Time machine files deleted in unison with HD files

I've been using Lion for about a month now and had very few problems. However, today I was clearing some files from my hard drive and trashed an installer programme by mistake. I wasn't too worried as I have made several back-ups with time machine. I went to my external backup drive and opened the folder the installer should be in. That's when I noticed the file had also been deleted from the back-up. I deleted another file on my hard drive as a test and watched as it deleted the same one in the back-up folder. Is this a glitch? Has anyone else had the same problem? I thought I'd mention it as people may delete important files and think they still have a back up

Mac OS X: Time Machine Basics

Similar Messages

  • Does Time Machine Ever Delete All Traces of a File?

    I have a question.  I have read up on Time Machine on various articles, posts, and documents across the web and I am having a hard time understanding exactly how time machine deletes files.
    When a disk is full, does Time Machine ever make the decision to delete the last copy or version of a file, therefore completely erasing it off the disk forever?  I know that Time Machine deletes older versions of files, but will it ever completely delete the last, final backup of a file to make space?  If so, I can't imagine using Time Machine as a true piece of backup software.  It seems like it would be useful in restoring your computer in an emergency, but as far as backing up files, it seems that it would be catastrophic, because it may choose to delete the last remaing version of a file to make space and you end up losing that file for ever.
    Here is an example:
    I create a file X.doc
    Time Machine backs it up.
    I modify X.doc
    Time Machine backs up the copy, keeping both the original and the new copy on the backup drive.
    I modify X.doc yet again.
    Time Machine drive runs out of space. Time Machine deletes the oldest version of X.doc and backs up the new copy.
    I create 10 more files unrelated to X.doc
    Will Time Macine remove all remaining versions of X.doc to make space for the 10 new files???
    I hope I am making sense.

    Derek Doublin1 wrote:
    Will Time Macine remove all remaining versions of X.doc to make space for the 10 new files???
    The worst TM can do is delete all your older copies of files, not the most recent version.
    If the drive is full, then it can't accept any more files period.
    If you had a full 100GB boot drive and a 100GB TM drive, the TM drive would be a copy of the boot drive with no room for saved states.
    If you changed a file on the full boot drive, then TM updates that file on it's full drive, there will be no copy of the previous version of that file.
    TimeMachine makes for a poor pernament backup system, because lets say you do a major files addition to your boot drive, TM backs that up and can go ahead and delete files you realized you accidentially deleted just a few short days ago.
    It's better than nothing and works ok for newbies, but more seasoned types use many backup methods in addition to TM, because corruption creep is possible with TM as well as malware as it's hooked up so often, in a lot of cases all the time.
    Most commonly used backup methods

  • If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space, I mean I have to delete mu hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using to with new information?

    If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space [externak hard drive], I mean I have to delete my hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using it with new information?

    Time Machine does not provide archival storage.
    If you delete a file from your disk it will eventually be deleted from your TM backup without any notice to you.
    You need a second external disk to use for archival storage.
    You also need a third disk for backups of the second disk.

  • How do I get Time Machine to delete old files?

    On threads for earlier operating systems I've seen similar questions, and it seems Apple hasn't resolved the problem that although Time Machine says it will delete old files when the disc is full, it doesn't do it, even though my hard drive has only ~300 GB of files on it and my external hard drive has 1.5 T, it does nothing to delete old files automatically.  This hasn't always been the case.  The first few entries were deleted awhile back, freeing space, but that has stopped happening.  Any suggestions?  Do I have to start with a fresh external hard drive? 

    ringoiphone wrote:
    Thanks.  Although the reset did nothing, by deleting enough old backups (a VERY slow process) I could get it to free enough space for another backup.  It's not clear to me why it cannot do this automatically.
    Time Machine will delete old backups, if it can.  So something must be wrong.  See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
    If nothing there helps, a clue may be lurking in your logs.  Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs.  Locate the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here.

  • Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

    hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

    See E-10 in the first link.
    Time Machine Troubleshooting
    Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

  • How does time machine handle deleted files

    I've recently grown into a 1.5TB external hard drive where I back up my iMac through Time Machine. I'm a photography hobbyist who does a lot of processing work on my photos in Photoshop, therefore I'm regularly generating sizable data to back up.
    My question is, using some hypothetical numbers:
    Pretend I create 50GB of new data by importing a lot of photos onto my iMac, then Time Machine does it's thing before I can decide what photos I want to keep or trash. I later go back and edit my photo catalog and decide I only want to keep 1/2 of photos from that previous import, reducing that data to only 25GB. Will Time Machine keep those old pictures on my external drive, even though I deleted them from my iMac? Will Time Machine ever recognize I threw away those files, assume I don't want them, and overwrite them? Or is Time Machine going to keep using my my external drive to back up everything until I used up all of the externals space?
    Message was edited by: Michael Streubert

    Understanding how TM deletes things can be difficult, but I'll try to summarize it:
    -TM will back up your system every hour.
    -After 24 hours, TM will delete all but one of the 24 previous hourly backups. The one it decides to keep will become your "daily" backup. You have no control over which of those 24 backups it will select to keep as the daily.
    -After 30 days, TM will start to delete the old daily backups too. It will keep 4 of the last 30 backups, one for each week.
    -After your TM disk fills up, it will start to delete old backups to make room for new ones.
    So, after you delete them from your main HD, the length of time that they kept on the TM drive can vary. If the files existed for only a few hours, then there is a good chance that they will be purged from the backups the following day. Or they might be kept for weeks or months, depending on if TM decided to keep those backups as the daily or weekly. It's kind of a crap shoot.
    If the files existed on your main hard drive for between one and seven days, then they will remain on your TM backup drive for at least a month. After that they are at risk of being purged out.
    If the files existed for more than a week, they will stay on your TM drive until it fills up. After that, they are at risk of being deleted.
    I hope this helps.

  • HT1553 i am upgrading my 2008 macbook to an ssd drive and want to save my settings. how do i save then? I have my files backed up with time machine ,but dont want to restore all files ,as there might be some junk backed up too. Help will be appretiated

    i am upgrading my 2008 macbook to an ssd drive and want to save my settings. how do i save then? I have my files backed up with time machine ,but dont want to restore all files ,as there might be some junk backed up too. Help will be appretiated

    When you restore from a Time Machine back up you can pick and chose what is restored. It is not an all or nothing process. Nor do you have to do the partial restores all at the same time. If days after the first partial restore you find something else you want you can restore just that.

  • HT5988 I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version?  How do I make that unit compatible?  olefromca

    I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version?  How do I make that unit compatible?  olefromca

    I agree entirely, been messing with this since the upgrade to Mavericks but I didn't find it quite as easy as uninstalling the WD smartware as it still operates when you plug the drive back in - I think it gets loaded onto the drive and runs from within (?). The advice from WD was that time machine was faulty and I should contact Apple...thanks guys!
    Anyway, for the OP's benefit, this is what I found:
    1. My problem was that time machine couldn't see any further back than before the Mavericks install, but if I opened up and interrogated the WD drive, the old backups were still there.
    2. When TM started doing new backups, it overwrote the ones that it could see, not the oldest ones on the drive. This indicated to
    me that the WD software had somehow partitioned off the old backups and excluded that part of the drive from being overwritten. Of course, as the drive was practically full, it meant that any new backups wouldn't fit in the available space.....
    3. The only way I could find to resolve this was to use the disc utility to erase and repartition the external drive. This will obviously remove all of the old files and backups, but I was more concerned about keeping a current profile as backup rather than a load of stuff from months ago.
    4. Anyway, what happens after the eraseure has completed is that you get the WD icon on the desktop, and you're invited to install the software - this means the software has now been deleted. Juts don't reinstall it, just let TM do it's backup and all is well.
    Usual disclaimers and warnings about keeping another copy of your system etc. obviously apply, and I know this is a radical move to delete all your old data but it worked for me. I guess I didn't appreciate that you could use the external drive without the software that came with it and just followed the screen guide.
    I'm also aware that if you don't want to use TM to do a complete restore and only want to find one old version of a document, this is difficult. However, you can then install the WD software and find the file but you'll then have to do this all again.....

  • Time Machine does not cope well with nearly-full disk

    Although Time Machine is supposed to delete old backups when the disk fills up, under some circumstances it does not cope well with a disk-full condition.
    Hardware: iMac (mid 2007)
    OS: Mac OS X version 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)
    Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
    Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
    The other day I noticed that I had not had a successful Time Machine backup in over a day. Backups were taking a long time to run (4 hours or more), during which time the backup disk was chattering constantly and the disk showed "Estimating index time" in the Spotlight menu (even though I had excluded the disk from Spotlight indexing). When the disk finally stopped chattering, the backup finished with no visible errors but Time Machine continued to state that the last successful backup was yesterday. The backup disk was nearly full, but I had assumed that Time Machine was designed to cope with this situation by deleting old backups.
    A complete annotated log file of the incident and my observations can be found here: http://bentopress.com/backup.log.zip
    Here are some of the interesting entries from the system.log file:
    Sep  7 16:22:14 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Starting standard backup
    Sep  7 16:22:14 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Backing up to: /Volumes/My Backup Disk/Backups.backupdb
    Sep  7 16:23:07 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 137.2 MB available
    Sep  7 16:25:49 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Copied 32984 files (23.7 MB) from volume iMac HD.
    Sep  7 16:25:53 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 108.4 MB available
    Sep  7 16:25:57 Bento-iMac KernelEventAgent[47]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/My Backup Disk', from '/dev/disk1s3', low disk, very low disk
    Sep  7 16:25:58 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Normal) DiskStore: Rebuilding index for /Volumes/My Backup Disk/Backups.backupdb
    Sep  7 16:25:58 Bento-iMac KernelEventAgent[47]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/My Backup Disk', from '/dev/disk1s3', low disk
    Sep  7 16:25:59 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Normal) DiskStore: Creating index for /Volumes/My Backup Disk/Backups.backupdb
    Sep  7 16:26:00 Bento-iMac KernelEventAgent[47]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/My Backup Disk', from '/dev/disk1s3', low disk, very low disk
    Sep  7 16:26:00 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Warning) Volume: Indexing reset and suspended on backup volume "/Volumes/My Backup Disk" because it is low on disk space.
    Sep  7 16:26:02 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Normal) DiskStore: Reindexing /Volumes/My Backup Disk/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/35367D91-8096-4D43-802B-A8658DBAB581 because no basetime was found.
    Sep  7 16:26:02 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Normal) DiskStore: Rebuilding index for /Volumes/My Backup Disk/Backups.backupdb
    Sep  7 16:26:04 Bento-iMac mds[45]: (Normal) DiskStore: Creating index for /Volumes/My Backup Disk/Backups.backupdb
    Sep  7 16:26:14 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Error: Flushing index to disk returned an error: 0
    Sep  7 16:26:14 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Copied 776 files (17.3 MB) from volume iMac HD.
    Sep  7 16:26:15 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[56515]: Backup canceled.
    Note the "error: 0". Error code zero normally indicates success.
    There were also many, many, many copies of the following message, which occurred while Spotlight was trying to index the backup disk:
    Sep  7 17:28:40 Bento-iMac com.apple.backupd[58064]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    Here's what I think is happening: at the very end of the backup, after the files have been copied to the backup disk, mds resets indexing because the disk is now full. backupd's attempt to flush the index to disk then fails because indexing is suspended (error zero), so the backup is canceled. I suspect that this may occur when the new backup and the old one(s) being deleted are both small enough that the disk "packs" tightly, leaving no room for the index. If a large (>500MB) old backup had been deleted to make room for a small (<100MB) new one, the problem would not have occurred.
    I worked around the problem by switching Time Machine from the full disk to my Time Capsule. (I did not have this system backing up to the Time Capsule originally because I purchased the Time Capsule later for a different system.) The downside of this is that I lost access to older backups (though they are still accessible by right-clicking on Time Machine in the dock and selecting "Browse other Time Machine disks..."—however, I have not actually tried this). I'm also not completely happy having both my main systems backing up to the same hardware, but everything seems to be working well at this point and I do have a secondary backup system, using SuperDuper to clone the systems' disks to an external HD, which I do about once a month.
    Although I have worked around the problem, I am posting this in the hope that it will be useful to someone else, in the hope that someone at Apple will notice and perhaps improve the performance of Time Machine in this situation, and also in the hope that someone can suggest a solution that does not involve throwing a bigger disk at the problem. Is there any way to free up space on Time Machine's backup disk, for example by manually pruning older backups, either through Time Machine itself or via the Finder or command line?

    If you suspect that the disk being full is the problem, have you tried deleting some of the old backup data on the TM disk?
    When in TM, go back to the past a long way, right click on a file/directory and select "delete backup". Do this on some big files you have (so that you get more space per removal) that you change all the time (so you'll still have recent backups).

  • Time Machine: "Partially Deleted Backup"

    Last night, after Time Machine performed a backup and began its post-backup thinning, it got stalled on "Finishing backup... ." The system log showed that it was attempting to delete a previously partially deleted backup:
    Starting standard backup
    Starting post-backup thinning
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-09-30-110803
    The backup it was trying to delete was the last one on its list (i.e., the oldest one on that TM volume). And when I opened it up, it indeed appeared to be a partially deleted folder. So I let TM run. However, it never finished "Finishing backup... ," so after letting it run all night and all day, I simply told TM to stop. It did, and the system then added two more messages to the log, acknowledging my cancelation as well as TM's current success:
    Starting standard backup
    Starting post-backup thinning
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-09-30-110803
    Backup deletion was canceled by user
    Backup completed successfully.
    However, the next time TM ran, it began all over again:
    Starting standard backup
    Starting post-backup thinning
    Found partially deleted backup - trying again to delete: 2009-09-30-110803
    It's still sitting there in its "Finishing backup..." mode.
    I was thinking about entering Time Machine, selecting that backup, and telling Time Machine to delete that backup—and only that backup. But I'm (a) not sure that will address the actual problem, and (b) wondering if deleting that particular backup (i.e., the oldest one on the list) is advisable.
    Suggestions?

    Pondini wrote:
    Maxwell’s Demon wrote:
    I'm aware of the multilink nature of TM's backups. What I don't understand is how you immediately concluded that the backups were corrupted.
    TM finding partially deleted backups, trying repeatedly to deleted them, and failing to.
    (And yes, I though you meant that you'd tried to delete the backup yourself.)
    It took forever. I ran TechTool Pro, and it "choked" (i.e., ran out of memory) trying to rebuild the directory. When I asked Disk Warrior to graph the directory, it revealed that it was more than 40% fragmented!
    I'm not sure fragmentation is a problem, or even applies, given the structure of TM backups.
    So I ran Disk Warrior. It ran without incident. When I then looked inside the TM drive, I discovered that along with rebuilding the directory—which is what I understood its job to be—DW apparently removed/deleted the offending (partially deleted) backup. The next time Time Machine ran, everything went smoothly. It's been running fine ever since.
    Great! And yes, there are times it can repair/rebuild TM backups that nothing else can (I guess that's why it costs $100!).
    I'm obviously quite pleased with the results: Not only did DW perform an incredible directory rebuild (fragmentation went from more than 40% to less than 1% !!) but it cleared out the partially deleted backup that was causing TM to stumble. But I remain awfully curious: Had I simply gone into Time Machine and deleted the partially deleted backup myself, wouldn't that have fixed the problem? (Granted, DW not only got TM back on track, but it also rebuilt its directory, which is a definite plus in my mind...I'm just trying to understand.)
    It's possible you couldn't have deleted it completely, any more than TM was able to. Remember, a single backup folder has hard links to hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of other items. Just one of those being screwy can have a ripple effect through the whole structure.
    And if you could have, it might well have left some of the actual backup files "abandoned" -- some or all of the hard links to them deleted, but still somewhere in the disk directory, so still taking up space.
    I got the idea from
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090515063602219
    which provided a link to the "solution" when partial backups remain that result in TM "error: 11" failures:
    http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2008/08/13/fixing-time-machine-backup-faile d-with-error-11
    Admittedly, mine wasn't an "error: 11" problem, but it sure seemed similar. My hesitation/concern was due to the fact that the partially deleted backup was the last one (i.e., the "oldest") in my TM volume: I wasn't sure if deleting it would screw up all of the links used by the remaining backups. However, since DW removed it without causing any problems, it seems like I may have been able to accomplish the same result by removing it "manually" from within TM. If that is the case, then it suggests that there may not have been any actual "corruption."
    Again, I am very happy with the result, and likely will resort to DW again the next time I have similar problems. The only reason I'm harping on it is simply to try to gain a deeper understanding of how to determine when such problems are indeed due to corruption as opposed to simply an errant file that causes TM to stumble. (Had TM indicated that it stumbled and was unable to successfully perform the backup, then I would have little doubt that there was actual corruption.)

  • I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard.  Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

    I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard.  Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

    Hi there,
    I found that Time Machine in Mavericks will sort it all out for you. You shouldn't need to buy another backup drive, unless you have insufficient space left and can't afford to delete whats on there. It should just work fine.

  • Time Machine running on Linksys WRT600n with external drive.

    Hey Folks,
    After searching the internet for the answer on how to setup OS X Time Machine on my Linksys WRT600n with storage link, and finding nothing or only parts of what I needed, I finally got it to work. Hopefully this will help you in your setup.(this should work for any linksys routers with storage link.)
    1) First you will need to attach your external USB drive to the Linksys Router, and format it using the linksys utility. This will format the drive as fat32 so it can be access by the mac and the router.
    2) You now need to create a share on the drive using the Linksys utility (I called mine "TimeMachine") and grant R&W permission to it. I found and article that said you have to create a group called "root" and a user called "root" within that group, then grant the group R&W access to you share. I did this but I am not sure if its required. you may be able to edit the default "admin" account.
    3) Once you have the share created you should be able to access the share from your mac by logging into it using your (Linksys) "root" account and password. Make sure you can save a file here. You maybe able to create a folder but make sure you can save a file (.doc for example).
    4) Apple has blocked the use of unsupported drives in Time machine so you will have to make a change for this to work. open a terminal window and type the following in one line:
    defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
    Hit enter, and close terminal.
    5) For some reason Time Machine will have issues creating the .sparse bundle Disk required for the backup over the network. So you will have to create it yourself. Safely unplug the USB drive from the router and plug it into your mac. Open disk utility (applications > utilities > disk utility) and create one the same size as your external drive.
    parameters:
    - Volume name: "Time Machine" (has to be this to work)
    - Mac OS Extended (Journaled);
    - No partition map
    - sparse bundle disk image
    Make sure the sparse bundle is in the share folder. If Time Machine had created this sparse bundle it would named it after your machine. You will have to rename it accordingly. This is the required format 'computername'_'mac address without colons'.sparsebundle
    (eg. "joe's MacBook Pro_000000000000.sparsebundle")
    6) Once all the above is complete you can reattach the drive to the router, and attach to the share again from your mac. Open Time Machine and you should see your share. Setup Time Machine to use this drive. You may want to be connected using Ethernet for the first backup as it may take a while.
    I have found the wireless backup to take a bit of time to prepare and run but it seams to work nonetheless. The slowness could be caused by the difference in mac addresses from wired to wireless. So you may want to change the sparse bundle file name depending on how you are accessing time machine.
    Hopefully this will work for you as it did for me.

    I am afraid I have to pour some cold water on your enthusiasm.
    Yes, what you say can get TimeMachine working, but there is a nasty snag:
    WRT600N uses FAT32 for its external harddrives and (regretably) understands nothing else. FAT32 has two restrictions:
    1) Maximum file size is 4GB
    2) (a lesser-known one) Maximum number of files in a directory of 65,535.
    The first restriction isn't really a problem because Time Machine organizes its data in 8MB "bands", which are files within your sparsebundle directory.
    The second restriction, however, will cause Time Machine to eventually hit a brick wall: The sparsebundle bands are given a sequence number in hexadecimal and there isn't really a limit to how many you can have. If you run Time Machine on a large harddrive attached to the WRT600N, you will eventually run into a situation where you are hitting the 65,535-files-in-a-directory limit. Time Machine will, therefore, run for a while and then suddenly fail for no apparent reason.
    Given the parameters of Time Machine, you can't run Time Machine reliably on a WRT600N with an external harddrive larger than 8MB * 65535 = 512GB. If that's good enough for you, then great. If not, you can do one of two things:
    1) Get something that doesn't format its harddrive in FAT32. 
    2) Install DD-WRT on your router (thus voiding its warranty), fight with it for a while in order to get SAMBA running on it, and gain the ability to format your harddrive in Ext2.
     I hope this helps somebody.

  • How to prevent time machine from deleting certain backup folders?

    So, I have problem undrestanding time machine. Time machine has made a backup of my files in Nov 2012 and another backup from Jan 2013. There is some files in Nov 2012 that I want to keep them forever and never be deleted. So, they were backed up by Time machine (I have deleted those files from my computer so they're no lonegr excist in my compuetr). Althought they do excist on my time machine under the Nov 2012 folder, I am not able to modify them at all for example, I'm not allowed to copy them somehwere else. Since, I can not make another copy of them, I am worried if time machine delete my Nov 2012  in future and then they will be gone. Can someone please help me in modifying/ controling my folder so it won't be deleted in future? 

    You are using Time Machine incorrectly, your files will be deleted from Time Machine after you delete them from your Mac, the only variable is when.
    Time Machine is a backup, not a storage system.
    Restore them now and copy them to long term storage (another hard drive)

  • Time Machine not deleting to provide adequate free space

    This is similar, but not identical to the recent post.
    I am backing up my internal system hard drive, which contains 111 GB, to a 1 TB external. But the disk has filled up to the point that I now get a TechTool Protection Alert every few minutes warning me that the free space is less than 15%.
    Sure, I can turn off the warning, but I agree with TechTool; I'd like to to maintain an adequate amount of free space so that overcrowding files don't create their own problems.
    Is there anyway to get Time Machine to begin the replacement of old files with newer ones prior to completely running out of space? What is the empty space threshold that Time Machine uses; surely not 100% full. Or is something not working right for me.
    Thanks

    B User wrote:
    I am backing up my internal system hard drive, which contains 111 GB, to a 1 TB external. But the disk has filled up to the point that I now get a TechTool Protection Alert every few minutes warning me that the free space is less than 15%.
    Less than 15% free space on your Time Machine disk is not a problem. That volume is not used for swap files, caches, or even active files, like your OSX volume is.
    If you have other data in the same partition, that can cause a problem, but Time Machine was designed to use up all the empty space available to it; there's no advantage to keeping any more of it free than it needs.
    By the way, if you're using the +Directory Protection+ feature of TT pro, exclude your Time Machine volume from it; and the files it keeps on your internal HD from Time Machine backups. It won't help if there's a problem, and having Time Machine back up the files can cause extra-large backups for no real benefit. See #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

  • HT3275 Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

    Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

    Unfortunately, when this happens, Time Machine cannot erase enough space to create room for the new backup. Your options now are:
    1) Add a new Time Capsule or a hard drive to the USB port on the existing Time Capsule and continue with backups
    2) Manually delete backups from Time Machine....which is a long and tedious process.  After a few hours, not much space will be reclaimed and it will not be long before the Time Capsule is full again
    3) Erase the Time Capsule....if you really do not need all the old backups from months ago....and start over with a new Time Machine backup and move forward again

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