Time Machine Managament of oldest backups

I have a question about Time Machine's management - and deletion - of its oldest backup versions
I've just upgraded one of my Macs from OSX 10.8.5 to 10.9.4. Now I've re-engaged Time Machine. Before the OS upgrade, I had a two year history of Time Machine backups, after the OS upgrade TM was pretty short of space, the messages in the log indicate that it deleted about a years worth of backups, and the oldest backup is now 28 Aug 2013.
What does this mean about files which  I have not changed since August 28 2013 -  I assume Time Machine now has no backup for those files?
If I had known that TIme machine would have done this, I probably would have removed all the system files from the backup, and deleted their backups, probably a few other things as well. 
Is there any setting one can make for Time Machine that will cause it to stop and ask "Do you want to Proceed" before deleting oldest backups, ore even just cause it to stop with an error message?

Thank you Linc and etresoft. The backup finally finished, I checked some older files, and it works as you describe.
There was even a user message after the backup stating "Your backup drive is now full, you should migrate to a larger disk". Its unfortunate it couldn't have given that message before it started to delete information; I'll send that in by Apple feedback.
In the mean time I've turned Time Machine off until I figure out what to do about getting a larger drive.

Similar Messages

  • Help! Time Machine Deleted My Oldest Backup!

    So, time machine deleted my oldest backup (because it ran out of room)
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    Time Machine isn't meant to be used as an archiving utility, as you've now noticed.
    If a file isn't on your internal hard drive, eventually TM will delete the copy in its backups.
    If you wanted an archiving utility, you needed to look elsewhere
    You may be able to use a data recovery software to get the files back--I suggest you turn off TM until you get this sorted.
    Take a look at Data Rescue II here:
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  • HT3275 Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

    Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

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  • Time Machine wont erase oldest backups

    So at work and at home im having issues with my time machine backups. It doesnt seem that time machine wants to erase the oldest backups to make room for new backups. I have a 1TB hard drive in the iMac and i have 1TB backup hard drive with only 1 partition, all dedicated for backup. It keeps saying...
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    Hi,
    I recommend you slide on over to the Time Machine forum and spend a little time reading the TM FAQ. You can locate them at:
    http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
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    Hi All,
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    Message was edited by: mdavis75

    I have the exact same problem, but I am not using TM over a network... Only my local Mac Pro w/ a 600gb external drive. I recall back when I first got Leopard that time machine did in fact ask me if I wanted it to delete old backups after the drive filled up. Then one day it randomly decided to not delete old backups anymore... Instead displaying the same error message you get.
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  • Time Machine not deleting oldest backups?! Disc full.

    What is wrong with Time Machine in Yosemite?
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    Time Machine Troubleshooting
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  • Time Machine very slow when backup disk almost full

    My Time Machine backups on a Time Capsule (first generation, 1 TB) have become extremely slow recently. The disk is almost full, but I don't think that should be a problem as Time Machine deletes the oldest backups by itself. It has been, so I don't think that in itself should cause a problem.
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    Florian M. wrote:
    Thank you. Did that, and it seems to be working now - though it actually seemed to have got better even before I ran Disk Utility. Before, even rebooting didn't help.
    Yes, if there's a problem inside he sparse bundle, rebooting (the Mac and/or TC) won't help.
    Time Machine is a great technology, but it seems to have strange quirks sometimes
    It does indeed!
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    You're quite welcome, and thanks for the star!

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

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

    Have a look at this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427 and section "backup drive fills up".
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  • Time Machine deleted my old backups and crapped out midstream

    I had just gotten my failing hard drive replaced, and restored from Time Machine backup. So far so good.
    So a week later, I wanted to upgrade to Mountain Lion, but figured I should be responsible and run Time Machine backup again before doing the upgrade just in case something goes wrong.
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    It must have thought that everything on the drive had changed since the last backup, and it wanted to backup the entire drive. As such it tried deleting all my old backups! But it failed, and stopped in the middle.
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    To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
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  • 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.
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    2) If so, how can I recover said backups?
    3) How can I prevent this from happening again?
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    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
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    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 has stopped making backups

    Time Machine has worked fine for me fore many months, the backup disk being a 1 TB external firewire drive.
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    Tom

    Tom Baker1 wrote:
    My Time Machine backup disk is an external 1 TB firewire drive with only one partition, dedicated entirely to TM, and it backs up the two internal drives in my G5. One of these two internal drives has about 600 GB of data on it and the other about 400, so together they would be enough to fill the external Time Machine backup drive.
    Yes, that's too small. Our "rule of thumb" is, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing up. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
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    The 88.7 GB it's requesting means it's trying to back up about 74 GB (it adds 20% for workspace, etc., on the TM disk).
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    That probably won't help much, if at all. To confirm what's going on, Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to the last backup attempt, then copy and post all the messages for that run here.
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    Get a larger drive, at least 2 TB.
    Get an additional drive; use one for TM backups of one of your internal HDs, the other for a different app to back-up the other internal HD.
    Exclude a lot of stuff from Time Machine (at least 300 GB).
    Use a different app, such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to back up your internals to separate partitions on the 1 TB drive. These will be exact copies only; no previous copies of things you've changed or deleted.

  • Time Machine doesn't make backups

    Hi,
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    18/02/09 11:59:26 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3053] Starting standard backup
    18/02/09 11:59:27 ReportCrash[3054] Formulating crash report for process backupd[3053]
    18/02/09 11:59:28 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[3053]) Exited abnormally: Trace/BPT trap
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    magali mistral wrote:
    Hello!
    Thanks for your message. The Time Machine Buddy widget was helpful. Although I couldn't mark the text, copy and insert it here.
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  • Time Machine won't recognize backups

    I have two external RAID 5 units. One for content, one for backup of said content. Both are 10TB. Content to be backed up is 5.27TB.
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    Start with C4 in the 1st linked article.
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    Best,
    Chris
    Message was edited by: cmburkhalter
    Updated to make it slightly more clear

    Linc Davis wrote:
    I have indexing turned off for all my drives
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