Applications :: Make Time Machine Overwrite Previous Backups?
Dec 8, 2010
I have an external that I use with Time Machine, however I don't need incremental backups. Rather, what I would like is only one backup so that I can save space. In this backup, however, I would like specific things to change that change on my computer, as TM already does with its incremental backups. So basically I just want to condense the function of TM into one single backup that will update whenever I back up again. I realize this is not the primary function of TM, but is there any way to make this possible? Or is there any other software that would do this? I've heard of Silverkeeper and Retrospect, but never used them.
Is it possible to have Time Machine overwrite an existing backup instead of making excessive new backups? If not, is there a way to control when Time Machine preforms its backup task so as to not make excessive backups?
Info: iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
After searching the internet for a couple of hours I've given up and I'll bother you all with a question.
I've been using Time Machine since around december when I got a 1TB external LaCie. I've partitioned 250gb of it to back up the 180gb OS X partition on my mbp (yes I know it's not a ton of space for backup). It's been working wonderfully for 6 months. Even saved me once, found a file I had accidentally deleted.
I've had absolutely no trouble until yesterday.
I plugged in my Time Machine drive after 3 or 4 days of running around with my mbp and doing some light work. A few minutes go by and Time Machine has calculated that 85gb (usually it's at most 1-2 gigs for a full day backup, no idea how it went up to 85) and that there are only 74gb available, so the backup fails.
That's odd, so I try again. Same thing. So I enter Time Machine and I find that only one backup date is available, June 10th. Apparently the last time it was plugged in. So I exit Time Machine and browse through the drive itself via Finder and find that, sure enough, there is only one backup folder in existence. It seems like Time Machine deleted all my previous backups in order to fit this massive 85gb 4 days backup.
So does this mean everything is really gone, and that's why it wants to backup 85gb (just over half of the used space on my drive)? I'm pretty confused as to why this would happen, and what it means.
Any other options other than wiping and starting over?
Today I bought an iMac to replace my 2009 Mac Mini. Since the iMac had already been set up, I just transferred my data from Time Machine to it through Migration Assistant. A couple hours later I noticed that all my previous Time Machine backups from my Mac Mini didn't transfer over and that Time Machine had reset itself up.
Is there any way I can transfer over those previous backups from my Mac Mini to my new iMac? I know OS X Lion has a feature to do this, but both computers are running Snow Leopard. I am using a WD 2TB My Book for all my TM backups.
Info: iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I switched from a Mac Mini to a Retina Display Macbook Pro. When I hooked up the external drive I've been using for Time Machine to the MBP, I went through the setup for Time Machine and it created a backup of the MBP. That is the only backup now showing when I enter Time Machine. How do I access the previous backups from the Mac Mini through Time Machine? If I open the external hard drive from the finder, I can see the backups on the drive.
Info: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
Yesterday, I got a disk read error when starting up Windows under Parallels Desktop. After some sleuthing, I found the offending file, and was about to restore from my Time Machine backup when I decided to make sure the disk wasn't going south. I booted off a second, backup, system drive that I keep just for this purpose, and ran aDrive Genius disk scan on the main system drive. All good, only 6 bad blocks on a 1T drive. I ran this overnight, as it takes an hour or two.
This morning, after seeing this result, I booted from the internal system drive, located the offending file again, and entered Time Machine to restore the data. What I found was that ALL of my Time Machine backup data had been deleted. The only data there was a backup from late last night, that WAS FOR THE SECONDARY DRIVE I HAD BOOTED FROM. Seemingly, Time Machine had quietly gone and killed all previous data, and started from scratch backing up my spare drive.
There was no warning, no notice, nothing. Over a years worth of backups were gone, and my Parallels installation is now shot, since I can't fix the read problem. I'm contacting Parallels to see if there is any other remedy. You can imagine how absolutely mad I am at this.
NOTE:
1) I did not touch the backup drive during the boot of the second drive, or the scan test. It was not re-formatted or touched in any way (other than by system software)
I used to be able to make Time Machine backups on my external HD and now I cant. Whenever I try it says my drive isnt big enough as my backup would take 500 gb yet my hard drive is only 250 gb.
I am finding time machine too slow and i am looking at super duper or carbon copy cloner has anyone used either of these programs ,are they better than time machine
I am unable to "Enter Time Machine" to view previous backups! Time Machine continues to make backups, and I can access other preferences and options but clicking on the Time machine icon in the dock or in the applications folders does nothing!! How do I remedy this - I have repaired permissions but am wondering do I need to reinstall Time Machine? If so how do I reinstall Time machine?
I keep getting the error saying that my backup will not fit in the backup volume, but shouldn't Time Machine automatically delete old backups to make room for new ones?
Ok, so I have been running on a MacBook for over 2 years, now I want to be able to restore everything from my MacBook Time Machine Backup to my Mac Mini?
My Time Machine has been making the usual regular backups for a few months onto my Time Capsule. I just found that all the backups prior to about a week ago have vanished. It's not a disaster (I think) as I assume that the current backups reflect what's on my iMac (I haven't had to delete files from it yet).
Where did they go? Why did they go?
A possible connection: My TC is 500GB; my iMac 1TB. I recently put extra files for temporary use onto the iMac hard drive - Time Machine said (in effect) 'that's too much, try removing certain folders from the backup'. I excluded said folder and things seemed okay, but it would be at around the time I did that that my old backups have gone.
I don't know if its supposed to do this or not because I am a new time machine user. I have a HFS + Backup Drive using the GUID partition table that is used by time machine. Yesterday I had quite a few backups in my backup directory, today I come on to find that some of these backups are missing. Does it delete some backups?
Time Machine on my Mac has kept backups of my machine since December of last year. I have no need for that many backups, and they are taking up space on my external HD. Is there a way to have backups older than say, a month deleted automatically?
So I thought maybe I just needed to tell Time Machine to use that harddrive again. I went into preferences, and selected "change disk," and then picked my external HD again.
It made a new backup, though. Now, when I go into my backups.backupdb folder, I see two folders, one is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15"" and the other is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15" 2"
I'm looking for a program that will let me delete old Time Machine backups on a schedule. I am aware that TM will delete old backups once the drive is full. However, I don't want to let TM fill up my hard drive (having a ton of backups is not useful to me, and I use my hard drive to store movies as well), and I don't like having to manually delete backups when I want to add more files to my external hard drive. I've read many forum posts that recommend "just letting TM do its thing."
I'm just looking for a way to minimize the number of backups that are kept so I can keep plenty of open space on my hard drive for when I add to my movie collection. I'm already using TimeMachineEditor to back up less frequently, but what I would really like is a program that will automatically delete an old backup every time I add a new one. Ideally, I'd like to back up once a day and keep a week's worth of backups. So, once I have 7 backups on my hard drive, the next time my computer backs up the oldest of those 7 will automatically be deleted.
Just wondering if anyone has had a similar problem with the Time Machine. I bought a 500gb Time Capsule last July and it has been running perfectly until a few days agp. I noticed that all my backups were no where to be seen (when entering Time Machine on my MBP) and that it was doing a full backup.. The backup took the guts of 36 hours.
I've come home today to find that all backups are gone again and it is doing another full backup!!!Any ideas what is wrong here?
I decided to reinstall Leopard, Erase and Install. Everything runs much faster of course. I'm doing some restoring from my Time Machine HD. I don't want a complete restore, I'm just grabbing folders here and there from my TM HD and restoring it. I'm doing a backup now and so far it has deleted over 20GB of my backups and it doesn't seem to be stopping.
I have not had to restore anything from backups for a while, however in the past, before installation of Yosemite I have on occasion had the need to restore a file or folder, mostly from the ~/Documents folder.and never had a problem.
I recently upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.1.
Now when attempting to restore a folder that resides in the ~/Documents folder I find that there don't seem to be any backups available. In can see a timeline to the right of the Time Machine screen that goes back many months, but in fact the only folder that I seem to be able to restore from is the Applications folder. None of the other folders show any available backups, however I know there were backups.
The documents folder is of course not on the list of folders/files to exclude from the backup.
How can this be fixed ? Is this perhaps a file permissions error on the timemachine hard drive that can be foxed with the disk utility?
I don't use iCloud drive or iCloud backup or at least I don't think so. Are there any settings that pertain to Time Machine in relation to iCloud backup that I should check ?
This behavior greatly concerns me. I've had a hard drive crash several years ago. Fortunately I did not loose a lot, only a few ripped CDs in the iTunes library which were easy enough to rip again. That crash was the reason I bought an external backup drive the next day an Time Machine has served me well since then. I don't want to loose the work I have in the documents folder.
I have a question about how time machine deals with programs. I am rethinking my backup solution because my 17MBP has had its HDD replaced three times. I have been running winclone for my windows partition and it is simply amazing. I was wondering if I back up from time machine, do all of my programs fall back into place perfectly with serial codes, etc. maintained? I ask because I am in the process of choosing the automated TM backups, or just doing CC clones myself because of how simple it is to restore a backup from a clone.
I have my Mac on a TM backup on a 500gb HDD and its been backing up for about a month now. The maximum space is just about 500gb but time machine has brought it to 338gb with each backup taking 10-20gb. Is this normal? On my other Mac (an aluminum imac C2D), the backups take roughly 80gb of space and on my MBP im already up to 159gb worth of backups. Is there a way to minimize the size of backups?
I plan to 'clean up' my Time Machine/Time capsule completely, whereby I want to make it impossible for third parties to recover all or part of these old backups.After I have accompished this I want to start from scratch backing up my Mac.
I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effects on using other programs. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?
I finally get to open my first iMac in a few days and the excitement is killing me. So I decided to sign up for one of the workshops at the local Apple store. The girl told the group that Time Machine would make a perfect mirrored image of the hard drive in case of catastrophic failure. I asked her if this image was a boot-able clone and she said yes.
I've backup my Macbook Air Using time machine before reformat it to have window partition.However, after installing OS Lion 10.7.4, how do I restore back all my application and data on my last backup from time machine?
