Time Machine: Only showing 2 backups?

[Beau10]

Hey Guys,

I originally had time Machine working great for a couple months. I would enter Time Machine and it would typically show a dozen or so backups covering earlier periods in the day/weeks/mos prior.

Decided to swap out the drive and start from scratch last week, newly formatted 220gb volume partition for my 2.4 Penryn Macbook Pro.

Since then Time Machine has only shown two backups. 1) The original first full backup and 2) A backup called "Now". #2 is always called "Now", even if I shut off Time Machine for over a day so "Now" is literally yesterday, lol.

Yesterday I decided to reformat that 220 gb partition and try again. Same problem. Did a search on this forum and perhaps couldn't figure out the proper keywords to use but can't find anyone complaining of the same issue. Anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[ert3]

how large is our hard drive and how much free space do you have.

 

[Beau10]

It's the standard 200gb drive, 186 formatted (vs. 220 formatted for TM backup). Only 30 gigs are currently used.

I've read something about how Time Machine needs to have space above and beyond the size of the volume being backed up, something like 15-20%, but in that case it simply refuses to select a partition if it is too small. Time machine selects this drive just fine and backs up, it just doesn't store more than the initial and the current backup.

 

[ert3]

other than the fact you really want to have 400 gigs for backup I must ask weather or not you are infact plugged in all the time or just once or twice.

that and weather or not you are making any new or old files and if you have tried doing this to encourage a new backup.

 

[Beau10]

All I did was start over again with a new volume. Same volume size/usage pattern worked fine for two months.

Anyone else see something like this when swapping volumes? I'm a bit worried about having to reinstall Leopard, not much of a Unix hacker to find out how fix what could be wrong. Guess I'll run Onyx before going to bed and see if that does anything.

 

[Beau10]

A resolution

For the archives:

I -

1) fixed permissions on my MBP internal drive and
2) deselected then reselected the problematic volume in my Time Machine preferences.

Now when entering Time Machine there are multiple backups available to select. No doctoring of the Time Machine volume necessary 🙂