Time machine won't delete its oldest backups?

Can anyone explain this to me... in all the time I've used TM (several years, many OSs, two iMacs), it always eventually fills the backup HD and then stops backing up telling me it has run out of space. TM is suppsoed to delete the oldest backups to constantly renew the space available for the newest back ups.
Why does it never do this? Does TM work as described for any one else?
Is there a know solution for this ussue?
Thanks,
Dave

plainhat wrote:
The error message simply said it could not create the folder. My assumption was that the disk was too full. Indeed, after wrestling with it all morning I've managed to clear some of the old backups and it is now (as I write) finally running a backup.
That can happen if the disk gets absolutely, positively, chock-full. Time Machine alone usually won't let that happen -- we see it when there's other data on the disk (in the same partition), that fills the last few MBs. Needless to say, that's not a good idea. Other data needs to be in a separate partition or different disk.
Here's what happens: When Time Machine starts a backup, the first thing it does is create a backup folder, and create and start writing to a (hidden) log file inside it. When that's done, it figures out how much needs to be backed-up, and how much space is available, so it can start deleting old backups. Obviously, if it doesn't have even a few MBs to create the folder and log, it fails.
However, I'm afraid this means as soon as the disk is full again, it will not automagically delete old backups and I'll need to fix it manually again.
Unlikely, unless you have other data there.
NOW... if I can figure out how to keep my Early 2008 MacPro from randomly shutting down, I'll be a happy camper LOL
Are you sure it's random? Could it be a certain number of minutes with no activity? If so, check System Preferences > Security > General. Make sure the Log out .... box isn't checked.
it kept finding files that were locked (from a Dreamweaver enabled web site) and I had to go in and remove those locks inside TM. Interesting adventure.
Indeed! Why in the world anything would be locking files in your backups is beyond me. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.

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Time Machine will not delete the oldest backup when external hard drive is full

I may not understand this timemachine thing, but....
I have macbook pro, 15", mid 2011, mountain lion......I have a WD Passport Studio I have ben using to back up with time machine periodically. I tried to back up today and it says i do not have enough room on my external drive. I tought the time machine automatically deletes the oldest back up?

I agree with Linc's response but you also have to realize that it will keep the oldest backup and start removing snapshots if it can.
It is my undestanding that time machine does what is called a full backup the first time and then the snapshots done after that are changes since the first backup. I'm not sure if time machine then does periodic backups or just snapshots.

Time Machine asked to delete all my backups

Periodically, time machine tells me it's going to delete all my backups and create a new one. There is no way out of it. All I can say is "OK". But I'm wondering "Why?". Why is it doing that? Months of backup are gone with a single click.
When my backup drive gets full, it warns me that it is going to delete my oldest backups. That's okay. That's expected. But twice now it has told me that it is going to delete my entire backup set and start over. Why? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening.
Time machine has worked well for me for years. But suddenly, it's kind of useless.

Start with C13 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine won't restore a critical backup - disk space not sufficient error

Using Time Machine Restore Backup says my Macintosh HD has 55 GB available. I need to restore a 50GB Time Machine Backup from an external disk to the Macintosh HD device as the transfer destination of the restore copy it it gives me a message 'This Disk does not have enough space to restore your system'. In fact trying to restore all my many time backups over the past months give the same error even though the backup size is less then my Macintosh HD destination.
So I used the Time Machine software to delete many of my documents in the backup that I want to restore, now it is 30 GB through the Time machine finder, but restoring still gives me the same error. However, time machine made a new backup of my system today of 30 GB but when I go through the backup process using this, there is no error about there not being enough space.
It seems although the finder in Time Machine recognises that file is just 30 GB, in the restore process it doesn't recognise that file has been reduced to 30GB

If you're trying to add a large amount of data all at once, and you get an alert of insufficient space, then from the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Time Machine
If the padlock icon is closed, click it to unlock the settings and authenticate. Turn Time Machine OFF, then back ON and close the preference pane. Restart the computer. Test.

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 won't recognize my last backup after a power outage

Good Afternoon Everyone,
I just set up a Western Digital My Book Live on my network. Last week, I set up Time Machine to start a backup on my MacBook Pro (running 10.7.5). It took 2 days to finish, but all went well. For three days, all the backups worked perfectly. However, we had a power outage for an hour during the night and now that I turn on my MacBook Pro, Time Machine recognizes the disk, but doesn't have a record of any backup.
I have gone to the drive manually and seen that the files are still there, but how to I tell Time Maching on my MacBook that the full backup is already on that NAS drive, so that it won't do a full backup?
I would really appreciate the help.
Brett

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 won't see my previous backups

hi,
for some reason, TM has continually told me there isn't enough space to make a backup to my external usb hd.
it's been backing up to this hd for about 9 months. disk utility checked it out and it seemed okay.
is there a way to get TM to pickup where it left off instead of having to start afresh? i'd like to keep those backups because there's some important stuff in there.
thanks for any help!
cheers,
sean

TM may start a new backup sequence for any of a number of reasons. See #D3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
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 first of the backup attempt that failed, copy and post the messages here. A clue should be lurking in there.
i'd like to keep those backups because there's some important stuff in there.
That's a curious comment. Have you been deleting things from your internal HD, relying on TM to keep it's copies archived?

Time Machine won't do any more backups

I've had TC for about a month now and it was working well and reliably once I installed all the firmware/time machine updates on my Macbook Pro. Now however, TM is unable to complete any backups, even leaving it over night. For two days now I've come back to my machine in the morning to see it "almost" done. This morning it was 570.2 MB/837.2 MB and not moving. TC reports the last backup was 3 days ago (April 1).
Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?
Many thanks.

So this is probably a bug in TC but it worked for me. After scouring this forum for ideas I saw someone had suggested manually changing the 802.11 a/b/g compatibilty channel from "Automatic" to <something>, I chose channel 10 (randomly). Anyway, after doing that my wireless backups seem to work regularly and reliably.
I guess I answered myself

Time Machine won't make a new backup

I just purchased a 500 gig Western Digital external harddrive and formated it using, MAC OS Extended (Journnaled), and GUID Partition Table. It creates the initial image just fine but every back up afterwards is an exact copy of the initial. I downloaded a song and put it on my desk top and waited for my hour to come around and no changed. Waited for hour two with the same result. I have reformatted my hard drive and try starting from scratch with the same result. Love the idea of Time Machine but I would really love for it to work for me.

I have tried to reformat my external harddrive numerous times with the same result. The reason that I know it is not making new back ups is that i will make a new folder on the desk top and then wait for it to do its hourly back up. The now screen shows the correct desktop with folders in all but when i go to the actual back up screen. It is the same as the original back up. I have let it go on for a few hours to ensure maybe it needs a few hours but the back up screen never changes. Time Machine is just making a copy of the original over and over again and not recognizing any changes.

Time Machine won't delete old backups.

I keep getting an error that the backup failed due to not having enough space yet it says in prefs that old backups will be deleted when the drive is full. Does anyone have a fix for this?

I had a similar problem when I upgraded to 10.8. The TM searched and searchand had it brains semi-scrambled. I got tired of waiting for it to do its thing so I went to the Disk Utility and erased the TM drive. Then had it start over with a fresh backup. It has been working perfect.
It may be time to flush yours and start over.

Missing Backups -- They are there, but Time Machine won't see them

I have backups going back to March 2008 on an external USB drive. Recently, there was an error message in my time machine status bar that a backup had been interrupted. After that, TIme Machine stopped backing up. I repaired my time machine backup disk using disk utility (and it found and repaired an error that there were an "Incorrect number of Access Control Lists"). I then reselected my external drive as my backup disk. Time machine is again backing up correctly. Moreover, my time machine preferences show that my oldest backup is, in fact, from March 2008, and when I mount the sparsebundle from the USB drive, all my old backups appear. However, when I actually enter time machine, none of the older backups appear. In fact, none appear at all. Only "today" is visible. Any idea how I can make time machine recognize and view all of my old backups?

I have a similar problem, with a slight twist.
Installed Time Machine January 2008.
The Apple store installed 10.5.6. November 2008.
Time Machine will only go back to the date of the 10.5.6 installation.
In console or terminal mode there are some directories and files are there on the backup HD. Although I have not found the original baseline backup yet from the console mode.
Apple support call in reported that a product specialist said the only thing to do was erase the backup HD and start over, that the 10.5.6 install had been a "new" install and the backups were no longer going to be accessible. One way to cut down on support calls is to to limit the support delivered.
Found several December 2008 references to changing permissions on "Mac address" based on ethernet card 16 byte file.
"Note the name of the file that begins with a period and has 12 characters in the name, such as ".001b6397c156" mentioned in the quote above"
This permission was r-------- to begin with. I did a chmod a+r and a+w.
A number of ways on the web to do that.
But this has not changed the behavior, but I have not rebooted yet.

Help! Time Machine Deleted My Oldest Backup!

So, time machine deleted my oldest backup (because it ran out of room)
I know it's supposed to do this -- but I didn't want it to.
On my oldest backup, I had a folder with lots of pictures and documents. Does time machine delete files that can't be found anywhere else?
I don't know what to do! Those pictures meant a lot to me!

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:
http://www.prosofteng.com/
~Lyssa

HT3275 Why does Time Machine say it's unable to back up because the disk is full -- even tho it's supposed to delete the oldest backups when that happens?

I'm running OS 10.6.8 on an imac from around 2011. I back up with Time Machine to an external hard drive that has about 500 GB. Until now, I've had no problemsm, or at least that's what I thought. But today I'm getting a message every hour saying "Time machine is unable to back up because the disk is full." It IS full, but Time Machine is supposed to delete the oldest backups when that happens, and keep deleting them in order.
Anyway, when I opened up my backup disk I discovered backups from February and most of March, nothing in April and nothing in May.
I'm a little freaked.
Does anybody know why that would happen and what to do about it?
Thanks in advance.

Hello, I don't use TM, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imagine something not being covered there.

Time Machine won't overwrite oldest backup ? ..says not enough space

Seemed to start sometime after installing Snow Leopard..
Used Time Machine Buddy, it says:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie Disk/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Starting pre-backup thinning: 56.32 GB requested (including padding), 5.69 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed.
Backup Failed: unable to free 56.32 GB needed space
Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.

HI and Welcome to Apple Discussions...
*"Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume."*
Make sure you have sufficient disk space on your startup disk to back up to...
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you always have a minimum of 10% to 15% free disk space at all times.
*"Backup Failed: unable to free 56.32 GB needed space"*
In this case you need a minimum of 60GB of disk space for that back up.
Carolyn

Time machine won't backup. Says disk is full ( stand alone disk). Souldn't it delete enough to create new backup. Last backup was 7/20/11. When I click "enter time machine' it goes to mail screen and nowhere else.

Time machine won't backup. Says disk doesn't have enough room. Shouldn't it delete old info to make space for new.
When I click on "enter time machine" it takes me to the last backup 7/22/11 and doesn't allow me to go further back.

No idea's?
I'm starting to think I just need to delete the sparsebundle file altogether and start over again...

Time machine won't delete its oldest backups?

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