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criticalhit

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2022
3
1
Hey community! Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

Had to ask this question because I've read somewhere around 3 dozen posts with similar problems but none are nailing what I'm dealing with. I started a new Time Machine set up with an external hard drive in October. Time Machine has worked just fine for me in the past, and I have only three backups: one in October, one in November, and one in December. I'm trying to restore a lost file that might be in the November backup or the October backup, but here lies the problem. I can enter Time Machine, I can see the December backup and restore those files just fine. However, when I scroll back to November or October, the Finder header says "Waiting" and never loads up my files. I've waited as long as an hour and a half after reading a couple threads where someone was having such an issue (but ultimately their problem was unrelated and the thread was 4 years old, so no solution for me).

I already spoke with Apple Support. They didn't really help much, just had me reboot my MBP in safe mode and see if the backups appeared then, then they recommended I go to an Apple-approved service provider two counties away. There has to be a more grounded, simpler solution to this problem. Also, yes, I do view all of my mounted volumes using shift-cmmd-c while in Time Machine before trying to navigate to the desired backup—it's when I scroll to that backup that I get this result in the following image:

Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 11.48.04 AM.png


Screen Shot 2022-01-15 at 3.29.33 PM.png
 

criticalhit

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2022
3
1
Hey community! Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

Had to ask this question because I've read somewhere around 3 dozen posts with similar problems but none are nailing what I'm dealing with. I started a new Time Machine set up with an external hard drive in October. Time Machine has worked just fine for me in the past, and I have only three backups: one in October, one in November, and one in December. I'm trying to restore a lost file that might be in the November backup or the October backup, but here lies the problem. I can enter Time Machine, I can see the December backup and restore those files just fine. However, when I scroll back to November or October, the Finder header says "Waiting" and never loads up my files. I've waited as long as an hour and a half after reading a couple threads where someone was having such an issue (but ultimately their problem was unrelated and the thread was 4 years old, so no solution for me).

I already spoke with Apple Support. They didn't really help much, just had me reboot my MBP in safe mode and see if the backups appeared then, then they recommended I go to an Apple-approved service provider two counties away. There has to be a more grounded, simpler solution to this problem. Also, yes, I do view all of my mounted volumes using shift-cmmd-c while in Time Machine before trying to navigate to the desired backup—it's when I scroll to that backup that I get this result in the following image:

View attachment 1944729

View attachment 1944730
So! I left my MBP running with Time Machine open on that page for 19 hours. Got up today and the Finder window was still blank with that "Waiting: Friday October 22, 2021" header. I call it quits, view my mounted HDs (which, every time I do this using shift-cmmd-c, automatically brings me to the current backup), and finally, the button to scroll back isn't grayed out. I click it, I'm able to see my volumes in October! I begin clicking on folders to get to a specific file in my directory, and it throws me back to that December backup, and the scroll back button is again grayed out. Clicking on the October backup manually in the right-hand timeline once again gives me the blank Finder window that says "Waiting: Friday October 22, 2021."
 

Brian33

macrumors 65816
Apr 30, 2008
1,471
371
USA (Virginia)
Frustrating! I would try accessing the file you want with Finder instead of the Time Machine “star field” interface.

(I’m going from memory here…) Double-click your backup drive, then Backups.backupdb then your machine name then the date you want then the volume name then drill down to the file you want. Once you find the file you can just drag a copy to your desktop or wherever.

Of course, there could be some problem with the external drive or the backup itself, but it’s worth a try. Good luck!
 
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Brian33

macrumors 65816
Apr 30, 2008
1,471
371
USA (Virginia)
Also — if, using Finder you also get unusually delayed responses I would take that as an indicator that the external drive (HDD?) could be failing. Hopefully not the case, though.
 

MBAir2010

macrumors 604
May 30, 2018
6,975
6,354
there
i fish for files on the external hard drive, a lot faster and accurate!
even snow leopard had a slow retrieval of older back ups on time machine.

today i performed the first back up of the mini
and had to eject the formatted drive and
start over after 19 minutes of "beginning to prepare drive" studded.
the back up was fast tho, under 400GB in an hour or so.
 
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