Doing ls /run/media/path/to/drive/timeshift/snapshots returns five snapshots but the GUI shows only four. The fourth snapshot listed on the terminal is missing from the GUI. This happened after a strange occurrence where I was backing up the fourth snapshot that shows up under ls, I left the GUI (didn’t close it) and when coming back, the timeshift GUI is gone, looks like it was closed for some reason. Out of worry that this snapshot didn’t finish, I created the last snapshot, which shows up both in the GUI and through ls. Should I be worried that any of the snapshots are now broken?
Clearly the fourth snapshot doesn’t have some files the other snapshots do. There are changes between the third and fourth snapshots in my system, so it should have something to backup. Why this behavior?
I would suspect that timeshift crashed. Reasons unknown. In any case, at the end of a snapshot, timeshift creates a Json file, which is then used in the GUI to read the snapshot. If this file does not exist even though data exists, it will not be displayed either. So the backup was canceled and timeshift crashed. Is it possible that there is no more storage space left for the new snapshot?
Well, then I can only suspect a hardware problem, but here I can only guess because I don’t know anything about your system. USB connection has a loose contact?
Timeshift works for me pretty well, but I don’t use rsync, but btrfs snapshots. I think it makes no sense to store snapshots (volatile backups) on external storage. They are there to recover the system, not as backup, but as quick recovery.
Probably USB connection was shaken or something like that.
On the contrary, I like the idea of having backups and snapshots on a separate device for the obvious reason of not having the risk of losing them along with the main data when the hard drive gets compromised in any way. Also, I am using a laptop and I don’t like using some of my main drive for snapshots. If I were using a desktop CPU with slots for secondary drives, then storing snapshots there is a good option.
Well, the purpose/intention of timeshift isn’t a traditional backup and the developer makes it clear:
It is designed to protect only system files and settings. User files such as documents, pictures and music are excluded. This ensures that your files remains unchanged when you restore your system to an earlier date. If you need a tool to backup your documents and files please take a look at Baqpaq which is more configurable and provides options for saving user files.
Timeshift for Linux is an application that provides functionality similar to the System Restore feature in Windows and the Time Machine tool in Mac OS.