Time Machine Problem

[spot the dog za]

I got my very first Mac in March this year. I have a 13" MacBook Air (2.13Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Last month I set up a Time Machine using a Transcend StoreJet 640Gb - I used disk utility to format the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). In Time Machine, I can see entries going back to 08 August 2011.

Today after working on a document for 3 hours, Word for Mac kindly crashed on me. My Autorecovery did not save a version of the document (I checked all autorecovery files) and the 'Rescued Document' was unusable.

I then tried using Time Machine to see if I could get an earlier version of the document which might hopefully have a document that was 2/3rds done but discovered to my horror that although Time Machine seems to show entries back to 08 August, I could only access entries for the past 2 hours today.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[garycurtis]

You can either use the Time Machine 'Restore' function to retrieve your document. Or, you can click on your 640Gb drive and manually pluck out the file you want.

Your HD backups are stored chronologically (newest at the top) in a folder called "backup.db". (I can't recall the actual folder name, but you'll spot it immediately.)The contained files mimic what's on your HD in name,date and path. Newest at the top of the list, older at the bottom. Listed by date. One folder for each backup session, with the date.

I'm not smart enough to use the Restore function on Time Machine. i guess I will one day because a disk accident demands a complete reproduction of the structure of you HD data. That's where Time Machine works its wonders, compared to 'cherry picking' individual files manually.