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...
"This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 392.28 GB but only 243.40 GB are available.
Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in the addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files."
Thing is that if it needs more space it should get ride of older files, should it not?? a 1TB backup drive should be able to backup a 1TB HD shouldntn it??
any help would be much appreciated!

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
If you still can't find your answer then repost in that forum.
Roger

Similar Messages

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

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

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.

Time machine not deleting oldest backup on full network drive

Hi All,
I backup my iMac over the network to a share on a mac Mini. After around three months, the share is full. I expected Time Machine to just start deleting old backups, but it is not.
Time Machine gives me the following error:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume".
This is correct, but i thought Time Machine should have just deleted the oldest backup in this instance? Or does this not work when backing up over the network?
Thanks in advance for help and advice.
Cheers,
mdavis75
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.
Can anyone help? (Besides telling me not to back up certain files, and to do it less often. Those are BS solutions! I want my entire HD backed up every time automatically erasing old backups when necessary. Is that too much to ask for?)

Time Machine not deleting oldest backups?! Disc full.

What is wrong with Time Machine in Yosemite?
For years I have been using it and when the backup drive gets close to full I will be warned that the oldest backups will be removed to make space for the new ones.
It even says in System Preferences. "The oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full"
Why then does this not appear to work anymore? My Time Machine drive has become full and it REFUSES to back up now!
What must I do? Erase the whole drive and start again? Any answers appreciated.

Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Logic Board replaced, Time Machine wont recognize old backups

I just got my Logic Board replaced and obviously having the problem with Time Machine recognizing old backups. I looked at old forums and found the macosxhints page (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101) on how to fix the problem but when I try to enter cd /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb into terminal it gives me a message saying "no such file or directory" i dont know where to go from here any help would be appreciated thanks for your time

instead of Time Machine in that command you should enter "name of your TM drive" (put the name of your TM drive there and KEEP THE QUOTES). However, as you seem to be unfamiliar with terminal you will very likely have further problems following that hint. Try this one instead
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20081216145458979&query=%2Bfsaclctl

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.
This becomes particularly annoying because whenever backups are going on, the system doesn't allow me to access the "Open" or "Save" dialogues - probably because it wants to check the Time Machine disk, but can't, or only can very slowly. Whenever I do this, the app in question just freezes.
Anyone else has this problem, and does anyone know a fix? I don't want to start a new backup if I can avoid it.

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!
Once again, thank you.
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".
It's a normal behavior that Time Machine is deleting oldest backups when drive is filling up.

Time Machine wont backup

I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
Thanks

jmhoskin wrote:
I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
The drive is probably set up with the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition map, that Windoze uses. To use it for TM you must completely reformat it, which will erase it. If you have enough space (or can borrow another external temporarily), you can copy the data off, reformat it, then copy the data back.
TM works best with it's own, exclusive space, so you should partition the drive anyway. If you're going to use the other data with a PC, make the other partition MS-DOS (FAT).
For formatting instructions, see item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Also see #1 of the FAQ Tip for size considerations.

Time machine wont backup says backup failed

Hi all . I have had time maching running successfully for 5 years. It is running on mavericks IMAC and using an external MYbook drive - same setup 5 years. My macbok also backing up remotely over wifi to this drive using time machine. Recently my macbook stopped backing up and would not recognise the sparse file even though time machine could find the backups it would not backup. I connected th Mybook directly to my Macbook and it recrreated the backup and now works fine over wifi. However since connecting my Mybook back to IMAC time machine again recognises the Backups and history and the drive - but it wil not backup. It goes through the motion of preparing backup but fails after 45 mins just stating "backup failed" ! I run disk utility on the Mybook adn it is fine. I have deleted the in progress file but still does not work. How can I force Time machine to work - mad that it will recognise the drive, see all my previous backups but not use it as a backup drive and fail the backup with no proper error message. Any deas ?

Mister_E wrote:
Hi:
I have a mac that is about 3 months old. I am using Mac OS X 10.6.3. I am not using Time Capsule. I am using an external hard drive. My Mac's hard drive is 500 G the external drive is also 500 G.
That's almost certainly much too small. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
But of course, it depends on how much is on your internal HD, which you haven't told us.
The message I get says I have 74.74 GB of 499.75 GB available.
Under options I do have "Notify after old backups are deleted" checked.
That means you're running Snow Leopard. PLEASE update your settings (click +My Settings+ at the right of this very page, and select the version of OSX you're running, and be more specific than "iMac" about your hardware) so we know what we're dealing with, as asked before! PLEASE
That's one of the things that changed in Snow Leopard. Having that box checked in Snow Leopard does not prevent deletions.
As I said, it backed up fine for a couple weeks but now what do I do? No matter how small I make the backup, if it just keeps adding backups it will eventually fill the drive.
From your first post: +*"I started getting messages that TM failed to backup because is was full (something like that)."+*
Now that we know you're on Snow Leopard, most likely the message says *+"The backup disk is full,"+* which is simply the notification you asked for by having the "Notify after old backups are deleted" box checked. See #C4 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Next time you get the message, take the time to note exactly what it says, and see #C4 in the Troubleshooting Tip.
And PLEASE update your settings.

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 has stopped making backups

Time Machine has worked fine for me fore many months, the backup disk being a 1 TB external firewire drive.
But now Time Machine will not make a backup. I keep getting the same error message: "Time Machine Error. This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 88.7 GB but only 58.5 are available."
I thought Time Machine just deleted the oldest files on the drive to make the room it needs for continued backups. So why isn't it doing that now? How do I get it to go back to doing that?
Thanks for any help!
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.
Now I have discovered that there is something wrong with the Time Machine backups as well. I decided to go into TM to see just how far back in time the backups go, but it will only allow me to go back as far as yesterday. It acts as though there are no backups older than yesterday afternoon.
That's probably correct; your TM disk is too small, and there's just not room for more. Here's the situation: A full backup has nearly filled the disk; something fairly large has been added or changed, and there just isn't room for it, in addition to the full backup.
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).
This is getting stranger all the time. At this point should I just give up trying to fix the situation, erase the backup drive, and start all over again?
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.
You need to do one of the following:
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.

After having the logic board replaced, Time Machine will no longer backup my computer to the same backup files as before.

After having the logic board replaced due to bad NVidia chip, my Time Machine will no longer backup my computer to the current backup. Is there a way to reset something to get Time Machine to continue to use the same backup files as before for this laptop?

As far as TM is concerned you have a new computer, so it will make a new backup. If you don't have the space for both backups then erase your backup drive before backing up the computer.

I tried to install a new hard drive using Snow Leopard to back up with Time Machine. When I installed the new HD I installed Leopard (10.5) on it and tried to use time machine to restore the backup I had made using 10.6. Kernel panic screen occurred.

I backed up my system using 10.6 Snow Leopard's Time Machine to an external hard drive. I did this because I purchased a new internal hard drive to upgrade my 2007 White Macbook from 80GB to 320GB. When I installed the new hard drive, I installed 10.4 (Tiger) and then 10.5 (Leopard) and once Leopard was in I tried to use Time Machine to restore my backup from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and received a kernal panic screen directly after the bootup.
The screen had code asking for 10.6, so does this mean that the computer is searching for Snow Leopard? If so, how can I do this? Will a bootable drive with Snow Leopard on it be able to solve the issue or will I somehow need to find a way to wipe out this new hard drive?
-Steve

Booting From Snow Leopard Installer Disc
1. Insert Snow Leopard Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.
Drive Preparation and Installation
1. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After formatting is complete quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.

Time Machine wont erase oldest backups

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