Time Machine 1.1 sometimes deletes backups that should keep
About two years ago I was intrigued about the disparition of several Time Machine backups. After changing to a larger external backup disk, I've been trying to follow the behavior of Time Machine. Overall, it seems to be quite predictable, corresponding to what is explained in its window: mostly keeping hourly backups during 24 hours, then, from these, only keeping the first one in each day during 30 days, and then, from these remaining backups, only keeping one per week as "space" permits. Since the new backup partition is large (240% of the HD disk), it is still far from removing oldest backup(s) in order to free space. However, in my system, Time Machine has removed more backups, which should have been kept, in at least two occassions:
Several weeks ago, one month after having the system down for several days, two or three backups (specifically 2012-07-24-002423 and 2012-07-29-120258) that should be kept as weekly ones were deleted, possibly trying to resyncronize to a new day-of-week for the new series of weekly backups to keep.
Recently, and possibly related with heavy memory load giving 7 GB of swap, TM "got crazy" during two activations, deleting up to eight backups, both daily and weekly ones, which were far from being the oldest backups in the volume.
Has someone else observed this kind of behavior? What can be done to avoid it? If, as it seems, it is a bug in Time Machine, how can I notify Apple?
Since Time Machine seems to have a limit of 5 old backup deletions per activation, and given that occasionally strange (and dangerous) behavior, I think that Time Machine should warn when backups older than one month are deleted, and ask permission when 5 or more backups are going to be deleted (at least giving the user the possibility of configuring it so). We are talking here of data security, so some precautions should be allowed when destroying large quantities of data, which otherwise may not be recoverable.
The essential details follow:
Strings in recent system.log messages containing "deleted backup" (first & last groups are normal, there was no hourly backup to delete between them):
Oct 27 00:30:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[34391]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-27-002110: 120.20 GB now available
Oct 27 02:27:42 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-03-22-232115: 132.85 GB now available
Oct 27 02:29:05 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-04-06-000633: 143.17 GB now available
Oct 27 02:30:23 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-28-002619: 146.29 GB now available
Oct 27 02:31:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-30-004344: 149.48 GB now available
Oct 27 02:31:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-03-000509: 152.58 GB now available
Oct 27 03:27:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-08-001931: 155.64 GB now available
Oct 27 03:27:40 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-14-003758: 159.26 GB now available
Oct 27 03:28:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-22-002147: 162.48 GB now available
Oct 27 11:37:36 iMac com.apple.backupd[35839]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-26-104655: 153.98 GB now available
List of backups dates in the backup volume, and free space, taken from the terminal (after deletions: note that the backups marked in red should normally be kept):
iMac:~ admin$ ls /Volumes/iMac\ HD\ Time\ Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/
2011-10-01-061010 2012-05-31-093201 2012-10-20-002816
2011-10-09-005429 2012-06-07-002543 2012-10-21-021504
2011-10-16-001503 2012-06-14-005742 2012-10-23-004109
2011-10-23-002554 2012-06-21-001427 2012-10-24-002334
2011-11-05-001403 2012-06-28-001245 2012-10-25-002414
2011-11-12-004617 2012-07-05-002056 2012-10-26-002613
2011-11-19-000532 2012-07-12-002639 2012-10-26-012840
2011-11-26-000431 2012-07-19-005850 2012-10-27-012731
2011-12-03-000109 2012-08-05-002510 2012-10-27-032628
2011-12-10-003557 2012-08-12-002739 2012-10-27-042813
2011-12-17-002907 2012-08-19-005740 2012-10-27-052837
2011-12-24-001228 2012-09-03-110847 2012-10-27-062824
2011-12-31-002103 2012-09-10-123630 2012-10-27-113711
2012-01-07-005520 2012-09-17-002437 2012-10-27-123817
2012-01-14-000913 2012-09-24-002309 2012-10-27-133739
2012-01-21-005206 2012-09-29-011601 2012-10-27-143746
2012-01-28-000105 2012-10-01-001701 2012-10-27-153817
2012-02-04-022951 2012-10-02-010201 2012-10-27-163745
2012-02-12-210133 2012-10-04-000909 2012-10-27-173738
2012-02-24-002145 2012-10-07-112125 2012-10-27-183838
2012-03-02-002405 2012-10-09-001929 2012-10-27-193814
2012-03-09-003236 2012-10-10-002008 2012-10-27-203751
2012-03-16-002756 2012-10-11-001416 2012-10-27-213752
2012-03-30-014934 2012-10-12-004500 2012-10-27-223747
2012-04-19-004318 2012-10-13-012506 2012-10-27-233844
2012-04-26-012354 2012-10-15-003823 2012-10-28-011809
2012-05-03-003008 2012-10-16-002207 2012-10-28-013726
2012-05-10-004554 2012-10-17-002306 Latest
2012-05-17-011942 2012-10-18-002230
2012-05-24-001808 2012-10-19-002253
iMac:~ admin$ df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 914062528 585638424 327912104 65% /
devfs 226 226 0 100% /dev
map -hosts 0 0 0 100% /net
map auto_home 0 0 0 100% /home
/dev/disk1s4 2343750000 1980326912 363423088 85% /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine
/dev/disk1s3 976562504 568072864 408489640 59% /Volumes/iMac HD SuperDuper!
Time Machine has unexpectedly deleted several more backups, all of them (marked in red) about 2 hours before the 24-hour limit, then returned to expected behavior. Here is the complete list of yesterday's deletions (there was no 9pm backup to delete):
Nov 5 04:04:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[18020]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-035134: 163.92 GB now available
Nov 5 10:07:01 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-114210: 155.69 GB now available
Nov 5 11:06:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-103500: 155.68 GB now available
Nov 5 12:06:51 iMac com.apple.backupd[20542]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-134014: 153.54 GB now available
Nov 5 13:06:34 iMac com.apple.backupd[20687]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-124112: 153.56 GB now available
Nov 5 14:06:28 iMac com.apple.backupd[20828]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-154128: 153.55 GB now available
Nov 5 15:06:37 iMac com.apple.backupd[21152]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-144118: 153.54 GB now available
Nov 5 16:06:20 iMac com.apple.backupd[21360]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-174138: 151.67 GB now available
Nov 5 17:06:31 iMac com.apple.backupd[21510]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-164144: 151.66 GB now available
Nov 5 18:07:27 iMac com.apple.backupd[21674]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-194018: 151.59 GB now available
Nov 5 20:48:14 iMac com.apple.backupd[21804]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-184044: 151.57 GB now available
Nov 5 21:33:14 iMac com.apple.backupd[22086]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-230603: 151.54 GB now available
Nov 5 22:33:30 iMac com.apple.backupd[22370]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-220537: 151.49 GB now available
Nov 5 23:32:21 iMac com.apple.backupd[23141]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-05-000610: 151.47 GB now available
And here is the complete log of Time Machine executions around the first unexpected deletion:
Nov 5 09:04:17 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Starting standard backup
Nov 5 09:04:27 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Backing up to: /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Nov 5 09:04:41 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 9.08 GB requested (including padding), 159.15 GB available
Nov 5 09:05:35 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Copied 1075 files (2.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 09:05:38 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.41 GB requested (including padding), 156.92 GB available
Nov 5 09:05:40 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Copied 175 files (1.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 09:05:43 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Starting post-backup thinning
Nov 5 09:05:43 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Nov 5 09:05:43 iMac com.apple.backupd[19826]: Backup completed successfully.
Nov 5 10:04:18 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Starting standard backup
Nov 5 10:04:18 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Backing up to: /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Nov 5 10:04:38 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 10.56 GB requested (including padding), 156.92 GB available
Nov 5 10:06:11 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Copied 1314 files (3.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 10:06:22 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.41 GB requested (including padding), 153.45 GB available
Nov 5 10:06:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Copied 744 files (1.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 10:06:36 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Starting post-backup thinning
Nov 5 10:07:01 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-114210: 155.69 GB now available
Nov 5 10:07:01 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Nov 5 10:07:01 iMac com.apple.backupd[20110]: Backup completed successfully.
Nov 5 11:04:17 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Starting standard backup
Nov 5 11:04:27 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Backing up to: /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
Nov 5 11:04:43 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 9.14 GB requested (including padding), 155.69 GB available
Nov 5 11:05:58 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Copied 1223 files (2.3 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 11:06:08 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.41 GB requested (including padding), 153.41 GB available
Nov 5 11:06:17 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Copied 596 files (1.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Nov 5 11:06:21 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Starting post-backup thinning
Nov 5 11:06:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-04-103500: 155.68 GB now available
Nov 5 11:06:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Nov 5 11:06:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[20335]: Backup completed successfully.
It's a bit disappointing this unexpected and opaque behavior.
Similar Messages
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Time machine - possible to recover deleted backup files that have yet to be overwritten?
I recently had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall my OS after my MacBook Pro failed to start. I managed to restore all my files from a Time Machine backup on an external HD after installing OS Yosemite.
After my computer is up and running again, I switched on Time Machine again, which started deleting my older backup files to make room for a new backup. Before I know it, it has deleted all my backup files except for the latest one, the one which I used to restore my computer.
Then Time Machine discovered that it still would not have enough room for the new backup and stopped. So I don't think anything new has been written to my external HD yet. Given that Time Machine may not have overwritten the old backup images (fingers-crossed), is there any possibility that I could recover those? If so, how do I do it?
The old data backup is extremely important for me. Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.I recently had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall my OS after my MacBook Pro failed to start. I managed to restore all my files from a Time Machine backup on an external HD after installing OS Yosemite.
After my computer is up and running again, I switched on Time Machine again, which started deleting my older backup files to make room for a new backup. Before I know it, it has deleted all my backup files except for the latest one, the one which I used to restore my computer.
Then Time Machine discovered that it still would not have enough room for the new backup and stopped. So I don't think anything new has been written to my external HD yet. Given that Time Machine may not have overwritten the old backup images (fingers-crossed), is there any possibility that I could recover those? If so, how do I do it?
The old data backup is extremely important for me. Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. -
Time Machine seems to be deleting backups unnecessarily
Data (used / total) volumes are as follows:
Macintosh HD: 80 / 250GB (of the 80GB, 23GB is configured to be ignored by TM)
USB drive 1: 463 / 640GB
USB drive 2: Time Machine (see below) / 640GB
All drives are encrypted with FileVault 2. Some days ago I used TM to back up (afresh) my system disk. Then yesterday I plugged in my USB drive 1 and backed that up. The backup completed fine. Just now, TM informs me that it plans to backup the whole of the USB drive again and I have watched as it has deleted the backup that contained the data from USB drive 1. When i 'Enter Time Machine' I can see only the very latest backup from earlier today. I went into Console and checked the System Log for lines that cnotain 'backup' but cannot see anything that suggests a major error. Below is the output so far for this ongoing backup:
Jan 25 23:32:37 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Starting manual backup
Jan 25 23:32:37 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb
Jan 25 23:32:38 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Forcing deep traversal on source: "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Jan 25 23:32:51 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Apollo reason:must scan subdirs|require scan|
Jan 25 23:32:51 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Finished scan
Jan 25 23:32:53 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Found 14709 files (463.78 GB) needing backup
Jan 25 23:32:53 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: 558.27 GB required (including padding), 126.79 GB available
Jan 25 23:32:55 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-22-023427 containing 356 KB; 126.8 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:32:56 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-22-013429 containing 356 KB; 126.8 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:32:56 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Removed 2 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Jan 25 23:33:04 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-21-181408 containing 17.2 MB; 126.82 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:33:04 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Removed 3 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Jan 25 23:33:30 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-22-003429 containing 202.3 MB; 127.03 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:33:30 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Removed 4 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Jan 25 23:33:59 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-24-115959 containing 463.05 GB; 590.08 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:33:59 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Deleted 5 backups containing 463.27 GB total; 590.08 GB now available, 558.27 GB required
Jan 25 23:33:59 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25 23:35:08 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Copied 17357 files (355.6 MB) from volume Amarantus HD.
Jan 25 23:55:45 Amarantus.local com.apple.backupd[1811]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Volumes/Apollo/Lyre/Music/Bob Dylan/Desire/02 Isis.aif to (null)
I realise that with the extra space needed, the TM drive is well over half full, but for more than a year I have backed up a similar configuration continuously. It only registered a problem with capacity when, for example, I moved 200GB of data around on my USB drive. I have done nothing of the kind since it was last backed up successfully yesterday.
I can see that, having decided to backup the USB drive 1 again, TM needs to delete these existing backups, but I cannot figure out why it wants to back them up a second time anyway. I have not reconfigured the drive, changed encyptiuon parameters, etc. I should appreciate any thoughts re how I might investigate this further. Thank you.Linc, thank you. Below is the output from the command. I realise that the system has done more backups since the last process you asked me to undertake - if this is a problem, let me know and I can start again (or is there some way of capturing the log for a specific backup?).
2013-01-26-15:29:33 - Starting backup
Previous snapshot:
/Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-26-142939
Date of Previous snapshot: 1359210579952344
Will use FS events for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Gathering events since 7162257463778920123.
Will use FS events for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Gathering events since 7162257463778796241.
=== Starting backup loop #1 ===
Will use IncrementalBackupCopier
Running preflight for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Calculating size of changes
Should copy 290 items (5.4 MB) representing 1316 blocks of size 4096. 95632672 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Time elapsed: 1.225 seconds
Running preflight for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Calculating size of changes
Should copy 296 items (7.6 MB) representing 1860 blocks of size 4096. 95632672 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Time elapsed: 0.003 seconds
Processing preflight info
Space needed for this backup: 1.5 GB (367277 blocks of size 4096)
Preserving last snapshot /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-26-142939
Finished processing preflight info
Copying items from "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Finished copying items for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Time elapsed: 23.842 seconds
Copied 2147 items (5.7 MB)
Gathering events since 7162257463778947082.
Needs new backup due to change in /private/var/db/.dat05d2.001
Copying items from "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Finished copying items for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Time elapsed: 1.480 seconds
Copied 2464 items (7.9 MB)
Gathering events since 7162257463778943020.
=== Starting backup loop #2 ===
Will use IncrementalBackupCopier
Running preflight for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Calculating size of changes
Should copy 30 items (462 KB) representing 112 blocks of size 4096. 95629607 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Time elapsed: 0.212 seconds
Running preflight for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Calculating size of changes
Should copy 31 items (462 KB) representing 112 blocks of size 4096. 95629607 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Time elapsed: 0.002 seconds
Processing preflight info
Space needed for this backup: 1.5 GB (365380 blocks of size 4096)
Preserving last snapshot /Volumes/Chronos/Backups.backupdb/Amarantus/2013-01-26-152933.inProgress/567482 52-A169-447C-82C5-10428B8A5254
Finished processing preflight info
Copying items from "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Finished copying items for "Amarantus HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 5F4EC603-A5E6-355C-BCCA-4BFDC398260F eventDBUUID: 57D7A9F0-EFB6-4A1E-96A7-C6A7964DE5DD)
Time elapsed: 5.340 seconds
Copied 838 items (1.9 MB)
Gathering events since 7162257463778963904.
Needs new backup due to change in /Users/qcgm/.dropbox/photo.dbx-journal
Copying items from "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Finished copying items for "Apollo" (mount: '/Volumes/Apollo' fsUUID: 3E7BB8EC-1E44-3A61-8E9A-BA1EB31B54F4 eventDBUUID: 119D0F0D-E532-41D6-AB2A-65BDA38F9856)
Time elapsed: 0.590 seconds
Copied 843 items (1.9 MB)
Gathering events since 7162257463778943020.
Some filesystem changes made during the course of the backup may not be accounted for. Still busy after 2 retries.
Backup complete.
Total time elapsed: 42.033 seconds -
How to do a fresh restart of Time Machine (after HD swap & deleting backup)
Yesterday I upgraded my macbook's HD. There seemed to be a lot of ways to transfer my system to the new HDD, so I went with inserting the new HD, put the old HD in a USB enclosure, booted from OSX cd and told Disk Utility to restore from the original HD on usb. It took the little guy a few hours but then everything was up and running peachy. So far so good.
Then I turned Time Machine back on, and it wanted to make a complete new back up. I had read about that, so I decided to not waste 100s of GB on a second full back up and went ahead and formatted it... thinking that TM would start from scratch and everything would be fine.
But the backup got stuck on 26 GB for 3 hours. The TM widget (tx 2 Pondini) told me that it was waiting for the index to be ready and I stopped the backup. I went back to TM pref. and redid the setup, but when I clicked my backup drive in "change disk" TM told me that I'd better not because it is the same drive the original data is on!?! (screenshot).
It is listed in the 'do not back up' list as it should. Just to make sure, I formatted the backup volume again (ext. journaled) and verified it: all clear. Though for some reason there is still 200 MB of data on there, not visible in Finder, but if that's not causing the problem I can live with that.
I'm getting confused here... How do I to fix this? Or should I just ignore the message and go ahead?
How should I have set up a new TM from scratch?
Help would be much appreciated!Beautje wrote:
(I'm not sure whether TM said preparing when I stopped it, but nothing seemed to be happening.)
No, it had finished preparing, and started copying (once it logs how much space is needed, it's ready to copy), and had in fact copied 26.7 GBs.
My display had gone black, and I've set it to go to sleep when the computer has been inactive for 30 min. The whirring sound was still there.
That's fine; display sleep won't interfere. If you move your mouse, it should just display.
Should I be more patient,
No, something is definitely wrong.
would it really take so long do the deep traversal etc.? Does it need to do that at all when there's nothing on the disk? (that is visible in Finder)
It didn't do one at all (there's no message about it). Those are only required when the previous backup failed or was cancelled, or there was a very large volume of changes, like an OSX update. It was doing an initial, full backup.
What we can't tell yet is whether the copy was running terribly slow, or whether it had hung at the 26.7 GB mark.
When you have some time, erase the TM drive and start again. This time, watch the progress bar: note the time when it starts copying (xx GB of yy GB), and see how far it gets in, say, half-hour increments. The first ones will be rather slow (it's copying tens of thousands of mostly very small files, and there's a lot to do for each one).
Overall, it should run at, very roughly, 50-55 GB per hour for the whole backup (but again, considerably less at first; when it gets to your home folder and starts copying, say, large video files, it will speed up greatly).
It may not update the count continuously, but may seem to be going spurts; there's a problem only if it stops for several minutes. -
MAC OSX 10.5.8 and 2TB Time Machine would not back up. Saw discussion that suggested you change name without apostrophes etc. Went into Time Machine and did a manula backup without a name and it appears to be backing up now. Does this remove delete the old backup's ?
Does this remove delete the old backup's ?
No, they are all just fine. -
Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups
Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
Go into Time Machine.
Select the Macintosh HD.
Go back to one of the oldest backups.
Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more. -
I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?
Hallo Kieth ,
I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
Thanks for your interest and advice.
regards - Alan -
I've been getting this warning on my MBA for the last week: "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “LaCie-2big-NAS.” an error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, us Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
I have MBA and iMac, both running Maverick (10.9.4), backed up to LaCie NAS. However, when I go to Disk Utility on the MBA and the iMac, the LaCie does not appear and thus can't be selected to run repair. The iMac seems to be backing up to LaCie without problem. And even seems that MBA is backing up sometimes; when I check Time Machine, I can find files added in the last couple of days.
Is this a real problem? What's fix?
ThanksYou can't repair a network volume in Disk Utility.
Backing up to a third-party NAS with Time Machine is risky, and unacceptably risky if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want, and I also know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
If you want network backup with Time Machine, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
If you're determined to keep using the NAS for backup, your only recourse for any problems that result is to the manufacturer (which will blame Apple.) -
Since time machine backed up my computer does that mean I can delete files so I can increase storage space on my hard drive?
NO!
Time Machine is not an Archival Backup. It will keep files for a while, but if it needs the space, it will delete files that no longer exist on the hard drive.
Get a couple external drives and move the files to both of them. -
If I used external hard disk for back up time machine, is it possible to use that external hard disk to save another else from diffrent computers?
Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can do this, but you should make a new volume on your external disk. Time Machine needs a volume that is only used to store backups, so you can't store other data in the same volume as the one you are using for making backups.
If you want to create another volume on your external disk, use Disk Utility to do this > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Anyway, you should get another external disk to store other files, but if you don't want to, you can create another volume in it -
Time machine does not appear to backup an external HD. how do I get that included in the backup?
time machine does not appear to backup an external HD. how do I get that included in the backup?
In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-C, or select
Go ▹ Computer
from the menu bar. A window will open showing all mounted volumes. Select the one in question and open the Info window. What is shown as the Format in the General section? If it's not "Mac OS Extended," Time Machine can't back up the volume. -
My computer keeps getting a message that "Time Machine could not complete the backup. It continues, "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred creating the backup folder. I have to clear the pop up from my screen to continue using the computer. It is getting very tiresome. Any thoughts?
Hi there dean93,
You may find the troubleshooting steps in the article below helpful.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
-Griff W. -
The message I get recently and often is "Time machine couldn't complet the backup to "LaC TmMachn". Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
See > http://pondini.org/TM/C10.html -
"Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not availab
I have a Seagate 750 MB external disk connected to the USB port of my Airport Extreme Base Station. It worked fine with Time Machine under Leopard but it's not working the way it was under OS X 10.6.2. I'm hopeful someone can help me solve the problem.
Let's say the name of my Airport Extreme Base Station is "Airport." If I remember correctly, under Leopard time machine would start a wireless backup not long after I turned on the Seagate drive. That no longer happens.
I've erased and re-formatted the Seagate drive with 2 GUID partitions, one for my 24" iMac and one for my 17" MacBook Pro. Both computers are about 3 years old. In order to do the re-partitioning, I had to unplug the Seagate drive from the base station and plug it into one of the iMac's USB ports. If I didn't do this, nothing other than the iMac's drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility, although the name of my base station, i.e, "Airport" does appear in the Finder and PathFinder (a replacement for Finder that I use).
In fact, Time Machine works under 10.6.2. as long as the Seagate drive is plugged into the iMac's USB port. As soon as I plug the Seagate drive into the USB port of the base station, Time Machine no longer works. The backup is "delayed." When I click on "Back Up Now" a few seconds go by and I get the following dialog box: "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
In my Airport Extreme Base Station setup (Airport Utility version 5.4.2), the "Disks" pane sees both partitions on the Seagate drive. File sharing is enabled on the "File sharing" pane and "Secure Shared Disks:" is set to "With a disk password." "Airport Disks Guest Access:" is not allowed, nor is "Share disks over WAN."
When the Seagate drive is plugged into the base station and I click on "Airport" in the Finder or PathFinder, I'm prompted for the password I mentioned above because the shared disks are secured with a password. Once the password is typed, both partitions on the Seagate drive appear in Finder and PathFinder. When I try a Time Machine backup at this point, I get the same error I described above, i.e., "Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."
One last thing, I did an "Archive and Install" when I upgraded to Snow Leopard since I thought the changes were relatively minor as compared with past OS X upgrades. Normally, I do a clean install but didn't feel like it this time. I also tried deleting the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist to no avail and restarted my iMac to no avail.
At this point I'm completely stumped. As I said, Time Machine works as long as the Seagate drive is plugged directly into one of the iMac's USB ports as opposed to the base station's USB port. But doesn't this defeat the purpose of having wireless backup? Once again, the wireless backup worked fine under 10.5.8.
I hope my message is clear and a solution would be most welcome.
Thank you,
RichardI'm having the same problem. If my TimeMachine drive is not connected, I'll get the "Time machine could not complete the backup" "The backup disk is not available" warning a couple times a day. This is extremely problematic if I'm giving a presentation. I have tried changing my TimeMachine drive, removing that drive, repairing permissions, and have not been able to solve the problem.
Please help! -
If time machine puts all of my photos onto my external hard drive using time machine, can I then delete the photos from my computer but view them again from the external hard drive? Basically, can I free up space on my mac but not lose years of photos?
To add to Niel's comment bear in mind that if you have a backup copy on an external HD and later delete the orignals on your Mac HD you will then only have one copy - so no backup.
If the pictures are precious you should have at least two copies, and ideally another copy kept off site,
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