple to put out an update that fixes all this, but they need information which I itemized above. Thanks.

Thank you! That's brilliant! 🙂

That did it for me too...

By first going to my main hard drive and then entering Time Machine I was able to access all of my files perfectly.

It seems that Yosemite just needed a "macro view" (or a more complete starting point) before it could go "micro" on a specific folder...

Thanks again!

This has happened for me too. I can navigate only in Desktop and Applications folders but not other folders.

Seeing the exact same issue as described on an Early 2011 MacBook Pro. I'm able to restore files/folders by going to the "Macintosh HD" level.

One other thing that I did however, which also produced the "greyed out history" windows, is attempt to restore "Local Folders" within the Mail app. I know there is probably a way to restore these through restoring files/folders, but it is nice to be able to let Mail itself do it, and since the Mail app itself is obviously not accessible via the "Macintosh HD" approach I've not been able to restore within the app.

Time Machine appears to be fairly well broken in Yosemite. I backup to a Synology NAS but that doesn't matter as I have tried via a USB Hard Drive also and see the same behavior - can't navigate folder history in TM.

hi KJVoice:

It freaked me out the first time I left Mail on and when I went into Time Machine, Mail was in Time Machine! Then I understood. Yes, it is a problem to get earlier emails and data from Mail. To me, the question is where is the database located on the Macintosh HD for Mail. There has to be one. If you knew where it was, you could navigate through Time Machine, first clicking the Macintosh HD, and go to the folder that has the Mail database. It would be a question of knowing how many hours or days since the recorded Mail database that you want was made, go to that hour backup and restore the database of Mail. If this were Office 2011, I could tell you where the Outlook Database is, but I am clueless about where the Mail data is stored on the Macintosh HD.

Stephen

Yes, it is a bear trying to restore previous mail. It isn't worth the trouble. The good news is that my senior advisor got the report back from the engineers at Apple and called me to go over what they have to say about this whole restore issue. i missed his call, of course, but I will hear back from him within 24 hrs. The best way to use time machine is to let the developers fix the problem. Hopefully, my senior advisor's will be "they will put out a future update". We shall see.

What recommendation do you have if you can't even "see" your time machine drive in this manner?

Same issue here.

Absolutely the same behavior. I can access the TM only starting from the root of the disc.

And access is extremely slow if TM is on NAS. Previously, it was fast.

Thanks, AHappyMacUser! - I was sweating bullets on restoring iPhoto library after Time Machine failed to respond to clicking on previous backup dates. This was after a clean install of Yosemite and continuing to use the same Time Machine backup drive as had been used while running Mavericks. Indeed, double-clicking on the hard drive icon and then entering Time Machine did the trick. Many thanks for the tip.

Mike

I upgraded to Yosemite on both iMac and MacBook Pro and on both machines find that if I try to access Time Machine from any of the folders under Favorites in the side bar, Time Machine won't allow me to select any backups. However if I access it from any of the folders under Devices it works, and I can then drill down to any sub-folder and access the backup I want. I restored one old file as a test and it worked. Very odd behaviour, but at least I know I can use my TM backups if needed. Hope this helps some people.

Same issue here as mvia, (including the sweating!). Very glad to have found this thread - thanks to those who posted the solution.

Hopefully Apple will fix this properly in a Yosemite update.