Time Machine seems to be deleting files from the backup disk.

My main disk has about 400 GB of data including nearly 300 GB of movie files. Since I started using Time Machine in February, the backup disk has had about 400 GB of data on it. This morning Time Machine has said on the System Preferences display that it is "finishing backup" and in the process the backup disk contains only 108 GB of something - hopefully some of my data. The file structure looks OK on the backup disk but I am not sure that the data is there.
I turned Time Machine off and back on and for awhile it seemed to be moving data to the backup disk but then it went back to the "finishing backup" mode and the amount of data on the backup disk began to decrease again. This evening I turned Time Machine off and left it off but it turned itself back on. Somehow this does not seem right. This has happened a number of times.
The net result is that I have about 400GB of data on the iMac system disk and about 108 GB on the backup disk. What can I do to get out of this trap and start getting valid backup?
For starters I will dismount the backup drive and then disconnect the backup drive and at least I will have something left on the disk.
Thanks for the help.

Well, I can't really say what the problem is. You could try to repartition (not just erase) the HD and start Time Machine over again.
Or you could check Time Machine's logs in Console.app, and maybe someone else can help you if it's putting out errors (not my area of expertise).
Message was edited by: bcr88

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Time Machine seems to be deleting files from the backup disk.

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