What went wrong with my Time Machine backups?

[Reimer]

I've had Time Machine enabled for the past couple of years. Thankfully, I've only really had to depend on it a couple of times but nothing major. It was set to back up everything. The only exclusion I had set was the Bootcamp partition.

Due to an incident, I decided tonight to wipe my Macintosh HD partition using Disk Utility and restore from my Time Machine backup which was on a 1TB external USB hard drive.

To my surprise, the oldest backup available was from July 1, 2016. Only a bit over a month old. I could swear I've had backups much older previously. Okay, no problem I thought. I only need the most recent back up anyway.

I restore only to find out my "Application Support" folder, for some reason, hasn't been backed up since July 1st. But the rest of the Library folder was fine.

Anyway, I just thought this has been odd. Thankfully, the July 1st backup wasn't too old and I didn't lose much at all. Otherwise, I would have lost my browser settings, bookmarks, etc. And yes, I take responsibility for not being more diligent with my back ups and should have checked before deciding to format. I just thought this was weird behavior from Time Machine.

 

[george_i]

I suggest you try a full Time Machine reset. Go /Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences and move to the trash the file com.apple.TimeMachine.plist (you will be asked for your password), that is probably damaged.

Connect the Time Machine disk and restart > Use as Backup Disk. A new full backup will be taken and will be added to the previous ones. The preference file will be recreated.

 

[KALLT]

Have you verified the Time Machine partition with Disk Utility?

 

[Reimer]

I suggest you try a full Time Machine reset. Go /Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences and move to the trash the file com.apple.TimeMachine.plist (you will be asked for your password), that is probably damaged.

Connect the Time Machine disk and restart > Use as Backup Disk. A new full backup will be taken and will be added to the previous ones. The preference file will be recreated.

Thanks. I ended up doing this. Hopefully, it'll prevent future issues.

Have you verified the Time Machine partition with Disk Utility?

Yup. Doesn't seem like the drive itself has any issues.

 

[MacForScience]

You should check the Time Machine drive with something like SMART Utility. Disk Utility is useless at catching drive failures. I have seen it miss drives with more than 1000 bad sectors on many occasions. Also Disk Warrior would not be a bad idea.