Lost time machine backups

Question

I appear to have lost several months of backups including the original.
I backed up my entire disk using TM on April 21 this year in preparation for erasing the hard drive in order to resolve a problem I had with having to force quit every application & having to use the power button to restart.
I restored the entire backup, but that reproduced the problem, so I erased again (after backup) and started over, slowly adding files and applications.
Until two days ago I had no problems with TM at all.
And then.... I started having very serious problems with my laptop, with it crashing every time I used P-shop (never had this problem before, with nearly 3 years of use). So, in preparation for erasing the laptop & starting over, I backed up the laptop to the same disk partition. The laptop and the desktop have different names, so one backup shouldn't erase the other, right?
Well, now I am unable to access the original or any other backup of my desktop computer.
I know the data is still there on the external hard drive as the amount of data on that drive far exceeds the 90 GB laptop backup. The volume information says that there are 659 GB data and nearly 3 million files on that drive (Iomega).
I used a demo version of Stellar Phoenix to try to get a look at the files on that drive. Again, it registered 659 GB of data and nearly 3 million files. But just before the scan completed, the app crashed. This happened multiple times, even using a different boot drive.
So, I know the data isn't lost. It's just INVISIBLE!
Something else about the original backup - when I erased the main drive & started over on the desktop, I created a different home account. This was intended to make it easier to distinguish the difference between the "old" computer and the "new" one (i.e., the data as it appeared in the original backup vs. the data added to the drive after the erasure.
I have tried to get support using my Apple Care, but they are interpreting my problem as a problem with the desktop, which is out of warranty. Me, I figure the problem wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the laptop crashes. Also, my desktop is working just fine. The desktop isn't the problem. The problem is with whatever TM did with my data when I backed up the laptop.
Anyhoo....
I have already tried the suggestion of control-clicking on the TM app to get "browse other TM disks" (from a different forum question). That must be a Snow Leopard thing because my 10.5.8 Leopard doesn't have that option.
I am frantic over this. While I have much of the data restored on the current desktop drive, there is a LOT of data I never restored because I needed the space on my drive. I figured it was all safe on the TM dedicated disk.
I am prepared to buy recovery software but before I do I need to know that the purchase will in fact do what I need it to do.
Thanks.

Answer 1

briarrose wrote:
I don't want to delete old backups
Then you need an Archiving app, instead of (or in addition to) a backup app.
THE LAST THING I WANT is for it to delete my original backup, for the very reason that it has data that is no longer on my main drive because I didn't want to restore everything and then end up with the same problem I had BEFORE, and for which I had done the backups in order to erase my main drive.
Again, you don't understand Time Machine. Deleting originals and expecting Time Machine to keep it's copies indefinitely is not using it as a backup app (when you delete the originals, you no longer have backups), and especially with Time Machine, practically guarantees that you will lose backups sooner or later. See #20 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
So, see, maybe we need THREE drives - our main one, a backup and backup of the backup.
No, but if your data is important, you should have at least secondary backups. I've learned over the years (mostly the hard way, of course ), never to trust my backups to a single app or piece of hardware: no app is perfect, and all hardware fails, sooner or later. See #27 in the FAQ.
Just pray it won't be you.
It won't. I have 2 or 3 backups of everything important, at least one of which is off-site.
I don't know what happened to the backups of your desktop Mac.
I do know one thing, though: Time Machine didn't delete all of them: when it runs out of room, it may delete all but the most recent completed backup of that Mac (but not a different one) trying to get enough space. If it can't make enough room that way, it will fail with a message.