Friday, October 25, 2013

Time Machine Issues after upgrading to #Mavericks: Black screen or non-available Backups

I currently have an Apple Time Capsule serving the Wi-Fi of my house and handling the automatic Time Machine backup of two Macs. I had some issues installing Mavericks, which forced me to do a fresh install. I thought everything would be okay because I had all my information on my Time machine, right? Not exactly.

After installing the operating system I tried doing the Apple migration. However, what Time Machine managed to recover wasn’t exactly my old computer as it left orphans. Some applications were not installed but continued to have the Preferences panel in the System Preferences (Such as the go pro cuneiform, or the perian), or if they were kept at the dock there would be a question mark in it´s place.

Instead of trying to figure out what was right and what was wrong on this installation, I reinstalled Mavericks again and decided to get the information I needed out of the Time Machine like the documents folder, then the Desktop, etc… 

This is where the problem started. On entering Time machine on the time bar to the right, my previous backups where light purple - they could´t even be selected.

Solution:

1) connect to Time Machine via LAN cable and to WiFi - it´ll be much faster

2) Press the Option (alt) key while pressing the time capsule symbol on the menu bar. There will be a new option ¨Verify Backups¨ where ¨Back Up Now¨ was.

Time Machine Verify backups

3) Let it Verify. When it is finished, the the bars will be Purple, and the Time Capsule will go into them

 

Problem #2 - After all this Time Machine would show me black boxes only, vs. the normal finder window!

Time Capsule Black Screens

 

The black screens are because the Time Machine has defaulted into a folder that it has not backed up. i.e. If you are in the Applications folder before getting into Time Machine and it does not have that folder backed up, it will show the black screen.

Solution:

1) Open finder (outside of Time Machine)

2) Go to your computer, or press CMD-Shift-C. 

3) Select the hard drive that you have backed up

Mavericks Finder

4) Enter Time machine again via ¨Enter Time Machine¨ on the menu bar

Time capsule menu

5) You should be able to navigate to /Users/<your user name> and get any file you need

 

 

6 comments :

  1. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was worried that my backups were gobbled by the black screen of death. Your advice helped me find my files. Thanks.

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  2. same here, thanks a lot for this post..
    I have different problems with Mavericks and wanted to do a fresh install but since I had all these black screens I was really worried. Well I still am but at least I know the data is still there and could be accessed.

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    Replies
    1. Great that it was useful!
      As advice, if you really want a fresh install of mavericks, try not to use the restore from Time Capsule option as it restores all settings (and issues), just install and then restore files or folders from the time capsule.

      Thanks for the kind comment!

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  3. Glad to have helped! Had me worried too the first time it happened!

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  4. I ran a verification and it wanted to create a new back up, saying it would remove my old history - what should i do?

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    Replies
    1. Do you need the backup or can you create new and backup immediately?

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