How do I know if Time Machine has backed up my computer?

[EEzycade]

Running Monterey on a MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021) w/ M1 Pro. Using a Sandisk 512 gb drive as my time machine backup drive. Got a notification that it'd been about six months since I've made a backup (last one was Jan 9). Plugged my drive in, waited for a few mins, and pulled up Time Machine. I've included a picture of what Time machine looks like right now, and what the Finder window for the Sandisk looks like. Thanks!

PS. Can anyone tell me what the other files are in the Sandisk drive? (note: I had some audio files on the drive once, but removed them a while ago)

 

[Nermal]

That first screenshot looks wrong. You shouldn't be able to "enter" Time Machine when looking at your external drive, and it almost seems like you've backed the external drive up onto itself.

Hopefully someone else can untangle this because I didn't even think it was possible!

 

[gilby101]

The first screenshot is showing that you have no backups of "SanDiskBackup" - that is correct.

If you want to use the horrible (my view) TM interface, go to a folder on your boot disk (e.g. your home folder) and from there select "Browse Time Machine Backups". I prefer to go to the TM disk in Finder and use Column view to dive down in to each backup.

The second screen shot looks normal. It is showing the TM snapshots on the disk - you only have 3. You can dive down into each snapshot to see what is there. As I have said I view "as Columns" in Finder for this sort of searching.

There is probably nothing else on the backup disk.

Your real problem is "Why no backups since January?".

Do you have automatic backups enable - in System Settings > General > Time Machine. You want it to say "Next backup: Automatic (hourly)".