I'm running OS X 10.6.4 on a 17" MacBook Pro. For backups, I have a WD 1TB external drive, and I use Time Machine. I don't have Time Machine on all the time, as I don't need backups that frequently. The last successful backup I did was 7/16/10. I attempted to do another backup on 9/20, and all seemed to work as normal until I attempted to look at the backups in Time Machine when the backup ended. The new backup did not appear in TM. I tried another backup, and I noticed in Finder that there were TWO partitions mounted for backups: Time Machine Backups & Time Machine Backups 1. The TMB partition is the one I created. I have no idea where the TMB1 came from. Finder showed TMB being backed up, and only showed TMB1 as being mounted. Using muCommander (a file manager) I looked at the files in TMB1 and was able to access everything on that partition. When the backup ended, TMB1 was automatically unmounted and disappeared! I used every utility I could think of to find that partition, and it's not listed anywhere on my system. Has anyone heard of anything like this before? I contacted Apple support on Monday and they said they wouldn't be able to get back to me until next Friday October 1st! Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Time Machine "hidden" partition problem
- Thread starter peterv6
- Start date
djackmac
ACMT
After a certain amount of time, Time Machine either suggests or defaults to creating a new backup. Furthermore the volume only stays mounted while backing up. You can go and manually mount the disk image to traverse the directory, but Time Machine prefers you use the Time Machine interface to keep from screwing anything up. You really need to backup more often. I'd suggest at the very least once a week, if you want to have incremental backups stored in one disk image as opposed to only a few backups each in a different disk image.
djackmac,
Thanks for the quick reply, but I think you are missing my point when you state:
"After a certain amount of time, Time Machine either suggests or defaults to creating a new backup. Furthermore the volume only stays mounted while backing up. You can go and manually mount the disk image
to traverse the directory"
As for the volume staying mounted while backing up, that's not true (at least on my system). I'm using an external drive, so it is mounted whenever I boot, it's always listed as mounted in Finder. It has to be manually dismounted. (This is for the original backup partition I created.)
The partition I use for backups is named Time Machine Backups. What now happens when I attempt a backup, is that a new "hidden" partition seems to be mounting called Time Machine Backups 1. This one, does only get mounted when Time Machine is backing up, and dismounts automatically when the backup is finished. The problem is that after Time Machine ends the backup, there is no way to remount the Time Machine Backups 1 partition, as it can't be found using Finder.
So, what I need to know, is if Finder automatically creates another backup partition, how am I supposed to be able to access the data on it if I can't find the partition to mount it?
Thanks for the quick reply, but I think you are missing my point when you state:
"After a certain amount of time, Time Machine either suggests or defaults to creating a new backup. Furthermore the volume only stays mounted while backing up. You can go and manually mount the disk image
to traverse the directory"
As for the volume staying mounted while backing up, that's not true (at least on my system). I'm using an external drive, so it is mounted whenever I boot, it's always listed as mounted in Finder. It has to be manually dismounted. (This is for the original backup partition I created.)
The partition I use for backups is named Time Machine Backups. What now happens when I attempt a backup, is that a new "hidden" partition seems to be mounting called Time Machine Backups 1. This one, does only get mounted when Time Machine is backing up, and dismounts automatically when the backup is finished. The problem is that after Time Machine ends the backup, there is no way to remount the Time Machine Backups 1 partition, as it can't be found using Finder.
So, what I need to know, is if Finder automatically creates another backup partition, how am I supposed to be able to access the data on it if I can't find the partition to mount it?