Time machine eliminating all of my old backups

I have Time Machine Backing up to an external 4T hard drive. TM is also set to back up another extenral hard drive that contains just photos to the same TM drive. It's been working seamlessly. Lost some photos today on the photo drive and found them on an old time machine backup and dragged them to the external drive (the icon on the desktop, not the icon in the Time Machine backup). All good. There were about 111g left on the Time Machine external drive and the imac has about 225g of data on it. So Time Machine started eliminating old backups one month at a time and looked like it wasn't going to stop....month after month. I turned off TM when it reached 400g of available space. How much extra room does a backup require and will it just keep going - eliminating ALL of my backups? Something just didn't feel right...

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message 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.

Similar Messages

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install of OSX Lion
I also tried using migration assistant with no success.
I just want to use TM to restore files and folders SELECTIVELY.
Does anyone also know how to fully restore my iTunes data? (purchaces, music, iphone backups, etc)
Thank you in advance

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, now I CAN'T go back in time using my Time Machine back-up . . . It says I've never backed up now (I guess because this is a fresh install that's TECHNICALLY correct), but I restored from this Time Machine file . . . Surely I've done something wrong that can be fixed. Help, please?

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.

Time machine won't recognize my old backup

I just bought a new MacBook Pro and am attempting to restore my old (stolen) laptop from my Time Machine backup. It recognizes my external hard drive, and I can browse all my files, but when I attempt to do a system restore it tells me that no valid Mac OS X backups are found. (Similarly, in Migration Assistant it just gives me a blank box in the "Select System to Transfer" dialogue.)
Does anyone know why my data is on my drive but not recognized by Mac OS X? I don't know if I set Time Machine to only backup my Applications / Personal Files and not the System, which is why it won't let me back it up. But it has everything else on there, and I really don't want to have to back up every file manually.
Thanks for your help in advance!

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time Machine deletes all but latest two backups

Hello,
Today I was backing up my macbook, with about 38 GB of space left on my harddrive, and Time Machine deletes everything but the latest two backups (from Feb 2012 to May 2012).... I had things on there from 2009. TM preferences now says I have 27 GB of free space, after the latest backup. I didn't have anything big enough on my computer to be backed up that justified deleting years of data, over 200 GB, in order to compensate for the new data that had to be backed up. Is there any way to recover the files that were erased off of my external hard-drive that were deleted during Time Machine's semi-routine back up?
Thank you

Sebastian Kuhn wrote:
Is there no way to set up Time Machine such that it will ASK before destroying a (potentially valuable) "old" backup
That's how it worked at first, on Leopard. But many users either didn't understand it, or never got around to doing anything, so had no backups at all when disaster struck. It was fairly common, so Apple changed it with Snow Leopard.
Why does Apple assume that it is always the OLDEST backup (which will be hardest to retrieve) that people would be willing to loose?
That's usually correct. Time Machine is not a traditional archive-type app; if you need archives, make archives.
If you frequently need things from your backups, you may have a deeper problem. But most likely, you just need a larger backup drive.
That all applies to the vast majority of users -- they have a single internal HD with less than 1 TB of data, so a 2 TB backup drive is ok, 3 TB large enough for most everybody.
If that's not enough for your setup, you probably need a different strategy anyway. You may have some data that changes frequently and should be backed-up hourly by Time Machine, plus something like a large media drive that's best backed-up only once a day or so by a different app, such as one of the "cloning" products.
there should be the option to exclude different items when backing up to different disks. Is there?
No. Apparently Apple wants to keep it as simple as possible, with few options that may confuse some folks, so instead of making a decision, they do nothing (that's not just Time Machine, either). Remember, most of the folks using Time Machine have never used any backup app at all.
Apple's resisted all suggestions (and there have been many) for things like the ability to limit the size or age of backups, reduce the 10-day warning when no backup has been done, etc. Like it or not, that's Apple's approach to pretty much everything -- streamlined, simple, easy to use. Very successful for the majority.
Is there any workaround other than the cumbersome procedure of turning Time Machine off, and under "options" re-select the correct set of folders to exclude every time I move from one disk to another? Not exactly what I would call a user-friendly interface...
Best of course, is get a larger disk. Is your data worth the price of a 2 TB disk?
There are some elaborate workarounds involving automatically swapping destinations and exclusions, but they're very "iffy" as they do things that TM (and OSX) don't anticipate so don't react well to.
Effective with Lion, however, there's a new tmutil command that in theory would allow you to write an AppleScript to set a destination, add or remove exclusions and run a backup. Many things could go wrong, of course, but I know of no way to detect which destination is available.
Much safer, easier, and more reliable to get a larger drive (or better strategy).

Time Machine does not completely remove old Backups

Hi all,
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.
The number of expired backups not removed is growing. I know one should not fiddle around with backups in Finder or Terminal - but the system does not allow me to remove any of the files/folders anyway.
Here is part of the log:
Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-08-06-211832
Error -47 deleting backup: /Volumes/Drobo/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro HGA/2009-08-06-211832
Deleted backup /Volumes/Drobo/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro HGA/2009-08-06-211832: 1.75 TB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 5 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Any suggestions?
Thank you for helping
Heinz
Message was edited by: Heinz-G?uenter Arnold

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.

Time Machine does not automatically delete old backups when drive is full

I back up to a 1TB external drive with TM. It will not delete old back-ups and instead tells me that the drive is full. I thought TM was supposed to manage all of this on its own.

It will, if it can. But it will never delete your last remaining backup.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, probably the pink box there.
Basically, if Time Machine has to do a full or very large backup, and your Time Machine drive isn't well over twice the size of the data it's backing up, there won't be room for the last backup, plus the new one, plus some workspace.

How to set up time machine so it can view old backup after renewal of user rights ?

I am newbie in the mac world but I am very happy to use the devices I have.
I just both and setup time capsule and did firt initial backup with time machine into account I have setup on the TC. But after while I was not able to view my user folder, so I resetup the user rights.
But now when I turn on time machine, I say that I didnt perform initial backup. In finder I am able to see and acces my folder on TC now and there is also a file with backup with name Václav - Mac mini.sparsebundle just in the root of my user folder on TC.
Can you please help me how to tell TM, that there is a initial backup that can be used for other incremental backups in the future ?
Thanks for your help.
Vaclav.

I did that. But and then reopen TM but still I dont see backup performed any suggestions ?
"Inherit" a backup
Copy the following after the prompt, and leave a space, but do not press Return yet:
sudo tmutil inheritbackup
If your backups are on an external HD, locate and open the drive in the Finder window. At the top level of the drive is a Backups.backupdb folder containing a folder named for your old Mac, per the sample. This is what you want the new Mac to "inherit." Drag that folder to the Terminal window.
(If your backups are on a Time Capsule, locate the sparse bundle containing the backups for your old Mac via the Finder, and drag it to the Terminal window):

Why did time machine delete all my backups ??

In time machine, I wanted to delete an old Lion backup to make more space for my new Mountain Lion. So within the "Star Wars" interface, I selected a few old backup directories (with the date on them), from year 2012. I had several backups from year 2013 I still wanted to keep... So i used the action button (the icon with the wheel) and asked to delete the selected directories of year 2013... But after waiting about 15 minutes to complete, all the backup including from year 2013 are GONE ! And the automatic backup from the new Mountain Lion started.
How come ?

Natael wrote:
@Pondini : yep, everything. 4 weeks ago was the most recent backup of all the Lion's ones.
Maybe. How did you do the upgrade? If you erased and installed, that could explain what seems to have happened, depending on how you put your stuff back. If so, there may be a fix, and you may not have lost the backups.
If you don't put things back in just the way Time Machine expects, it treats the drive as a different one, so does a full backup. And you've got messages for a full backup.
We have seen a few reports that TM occasionally does that even on a normal upgrade "in place" but I'm not sure how accurate they are.
See if the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting will display the old backups.
Now i'm reluctant to remove some old backups of my other macbook Snow Leopard's time machine... they are saved on the same HDD that i'm using for the ML.
In the same partition?
The widget doesn't "recall" removing anything. It seems to mention the error because of the lack of space, and/or a mounting problem.
No, no space problem. If it deleted backups, each one would be documented, although that might have been done on an earlier backup.
Could not back up OS X Recovery to /Volumes/MACDATA/Backups.backupdb: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=-69737 "Unable to mount recovery partition" UserInfo=0x7fd01438a350 {NSLocalizedDescription=Unable to mount recovery partition}
That's Time Machine trying to copy the Recovery HD to the Time Machine drive. Either there isn't one, or it may be damaged.
Error: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-50 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -50.)" (paramErr: error in user parameter list) deleting backup: /Volumes/MACDATA/Backups.backupdb/Macintosh/2013-06-06-114031.inProgress/BD2B91 A4-6790-42E6-AEBE-E631D990D253
That's a bogus message; trying to delete something it couldn't find from the work file.
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time Machine lost all old backups

I have an iMac 24" with a 750GB drive that only has about 200GB full. I have been using Time Machine to do backups onto a 400GB hard drive, and it has been working fine for a few weeks. Last week I copied 250GB of material onto my Mac's HD (as a backup of an external drive), but set that folder NOT to be backed up in TM (this worked fine). Then yesterday I renamed that folder... and Time Machine tried to include it in the next backup... and that backup failed, of course, since there is now more that 400GB of material to backup. Ooops... I have put that renamed folder onto the exclude list.
BUT, in the process of failing to backup, Time Machine appears to have deleted all of the previous backups from the 400GB Time Machine drive. The weeks of backups are gone. THAT was very disappointing. I thought Time Machine wasn't supposed to delete old backups without warning me (I have that option checked). Why did it do that??
(Happily, I have also been making backups manually onto other drives, and my main drive is still happy, so no files were lost... but I want to understand what happened before I trust my backups to Time Machine. I realize that I accidentally asked Time Machine to do an impossible thing by suddenly dropping that extra 250GB folder into its world, but why did it fail so ungracefully and delete all my old backups? This could be very bad if it happed to someone who was counting on Time Machine.)

This is TRULY a serious software design bug IMO and should be reported to Apple via their Feedback procedure. I also have seen this bug and I've reported it to Apple. You should also to add more weight to the bug report and to hopefully have Apple resolve this soon for all of us.
TM does fail to alert the user with a request that to free up backup space some older backups will need removing. Not only this but it silently removes the oldest backups trying to free up space only to find there's still insufficient space. This is clearly a very serious problem as you've discovered.

Does the last updated backup in Time Machine have all my files for "standard" file copy? (i want to copy and paste files to another computer that doesn't have TM)

My personal Macbook pro died, but I did have a Time Machine backup. I have a new iMac that I would like to use as a family computer. I would like to transfer some files to the new computer (and set-up a new Time Machine backup), but archive the remainder on a non-TM drive. I was planning to:
1. File copy my last backup folder from my old TM drive to the new computer
2. Copy (and then delete) the files I want to archive on another HD drive
3. Wipe clean my current TM drive
4. Set-up TM on my new computer
Is this a good way to proceed?
Is copying the last backup folder (vs. all backup folders) enough to move my files over?
Any better approaches appreciated!

I suggest you visit MicroCenter and go to there Apple section and ask one of there guys if they are still offering the 2 terabyte Backup For the iMac, Mine was only $100.00.
So the iMac has Time machine plus the USB 2 Terabyte Backup for less than your $130.00

Time Machine deleted ALL my backups

I was using time machine for quite a while to backup my hard drive and then stopped it for a while. When I turned it back on today, it backed up my ENTIRE hard drive (50 GB) and deleted ALL the old files & time machine backups.
The files and information on those old backups were extremely important. Is there any way of getting these back? Or am I SOL.
Thanks in advance, I really appreciate any help.

If TM completed what was most likely a new, full backup (which it will do after a long period without backups), then much (or most) of your old backups have already been overwritten.
It is possible that you might be able to recover some data from the rest of the disk with a +Data Recovery+ app, such as Data Rescue II, or a 3rd-party service. Neither is cheap or certain.
If you want to try that, stop using the disk immediately. To find such apps & services, look for +Data Recovery+ or +Disk recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com

After reinstalling 10.6 Time Machine deleting ALL backups - Help!

I recently reinstalled Snow Leopard. I then re-enabled Time Machine and let it run for a while. Then I discovered to my dismay that it had deleted several months of backups, and it looked like it was going to delete them all. So I turned it off.
Does anyone know why it is doing this? I have done reinstalls before and TM has picked up seamlessly from where it left off. But not this time.
A thought: I deleted the entire Caches folder from my Library - could that made TM think it needs to start from scratch with a brand new backup?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

SECollins7 wrote:
Does anyone know why it is doing this? I have done reinstalls before and TM has picked up seamlessly from where it left off. But not this time.
It may depend on exactly what you did. If you just installed a fresh version of OSX "over" the old one, Time Machine should only back up the new version of OSX.
If you erased the HD first, then installed OSX and used Setup Assistant to transfer everything else from your backups, it shouldn't have done a full backup. Sometimes, however, it does anyway.
If you erased, installed OSX, and used any other method to put your data back, yes, Time Machine will do a new, full backup. You can't prevent it on Snow Leopard. (There is a way on Lion).
If you really need the old backups, your only option is to let Time Machine start fresh on a different drive. You can always see and restore from the old one via the Browse... option, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
A thought: I deleted the entire Caches folder from my Library - could that made TM think it needs to start from scratch with a brand new backup?
No. That folder is automatically excluded from backups.

Time Machine Deleted ALL the backups!

Today, TM was cleaning up the old backups as it does every so often, however it inadvertently deleted ALL of the backups.
1) Can I recover my backups?
2) If so, how can I recover said backups?
3) How can I prevent this from happening again?
Thanks.
What a bummer....

TheChemist wrote:
May 30 15:12:50 francoisimac com.apple.backupd[500]: Starting pre-backup thinning: 423.93 GB requested (including padding), 123.83 GB available
The "padding" is workspace, etc., that TM needs on the backup drive. It's about 20%, so Time Machine estimates it needs to back up about 350 GB. That's the symptom: there isn't enough room for that.
The one question I would love answered is what would trigger a pre-backup thinning?
Not enough room for the new backup. In that case, Time Machine first deletes "expired" backups, then your oldest ones.
Unfortunately, there's no way to tell what that 350 GB was. After a backup finishes successfully, you can see what was backed-up, but not before.
So, you need to start with #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Something you're running is apparently causing a very large, but not full, backup (a full one would need about the 500 GB that's on your internal HD, plus another 100 GB temporarily).
If you still can't figure it out, erase the drive and do a full backup. Then immediately do another. If it's quite large, see #A2 in Troubleshooting to download +Time Tracker+ or BackupLoupe to see what's causing the huge backups.
If it's small, turn Time Machine off. Periodically, run a backup manually. (Select +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in your menubar, or by right-clicking the TM icon in your Dock). Sooner or later, you should see a very large one, and hopefully it will complete so you can see what caused it, via +Time Tracker+ or BackupLoupe.

Time Machine Combines all Backups?

Hey,
Why did my time machine combine all my old backups? I can no longer go past my last backup. It's like it merged them all into the most recent. This is the second time it has done this. Does anyone know why or how to stop it from doing it?
I already checked out this page http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306928
and I have an apostrophe in my name but it hasn't ever been a problem. It's like when I reach a certain number of backups it consolidates them into one and starts over?
Message was edited by: amsgator

This is normal time machine behavior. After 24 hours, the backups collapse into 1 day. After 37 days or so, the first seven days collapse into 1 week. At some point you will have the last 24 hours, the last 30 days and weekly backups going back in time until your disk is full. If you think about it, it is very unlikely you will need a file from a certain hour 1 week or 30 days ago. It makes sense to collapse the backups into snapshots as time goes on. The more recent backups are more important. I hope I understood your question...
Message was edited by: Myron Jones

Time machine eliminating all of my old backups

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for