OS X V10.6 Snow Leopard :: Time Machine Has Erased All Previous Backups Without Warning
Apr 14, 2012
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 6Â bad blocks on a 1T drive. I ran this overnight, as it takes an hour or two.Â
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.Â
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.Â
NOTE:Â
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'v just lost important files when my new backup on an external HD using Time Machine deleted and wrote over a previous one ... informing me after (!) deleting (and why not before) . Is there any means for me to recover these files : mainly pics and music?
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)
The only way I can see my backups in Time Machine is by using the "option" key and selecting "browse other time macnine disks. However, there is only one Time Machine disk, only one backup appears in the list, there is only one backup directory on the Drobo where I put the backup and I can't find a backup directory anywhere else. HOw do I reset Time Machine so that it defaults to the "other" backup?Â
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.
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)
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.
In order to use Lion’s encrypted (Core Storage) external drive feature, I needed to reformat an external 1TB drive with Apple Partition Map, as that works only with GPT. The only partition was HFS+J formatted and was used as Time Machine Backup, which I wanted to preserve.Â
Act I:
I connected the drive to another iMac running 10.6 which happened to have enough space on the internal HD. I read this article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5096 , which describes how to copy the BackupDB just by drag and drop. In hindsight, that was a bad idea, I should have created a disk image like suggested elsewhere, but if Apple itself suggests it, it can’t be so bad right?Â
So I just dragged the whole BackupDB to random folder on the iMac (after enabling ownership), and apparently it copied correctly the dir-hardlinks, as the resulting folder had the same size. Â
It seems that the Finder activates a special dir-hardlink aware copying mode when one does this. This is also confirmed by the fact that the Finder will refuse to copy the BackupDB together with other files, you have to drag and drop the BackupDB only.Â
Act II:
I reformatted the external drive as HFS+J with GPT and activated ownership.. But now, when I try to copy the BackupDB back, it continues to count indefinitely the number of files to copy! I speculate that the special dir-hardlink aware mode is not activated, but what can I do? How can I trigger it? Is there some hidden command line tool which handles this?Â
The lesson I’m drawing from this is: use the method described in the article only if you copy the backupDB from your old to your new drive.Â
My TM backups seem to be proceeding normally on my MBP (which is only sometimes connected to its Time Capsule), but spotlight takes about an hour to index my backup volume each time. Looking at my system.log, I notice that the TM backup volume number is increasing by one each time:Â
[code]...
and so on. Is it normal that the volume name increments each time like this? Could this be related to the long indexing time, which just started recently?
I would like to always have one external hard drive attached to my iMac for Time Machine backups, and another external hard drive off site - periodically swapping the two. The though is that if there is fire or theft, it won't help to have a hard drive onsite attached to the computer, because both the iMac and the hard drive could be lost. Is Time Machine smart enough to allow me to configure two drives, so that whenever I plug in one of the drives, it can figure out what needs to be backed up?
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 have an external HD and have botched up all the time machine backups pretty badly. (deleting backups, adding things to the time machine disk not using a TM backup, etc).Â
I just want to delte everything and start over from scratch.Â
I ran a Time Machine backup of my MacBook Pro just like I do every night, and it completed successfully. This morning I noticed a msg saying my backup failed because there wasn't enough room on the disk (I leave my Time Machine disk plugged in all of the time when I'm home). When I enter Time Machine it doesn't show any of the old backups--it looks like it's never used the disk. When I browse the disk in Finder I see a backups folder.I really need to have access to my backups! I've tried restarting the computer, and control clicking Time Machine and selecting "Browse other Time Machine Disks" and nothing seems to help.
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.
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.
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 started installing Leopard last night before going out. I came back late last night (or early this morning) and sat down to explore the new OS. There was a pop-up about using Time Machine with my external hard drive. I clicked okay.
It began loading and running Time Machine before telling me my external hard drive was the wrong format or something. It then gave me the option to delete (which I assumed ment delete the Time Machine files from my external hard drive). I clicked on it.
A few minutes later I realized that it had erased my entire external hard drive, renaming it "Time Machine Backups". I had JUST moved my entire music and movie collection to that hard drive and am wondering if there's any way I can recover those files.
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'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?
I cannot seem to set up Time Machine using Time Capsule on my MacBook Pro. Evidently when I initially set up AirPort Extreme, I failed to select it as the backup disc.
Info:AirPort Extreme 802.11n (4th Gen), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I filled up a 250gb My Book external drive using Time Machine. Replaced it with 500gb My Book and now can't read the old 250gb one when I reconnect it. My iMac doesn't recognize it. (I lost a large picture folder that is now only on the 250gb drive).
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.