MacOS – One text file is not being backed up by Time Machine

macostime-machine

I have this strange problem where a single text file (Notes.txt, where I keep random notes) is, as of yesterday, not being backed up by Time Machine. It exists in the many backups that I have dating several months back, but since yesterday, it hasn't changed in Time Machine even though I edit the file almost every hour.

Anyone know what could be causing this? I'm pretty sure that if I deleted the file (after backing it up somewhere else) then moving it back there will probably force Time Machine to back it up again, but I'm really curious as to what is causing this, just in case it happens again. It's a good thing I happnened to notice this, because I needed to look back at a previous version, but now I'm very worried that it might happen to another file that I am never aware is being missed by Time Machine.

Best Answer

There are a couple of things you can do to narrow down if the system is being told to ignore that file or if there is a problem with the disk structures or some other bug at play.

If you like programs with icons and controls - go get Backup Loupe and use it to track that file across your backups. The program will pause itself if Time Machine is running, so you might do one backup and then turn Time Machine off for the time it takes the Loupe to scan a few backups.

Similarly, Apple has a diagnostic tool that they use to capture information that could show a bug or a problem with time machine and spotlight indexing - it's called tmdiagnose. If you are comfortable with zip files with lots of diagnostic data and text files, start here.

Lastly, you could run tmutil compare from the terminal to just let the system tell you which files are in need of a backup the next "time the machine" runs.

As written, you have four places to look to narrow things down:

  1. Time Machine is being told to ignore that file and you can learn all the exclusion rules and patterns and check for that.
  2. Spotlight is messing up and Time Machine depends on that to know what has changed.
  3. Time Machine itself is messing up.
  4. The disks / hardware / file system are messing up - general troubleshooting of that might be needed once you've ruled out the above three potential causes.
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