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Level 1

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Time Machine 1.1 sometimes deletes backups that should keep

About two years ago I was intrigued about the disparition of several Time Machine backups. After changing to a larger external backup disk, I've been trying to follow the behavior of Time Machine. Overall, it seems to be quite predictable, corresponding to what is explained in its window: mostly keeping hourly backups during 24 hours, then, from these, only keeping the first one in each day during 30 days, and then, from these remaining backups, only keeping one per week as "space" permits. Since the new backup partition is large (240% of the HD disk), it is still far from removing oldest backup(s) in order to free space. However, in my system, Time Machine has removed more backups, which should have been kept, in at least two occassions:

Several weeks ago, one month after having the system down for several days, two or three backups (specifically 2012-07-24-002423 and 2012-07-29-120258) that should be kept as weekly ones were deleted, possibly trying to resyncronize to a new day-of-week for the new series of weekly backups to keep.
Recently, and possibly related with heavy memory load giving 7 GB of swap, TM "got crazy" during two activations, deleting up to eight backups, both daily and weekly ones, which were far from being the oldest backups in the volume.

Has someone else observed this kind of behavior? What can be done to avoid it? If, as it seems, it is a bug in Time Machine, how can I notify Apple?

Since Time Machine seems to have a limit of 5 old backup deletions per activation, and given that occasionally strange (and dangerous) behavior, I think that Time Machine should warn when backups older than one month are deleted, and ask permission when 5 or more backups are going to be deleted (at least giving the user the possibility of configuring it so). We are talking here of data security, so some precautions should be allowed when destroying large quantities of data, which otherwise may not be recoverable.

The essential details follow:

Strings in recent system.log messages containing "deleted backup" (first & last groups are normal, there was no hourly backup to delete between them):

Oct 27 00:30:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[34391]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-27-002110: 120.20 GB now available

Oct 27 02:27:42 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-03-22-232115: 132.85 GB now available

Oct 27 02:29:05 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-04-06-000633: 143.17 GB now available

Oct 27 02:30:23 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-28-002619: 146.29 GB now available

Oct 27 02:31:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-09-30-004344: 149.48 GB now available

Oct 27 02:31:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[34677]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-03-000509: 152.58 GB now available

Oct 27 03:27:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-08-001931: 155.64 GB now available

Oct 27 03:27:40 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-14-003758: 159.26 GB now available

Oct 27 03:28:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[34860]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-22-002147: 162.48 GB now available

Oct 27 11:37:36 iMac com.apple.backupd[35839]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-26-104655: 153.98 GB now available

List of backups dates in the backup volume, and free space, taken from the terminal (after deletions: note that the backups marked in red should normally be kept):

iMac:~ admin$ ls /Volumes/iMac\ HD\ Time\ Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/

2011-10-01-061010 2012-05-31-093201 2012-10-20-002816

2011-10-09-005429 2012-06-07-002543 2012-10-21-021504

2011-10-16-001503 2012-06-14-005742 2012-10-23-004109

2011-10-23-002554 2012-06-21-001427 2012-10-24-002334

2011-11-05-001403 2012-06-28-001245 2012-10-25-002414

2011-11-12-004617 2012-07-05-002056 2012-10-26-002613

2011-11-19-000532 2012-07-12-002639 2012-10-26-012840

2011-11-26-000431 2012-07-19-005850 2012-10-27-012731

2011-12-03-000109 2012-08-05-002510 2012-10-27-032628

2011-12-10-003557 2012-08-12-002739 2012-10-27-042813

2011-12-17-002907 2012-08-19-005740 2012-10-27-052837

2011-12-24-001228 2012-09-03-110847 2012-10-27-062824

2011-12-31-002103 2012-09-10-123630 2012-10-27-113711

2012-01-07-005520 2012-09-17-002437 2012-10-27-123817

2012-01-14-000913 2012-09-24-002309 2012-10-27-133739

2012-01-21-005206 2012-09-29-011601 2012-10-27-143746

2012-01-28-000105 2012-10-01-001701 2012-10-27-153817

2012-02-04-022951 2012-10-02-010201 2012-10-27-163745

2012-02-12-210133 2012-10-04-000909 2012-10-27-173738

2012-02-24-002145 2012-10-07-112125 2012-10-27-183838

2012-03-02-002405 2012-10-09-001929 2012-10-27-193814

2012-03-09-003236 2012-10-10-002008 2012-10-27-203751

2012-03-16-002756 2012-10-11-001416 2012-10-27-213752

2012-03-30-014934 2012-10-12-004500 2012-10-27-223747

2012-04-19-004318 2012-10-13-012506 2012-10-27-233844

2012-04-26-012354 2012-10-15-003823 2012-10-28-011809

2012-05-03-003008 2012-10-16-002207 2012-10-28-013726

2012-05-10-004554 2012-10-17-002306 Latest

2012-05-17-011942 2012-10-18-002230

2012-05-24-001808 2012-10-19-002253

iMac:~ admin$ df

Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on

/dev/disk0s2 914062528 585638424 327912104 65% /

devfs 226 226 0 100% /dev

map -hosts 0 0 0 100% /net

map auto_home 0 0 0 100% /home

/dev/disk1s4 2343750000 1980326912 363423088 85% /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine

/dev/disk1s3 976562504 568072864 408489640 59% /Volumes/iMac HD SuperDuper!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 4 GB RAM

Posted on Oct 28, 2012 11:37 AM

32 replies

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2012 11:23 AM in response to Pondini

Thank you for the advice, although at first sight that doesn't seem without risk! Of course, I've never done an OSX reinstallation! Could you point to some page with instructions? Thank you very much!

Regarding the extended attributes, I suppose you're talking about the .Backup.log files.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 6, 2012 11:58 AM in response to ejtrim

ejtrim wrote:

Thank you for the advice, although at first sight that doesn't seem without risk! Of course, I've never done an OSX reinstallation! Could you point to some page with instructions? Thank you very much!

Oh, sorry, you sounded fairly experienced. 😉 It's not a big deal, since it just replaces your existing copy of OSX with a fresh one. See the pink box in Installing the ''combo'' update and/or Reinstalling OSX.

Regarding the extended attributes, I suppose you're talking about the .Backup.log files.

No, the actual backup folders on the TM drive (inside the Backups.backupdb folder). That's where Time Machine stores various "extra" information about the backup source, etc. For example, it uses fixed identifiers for the Mac and disk(s) that were backed-up, so you can rename them (or even have duplicate names), but OSX and Time Machine still know which is which. If you change your Mac's name, or the name of any drive or partition that's being backed-up, Time Machine will automatically change those folder names correspondingly.

Some of those are mentioned in the green box in How Time Machine works its Magic.

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2012 8:47 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for the advice. I'd like to see a step-by-step explanation for both reinstalling OSX and combo installation (my original OS was 10.6.4, but now is 10.6.8) before adventuring... (Besides, I suppose that in your box for Mountain Lion you mean it where you wrote just "Lion Install disc").

OK, I've seen those xattr's, thanks!

Besides, here is a new suspicious deletion:

Nov 7 00:07:47 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Starting standard backup

Nov 7 00:07:47 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Backing up to: /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb

Nov 7 00:08:02 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.53 GB requested (including padding), 150.40 GB available

Nov 7 00:08:25 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Copied 998 files (105.2 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Nov 7 00:08:26 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.41 GB requested (including padding), 150.30 GB available

Nov 7 00:08:30 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Copied 596 files (1.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Nov 7 00:08:33 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Starting post-backup thinning

Nov 7 00:09:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-09-001929: 153.39 GB now available

Nov 7 00:09:55 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-05-233202: 155.61 GB now available

Nov 7 00:09:55 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed

Nov 7 00:09:55 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Backup completed successfully.

This time, I think that it may be related to DST hour change: maybe Time Machine (in spite of having access to the exact start and completion times) is somehow seeing the backup in red as if it were created one hour before (well, somehow it actually was!), that is, as if it were created before midnight on Oct 8, which lies one day beyond the 30-day limit from Nov 7. Anyway, I think it should have been kept for one more day, because it actually was the daily backup for Oct 9.

That can also be applied to 2012-10-04-000909, which was deleted on Nov 2, as shown in an earlier post.

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 6, 2012 8:51 PM in response to ejtrim

Sounds like your backup drive isn't large enough so Time Machine starts removing old backups to make room for new ones. How large is your backup drive? How much space is used on your hard drive and how much is available?

About TM "Backup Drive is Full"

Alert TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM 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.

So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, 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.

Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.

Once TM has found 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 your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 6, 2012 9:04 PM in response to ejtrim

ejtrim wrote:

Thanks for the advice. I'd like to see a step-by-step explanation for both reinstalling OSX and combo installation (my original OS was 10.6.4, but now is 10.6.8) before adventuring...

Yes, the REINSTALLING OSX section of the pink box in Installing the ''combo'' update and/or Reinstalling OSX covers installing a fresh copy of OSX from your Snow Leopard Install disk, then details that you'll probably need to either install the "combo" update (as covered in the "COMBO" UPDATE section, or use Software Update).

(Besides, I suppose that in your box for Mountain Lion you mean it where you wrote just "Lion Install disc").

Yes, I just corrected that -- thanks!

Besides, here is a new suspicious deletion:

If the problem is in your installation of OSX, I'd not be surprised for them to continue until you install a fresh version.

Message was edited by: Pondini

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 6, 2012 9:02 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy wrote:

Sounds like your backup drive isn't large enough so Time Machine starts removing old backups to make room for new ones.

Hi, Kappy,

That's not the problem here -- as detailed in the earlier posts, Time Machine is doing normal "thinning" (and the drive is not full), but it's deleting some backups earlier than it should -- some "hourly" backups are being deleted when 23 hours old, not 24; and some "weekly" ones seem to be deleted when they shouldn't.

Since this doesn't seem to be affecting anyone else, we're suspecting there's something wrong with the installation of OSX that's affecting the date calculations, so are going to try a fresh copy of OSX.

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2012 9:21 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy wrote:

Sounds like your backup drive isn't large enough so Time Machine starts removing old backups to make room for new ones. How large is your backup drive? How much space is used on your hard drive and how much is available?

Just to summarize. The backup volume (a partition on an external FireWire 2 TB disc) has 1.2 TB, from which 167 GB are available, and the Mac HD volume (a partition on an internal 500 GB disc) being backed up has 468 GB, from which 165 GB are available.

However, my Time Machine has never reached a "disc full" condition: all the deletions have taken place at the post-backup thinning phase. The point of the whole discussion is that Time Machine is irregularly deleting backups too soon. Pondini thinks that I should try reinstalling the OS.

BDAqua

Level 10

239,225 points

Nov 6, 2012 10:22 PM in response to ejtrim

Are you aware there's far more useful,reliable, less stessful backup mehtods?

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2012 12:17 AM in response to BDAqua

Not quite... Could you please elaborate?

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 7, 2012 7:04 AM in response to ejtrim

There are a number of them. See the green box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for a few suggestions. Note that none of them are perfect.

The most common alternatives make "clones," very different from Time Machine backups. See Time Machine vs. Clones and Archives for a general overview of the different types of backup apps, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 11, 2012 9:48 PM in response to Pondini

Thank you again, Pondini. In fact, I've been following your advice on using two different ways for backing up, that's why I use SuperDuper in addition to Time Machine.

Just for the record, returning to the unexpected deletion of daily backups (red) that begun on Nov 7, it has lasted four days. Note that sometimes they take place even a little below 29x24 hours.

Nov 7 00:09:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-09-001929: 153.39 GB now available

Nov 8 01:13:55 iMac com.apple.backupd[39289]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-10-002008: 154.67 GB now available

Nov 9 00:40:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[55147]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-11-001416: 153.28 GB now available

Nov 10 00:20:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[3856]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-12-004500: 154.60 GB now available

The next "midnight" backup took much more time than usual because SuperDuper was working, and Time Machine waited for an hour repeating Waiting for index to be ready (100), and it had to backup more data than usual (see below):

Nov 10 22:28:12 iMac com.apple.backupd[8607]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-133808: 153.83 GB now available

Nov 11 02:05:25 iMac com.apple.backupd[9293]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-231930: 134.51 GB now available

Nov 11 02:27:22 iMac com.apple.backupd[11951]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-10-021926: 134.35 GB now available

Nov 11 02:27:30 iMac com.apple.backupd[11951]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-10-012002: 134.74 GB now available

Moreover, there was an overlapping burst of unexpected deletions of several hourly backups (orange) during about 13 hours, anticipating up to 3 hours the 24-hour deadline:

Nov 9 13:38:31 iMac com.apple.backupd[63701]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-123808: 145.95 GB now available

Nov 9 14:38:20 iMac com.apple.backupd[64032]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-163822: 145.93 GB now available

Nov 9 15:38:35 iMac com.apple.backupd[64380]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-173859: 145.97 GB now available

Nov 9 16:43:00 iMac com.apple.backupd[460]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-153807: 144.72 GB now available

Nov 9 17:04:00 iMac com.apple.backupd[1206]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-193844: 146.94 GB now available

Nov 9 17:37:36 iMac com.apple.backupd[1738]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-203751: 149.05 GB now available

Nov 9 18:37:41 iMac com.apple.backupd[2029]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-213844: 149.37 GB now available

Nov 9 19:37:39 iMac com.apple.backupd[2423]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-184126: 151.62 GB now available

Nov 9 21:14:45 iMac com.apple.backupd[2898]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-233659: 148.33 GB now available

Nov 9 22:20:47 iMac com.apple.backupd[3233]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-003837: 148.28 GB now available

Nov 9 23:20:00 iMac com.apple.backupd[3511]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-08-223712: 151.51 GB now available

Nov 10 00:20:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[3856]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-12-004500: 154.60 GB now available

Nov 10 00:21:05 iMac com.apple.backupd[3856]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-024022: 154.62 GB now available

Nov 10 01:20:34 iMac com.apple.backupd[4145]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-031135: 152.37 GB now available

Nov 10 03:20:35 iMac com.apple.backupd[5337]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-040122: 151.85 GB now available

Nov 10 04:20:33 iMac com.apple.backupd[5679]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-041305: 149.52 GB now available

Nov 10 04:20:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[5679]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-09-033648: 151.73 GB now available

Finally, because of a problem with my phone 16GB SD card, I wanted to restore its data by combining manual backups made on several iMac folders, the last one a couple of days ago. As you know, the DST hour change affects the datestamps in the Mac (HFS), but not in the SD (FAT), so I changed the iMac timezone to compensate for the hour change while saving the last SD state before reformatting it (in order to make datestamps comparable with previous backups), and also when restoring the pre-hour-change backup data (in order to restore the SD to the original timestamps). The two first deletions shown below correspond to current timezone + 1 hour (i.e., the "real" times were 20:47 and 21:44). The curious stuff is that Time Machine decided to delete a backup from Oct 26 that it could have deleted a long time ago.

Nov 11 21:47:18 iMac com.apple.backupd[18589]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-26-012840: 64.95 GB now available

Nov 11 22:44:15 iMac com.apple.backupd[19327]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-10-222657: 69.85 GB now available

Nov 11 22:44:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[19327]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-10-215618: 72.16 GB now available

After these timezone changes, I've bee able to verify that the CompletionDate extended attribute correspond (after DST correction) to the backup filenames.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 12, 2012 3:02 PM in response to ejtrim

Do you have any other problems with similar date calculations, such as Mail deleting messages at a certain age, anything with iCal, etc.?

Have you tried installing a fresh copy of OSX? Something damaged or missing in the version on your Mac seems the most likely culprit to me.

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 13, 2012 2:34 AM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

Do you have any other problems with similar date calculations, such as Mail deleting messages at a certain age, anything with iCal, etc.?

Not using Mail (but Thunderbird) or iCal (but my phone's agenda). I can't think where else could I watch for some time calculation glitches...

Have you tried installing a fresh copy of OSX? Something damaged or missing in the version on your Mac seems the most likely culprit to me.

I really appreciate your suggestion and diagnosis, I'll try to learn more about that procedure and its risks. This is my first Mac, and I like Time Machine, one can feel calm of being able to recover past versions of files (with probability decreasing with their age), if not for those irregular deletions.

ejtrim wrote:

Just for the record, returning to the unexpected deletion of daily backups (red) that begun on Nov 7, it has lasted four days. Note that sometimes they take place even a little below 29x24 hours.

Nov 7 00:09:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[30981]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-09-001929: 153.39 GB now available

Nov 8 01:13:55 iMac com.apple.backupd[39289]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-10-002008: 154.67 GB now available

Nov 9 00:40:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[55147]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-11-001416: 153.28 GB now available

Nov 10 00:20:46 iMac com.apple.backupd[3856]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-10-12-004500: 154.60 GB now available

I should have said that all were a little more than 29x24 hours old, since they were one hour older than they may seem at first sight, because of the DST hour change that took place on past Oct 28.

I can also confirm that the backups (green) that took place within the periods of time where the machine timezone was changed to +1 hour, have been deleted past the 24-(real)hour limit, even if their filenames indicate otherwise:

Nov 12 20:50:49 iMac com.apple.backupd[28834]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-11-214609: 94.00 GB now available

Nov 12 20:50:58 iMac com.apple.backupd[28834]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-11-200323: 97.92 GB now available

Nov 12 21:51:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[29095]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-11-224422: 95.71 GB now available

Nov 12 22:51:03 iMac com.apple.backupd[29412]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-11-224347: 93.51 GB now available

So, all Time Machine deletions since Nov 10 4am till now seem normal.

ejtrim Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 22, 2012 12:08 PM in response to ejtrim

I've just seen a bulk of 13 "unexpected" backup deletions by Time Machine, this time because of a disk-full condition that shouldn't have happened.

Just prior to these deletions I had simply moved with the mouse on Finder several large directories into another just created directory. I had understood that Time Machine made hardlinks on directories, and thus this simple movement should only cost a few bytes of hardlinks in my backup disk. However, with TimeTracker I've seen that these directories (summing up 123GB) have been fully copied, thus they are twice on my backup disk. That large space "needs" have provoked the deletion of the 13 oldest backups (3 full months) that should have been kept until a "real" disk-full condition. Here is the log:

Nov 22 18:05:35 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Starting standard backup

Nov 22 18:05:35 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Backing up to: /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb

Nov 22 18:06:27 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Starting pre-backup thinning: 154.52 GB requested (including padding), 66.03 GB available

Nov 22 18:06:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2012-11-21-180150: 68.35 GB now available

Nov 22 18:06:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Removed all 1 expired backups, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room

Nov 22 18:07:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-10-01-061010: 76.30 GB now available

Nov 22 18:07:22 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-10-09-005429: 84.14 GB now available

Nov 22 18:07:36 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-10-16-001503: 92.98 GB now available

Nov 22 18:07:53 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-10-23-002554: 95.98 GB now available

Nov 22 18:08:05 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-11-05-001403: 100.49 GB now available

Nov 22 18:08:14 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-11-12-004617: 105.30 GB now available

Nov 22 18:08:24 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-11-19-000532: 110.35 GB now available

Nov 22 18:08:38 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-11-26-000431: 122.67 GB now available

Nov 22 18:08:51 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-12-03-000109: 128.04 GB now available

Nov 22 18:09:04 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-12-10-003557: 133.66 GB now available

Nov 22 18:09:23 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-12-17-002907: 138.95 GB now available

Nov 22 18:09:33 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-12-24-001228: 150.05 GB now available

Nov 22 18:09:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Deleted backup /Volumes/iMac HD Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/iMac/2011-12-31-002103: 166.43 GB now available

Nov 22 18:09:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Pre-backup thinning completed successfully: 14 backups were deleted

Nov 22 18:09:50 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Jan 7, 2012

Nov 22 18:47:08 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Copied 139549 files (123.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Nov 22 18:47:17 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 6.43 GB requested (including padding), 42.36 GB available

Nov 22 18:47:30 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Copied 1021 files (2.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Nov 22 18:48:32 iMac com.apple.backupd[90772]: Backup completed successfully.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 22, 2012 12:21 PM in response to ejtrim

ejtrim wrote:

. . .

I had simply moved with the mouse on Finder several large directories into another just created directory. I had understood that Time Machine made hardlinks on directories, and thus this simple movement should only cost a few bytes of hardlinks in my backup disk.

No, if you copy, move, or rename a folder, it's treated as changed, and all its contents are backed-up again.

A hard link is made on the backup drive when a file or folder does not change at all from one backup to the next.

If you know that's going to take a lot of space, you can delete all backups of the file in the old location or with the old name, per Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12.

Time Machine 1.1 sometimes deletes backups that should keep