Time Machine deletes old files without notice

Once in a month I intiate the Back Up Now command
Time Machine works about 30 minutes and then anounces it could not backup
Then I see most of my old backups in the Trash. I could not recover them.
There is now 40 Gb space on the external hard disk but it seems not enough
The computer has about 70 Gb data.
Does it mean htat Time Machine backs up 70 Gb each time I initiate the Back Up Now ?
I also looked into Preferences: it is checked to receive a warning before old backups are deleted
But I did not get a warning.
WHat can I do now ?

Bomiboll wrote:
I had to trash all the backups. Then I had to empty the Trash or otherwise the external hard disk was still not empty and so TM asked for more space. It was quite time consuming, took more than 2 hours
To trash all the backups, all you have to do is erase the partition -- takes seconds.
But we still don't know what's going on. Again:
What message did you get when it failed earlier? Post the messages for that backup from the widget.
How much data is on your Mac, and how large is the backup drive?
Then I made a backup of about 55 Gb and that took another hour.
That's about right for USB2 or FireWire 400. How is your drive connected?
I would like to make it speedy but how ?
The first backup will take a while, as it copies nearly everything; subsequently, only additions and changes will be backed-up, so should be fairly quick under normal circumstances -- a few minutes at most.
But if you only back up once a month, it will be much longer, and sometimes Time Machine will do a full backup. It's designed to back up changes hourly.
Now that I have my backup, I wonder where is the mail app which has mails on My Mac, where is Reminders and Notes etc. I cant find them on the Backup.
For Mail and Notes, see the blue box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #15.
I'm not sure where Reminders are.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Deletes Old Backups without warning!!

I have just lost loads of pictures and emails when my Timemachine deleted old backups. I was so happy to have an easy way to keep my iPhoto cleaned up while keeping all the photos for the future. I would load my all the photos from my camera, backup with TimeMachine and delete the "bad" unwanted photos, confident in the knowledge that these pictures are still there on my external. I looked forward to some future date when someone would write an easy piece of software to consolidate old iPhoto libraries and even go through TimeMachine and consolidate those photos too. But until that fantasy event, my pictures, even though not wanted were still there.
Not any more!!
I replaced my hard drive and reloaded my laptop from Timemachine and I think that was the event that sparked the dump.
There should be a special check box to make sure that NO backups are automatically deleted, EVER. They should be a way to make them Sacred!!
There should be a way to create a separate backup just for iPhoto because right now, there are no good ways to easily break apart or merge iPhoto libraries. At least what I was doing worked, (well.... until it didn't).
Any ideas??

nerowolfe wrote:
True, TM is not a classic archival system, but until the drive is full, the difference is moot.
No, the difference isn't moot.
I still have on my TM HD every file I ever had because it's only 1/2 full.
No, you don't. Read on...
Time machine has three levels of backups:
1) hourly - deleted after 24 hours
2) daily - deleted after a week
3) weekly - deleted only when the disk is full - these are the only deletions you will be warned about
Time machine is always deleting files. Every time it backs up, it deletes files.
But the OP's real question is why he was never warned about the old backups being deleted, as TM says it will do, archival stuff notwithstanding. Apparently TM simply ignores the user's request to be warned.
No, it doesn't.
That being said, as I asked in a post not too long ago, "how many have had a warning from TM that old backups are being deleted?" as one would expect when the TM preference box, "Warn when old backups are deleted" is checked.
It appears to me to be a bug.
I ask again if anyone has gotten this warning.
Nobody answered my previous post with a yes.
Yes.
Because Time Machine continually cleans up behind itself, it tries very hard to ever delete the weekly backups. The only time I've gotten the deletion warning was when my disk was full. I think I just avoided the problem by removing my old Parallels images from Time Machine and got back an extra 70 gig or so - good for another six months.
This is not a bug. This is how Time Machine works. It is unfortunate that the original poster did not fully understand this. The fact is that Time Machine backs everything up. If you create 100 files, it backs up the folder with 100 new files. If you delete 100 files, it backs up the folder with 100 less files. Then, the next day, it deletes old backups. The only one it keeps is the last one, with 100 less files.
It is correct to say that Time Machine is not an archival system. It is a backup system. If you want to save your files forever, you need to copy them to a location that isn't under the control of any sort of automatic software.

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.

Time Machine deleted old backups as disk filled up. Now I'm confused

Hi guys,
My backup disk was full, and hence Time Machine deleted my old backup. The most important data on my Mac (for me) is my iPhoto library. As I know it, Time Machine deletes backups for files which are used less frequently. In my iPhoto library, there are some photos which I haven't opened for years. So has Time Machine deleted them?
Thank you

As I know it, Time Machine deletes backups for files which are used less frequently. In my iPhoto library, there are some photos which I haven't opened for years. So has Time Machine deleted them?
Time Machine won't delete files that are still on your Mac, regardless of how long since you view them.
What it trashes are files that have been removed from your Mac. So, it's not an archive app. For instance, if you backed up with TM and then deleted the pics from iPhoto on your Mac (to save space or whatever) then eventually they will be deleted from TM.
Regards
TD

Time Machine deletes "unchanged" files at some point?

I am worried with the fate of old files backed up with Time Machine and that are not changed, like old pictures.
I was told that after the first backup, Time Machine works by making links to unchanged files to avoid copying everything not changed.
_My question_: when Time Machine automatically deletes old backups to make save for the new backups - is it possible that these unchanged files (such a specific old pictures file) be also deleted ? In other words, some of _my old pictures might vanish of Time Machine if its file is not changed_?

Mikus wrote:
I am worried with the fate of old files backed up with Time Machine and that are not changed, like old pictures.
I was told that after the first backup, Time Machine works by making links to unchanged files to avoid copying everything not changed.
Correct.
_My question_: when Time Machine automatically deletes old backups to make save for the new backups - is it possible that these unchanged files (such a specific old pictures file) be also deleted ? In other words, some of _my old pictures might vanish of Time Machine if its file is not changed_?
No. As Malcolm says, Time Machine always has copies of everything currently on your Mac. Every Time Machine backup is, in effect, a full one -- a complete "snapshot" of your entire system.
See How Time Machine works its Magic for an explanation.

Time machine Deleted old computer backups

Hey,
I have been using a mac pro for about a year and a half now and as all computers get it has become slow and full of garbage. So i used my time machine back up and successfully backed up all my files. I put in the OS disk and wiped the computer clean and reinstalled the OS. I plugged the time machine back up in and began to copy over only the files that i wanted. A few days later I had not yet copied over all of the files that I needed, i was prompted me to set up this computer with a time machine back up. I began the process thinking that it would create the backups in a new file on the drive or append it to the current list of back up images. It stopped half way though saying there was not enough free disk space. on the 1 TB HD there was only 5 GB remaining. So I just canceled it and was going to finish copying over all of the files i wanted and they delete the old backups. However when I went to get my old backup files, they had all been deleted.
I was using this hard drive to store other media files as well as time machine backups. taking the HD into the local computer shop i was informed that that is a terrible thing to do and perhaps the reason that my backups have been lost. the tech said there was nothing to be done but reformat the drive and start again. I am hoping this is not the case. the drive still says there is only 5GB of free space however I can only fine 300GB of files on the drive. so i believe that the files are still there. Does anyone know a solution to this issue. There are many valuable things on this hard drive that i would hate to loose.
I have tried holding the option key and clicking on the icon to view other backups, but my original backups are not there.
Thanks in advance.

Before I make any reply, note that you are responding to a topic that has been inactive for more than two years, on a system two versions out of date. In the future, you would do better to start your own topic in an appropriate forum, specifying what system you're running and what hardware you're running it on, among other things.
this exact thing happened to me as well and I must say that I find it totally unacceptable...
Well, without more information, it's impossible to say what might have happened or how you can recover. You may find some answers on Pondini's excellent site:
http://pondini.org
However, it's important to understand that this may or may not have anything to do with Time Machine. Perhaps your backup drive is dying, perhaps its directory structure became badly corrupt, perhaps one of any number of other things could have happened. Because there is no such thing as storage that is completely stable, it's important to keep more than one backup, as noted previously on this topic.
Carbon Copy Cloner seems like a much better solution at this time.
Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent solution. Is it better? No. It is simply different, and that makes it better in some aspects and worse in others than Time Machine. The best backup strategy will involve two different backup programs. I frequently recommend using both Time Machine and CCC. I use TM with a Time Capsule for one backup, which has certain advantages over CCC. I use CCC for a couple other backups, one of which is in a safe deposit box at all times, and that has some advantages over TM. Using both, with multiple backups, means that I'm extremely unlikely to lose much data, if any at all... unless a meteor hits and destroys both my home and my bank, in which case I've got bigger problems!
Anyway, with regard to recovery, take a look at Pondini's site. If that doesn't help, or you need assistance with something, start your own topic in the appropriate forum for your system and provide additional details that may help us better assist you.

When Time Machine deletes old backups......

My Time Machine disk is about to be full. I realize that when the disk becomes full, Time Machine will delete old backups.
I am not clear, however, exactly what this means.
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
I suspect it is #1 and #2. So if you had a computer where files are added over time (without meaningful deletions), this strategy will not help a lot---you just need to get a new disk.
Is another option to just make a complete new full Time Machine backup (losing all the intermediate backups)? How is this done?

Jeffrey Folinus1 wrote:
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
I have no idea what that is.
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Yes. More to the point, files that were changed or deleted long ago.
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
No.
When Time Machine does it's first, Full backup, it of course copies every file and folder on your system. It also makes a folder in your backups, named with the date and time of the backup. This folder appears to contain all those copied items.
But it doesn't. It contains "hard links" to the backup copies. Think of these as extra-fancy aliases.
Thereafter, TM does "incremental" backups. It copies only the files and folders that were added or changed, and makes another dated folder for that backup. In that folder are links to the new items, plus links to the items that didn't change: so they're cleverly named "multi-links." This is how TM appears to have many full, complete backups of your system when it obviously doesn't.
When TM deletes a backup, all that's really deleted are the folder and the links.
Consider what happens when you do a normal (not secure) deletion of a normal file: OSX basically "forgets" where it was, so the space can be re-used. TM is a little fancier: as long as there's even one link to a file, it isn't forgotten, so it's available to be recovered from any backup that has a link to it, and the space isn't re-used. When the last link is deleted, the copied file is forgotten.
Thus, when you delete a backup, the only actual backup copies that are deleted are the ones that have links in no other backup. So, for example, once you've done a Full backup and a single Incremental, you (or TM) can delete the Full without losing it's copy of anything current.
Another way to look at it is, *each backup is, in effect, a full, complete copy of your entire system the way it was at the time of that backup.*
So much for "fancy." The "extra" fancy part is, TM doesn't necessarily make another link for every single file and folder that didn't change. Instead, if a folder wasn't changed, and nothing in it was changed, TM makes only a single link, to the folder. When you consider that your System folder, for example, contains many tens of thousands of sub-folders and files that rarely change, you see how efficient this is.
For more details: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
and: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14

Time Machine delete old backups

My wife has a MacBook Pro and uses Time Machine on a 500 GB external drive. She is using about 160 GB on her MacBook Pro, but the Time Machine drive is now full and is not backing up current files. The Time Machine backups go back to 2010 and two or three versions of the operating system. I would like to delete old backups from Time Machine, as I understand that only files no longer needed in other backups will be deleted. Is there any reason this approach should be avoided? Are there instructions on the best way to do this? Thanks.

tomarm wrote:as I understand that only files no longer needed in other backups will be deleted. Is there any reason this approach should be avoided? Are there instructions on the best way to do this? Thanks.
yes, your wife ..
A: needs a MINIMUM of a second HD to archive data on
B: Yes, time machine "throws data out the window" when full
C: HD clones are more important.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Time Machine / Time Capsule
Drawbacks:
1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.
2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.
4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.
5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.
9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.
10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.
11. In the case of Time Capsule, wifi data storage is a less than ideal premise given possible wireless data corruption.
12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
Drawbacks:
1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).
2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
Advantages:
1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)
3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.

Drive no longer being used by time machine: delete some files?

Tried unlocking and allowing myself to read and write. Nope. Tried holding down the option key. Nope.
This drive is no longer being used by time machine and I want to delete some files on it.
Is there a way to do it without wiping the entire drive?

nowsthetime wrote:
It wasnt a dedicated backup and there's other material on it that I need to keep.
That's a problem (as you've discovered). Time Machine works best if it has it's own, exclusive partition. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #3 for details.
Aha! Just found THIS. I'll post if it works. http://www.celiamania.com/wordpress/?p=1038
That will let you delete individual backups, or all backups of selected items.
If you don't have room to copy the "other" stuff elsewhere while you erase the disk, you can delete the Backups.backupdb folder. Emptying the trash will take a very long time, and may give you permissions and/or locked file problems. If so, see #E6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Why can't time machine delete old backups when full?

My time machine disc is full and sends a message that it will delete older fileson next try. It did that before I installed OS 10.8.4.

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:
â Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
â In the Finder, select Go â¹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
â 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 â¹ 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 that corresponds to a failed backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. 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 all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
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.

Any way to restore Time Machine deleted old backups?

Hi,
I've just discovered that Time Machine has successfully deleted my very first backup and all my files tediously archived from 2002 has disappeared. TM has failed to warn me that my disc was full.
My only question is there any way at all i can recover these files? I have unfortunately dumped all my old cdrs.<proceed to wail uncontrollably>
Help.

V.K. wrote:
nerowolfe wrote:
I am beginning to suspect that when TM informs the user that backups are being deleted, it is not with a popup on the desktop, but rather via the console only.
No. that would be totally absurd.
Absurd, perhaps, yet possibly true. From reading these boards, many people have never gotten that message, but the logs do show that old backups are being removed.
I was also being sarcastic but I suppose unless you know me, it does not show
No user is reasonably expected to monitor console for a message like that.
I agree but the facts show that very few have ever gotten this warning. Again, I was being sarcastic.
I did get a regular desktop popup warning me about this when my TM drive filled up. but as I understand this particular feature is quite buggy and many people don't get those popups.
If it is buggy as you note, then what I wrote is not so absurd after all, IMO.
TM is not quite ready for Prime Time. It is a useful tool, much like a hammer or tire wrench, but it is only a tool.

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 deleted data files

I just set up time machine with a back up hard drive. When I went to open "Quicken" the data file opened is almost two years old. I cannot locate the latest file anywhere on the computer or back up drive. Any ideas where it could be hiding?

stheyn wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Time Machine must have deleted the file.
No. It's possible that for some reason Time Machine didn't back it up, but it cannot delete a file from your system.
The last time I saw the file was 1 day before I turned on time machine
I never mess with the data file (Quicken automatically backs up the files - they are all missing since early 2009)
Quicken backs them up? Where? (Obviously I don't use it).
I have tried Spotlight and Finder to look for any newer Quicken type files, with no luck.
I really don't know what happened and the file is probably gone. But, I was hoping somebody has had this issue and found some solution.
Have you looked in the trash?
If you're really sure the file was there yesterday, and it's important, +*Stop using your internal drive immediately+* to stop further loss due to files being overwritten. The longer you use it, the more files will be overwritten and lost forever.
You need specialized +Data Recovery+ software, or a service that performs the function. It's not cheap, and there are no guarantees.
The app mentioned here most often is +Data Rescue 3,+ but I haven't used it myself, so can't recommend it over any of the others.
Some of these have a free "trial mode," that will tell you if there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file. For more, you have to pay the $$.
You'll also need another drive to receive anything it can recover.
Look for apps or services under +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.

Time machine deletes old backups with new system drive

So I decided it was time to get a larger system drive. After I finished migrating to the new drive, I plugged in my Time Machine backup drive, and now it's deleting all my old backups! What gives? Shouldn't Time Machine keep doing incremental backups the way it always has? Nothing has changed except the drive -- the files are still the same. I had backups going back to 2011, so it's a bit unsettling to see this happen.

Digijohn wrote:
So I decided it was time to get a larger system drive. After I finished migrating to the new drive,
On Snow Leopard, that's what usually happens.
On Lion and later, depending on exactly how you put your data back, it usually doesn't -- TM changes the backups so they look like they were made from the new drive. And there's a way to do that manually.
But on Snow Leopard, there's nothing you can do. Note that you can still see and restore from the remaining old backups, via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

"Notify after old backups are deleted. Be notified if your backup disk is full and Time Machine deletes old backups to create space for new ones." I would prefer to be notified BEFORE things are deleted. Can the deleted items be recovered?

Time Machine option #2:
"Notify after old backups are deleted" Wouldn't it be better to get this notification BEFORE things are deleted? I suppose the real question is, is it possible to recover files deleted from time machine?
The bold phrase above has a checkbox. But if I leave it blank it appears that I will receive no notification at all.
I am using MacBook Pro, OS X version 10.9.5

TIme Machine is not an archival tool. And no, you won't be able to recover the files that are deleted.

Time Machine deletes old files without notice

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