Time Machine deleted my old backups and crapped out midstream

I had just gotten my failing hard drive replaced, and restored from Time Machine backup. So far so good.
So a week later, I wanted to upgrade to Mountain Lion, but figured I should be responsible and run Time Machine backup again before doing the upgrade just in case something goes wrong.
The Mac has a 4TB drive, which has 2TB free. The backup drive is a 4TB external drive, which has (or had) Time Machine backups going back two years or so. It still had over a TB of space left. I clicked on Backup Now and let it run overnight. I noticed it said "Deleting old backup to make room" or something like that, which I thought was normal.
I woke up in the morning to find that Time Machine had crapped out in the middle, and said that it couldn't complete. I realized that it had deleted all my old backups. It didn't need to do that, since the only files that had changed would have been less than a GB, and it had over a TB of space to work with.
It must have thought that everything on the drive had changed since the last backup, and it wanted to backup the entire drive. As such it tried deleting all my old backups! But it failed, and stopped in the middle.
Now I have a drive that still says there is only 1.2 TB of space on the drive, but I can't see the files! Even with Tinkertool, I can't see anything beyond the one most recent backup.
Can these files be recovered? I am totally ticked that there isn't some kind of confirmation like "Are you sure you want to delete X?"
I actually need to have some of these older backups, as they include files that had been deleted before the latest backup that I may need to retrieve. Any hard drive experts out there? Any terminal commands that can make these files accessible, even if I have to retrieve them manually?

To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

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Time Machine deletes entire previous backup and then back it up from zero!

my configuration :
Time Machine : USB external HD 500G
Backing up : 1. internal 160G (90G used) 2. USB external HD 500G (290G used)
the problem is, every time I hook up the TM, it backup the internal HD smoothly but deletes its entire previous backup of the external HD and starts all over ... and naturally it takes forever to do 290G....
anybody get any idea where the problem seem to be ?
Thanks!!

Welcome to Discussions.
It could be that your drive isn't formatted correctly for Time Machine. Launch Disk Utility which is in your Applications > Utilities folder. Choose the upper icon (the one that is not indented) for your Time Machine drive. At the bottom of the window the Partition Map Scheme should be GUID for Intel Macs and Apple Partition Map for PPC Macs. Next click on the indented icon for your Time Machine drive. The format should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
If the formatting is not correct on your Time Machine drive you will need to reformat your drive which will erase everything on it. Copy any files you might need from your Time Machine drive. Then format your Time Machine disk following the directions in this article. People with PPC Macs should substitute Apple Partition Map for GUID when following the directions.
If your Time Machine disk is formatted correctly there might be some hints in the Time Machine log as to what has gone wrong. Launch Console which is in Applications > Utilities. Choose All Messages in the left pane of Console and type in "backupd" without the quotes in the search window. Post back any errors or complaints that you find in the log.

Time machine shows larger hard drive, so never deletes old backups and maxed out my drive

So I back up my Mac Pro to a Drobo Gen 2. There is a 3tb and 3 2tb drives in it. When Time Machine backs up, it says there is a 11.88 out of 17.59 available, which isn't true. It actually ran out of room during a back up b/c it's putting so much stuff on there. There is only 238.70 left. (the 3 TB drive is not used in the Drobo system, but is there in case a drive goes bad.) My Mac Pro has 4 TB in it, and there's about 1TB left on it, so the Drobo is showing 5.19 is used, and only the 238.70 left, so all the rest is TM. TM is suppose to delete older backups when disc is getting full. But it's not b/c it thinks there is plenty of room. How do I get TM to see the proper drive space, or is there a way to have TM only do a certain number of back ups then start erasing. I'm not really tech saavy, so whoever can help and speak my language, that would be great!

To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

The Time Machine in my old Mini and new Mini is different

In my earlier Mac Mini, I could use the internal drive for the backup, which was great. However, when I setup the Time Machine for the new Mini, it insists on me setting up an external drive. So I can't use the internal drive for backups any more?
Thanks
Steve

To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

HT3275 My Time Machine deletes ALL previous backups

Every so often, Time Machine deletes ALL previous backups and starts over from scratch. It has done this several times in the last year. I have not changed any hardware or the name of the computer. Why is this happening? Makes me very concerned that I now have NO backups while it chugs away rebuilding a 210 GB backup.
Just got an error message:
Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup. Time machine could not delete the backup disk image "/Volumes/Joe's iMac.purgeable"
HELP!
iMac 27: 8GB, 2.9 GHz Intel Core I5
OS X Yosemite 10.10.1
Backup volume is Western Digital MyBookLiveDuo with 2TB and 1.8TB available

Hi Joe,
Have you Repaired both drives first, then Repaired Permissions on both?
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imagine something not being covered there.

My 2 TB Time Capsule's memory is full because it will not automatically delete old files as it is supposed to, so it is giving me zero backup of my two computers now. How can this be fixed so my Time Capsule deletes the old data and saves the new?

My 2 TB Time Capsule’s memory is full because it will notautomatically delete old files as it is supposed to, so it is giving me zerobackup of my two computers now. How can this be fixed so my Time Capsule deletes the old data and savesthe new?
Neither my local computer consultant nor I have been ableto change any of the settings in Time Machine to correct this problem. Working with the choices in the TimeMachine, there does not appear that there is any way to change the frequency ofthe backups either, so, after a year has elapsed, the time capsule is full, andmy only choice appears to be to erase all the current data on the Time Capsuleand start over, something that I do not want to at all let alone repeat on anannual basis. My questions are:
What can be done to have my Time Capsule delete old filesas it is supposed to do, so it has memory available to allow my computers toback up?
Is this a software problem that can be fixed online or isdoes this require a mechanical fix of defective hardware?

How much data is being backed-up from each Mac? (see what's shown for Estimated size of full backup under the exclusions box in Time Machine Prefs > Options).
Is there any other data on your Time Capsule, besides the backups?
Most likely, there just isn't room. Time Machine may be trying to do a very large (or full) backup of one or both Macs, and can't. Since it won't ever delete the most recent backup, there has to be enough room for one full backup plus whatever it's trying to back up now, plus 20% (for workspace).
Also see #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for more details.

Time Machine deleted my first backup to make space for a new one, is there anyway to recover it?!?!

So I had all my stuff backed up to December 23 on an external hard drive with Time Machine, then I deleted it all so that the next automatic backup didn't have any of these older files. Today Time Machine deleted my original backup to make space for a new one and so I lost Decemer 23, now I am screwed..HELP?? I accidently let it delete or something, I don't really know, I know this was just a series of mistakes and now I'm desparate ):

Have a look at this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427 and section "backup drive fills up".
It's a normal behavior that Time Machine is deleting oldest backups when drive is filling up.

Time Machine deleted 4-5 backups...

Time Machine deleted 4-5 backups that were from a different computer to make room for the an update. How can I get back 1 or more of those backups?

Unfortunately, you can't, since they have been permanently deleted and the drive space has been overwritten with new data.

Help! Time Machine Deleted My Oldest Backup!

So, time machine deleted my oldest backup (because it ran out of room)
I know it's supposed to do this -- but I didn't want it to.
On my oldest backup, I had a folder with lots of pictures and documents. Does time machine delete files that can't be found anywhere else?
I don't know what to do! Those pictures meant a lot to me!

Time Machine isn't meant to be used as an archiving utility, as you've now noticed.
If a file isn't on your internal hard drive, eventually TM will delete the copy in its backups.
If you wanted an archiving utility, you needed to look elsewhere
You may be able to use a data recovery software to get the files back--I suggest you turn off TM until you get this sorted.
Take a look at Data Rescue II here:
http://www.prosofteng.com/
~Lyssa

I have 2 auxillary disk drives for my MacBokk Pro. Time Machine uses one for backup and I use the other for storage, but I am unable to create a new folder or drag and drop files or folders to the aux drive.

I am unable to create a new folder on either of my auxillary disk drives. I can access the files and folders that were there when I transferred one of the drives from a PC. Time machine uses one for backup and I want to use the other to store photos which are large files. An help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. If I reformat the drive will I be able to access the files on it from the MAC. I do not share the drive with a PC. The files were originally created on a PC which I no longer use. I do want to continue to access the files put there by the PC. I would like to not have to copy them over to the MAC hard drive just to use them. The second aux drive is new and works fine because it was formatted by the MAC. I can drag and drop files there and work with just as if they were on the internal drive.

OMG... Time machine deleted ALL the backups, even latest..

Hey All...
I have just experienced a nightmare. If anyone can help I would be in your debt.
Here we go...
I was trying to move the backup of old computer ( partition A ) to a new partition ( B ) on same ext. hard drive.   Not enough space in partition b so I looked into deleting some old backups before copying A to B using restore in disc utility.
Inside time machine I was using the cog thing to select delete backup... selected the oldest backup, thinking this would delete only the oldest backup.
It deleted ALL the backups on A, including the latest.
This had work files on it that are important so it's a bit of a disaster. I have had a great backup stradegy for the last 15 years and have NEVER before lost anything. Here is my details...
Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz
10.7.5
External drive 4 partitions
Partition A was backed up using 10.6
From a G5 which I deleted the files from.
I am hoping the files could be recovred from either the G5 or the hard drive or my trash on the macbook pro?
I have and will not do too much on my computer like disc utility stuff or empty trash etc.
It's a long shot, but anyone have any ideas..?
Thanks in advance..

The...........Haggis wrote:
Thanks for your prompt reply Pondini,
I could have selected all in error but I am sure I didn't. I guess I must have.. grrr.
I cannot see any when I enter time machine.
Ok. It's just that I've never heard of it erasing more than what was selected.
It's possible something went wrong, and at least some of the other backups are still there. Especially if no other changes have been made to the TM drive, you might try running Repair Disk on it with Disk Utility. Unlikely to help, but it's worth a try.
The G5. I erased the drive using disk utility and haven't used it since. There is 2 drives on that machine, the drive we are talking about is not bootable it's just storage.
Since you already have it, you might want to try running the File Salvage app on it (you'll probably need another HD, or at least partition, to receive whatever it finds).   The results might be more usable than the results from the TM drive, since they're "ordinary" files and folders, not all the "hard links" Time Machine uses.
EDIT:
I had the ext drive hanging off my Mac Book pro 10.7. Ext drive had TM backups of 2 laptops and G5.
Hold on a minute -- how were all those backups made -- by connecting the drive directly to each Mac, or were any made over a network (wired or wireless)? Are they / were they all in the same partition, or separate ones?
Message was edited by: Pondini

HT3275 Time Machine deleting all previous backups?

While restoring my hard drive that I recently replaced the data on time capsule seems to have been erased after a back up of the new hard drive was attempted, how can I verify that these are deleted?
My current amount of data on my new hard drive exceeded the amount of data space on the previous time machine hard drive and I believe it might have deleted backups from the previous hard drive. Is there any way to see if that is the case? The error message stated that it could not be written, but when I looked in time machine I am at half of the storage used and previous backups are not seen.
any information or help would be great.
if worst comes to worst I can just reinstall the old hard drive and back it up again, and start over, but I would like to avoid the head ache if a solution is possible.

Exactly what happened depends on what version of OSX you're running, and how you restored your data.
If you're running Leopard (10.5.x), then however you restored the data, the drive is treated as a different one, and was backed-up completely. That may have required deleting many old backups. TM would not have deleted the only remaining backup then, but might have on a subsequent backup.
If you're running Snow Leopard or Lion, and did a full system restore, or installed OSX and used either Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to restore the data, that should have left a "trail." The next TM backup should have treated the new drive as if it were the old one, and only done an "incremental" backup, of what was new or changed since the previous one.
I put the word "should" in bold because that doesn't always work, on Snow Leopard especially, but sometimes on Lion, too. Just why not isn't clear.
If you used any other method to restore your data (drag & drop, restore from a "clone," selective restores via the TM "Star Wars" display), no "trail" was left, so the drive was backed-up completely.
If the new drive was backed-up completely, it will appear as a different one in the "Star Wars" display. Use the technique in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to see the backups of the old one, if they haven't been deleted.

Time machine deleting many more backups than necessary - how to stop it?

I did something that I expected to cause a full backup and might require TM to do some cleanup. Time machine has started eating my old backups and has quite a healthy appetite. I'm quite afraid it's going to wipe out my entire backlog of backups.
So here's what I did:
- turned off TM
- defragmented my boot disk* by using SuperDuper to create a clone of my boot disk, reformat my boot disk, clone back to my boot disk
- Selected "Choose Disk" in TM
- Selected "Backup Now"
(I expected TM to do a full backup do to changed i-nodes on the file or whatnot)
TM thinned out the backups as expected by removing weekly backups for the prior month. It then proceeded to start deleting old backups.
At last count, my TM Disk had 452.87GB of 999.86GB. My boot disk is using 142.49GB free of 319.73GB. So, there would be room for a full backup even if my boot disk was completely full but it's not.
What can I do to get TM back on track without losing all my old backups?
Thanks,
Dean
* Yes, I know I don't NEED to defrag, but even Apple recognizes that if you do a lot of video work, it's possible you might actually benefit from a defrag.

Dean Thompson wrote:
I did something that I expected to cause a full backup and might require TM to do some cleanup. Time machine has started eating my old backups and has quite a healthy appetite. I'm quite afraid it's going to wipe out my entire backlog of backups.
So here's what I did:
- turned off TM
- defragmented my boot disk* by using SuperDuper to create a clone of my boot disk, reformat my boot disk, clone back to my boot disk
Any time you replace everything on a disk (or the disk itself), it's considered changed and will be backed-up in it's entirety. This even happens if you do a full system restore from TM backups: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338
The new backup will require as much space as the data on your internal HD, plus 20% for workspace.
At last count, my TM Disk had 452.87GB of 999.86GB. My boot disk is using 142.49GB free of 319.73GB. So, there would be room for a full backup even if my boot disk was completely full but it's not.
So the backup should require about 170 GB of free space.
To confirm what's going on, 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 the messages (but only to the first deletion) for that run here.

Time Machine : Deleting all local backups of one of several computers leaves files behind

Hi,
I'm in the process of transitioning my Time Machine setup. For the moment, I have a local Time Machine volume backing up three Macs to the same Backups.bakupdb folder (I had set that up two years ago before reading Pondini's Time Machine FAQ).
Basically what I want to achieve is have a partition per computer that I'm backing up. So what I did was I partitioned a second external drive into 3 partitions, and I copied my TM partition to each of these 3 temporary partitions. I did that using Disk Utility's Restore tab. My plan was then to delete the backups of two computers off each temporary partition (per question 12 of Pondini's FAQ), to get 1 computer per partition on the temporary drive, then partition my main external drive in 3 and copy back each temporary partition to the main drive.
(The second external drive is lent, I can't just switch to using it.)
From what I read on question 12 of Pondini's FAQ and this reply by Pondini to a similar thread, I thought that deleting all backups of one computer via the Time Machine interface would leave me with an empty folder for that computer under Backups.backupdb, and that I could just delete this folder via the Finder. This is * not * what happened.
After all backups for the first computer I wanted to delete off the first temporary partition are deleted, the folder for this Mac is not empty ; it still contains all the 15 dates folder of the individual backups. What's more, these date folders aren't empty either. The first 12 of them I deleted (the most recent ones) each contains a Macintosh HD folder, under which remains a System/Library/CoreServices hierarchy. The (locked) boot.efi file is alone in the CoreServices folder. The last 3 dates I deleted (the oldest backups), however, still contain an even bigger hierarchy. Applications, Library, System and Users exists in all three, with a lot of subfolders and lots of files, totalizing around 2 GB of data. Most of the files are locked, even logged into root (very diverse files : plists, dylibs, rtf files, fonts, etc) but some are not (apps, and other diverse files : colorsync profiles, dashboard widgets, bundles...). Seems like Time Machine could not delete everything. (Why ?)
Note that I deleted the backups for one computer using that same computer, first using an Admin account for the first 3 or 4 dates and then using the root account to avoid having to always authenticate. (I didn't think it would create a problem... maybe it has?)
When I go back into Time Machine for this computer, no backups remains. It's like if Time Machine doesn't see the data that it could't delete... This is all very strange.
My question is : can I delete these leftover files and folders bia the Finder without fear it's going to break the backups for the other computers on the same partition ? If not, what should I do ?
Sorry for the long post, but I hope I was clear...

Phil_6379 wrote:
After all backups for the first computer I wanted to delete off the first temporary partition are deleted, the folder for this Mac is not empty ; it still contains all the 15 dates folder of the individual backups.
It shouldn't; when you delete a backup, the date-stamped backup folder and all it's contents should be deleted.
Most likely, there was some sort of corruption, either on the original or the copies, that left some pieces. On occasion, that will happen even when Time Machine is doing it's normal "thinning:" there will be a message in the log about finding a "partially-deleted" backup, and trying again. Sometimes the second try will do it, sometimes not. In that case, you might be able to delete it after running Repair Disk; if not, sometimes you can delete it via the Finder.
Under Lion only, deleting backups via the Finder is supported by Apple; you'll get a message about how it can't be undone. But it doesn't always work, so is recommended only as a last resort. Holding the Option key while deleting may help with the locked files.
If you can't get rid of the detritus, however, I'd recommend erasing the affected partition(s) and starting over. I'd not continue backing-up to a set of suspect backups -- the way they're all linked together, there's just no telling whether you could do a full system restore successfully.
In addition, as Linc says, even if you have some things off-site, I'd strongly recommend getting another external HD for "secondary" onsite backups. Externals are getting much less expensive all the time, and if there's a problem with the old one (either the drive itself or the backups on it), you'll be in a large pickle. Plus, of course, drives don't last forever. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for some suggestions.

Time Machine deleted all my backups after upgrading to Yosemite!!!! Help!!!!

Hi all! I'm in deep, deep trouble!! I was on Lion, and had all my backups on an external hard drive done by the Time Machine.
So after I did a clean install to upgrading to Yosemite. So I was left with my Imac with nothing on it, Yosemite, and the applications that I've been installing manually.
However, Time Machine starting backing again my Imac with Yosemite, and decided to delete ALL BACKUPS of when I was with Lion!!!
Now I'm only have my new Backups(3 days old), and ALL MY WORK IS GONE!! (About 1TB of precised organised info!!!)
I tried a software called Data Recovery and whilst is recovering only a 50% of all deleted data after a scanning, now its retrieving that info with new names i.e. 0001,0002,0003 and organising depending on name of extension i.e: PDF,JPEG...therefore becoming totally useless as it will take literally YEARS to put it back the way it was.
Please HELP, I don't know what to do!!!
My profesional life is depending on it!!
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Hi there The Zach,
I would recommend taking a look at the troubleshooting steps for Time Machine backup issues found in the article below.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
-Griff W.

Time Machine deleted my old backups and crapped out midstream

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