The documentation says Time Machine does daily backups for the current month and weekly backups for previous months. My backup only has daily backups for the current month and the previous month. Is there some setting I have got wrong or has there been a change in the way Time Machine backs up?
iMac 27", macOS 10.15
I don't think you were correctly informed:
Time Machine deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source when it needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
How long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before you deleted it, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room. By default, Time Machine backs up hourly. That cannot be changed in Time Machine. There are third-party utilities that will modify the backup interval such as Time Machine Editor.
The Time Capsule sparse bundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's viewpoint of the Time Capsule, it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparse bundle.
Once Time Machine finds it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start over or get a larger drive.
I don't think you were correctly informed:
Time Machine deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source when it needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
How long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before you deleted it, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room. By default, Time Machine backs up hourly. That cannot be changed in Time Machine. There are third-party utilities that will modify the backup interval such as Time Machine Editor.
The Time Capsule sparse bundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's viewpoint of the Time Capsule, it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparse bundle.
Once Time Machine finds it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start over or get a larger drive.
You have basically told me what Time Machine should do but that is not what is happening on my Mac.
I started using Time Machine on 11 October 2019, it did the full backup and then did hourly and daily backups. Now that we are in November, when I look at the backup folder on the external backup disk, all I see for October are daily backups for each day. I have left Time Machine running automatically and have not deleted any backups.
Now that it is into November, I would have thought the backups for October should be weekly, not daily.
time machine no weekly backups
