Advice on MacBook crashes and folder disappearance

[danno9999]

Grateful for any advice...

I have a 2011 mbp which worked flawlessly until I upgraded os to Mavericks. Now my Mac crashes every two weeks, my folders have disappeared and my Serato music app has lost its folder structure too.

Would you advise a clean reinstall of Mavericks as a safe and comprehensive way of fixing this? Not keen to move to Yosemite until it's a bit more stable.

A further question - would the safest thing to be to go back to mountain lion? I don't think I'm too bothered about losing the new features that came with Mavericks...

 

[danno9999]

Ok - development from the above. I've used Time Machine to roll back to my previous OS - which was actually Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

So everything seems to work ok.

EXCEPT...when my time machine tried to back up again after this, it says not enough space left on back up drive.

I'm not sure why this is. It could cope with the previous back up which was actually bigger. I thought time machine was designed to be incremental.

 

[danno9999]

Another development...I'm sure you're all riveted by this thriller!

I've just tried to re-install Final Cut Pro X from my App store purchases but it says I need OS 10.9.2 - Mavericks!

Is there any way I can get a downgrade on my Final Cut Pro so that it works with Snow Leopard?

Failing that, should I perform a clean install of Mavericks? Would that prevent the issues I had with Mavericks over the last few months? (ie computer fully crashing every two weeks, then my folders disappearing).

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Take a look in the backups.backupdb on the backup drive - there should be a folder in there named after your computer. If you see multiple folders in there, and aren't backing up multiple computers to that drive, then there's the problem - Time Machine has tried to backup under a new name. Two complete backups of your system require double the space.

Even if it's not doing that, it might still be attempting a new, complete backup. See this article for more information.

Regarding Final Cut Pro, you don't have much option other than to acquire a boxed copy that can be installed from disc. If you contact AppleCare support, they may be able to provide you with one, but I can't say for sure. It may be that you need to turn to the second-hand market.