Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

Why does my time machine say it hasn't backed up in 56 days?

Hi Scotty I had unplugged the back up drive a while ago for travel and have since plugged it back in. Don’t understand why I’m getting this message?



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One possible explanation (and this is Apple's fault for not paying attention to detail) is that when a person uses 2 drives to backup using Time Machine, while one drive is happy and working, when the computer has not seen the other drive, instead of displaying a message that should say "we have not seen your second backup drive in xx days" it says "we have not backed up in xx days." This is confusing because it makes us think no backup has happened.

That is the most common explanation. To see if this may be the case, you can open system preferences, go to Time Machine then see if two drives have been selected as backup drives in the left column.

Another way to see if the drive you actually have plugged in is backing up is to open it in the finder then navigate to backup.backupsdb/your computer name/Macintosh HD/ then you'll see several folders all with dates. The most recent completed backup should be very recently (like within a day or so if your computer has been on and the drive was plugged up).

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