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My Time Machine backups go back only one month. I have been using the same 5T external drive for years, and upgraded to Big Sur in June, 2021. It is now April , 2022 but my backups only go back to March, 2022. Where have all the older, weekly, backups gone? Even if the issue was related to upgrading to Big Sur, my backups should at least go back that far, to June 2021. But no. Help.
P. Phillips, I did not use Time Machine during the upgrade, so I didn't get any messages regarding APFS format. Even if the upgrade were involved in this issue, I would at least have backups starting from that point forward back in June, but I don't. I do a lot of video and music production work, so I've gotten messages that TimeMachine is full, but even then it thins out from the oldest backups, so I should have plenty of protection. Yet, my oldest backup is March 15th. Thoughts?
Guess I was not clear enough and sorry about that.
The TM Backup Drive after the Upgrade to Big Sur was and Time Machine Backup used under Big Sur ?
The TM Drive Requirements under Big Sur changed to requiring the drive be formatted as APFS.
That said - did TM Backup request the Drive be converted ?
Double Check the TM Backup Drives format using Disk Utilities.
What format is the drive using ?
Time Machine has been using APFS for at least the past few macOS versions. At some intermediate juncture the older HFS+ / Mac OS Extended formatted Time Machine backups had been using were seamlessly transitioned to APFS. When that happened, Time Machine didn't inform you, it just did it. If you upgraded to Big Sur from a version preceding Catalina (perhaps) those older backups may have become truncated.
This is only speculation on my part. A more plausible explanation may be that the enormous number of files associated with a macOS upgrade resulted in the need for Time Machine to delete older, "expired" backups, resulting in a shorter backup history.
The salient point to bear in mind is that TM guarantees an absolute minimum of one and only one complete, restorable system backup. More than that is "nice to have" but not guaranteed.
All the TM backups I had prior to upgrading were preserved, but I don't keep more than a year or two's worth. At this point they don't go back any earlier than Catalina.
My external drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Even though my backups don't go beyond March, TM is backing up now. So, does that mean I should stick with the current format or reformat to APFS? Thanks.
Changing the Drive Format from HFS Journaled to APFS involved Reformatting the entire Drive.
That will mean Everything on the Drive will be lost forever and there is not recovery of any Data.
As it stands Now - the Time Machine Backup from Before Big Sur are still on the drive but just not available and can not be used. They are taking up space on the drive.
P. Phillips, based on what you've said, I should probably re-initialize my TimeMachine drive to conform to the APFS format. However, I'm still a bit confused about what happened to all my older backups. The TimeMaachine drive shows only backup folders going back to March, and all of these are accessible when I enter TimeMachine, which means that TimeMachine is functioning properly on the current Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted drive. How do we make sense of that?
My TM drive is doing its first backup to my newly APFS formatted drive. Thanks for all your help. Greatly appreciated.
When the computer was upgraded to Big Sur and Time Machine Backup Drive was used - did Time Machine Backup offer to Convert the TM Backup Drive to the new APFS Format ?
Now, that explanation from @ John Galt :-), really puts a very fine edge to the matter.
Do suggest verifying the TM Drive format be it HFS Journaled or APFS.
Refer to the posting above by @ John Galt
No older Time Machine backups
