Q: Time Machine not working with Yosemite

Don't know if you have read thru this entire thread, but for many of us, selecting the top level of your hard drive in Finder before entering Time Machine will allow access to your stored files. (The links on the sidebar of Finder don't work.) It's not a real solution, but Is a useable work around.

For me it was unsucessful. I tried in both following ways :

Way 1: Selecting top level of Macintosh HD before entering TM, then entering TM, then browsing to the folder. It did not work. Still greyed out.

Way 2: Entering TM, selecting top level Macintosh HD, then browsing again from there. Still greyed out. Did not work either.

Half the posters here have this problem and the other half are offering work-arounds.  I too am experiencing the same time-machine issue.  Sometimes the "work-around" of selecting the hard drive first works, but lately it hasn't.  Something is broken in Yosemite, so fix it Apple!

This is what mine was doing with the greyed restore on the drive and no backup history in Time Machine. Then I went to the disk utility and found my hard drive needed to be repaired.  After I fixed the drive everything has worked fine.  It has worked correctly now for about 2 weeks.

Did you try this? 

I had not tried it. But after I tried now, it looks like the Hard Disk of my MBP does not need any kind of repair at this point. And still Time Machine does not work well.

I also was not able to get Time Machine to work by selecting the top level of "Macintosh HD"; I found instead I could only access my old backup by selecting the top level of my computer (not any particular volume).

To be clear my situation was the following (perhaps a bit different from others in this thread): I had a Time Machine drive for an iMac running Mavericks and I used migration assistant to transfer my data to a new iMac running Yosemite. I then selected "Inherit backup history" when I did the first backup of the new iMac to the Time Machine drive.

When I attempted to access old backup the usual way (i.e. entering Time Machine from some subdirectory of my home directory) I could not access my old backups. I was also not able to access my old backups from the top level of "Macintosh HD" as people had suggested above. However, I had forgotten that I had renamed my internal HD on my old iMac, whereas my new iMac was still named "Macintosh HD" (I'm not sure if this was related to my inability to access backups from "Macintosh HD"). However, when I moved to the top level of my iMac (not a volume), I could access my old backups and navigate down the directory structure.

Am I correct in thinking the confusion (in my case at least) is that Time Machine seems to be organizing the backups in a way that keeps a distinction between the two different drives (either different name or different physical device), and thus won't let you browse back in time from inside the "new" volume, but will let you browse top down from the old backups?

I have this same problem. Installed Yosemite on October 19 onto a 2013 iMac. I also want to know how to make Apple aware of this problem. I have read many similar problems regarding Yosemite and Time machine errors.

I have the same problem. time machine backs up, but all the previous backups are not accessible. The restore button is greyed out.

Thank you for documenting this problem and sending it to Apple for a fix, hopefully very soon!!

FWIW: the folks at AppleCare say the engineers are aware that it's an issue. Anyone with AppleCare should call and add their voice.

My own experience is that Time Machine never finds the pre-update files (before I installed Yosemite) and can access post-update files only if I start at the top level as many posters have mentioned. But sometimes it fails to find anything at all. The solution appears to be a software fix.

I am having the same problems. I had somehow deleted a folder. It is ok because I have Time Machine - or so I thought .

Way 1: Selecting top level of Macintosh HD before entering TM, then entering TM, then browsing to the folder. It did not work. Still greyed out.

Way 2: Entering TM, selecting top level Macintosh HD, then browsing again from there. Still greyed out. Did not work either.

Way 3: Navigating to the Time Machine drive, and navigating through 'Latest' to where my files are and I am finding empty folders that should have my work in them. Not happy! Fortunately I still had an old mac and the files were on there.

Try this:  select the top level of your Macintosh HD and enter Time Machine.  Instead of browsing through your folders, go to the date you wish to back up to via the date bar on the right side of your monitor.  Once you've selected that date, then browse your folders.

I realize this is a "work-around," but it seems to work for me every time.

Try this:  select the top level of your Macintosh HD and enter Time Machine.  Instead of browsing through your folders, go to the date you wish to back up to via the date bar on the right side of your monitor.  Once you've selected that date, then browse your folders.

 

I realize this is a "work-around," but it seems to work for me every time.

Thanks for the tip. When I do this my file structure is incomplete. As in a particular folder should have 50 items in it but is only showing 10. Some folders are empty that shouldn't be. Navigating to that folder via the Finder - Time Machine HD - 'Latest' shows the same behaviour.

I would recommend others dig deep through their TM files to see if anything is missing. Most folders are intact but a random few are empty of incomplete.

There is another bug with Time Machine in Yosemite 10.10...

Look at this link : OS X Yosemite hangs when exiting Time Machine Interface

exactly the same.

will keep an eye on this post