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Time Machine Deleted Files From A Non-Full Backup?

OK... I just noticed something strange... I had some movie files that I deleted sometime yesterday (don't need them anymore)... just now, I wanted to see to retrieve one of them with TM and they're gone!

My backup drive is nowhere near full and TM didn't warn me about deleting anything... looking at my backups, I noticed that I only have backups for yesterday at 8:03AM and from 8:09PM (and on)... I'm guessing that's the case because anything before 8:09PM is now more than 24 hrs old... hence, it's 'thinned out'... I also noticed that I only have my initial backup from Friday... not the several it made afterwards... and that backup from Friday is missing some data I had that was captured by the later backups...

What's going on here? Seems to me that it should have all of my stuff, no?

Mac Pro 2.66, 4.0 GB RAM, 23 Apple Cinema HD Display, Mac OS X (10.5), EyeTV 200, Powerbook G4/667, 512 MB RAM

Posted on Oct 28, 2007 5:23 PM

26 replies

Nov 2, 2007 6:38 AM in response to Justin Surpless

I'm seeing this same behavior, and I think the biggest problem I have with it is, the way Apple says TM works, makes users believe they are safe.

I really think they dumbed down the whole system.

I'm showing that my TM keeps the first hourly backup around, and I think that backup is what is made into the Daily backup for that day.

Seems to me that Apple could have gone a step further, since they ARE taking hourly snapshots, and compiled the Daily backup with all the files backed up in the hourlies.

-Kevin

Nov 3, 2007 4:34 AM in response to Justin Surpless

Thank you very much for this helpfull information! And for all the discussion that comes next.

Nov 3, 2007 5:02 AM in response to Justin Surpless

I just have one question : what happens if we move a file on our internal harddrive? Just moving it, not deleting it : will I have to wait another new week to make sure that it will be saved definitively by Time Machine or not?

Thanks!

Fumi

Level 1

9 points

Nov 3, 2007 7:23 AM in response to Justin Surpless

This problem has also happened to me. I dumped about 10GB of stuff into TM. Waited for the next snapshot. Then I manually browsed the files and everything was looking good. I then deleted the files from my machine (in the safe knowledge that TM had them covered).

Following day, I tried to find the files and now they are gone.

This is ridiculous. What's the point of taking snapshots if it doesn't keep them? I have a 1TB drive with plenty of space but the way TM works seems to defy the whole idea of safe backups.

Nov 5, 2007 2:24 PM in response to Clement H

Clement H wrote:
I just have one question : what happens if we move a file on our internal harddrive? Just moving it, not deleting it : will I have to wait another new week to make sure that it will be saved definitively by Time Machine or not?

Just don't delete it for about 8 days, and you'll have a backup of it... 🙂

Seriously, that is the only way to be sure that you will have a TM backup of the file after you move it. Since it is a new file, it will only show up in the backups with 100% certainty after a week.

Do remember though, that if the file that you renamed (moved), has been around for over a week, you can restore the old file, even if your new copy of the file is gone.

Thanks,
Per

Nov 5, 2007 2:33 PM in response to jdelima

jdelima wrote:
I completely agree with you and Per. The dilema as i see it is where do you draw the line between version control and backup, if every piece of data is backed up, as would be nice? The weeklies (in a ridiculous example) could in theory for a file changed every hour of every day of the week, hold 168 different versions of one document!

I think that is actually OK. If you want to back this file up, then you have to be willing to have 168 versions of it every week. And again, since this is an end-user backup system, you can put a UI on these versions that only show the most recent (non-deleted) version, and only if you need to go back in time will you look at older versions.

Also, to be clear, this is what TM does. If a file changes every hour of the day, you will have 24 full backups of the file after a day, and not just 24 hard links to the same file. The only difference is that TM starts thinning out the backups after 24hrs.

Thanks,
Per

Nov 11, 2007 11:46 AM in response to Fumi

is it too hard to ask time machine to work like this?

1. First time you plug it in backs up everything.
2. Second backup (instead of backing up everything again) back up only what has changed, yet still leaving it time stamped some how that when you are in the time machine view that you can still see files that where there and not there at that time just using data from the first backup instead of making entire backups every time.

Also it would be nice if a file was created lets say when your backup drive was not hooked up then you deleted the file that "Time Machine" doesn't actually let the file be deleted until the next back is made then trashes all files automatically once the backup is complete.

pvonk

Level 6

13,851 points

Nov 11, 2007 11:55 AM in response to PleaseandThankYou

"Also it would be nice if a file was created lets say when your backup drive was not hooked up then you deleted the file that "Time Machine" doesn't actually let the file be deleted until the next back is made then trashes all files automatically once the backup is complete. "

But what if there are tons of files that were created and deleted (like a huge install of an application that loads zip files, unzips them and installs the results, and finally deletes the zip files) while the TM backup drive is offline? You don't want Leopard to keep those files around until TM can back them up. You might fill your boot disk.

Nov 11, 2007 6:03 PM in response to Justin Surpless

Here's something interesting... well, potentially disturbing...

I was looking through my TM backup today and I noticed that I didn't have a backup for October 30th... odd, I thought since I have one for Oct 29th and 31st... so I try to think back if my computer was awake during that day... which it was... I checked my system.log and I saw it making backups...

It purged the 2nd and so forth backups of that day on the next day 24 hrs later... BUT then I noticed that it purged the 1st one on Nov 3rd... why would it do this? Still got plenty of drive space (~35GB) AND there are OLDER backups still present...

Nov 11, 2007 6:53 PM in response to Justin Surpless

For my Nov 2nd backups....something was screwy....I have 2 backups that are for 12:45a and 2:45a. It's almost like TM couldn't delete the 2:45a backup, so it just left it.

Not that it's a big deal....just weird to be checking back through and instead of seeing 1 backup for Nov 2....there are 2.

-Kevin

Nov 11, 2007 6:57 PM in response to netnothing

I noticed something similar to this a short time ago... TM left my 1st 3 backups one day... it ultimately removed them but it was still strange...

Time Machine Deleted Files From A Non-Full Backup?