I Loaded a backup from my time machine yesterday when I felt it was being laggy, I saved a full backup before I restored the computer, theN when it was done I had about 50 gigs of harddrive space now empty that used to be full. I tried again and more stuff when missing. When I go into time machine I can't find it. What do I do??
Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Try a disk recovery app:
Top Ten Mac File Recovery Review 2015
you may be able to download a demo of Data Rescue 4, and the demo will give you an idea of what it can recover. If it looks promising, you then can buy the software.
After the original restore did you look at the free space amount and assume things must be missing or did you actually have files and/or applications missing? I ask because TimeMachine does not back up temporary files, swap files, caches, or TM snapshots all of which can add up to a heft amount of space. It is possible that the restore actually worked properly and seeing that the drive was now less full than it had been just assumed it went awry. Of course it is also possible that the restore wasn’t successful but you should have gotten an error message. TM does have its quirks which is why I also back up my computer with CarbonCopyCloner. My motto is two backups are better than one and three is better than two.
Time machine didn't restore all the data and now it doesn't show up in the latest backup.
