Time Capsule / ime Machine all old backups gone - help!

The TC is almost full so insufficient space for a full backup and a flashing amber light I perhaps mistook for a fault - someone told me it means short of disk space! The Backups.backupdb folder in Time Machine Backups (green icon) shows a DateTime.inprogress file. The Backup of iMac (white icon) Backups.backupdb folder shows a list of all of the backups. Time Machine only mounts whichever of these contains nothing before today. How do I force selection of the image/folder/volume containing what are clear the still existing backups?

Considering the disconnection problem in your other thread, your backups may be corrupted. Try repairing the sparse bundle per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
If that doesn't help, a clue may be lurking in your logs. Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages for that run here.
Also . . . are you backing-up more than one Mac to your Time Capsule? And is there any other data on it?

Similar Messages

Time capsule won't delete old backups

Time capsule working fine since months ago. After snow leopard upgrade started to give warning that not enough space is available. Delete old backup's option is on.

The Time Capsule was designed to work with Time Machine for backups. That doesn't mean you can't use other backup software to do the job, but Time Capsule is "relying" on Time Machine to perform backup maintenance ... like deleting the oldest files.
Because you are using a Mac with an non-Leopard OS, you will have to either rely on the backup program that you are using or self-maintenance. I would suspect that in order to delete the current backups, you would need to access the Time Capsule's hard drive directly through the Finder. You mention the connection fails. What exactly is the error you are seeing when attempting to access the Time Capsule?

My Time Capsule won't remove old backups so that it can keep backing up

My TC is associated with a few Macs and has gotten to pretty much full capacity, so not when it attempts to back up it says no more room blah blah blah. I was of the impression that it'd remove old back ups so as to maintain its backing up function. At least that's what it says on the tin.
I'm confused.
Would I be correct in "assuming" that it will only remove old back ups of the first Mac it was associated with and that it won't remove back ups so as to fit in a new Mac.
Standing by.
Regards
Gav

When you upgrade the OS it gets confused.. and it stops being able to delete old backups because which are necessary to a viable install is no longer known.
That is a very big backup that you have posted the screenshot.. and the simple fact is with multiple computers sharing the TC it may simply not be able to reduce its backup enough to fit.
Here are your choices.
1. Different backup location.. USB drive plugged into the computer or into the TC and use that.
2. Archive off the old backups and start over with erase and redo the backup of all the computers.
3. Delete just the backup of the computer you are trying to backup now assuming that will leave enough space to actually do the backup..
But it is not worth bothering unless you have at least 2x the drive space used..
4. Open the TC (assuming it is gen4 or older and replace the drive with a new one.. say 4TB)
For a really old TC this is not worth it.. but gen3 or gen4 might last a while.
5. Buy a brand new TC.. and start new backups to that. Erase and dispose of the old one.

How can I close my Time Machine Sparsebundle so Time Capsule can do a scheduled backup?

"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Your Time Capsule". The backup disk image “/Volumes/Steven Weinberg's Time Caps-1/Steven Weinberg’s MacBook Pro (4).sparsebundle” is already in use."
I have both a Time Capsule and a 2Tb external drive using Time Machine to back up my laptop.
Is it as simple as when the Time Capsule goes to do a backup and finds that the other drive is in the midst of using Time Machine to do its backup that I get this notice on my desktop?
It's 10:30 AM now. The last Time Capsule backup was almost 12 hours ago.
There have already been 6 Time Machine backups today on the 2nd drive.
Sounds like the Time Capsule really is being blocked from doing its job.
THe 1 Tb Time Capsule backs up to a .sparsebundle document which fills the Time Capsule at 985 Gb. You can't open and peek inside the .sparsebundle backup file.
The other drive backs up to a .backupdb folder within which are subfolders for each backup which appears to be a complete recreation of thebacked-up 500 Gb hard drive on my MacBook Pro laptop. And even though there are 37 separate folders with backups going back to Sept 2013 when I installed the second backup drive, it's only used about 500 Gb of its 2 Tb capacity.
1. How can I solve my primary problem of freeing up the .sparsebundle file for the Time Capsule?
2. Since both drives are using Time Machine to do the backup, why are they producing such diffrent backup file structures?
Steve

David Bean wrote:
So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing
Have you run Repair Disk on it?
I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup,.DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup
That does get damaged on occasion. I haven't seen it in quite a while, so it's pretty rare.
You can delete it from the backups, via the TM interface, but you must be able to show invisible items).
First, open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be very careful with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.
In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: <Computer Name>:~ <your name>$
(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.
Copy, do not type, the following after the prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
and press Return.
You should just see the prompt again.
Then see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 to delete all the backups of it.
and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.
Yes. You will, of course, lose all previous versions, but since the file is corrupted, you may have lost some, most, or all of them already.
When done, run the same command to hide the invisible items, but replace the "1" with a zero.

HT201250 HELP! My Time Machine deleted old backups

If any one can help me, please do so.
Yesterday i did a clean install of OS X Lion. Started importing photos from the Time Machine this morning. While at work TM has deleted all old backups, so now the latest backup i have is from 5 minutes after I did the clean install.
How can I restore an old backup that has been deleted automatically by TM?
Thankful for any help!
Lars

The problem is that Time Machine is only a temporary repository. It will always ensure that you can restore the machine to the state that it was in at the last backup. But if the backup drive runs out of space - as yours undoubedly did when you installed a brand-new system, forcing Time Machine to back up everything on the entire drive all over again - then it will start deleting older files until it makes enough room to back up the newer files.
So, if you only had one backup, with Time Machine, and it wasn't large enough (at least double what you planned on backing up) ,and you didn't restore all your files before letting Time Machine start backing up the new system, there is unfortunately nothing you can do at this point. Your data is not only gone, but it has almost certainly been written over. You could always try a data recovery tool on the backup drive, but results are likely to be poor. Some such tools are DataRescue, FileSalvage and Stellar Phoenix.
In the future, you need to:
ensure that the Time Machine backup drive has a minimum of 2 times the capacity of what you plan to back up, now and in the foreseeable future
make at least one other backup on another drive, preferably more than one (minimum of two backups total)
use a different backup program, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, for at least one of those backups
keep at least one backup off-site - but frequently updated - in case of fire, flood, theft, etc(I keep Carbon Copy Cloner backups on two drives, one of which is always in a safe deposit box at the bank, and swap them out about once per month.)

Time Machine: removing old backups w/o redoing whole thing!

I've been using time machine for years now. In the past, when my backup disk has become too full, I've wiped the entire backup (delete) then created a brand new one. Why?? Because having a backup of what I have RIGHT NOW is all I want or need.
Now, all that said I would rather just prune all files not needed. Right now my 250gb mac HD has a 475gb backup file, and I have 100gb free on my mac's HD.
Is there any way to remove all old backups...or prune up to, say a week prior? I would have to imagine that this would be of some value. Reasons:
1. Save me (some) time of pruning/deleting vs doing a wifi backup from scratch.
2. I could potentially lose all of my data should my HD crash before my backup completes.
Help?

Greazy wrote:
I've been using time machine for years now. In the past, when my backup disk has become too full, I've wiped the entire backup (delete) then created a brand new one. Why?? Because having a backup of what I have RIGHT NOW is all I want or need.
Then Time Machine is not the right backup app for you. The backups of things you've changed or deleted can be very useful, for a number of things, but if you really don't want that, you're using the wrong app, because that's what Time Machine is designed to do.
Try CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to make "bootable clones." CCC is donationware; SD has a free version, but you need the paid one (about $30) to do updates instead of full replacements, or scheduling. Either is easily found via Google.
Now, all that said I would rather just prune all files not needed. Right now my 250gb mac HD has a 475gb backup file, and I have 100gb free on my mac's HD.
Is there any way to remove all old backups...or prune up to, say a week prior? I would have to imagine that this would be of some value. Reasons:
1. Save me (some) time of pruning/deleting vs doing a wifi backup from scratch.
2. I could potentially lose all of my data should my HD crash before my backup completes.
Where is your backup disk? You mention a WIFI backup, so is it an external disk connected to a Time Capsule, or Airport, or another Mac; or are you backing-up to a Time Capsule, or ??
There are ways to limit the size of TM backups, depending on what version of OSX you're on (this is the Leopard forum, but your signature says you're on Snow Leopard), and where the backups are. Once you do that, Time Machine will delete old backups automatically when it needs room for new ones.
If they're on an external HD, partition it to the maximum size you want. If they're elsewhere, tell us where, and confirm what version of OSX you're on.

TimeMachine not backing up, as hard drive is full. Can the time machine clear old backups and replace them with new?

Time Macine not backing up.
As the harddrive is full, Can the time machine clear old backups, and override them with new backups. For example 5 - 6 days +++ old. Backups were proformed dayly
Any help much appreciated
Many thanks,

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Doesn't Time Machine delete old backups when it needs more space?

I've had time machine running for a long time now. It worked flawlessly for quite some time.
Today it gave me the error that there was not enough free space on the disk to complete the backup (the error message says something like there is 360 GB of data on the Time Machine drive already, 140 GB of free space and it would require more than that to complete my backup). I have a 500 GB Time Machine disk and my Mac has a 500 GB hard drive, so I should technically never run out of space.
The Time Machine almost acts like this is the first time I've ever backed up, which is not true. Shouldn't Time Machine delete old backups to make space for the new? What's even weirder is that if I open the "Star Wars" window of Time Machine I only see one backup from March 31, 2011, but I have been running Time Machine for well over a year now. I'm totally confused as to what happened. Any advice on how to get my Time Machine back up and running (without buying a new drive) would help!

You see only one backup in the Time Machine window because Time Machine has deleted the older backups to make space to do the current backup.
Time machine needs some working space to do its backups, and so backing up a 500GB drive onto a 500GB time machine volume is not ideal.
However, I do essentially the same thing, and what I do, when I have this problem, is exclude things from the backup.
First off, figure out what you changed. If you moved things from one partition to another, then that will cause a backup of the size of the thing that was moved. This may be why you have a large backup.
When I have this problem, I exclude large things that have changed recently from the backup. This makes the backup smaller, and means that there is less working space needed. I do this until I get a successful backup. Then I remove things, one by one, from the exclusion list, and back up after each one.
So, for instance if you just put 4 new folders on your drive, each of which s 20GB of data and they are named A, B, C and D, add all four to the exclusion list, do a backup, then remove A from the exclusion list (leaving B, C & D on it) and do a backup, and continue like this, adding 20GB of backup data each time until none of the new data is on the exclusion list and you get a completed backup.
Another possible issue, if you use multiple partitions, is that Time Machine may be keeping an obsolete backup of a partition that you previously reformatted. To see if this is the case, go into time machine (The universe interface) and go back to the most recent backup it shows. Click on your computer and see what partitions show up-- are any of them old ones that have been reformatted and renamed? You may be storing a duplicate backup because Time Machine does not realize that the disk that went away isn't coming back (because it has been reformatted as a different partition)
You can right-click on these items and remove them from your backup by sleecting "Delete all backups of...." This will free up space as well.

My Time Machine / Time capsule gets the error: The backup disk image could not be mounted

My time machine / time capsule gets the error: The backup disk image could not be mounted.

Reboot the TC.
If you normally have multiple computers backing up, under Lion there seems to be some issues.. you need to force other users off the system. You can do that through the Airport utility, manual setup, disks, disconnect all users. Note carefully if you use Lion you probably need to download the real airport utility.. 5.6 to accomplish anything useful.

HT1178 i am setting u a new time capsule. i already have a wifi setup in my office. now i want to use this time capsule just as a wireless backup machine. do i still need to attached a DSL cable, or it can connect to my existing wifi and start working ?

i am setting u a new time capsule. i already have a wifi setup in my office. now i want to use this time capsule just as a wireless backup machine. do i still need to attached a DSL cable, or it can connect to my existing wifi and start working ?

You probably can, but this type of configuration is not recommended or supported by Apple.
Two cautions if you want to try this:
1) The Time Capsule has to be configured to "Join" your existing wireless network in this type of setup...and to do that, you must know the exact type of wireless security that your network is using.
2) Backups are likely going to take twice as long. The wireless signal must travel from your computer to the wireless router and then from the wireless router back to the Time Capsule. Two "hops"......even if the computer is located close to the Time Capsule.
If you want to try this, we can tell you how....but with no guarantees on your results....since this is not officially supported.

Have 2009 time capsule with 6 month old iMac very slow cox said i needed to replace with a new time machine with newer wifi ??

have 2009 time capsule with 6 month old iMac very slow ...cox said to replace with new router or extreme with new wifi ???? confused

Replace the Time Capsule with a new one or replace your router with an Airport Extreme Base Station that has faster Wi-Fi. Or you could just connect your old Time Capsule using an Ethernet connection from the Time Capsule to the computer's Ethernet port.

I have a desktop imac with snow leopard 10.6.8 OS I have a time capsule that shows all restore dates of 2009 but there is a Jan 2012 restore that is faded looking and will not open to be restored.

I have a desktop imac with snow leopard 10.6.8 OS
I have a time capsule that shows all restore dates of 2009 but there is a Jan 2012 restore that is faded looking and will not open to be restored.
Thanks for any help you may give.

Whatever is in the Finder window wasn't backed-up on that particular backup.
See the pink box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #15A

Time Capsule message:Unable to complete backup. time Capsule already in use. If I try to ess Time Macine, it says: that the sparse image is temporarily unavailable.acc

Normally, my Time Capsule backups without issue. however, recently, it failed and I was unable to either complete a backup (done automatically) or enter Time Machine. I received a message that:" Unable to complete backup. Time Capsule already in use" when backup is attempted. When trying to access Time Machine when this occcurs, The message is" sparse image temporarily unavailable". Why does this happen? How can fix it without erasing the who;e image and starting all over?
I have Mac OS Mountain Lion.

You might need to if the bundle is damaged.
You can verify the bundle.
Read A5 here http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Also try C12 and C17
Just a reboot of the TC might get it working again.

Two Time Capsules, two users, two individual backups

Two Time Capsules, one connected via Ethernet, and one connected wirelessly to the first one to extend the network. My question is this: we are two users, and would each like to use one of the Time Capsules each to back up our data (individually). Can one of you fine minds out there tell me how you would set up the wireless network, considering my needs?
Thanks in advance.

we are two users, and would each like to use one of the Time Capsules each to back up our data (individually).
I assume that you have assigned different names for each Time Capsule, correct?
All that you need to do on each Mac that you want to back up is this:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click Select Disk
Click to highlight which Time Capsule you want that specific computer to use
Click Use for Backup
Do the same thing from the other Mac, except be sure to choose the other Time Capsule in the list, of course.

180 GB of my 639-GB Macintosh hard drive is used. 320 GB of my 498-GB Tie Capsule is used. Only one backup ("now") exists for the Time Capsule, which can no longer backup because of "insufficient space". How come? What is wrong?"

180 GB of my 639-GB Macintosh hard drive is used. 320 GB of my 498-GB Tie Capsule is used. Only one backup ("now") exists for the Time Capsule, which can no longer backup because of "insufficient space". How come? What is wrong?"

Thank you William for your most helpful response. I shall deal first with your three comments:
Not being tech savvy, I would not have been able to make that call myself but it sure makes sense.
I have updated my profiles as you suggest. Excellent tip.
This guidance is good. Being new to Apple Support Communities, I did not find the field a labeling and guidance to be clear, a point you make. Now I know, I shall do as you say and will use the small slim box as a header to the full message/question, which will place in the larger box below.
Secondly, I come to your question: Did anything change on your Mac recently, such as replacing the disk or main logic board?
The answer is “yes”. Two events have happened both of which concerned the Time Capsule:
The telephone company, with which I have access to the Internet and I have my email account, installed a new modum. After the technician left I had to try and get the Time Capsule and WiFi working again which ended with my having to call Apple for technical assistance. The Apple technician walked me through a number of procedural steps which effectively re-set up the Time Capsule.
Access to the Internet failed and the telephone company reset the modum. I had to call Apple again. This time the technician did not reset the Time Capsule but walked me through a number of steps tha included renaming the “site” (not the Time Capsule).
Another piece of information that may be relevant is that the MacBook Pro uses the Time Capsule for backup. Everything appears to be in order. When I enter the Time Capsule for this laptop I have backups going back for a long time.
Also, I do a weekly backup of the two computers onto another external hard drive using the Time Machine software. So I have another backup of both computers.

Time Capsule / ime Machine all old backups gone - help!

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for