Recover time machine old backups

I just pluged in my external hard drive and descovered that my old backup was deleted...
i went to settings to learn for the first time that time machine deletes old backups when the drive is full...
is there any way to recover those files? There was very important data in those backups..

Thank you baltwo for replying..i didnt not recieve any notification from TM that it will be deleting my old backup...i guess apple should think of adding this as a feature.. still, i will be using TM as it is a good way to keep backups..
I will buy some good data recovery software and if i am luck i might get all my data back.. thanks..

Similar Messages

Recovering Time Machine after backups were deleted

The event I will describe occurred from an incomplete operation. Hindsight is 20/20. After the mistake, I stopped using the Time Machine drive.
Fearing that my Time Machine drive (1 TB) was becoming full, I proceeded to delete some backups between the start date and the present. Thinking that on the dates I deleted nothing really changed, I thought it was safe.
The dialog appeared, "Preparing to delete files..." and was still on the screen when I realized that any deletion was idiotic. The dialog never changed to indicate files were actually being deleted. After inspection, some files were deleted. There is only a small subset of backups remaining. As no data was ever written to the drive, I'm sure I can recover all or most files.
What is the best path to recover as much backup data as possible? I own the Stellar Phoenix recovery program.
What should I know about the structure of Time Machine archives? My latest attempts have resulted in almost no complete files but rather in hundreds of files named "iNode xxxxxxx" being recovered. I don't find that helpful at all. All changes can be reconstructed with work. All I care about are the original downloaded files. The diff files (I assume that is how TM works) are negligible.
Thank you for helping this Macintosh and TM amateur.
Robert

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't do a very good job of warning people: +*Never, ever, move, change, or delete anything in your TM backups via the Finder.+* That can hopelessly corrupt them.
They do have special "deny everybody everything" permissions, but that isn't enough, as you've found out.
Just for future reference, see #12 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Time Machine uses some rather complex techniques, so it can perform only incremental backups of what's new or changed, but have each backup be, in effect, a full one. This is done with multiple "hard links" to the actual backup items, at both the file and directory level. Think of them as multiple aliases. Few 3rd-party apps understand this. So be sure your recovery program is fully compatible with Leopard.
I think that +Data Rescue II+ is, but I've never used it, so can't be sure.
Most likely, the best you'll be able to recover are some "raw" files.

Remove disk from backup disks in Time Machine, old backups no longer accessible

I accidentally removed a disk from my backup disks in Time Machine. It said it wouldn't delete any backups, but after reconnecting it, I cannot access any previous backups through the Time Machine interface and it says "Latest Backup: None". The data is still visible on the drive.
What can I do? I really need these backups.
PS This poster appears to have had a similar problem but was never resolved: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4175446

See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

Time Machine same backup size every time

Anyone have any idea why Time Machine would backup the same amount every time? Every hour mine backs up 1.8 GB, unless I've added more than that to my hd.
I only back up the internal drive on my macbook to a 500 GB Time Capsule via wifi (802.11n only, 5GHz). Not that I figured it would make a difference, but it still does it if backed up via ethernet.
I've also noticed that as soon as it completes the backup, it will backup all over again - and not because an hour has passed. I'm not sure if it does this every time (but I think i does), or if it does it more than twice when it happens.
Thanks in advance!

See if the following might give you some ideas as to why...
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if this resolved your issue.
Cheers!

Time Machine nuking backups, starting from scratch!

ok, i just received this warning:
and now i't doing a backup that is slated to take more than "several hours."
is this common? how often can i expect this?

Hello,
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-bac kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076

How to save SOME time machine Mac backups from the TM disk to other disk WITHOUT formatting the destination disk?

Hi,
How to save SOME time machine Mac backups from the TM disk to other disk WITHOUT formatting the destination disk?
I have a Time Machine disk (A) including the backups of several different Macs (B, C, D & E) generated with an old Mac OS X 10.5.8 (iMac PowerPC) over the years.
I have transferred the old Mac contents to a new Mac with OS X 10.8.3 using Migration Assitant. All OK.
Now, I want to erase such TM disk A to use if for other purposes, but first, I would like to RECOVER the backups of some Macs inside it (D and E). Is that possible WITHOUT formatting the destination disk and selecting only some Macs from the TM disk and not the fulll TM disk? How?
Thanks.

Thanks for the reply. I do not think that is messy, anway. I simply used the same external disk as Time Machine disk for different Macs. And that worked OK all the time for years.
The ExternalTimeMachineDisk contains the folder Backups.backupdb
which contains the following folders (each one corresponding to the Time Machine backup made from each Mac):
Mac1
Mac2
MacBook1
MacBook2
In relation to my message above, is it possible to select specific files, folders or full Mac backups from such Time Machine disk and save them to other disk? How?
Thanks.

Can I use Time Machine to backup ONLY an external drive?

I am having problems with the internal HD on my iMac and Disk Utility is telling me I need to reformat the drive and restore from backup. Only problem is that my 3TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive I was using for Time Machine recently failed (think it may have happened during an electrical storm brownout). Yep, I know, ***** to be me
The issues with the internal HD are preventing the iMac from booting and I would prefer not to have to purchase various repair software to find one that really works such as Disk Warrior or similar ((despite it getting very good reviews). I suspect it make be HFS corruption but no way to really tell that I am aware of.
I have setup an external drive with Yosemite and booted from that so now my old internal drive is seen as an "external drive".
I am using Disk Utility to make an image copy to a new 3TB external drive I purchased. Writing the DMG is going to take some time.
What I would like to do is to set up Time Machine to backup to a separate external 3TB hard drive (the second one I purchased) and have TM create a backup of ONLY the old internal drive - not the new system as well as the old internal unit.
Is this possible and if so can anyone advise how to do this. Does not seem I can exclude the system drive I am now booted from so that it is not backed up. (This makes sense that TM would be designed this way given its primary purpose is to backup a system).
If TM cannot be configured in this way, is there another option I can use?
Thanks
Andrew

Thanks for that advice. I have heard of it but a friend who does IT support at a University nearby suggested using Disk Utility to save an image - hence this is currently underway at present. Once this is finished I will try Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have another friend who has an older version of CCC - do you know if an old version will work ok or if only the latest supports Yosemite?
Also once I have the clone completed from CCC, is the process then to reformat the old internal drive and then clone from the CCC external drive back to the internal and then reboot and trust all is well?
Appreciate your help Csound1.
Regards
Andrew

Time Machine:The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. .....

Hi,
I upgraded to Mountain Lion when it was released and yesterday I began getting this notice from Time Machine:
"The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. Time Machine will try to make more space available by removing expired backups during the next scheduled backup."
I have a one terra external hard drive with exclusively Time Machine. It says it has 3.4 gigabytes available, but isn't deleting old backups and making room for new, like before. I tried the "encrypting" solution, but it still keeps on giving me this message. Should I erase and format? If so, what option should I chose to format?
My Hard Drive has 240 gigabytes, so 1Tb should be more than enough.
Thank you!
Gloria

SuperDuper and Time Machine are two completely different backup utilities. If you want something like what SuperDuper does then don't use Time Machine. You have many other options that won't use up all the space on your backup drive:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Do the following to erase your drive:
Erase a Drive
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

Time Machine wont backup

I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
Thanks

jmhoskin wrote:
I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
The drive is probably set up with the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition map, that Windoze uses. To use it for TM you must completely reformat it, which will erase it. If you have enough space (or can borrow another external temporarily), you can copy the data off, reformat it, then copy the data back.
TM works best with it's own, exclusive space, so you should partition the drive anyway. If you're going to use the other data with a PC, make the other partition MS-DOS (FAT).
For formatting instructions, see item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Also see #1 of the FAQ Tip for size considerations.

Time Machine vs Backup

I plan on reformatting my computer and would love to know if I should use Time Machine or Backup. I want to keep some of the programs and data from the computer, but not all of it. Which one will allow me to select data to "bring back"?
Thanks for your help!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You do not want to use Backup for large amounts of data. It's fine for it's original purpose: to get relatively-small amounts of data off-site to iDisk, automatically, but don't use it for anything more.
Time Machine will back-up your entire system by default. The first backup is, of course, lengthy, but thereafter it will back-up only new and changed items hourly. This gives you an excellent chance to recover things that were deleted or changed in error, or somehow corrupted. But whether you use Time Machine or some other app, use something or you can lose some or all of your data in an instant.
But the question here is, are you doing this only to get rid of some apps and files? If so, that's not the best approach. Unlike Windoze, a periodic reload is usually not needed on Macs.
Unless your internal HD is over 85% full, your best bet may be to get an external drive thats at least twice the size of the data on your Mac and let TM do a full backup. Then start identifying and deleting the things you don't want. If you delete something you shouldn't, you can easily get it back from Time Machine (for a while).
Most applications on Macs can just be deleted. Some need uninstallers. Apps will be where you put them, hopefully in your Applications folder. Most data will be in +<your home folder>/Library/Application Support,+ usually in a file or folder containing the name of the app or maker.
Unless you're very tight on space, you could make a folder named +Apps to be Deleted+ or something similar, at the top level of your home folder, and move them and their data files there, rather than delete them immediately. You could even create a sub-folder for those apps that have data files, and put both the apps and files inside them. Once you're sure they're not needed, delete them.
Doing it the other way is much riskier; if you omit things you actually need, all sorts of things may go wrong, unpredictably.
For info on Time Machine, you might want to review this Time Machine Tutorial
and this: Time Machine Features
and perhaps the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of the Time Machine forum.

Time machine email backup showing incorrect emails

I have been using time machine to backup my emails. The great thing about time machine is that I could always go back in time and restore yesterdays emails after I had just deleted them by accident. Since I upgraded to Yosemite I notice that in time machine my yesterdays inbox not only contains yesterdays emails, but many more emails that I have moved or deleted already. My mailboxes are imap mailboxes, but all emails are also stored on my macbook air. Does anyone know how to get the old behaviour back, as before Yosemite? Or is this a confirmed bug? Any info will be much appreciated.

Inside the V2 folder are subfolders representing your Mail accounts. The names refer to the email addresses you use.
From the Mail menu bar, select
File ▹ Import Mailboxes...
Import from the mailboxes in the restored folder. The imported messages will appear in a new mailbox. Move the ones you want to keep wherever you like and delete the rest.

Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created

Iet up my new time capsule day and it's working great. Now that I've got everything sorted out, I'm ready to do the initial time machine back up on it. I went into preferences, changed the backup location to my TC and clicked 'back up now'. Very quickly I get a message that the backup failed: "Time Machine Error - The backup disk image could not be created".
I've searched the apple support area but haven't been able to figure this one out. Can anyone help, please? This is an initial backup. (FYI, it worked great on my old external drive.)
Many thanks

I had the same problem. I installed my Time Capsule, fired up Time Machine and got an error that said "The backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 436.8 GB but only 182.2GB are available."
Coincidently, these are the same sizes as the space used and the space available on my iMac's drive.
I looked in /Volumes and saw that the sparsebundle was being created on the local disk and not on the main disk. Trying to backup again gave me the "Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created." message.
I poked around the forums, and found a post about the machine name setting in sharing. I decided to give it a look, and lo and behold, I did not have a machine name. So I gave my box a name, kicked off Time Machine again, and it worked.

Use Time Machine to Backup a Share?

Hi all,
Looking for some help on this. I'd like to get Time Machine--if it's possible--to backup not only the information on my hard drive, but the information on a network share.
Here's my setup:
* Both my husband and I have MacBooks.
* Our shared data (i.e., all of our photos, music, etc.) are located on a ReadyNAS Duo connected to our network, in different shares (i.e., "photos", "media", etc.).
* Each of our laptops is configured to backup (using Time Machine) to yet another share on the NAS.
So here's my issue. Even though the NAS has two mirrored drives, items that get deleted from the NAS are deleted permanently (i.e., no recycle bin), so if we accidentally delete something off of it, we're screwed as far as recovering it.
I'd like to get Time Machine to backup the shares so that we don't have to worry so much about accidental deletions.
I'm a relative newbie to the networking thing, and a VERY newbie to Mac, so I might be missing something critical here.
Any help would be appreciated!

TM can't back up network drives of any kind. only directly attached drives can be backed up.
you need a different backup solution. Try CCCloner. it can do it.

Time Machine deleting backups?

When Time Machine is finishing taking a backup of my Mac, why does it delete something, maybe old backups, even if I have nearly 200GB free space on my external disk?

And now it's stuck with 18,9MB and canceled
6.4.2014 13.36.37,783 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Starting automatic backup
6.4.2014 13.36.37,895 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@WDMyCloud._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeMachineBac kup
6.4.2014 13.37.06,076 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup using URL: afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@WDMyCloud._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeMachineBac kup
6.4.2014 13.37.06,099 mds[79]: (Normal) Volume: volume:0x7fd3e386f000 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:0 SpotLoc:(null) SpotVerLoc:(null) occlude:0 /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup
6.4.2014 13.41.52,245 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup/Samu - MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine -varmuuskopiot
6.4.2014 13.42.13,441 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Backing up to /dev/disk2s2: /Volumes/Time Machine -varmuuskopiot/Backups.backupdb
6.4.2014 13.47.45,821 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Will copy (2,6 GB) from Macintosh HD
6.4.2014 13.47.45,845 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Found 1010 files (2,72 GB) needing backup
6.4.2014 13.47.46,251 com.apple.backupd[1294]: 3,51 GB required (including padding), 183,9 GB available
6.4.2014 13.52.22,072 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: assertion failed: 13C64: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [38D1AB2C-A476-385F-8EA8-7AB604CA1F89]: 0x25
6.4.2014 13.52.22,090 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: assertion failed: 13C64: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [38D1AB2C-A476-385F-8EA8-7AB604CA1F89]: 0x25
6.4.2014 13.52.22,332 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: Bogus event received by listener connection:
<error: 0x10aae4b50> { count = 1, contents =
"XPCErrorDescription" => <string: 0x10aae4e60> { length = 18, contents = "Connection invalid" }
6.4.2014 13.56.31,228 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Cancellation timed out - exiting
6.4.2014 13.56.31,245 com.apple.backupd-helper[869]: XPC error for connection com.apple.backupd.xpc: Connection interrupted
6.4.2014 13.56.31,245 com.apple.backupd-helper[869]: Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Failed to send message to backupd
And yeah, that deleting takes hours (about 10 last time).

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

Recover time machine old backups

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