Backup drive full and failing to back up

Question

I've read the posts in an earlier thread that say what is supposed to happen:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1668180&tstart=45
I have 2 macs, one Intel iMac and one PowerMac G5.
On the Intel, TM tells me that it can't back up because the backup volume is full. Does that mean it does not know how to delete older backups?
On the G5, I am getting the message "Backup volume is read only" on some days and backup volume full on others. This is after 25 backups.
I don't want to eliminate files from the backup. Isn't TM supposed to be smart enough to make space for new incremental backups?

Answer 1

Elkscat wrote:
I've read the posts in an earlier thread that say what is supposed to happen:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1668180&tstart=45
I have 2 macs, one Intel iMac and one PowerMac G5.
On the Intel, TM tells me that it can't back up because the backup volume is full. Does that mean it does not know how to delete older backups?
On the G5, I am getting the message "Backup volume is read only" on some days and backup volume full on others. This is after 25 backups.
I don't want to eliminate files from the backup. Isn't TM supposed to be smart enough to make space for new incremental backups?
yes, it's supposed to but TM is still very buggy and this is one of the bugs. when this happens there isn't much you can do. you can try manually deleting a few old backups to clear up some space and see if TM starts deleting old backups itself. this should be done from TM interface and not from finder. start TM, scroll to the backup you want to delete, click on the "gears" action button in finder's toolbar and select "delete backup".
If this doesn't help your only options are either getting a new drive for TM or reformatting the existing TM drive.