Time Machine backups gone missing

Having read up on the subject, I've come to realise that I probably did get a pop-up window at some point with

"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."

Which I okayed, but I could never have imagined that creating a new backup means wiping out 6 years of data!!

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens if you"ok" this message. However, it should only delete the backup set for the currently connected computer. If you had made Time Machine backups for other Macs, they would should not be affected by this.

I'm still wondering why I have two different Time Machine -partitions on the disk:

• TimeMachine - including only one sparsebundle backup file (which holds only backups from the last week)
• TimeMachineBackups - which is totally empty

Is it time for me to accept my defeat?

In this case, TimeMachine is the logical volume name of your WD My Book Live device that is used by Time Machine. When Time Machine runs, it will first attempt to mount this volume. It then finds the sparsebundle for your computer's backup which is actually a disk image. It then mounts this image at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups. That's what the second item is ... so, here TimeMachine should only contain a single sparsebundle, which unfortunately, does not have any backups in it when the "new" backup was created.

The only thing I can offer at this point, is if this data is critical to you, you may need to hire a recovery specialist to see if they can recover the data. In the mean time you should stop using your WD device so that no additional data can overwrite them. Good luck!

It is possible, but not a sure thing.

Data Recovery – Best

Data Recovery – Disk Drill

Data Recovery – Data Rescue

Data Recovery – File Salvage

Data Recovery – Stellar Phoenix

Data Recovery - uFlysoft

Data Recovery - Recovering Deleted Files

Data Recovery - Recovering Deleted Files (2)

Time Machine stores its backups a bit differently between local (directly attached drives, like your AUDIO drive) and network drives (like your TimeMachine drive).

When everything is working properly, your mounted TimeMachine drive, should contain a "file" in the form of a sparsebundle with the name of the Mac that is being backed up. For example, if your Mac is named MyMac, then there should be a file at this location, called: MyMac.sparsebundle.

If you double-click on this file, two things should happen:

1. An icon, named: Time Machine Backups, should appear on the Desktop, and
2. A new Finder window will appear with a folder, named: Backups.backupdb

If you now double-click on this folder, another Finder window will appear with the name of your computer. Double-clicking on this folder should open yet another Finder window with each backup set that is currently available. You can continue double-clicking on any of these folders to drill down to where the backups are stored.

Agreed! That's why I don't rely on a single backup methodology for critical data.

FWIW. As a minimum, I use the following methods:

1. Incremental backups.
   • I use Time Machine to make backups to both network and local drives.
     • For the network drives, I use:
       • An 802.11ac Time Capsule (TC)
       • A Synology DS916+ NAS
     • For the local drive, I use a WD My Book Pro connected directly to my Mac mini's Thunderbolt port.
   • I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make backups to the TC.
2. Full disk cloning. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable clones of my Mac's internal drive to WD My Passport portable USB drives. I have multiples of these drives and I rotate them off-site for storage.
3. Quarterly, I create archive copies of the TM backups that are stored on the TC, and then, start with fresh TM backups to that same TC.
4. Weekly, I verify the TM backups on my network drives and boot from my cloned drives to validate my backups are accessible.
5. I presently do not utilize any cloud services for backups.

This may be overkill for most folks, but I "sleep better" at night not worrying about it.

If you cannot locate the dated folders in Finder, then as far as Time Machine (TM) is concerned, they don't exist. Recovery apps may help, but there is no guarantee of recovering them of course.

We have seen numerous posts related to TM with network drives (especially with the Time Capsule) with either corrupted or missing backups since the release of macOS Sierra. It doesn't appear to be affecting TM backups to local drives. A number of us have been recommending using a third-party solution for incremental backup, like Carbon Copy Cloner. Unfortunately, this won't help with your current situation. Sorry!

While in Time Machine, to see all mounted volumes shift - command - c. Information learned from Linc Davis.

Hi, did you update the last OS version? I ask because it happens also with me, my whole back up just gone after I upgrade to the OS 10.13.3 and I can see just a back up of few days.