If my time machine is full and it deletes backups to free up space does it mean i will eventually loose data

I have been backing up my hard drive with a external hard drive as atime machine
the last time i backed up time machine said that it had deleted the oldest backup to make more space for newer ones .
I looked back through the various back ups i have made and found that all my vidoes that i had taken off my computor and put on my external hard drive were only on the earlest backups
my question is if the earliest backups are deleted to make space will i eventually loose all my videos - if so is there a way to avoid data being lost

troyboy65 wrote:
My time machine is full as it is backing up my imac and macbook. I am getting the orange flashing light.
I have looked at the settings and it does not seem to give many options on length of backups etc.
Im not sure what to do.
You may not need to do anything; Time Machine ordinarily deletes your oldest backups automatically when it needs room for new ones. The orange light is completely separate and independent from that.
Are both Macs getting backed-up regularly? Check via Time Machine Preferences > Options.
How much data is on each of your Macs, and how large is your TC?
I do have an old 500gb hard drive. Can i re format this and piggy back it to the time capsule to give me 1.5 tb?
No. Time Machine backups can't "span" multiple drives.
But if there really isn't enough space, you could connect that drive to your Time Capsule's USB port and back up one of the Macs to it, instead.

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For All things Time Machine see Pondini's Excellent Infirmation here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
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Message was edited by: Christopher Mackintosh

I'm sorry to see that no one has replied to Christopher in the two months since his post.
After 5 weeks of successful back ups I am now getting this same TM Error followed by Disk Repair error. The first time it happened I moved the sparsebundle and let TM start over. That worked fine and lasted one week, but now the errors are back. Today I tried repairing the sparsebundle in Disk Utility and it too failed with the following:
Invalid key length
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I get notice that my Time Machine is full and can no longer back up. Isn't it suppose to delete old files

See my question above in subject line

See item C4 in Time Machine Troubleshooting.
By the way, your system details mention OS X 10.4.8. That OS version doesn't support Time Machine. You might consider updating those details.

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I bougth a external hard drive form western digital, MyBook World Edition, and at first it was working fine, I make a first backup with time machine and it was perfect. last month when I entered time machine to check my backups they were all gone, and now I've been trying to make a new backup but it's moving really slow, like less then 2Gb per hour, and also it seems as it's over but them the size of the backup keeps changing (as soon as it reaches the whole size it gets bigger) Don't know what to do, I haven't changed anything in the system or anything.
The hard driver is connected to a router and I connect to it trhough my wireless network.
ps: sorry my bad english I'm not a native speaker.

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Hello all,
I am trying to do something that should be pretty simple. I have an iMac, with Mountain Lion and Server installed. My wife has a Mac Air. The goal was to get her to Time Machine backup through the wifi to my external hardrive. I think it is working, but here is the small catch. Last night, while getting it all going, it was saying "making buckup disk ready" through the night until now. Now it is actually doing the backup normally, i.e. I can see the data transferring. BUT, here is the question, in the mean time the external hardrive lost about 300gb of space which is the size of MY iMac backup. So I hope that when I turned on Time Machine it dosnt back up one time as my computer and another as a server. That may not make any sence at all.
Here is a screen shot of my external hardrive:
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Hello all,
I am trying to do something that should be pretty simple. I have an iMac, with Mountain Lion and Server installed. My wife has a Mac Air. The goal was to get her to Time Machine backup through the wifi to my external hardrive. I think it is working, but here is the small catch. Last night, while getting it all going, it was saying "making buckup disk ready" through the night until now. Now it is actually doing the backup normally, i.e. I can see the data transferring. BUT, here is the question, in the mean time the external hardrive lost about 300gb of space which is the size of MY iMac backup. So I hope that when I turned on Time Machine it dosnt back up one time as my computer and another as a server. That may not make any sence at all.
Here is a screen shot of my external hardrive:
636.33 GB, before yesterday it was half that. But my wife's hardrive is 100 GB of Data.
Just a note, I had my hardrive wiped clean the other day before Mountain Lion was installed, and I have a "carbon copy" from before that on another hardrive. Can I delete the backup of MY machine and start over?
Thanks, I hope this is clear.
Best,
Justin

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My time capsule is full and when I attempt to back up, I only receive a preparing back up message and the earliest and most recent back up dates remain the same. Why are the oldest backups not being deleted to make room for the newest backups?

linda mariefromharper woods wrote:
My time capsule is full and when I attempt to back up, I only receive a preparing back up message and the earliest and most recent back up dates remain the same. Why are the oldest backups not being deleted to make room for the newest backups?
It may be in the process of making room. What version of OSX are you on? (That process can be excruciatingly slow on Leopard or Snow Leopard backups over a network; Lion has improved it greatly.)
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If you partition it you must use a Mac disk utility and use the HFS+ ie standard Mac format. And GUID partition table not windows type.
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There is no media server in the TC.. it is merely disk storage.. you can serve files from it to a media device.. but the TC itself is dumb as dumb.
Now the actual format of the drive is irrelevant to the PC.. The TC offers SMB file services to the network. You can copy files to and from the TC as if it was a local disk without caring one iota about the format. The TC handles that .. it is not a local disk .. it is a network drive.
Although you cannot partition the TC. you can still copy files to it.. this does have implications for TM.. but as long as there is plenty of free space should not be a major issue.
You can create a disk image via the disk utility in a Mac.. and as stated you can create partitions if you do it on a Mac with the disk directly connected which means breaking warranty if any exists on the TC.

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If my time machine is full and it deletes backups to free up space does it mean i will eventually loose data

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