Arghhh! Timecapsule just overwrote 2 yrs of backups!

[Chiquon]

I have been using Timecapsule to back up all my business data on my 13" MBP using the factory Timecapsule settings (every hour etc) for the past 2 years.

Last night without any dialogue boxes or prompts it started to back up 122 GB - I figured it had got confused and left it to it.

This morning the back up had completed but now when I go into Time Machine I only have 3 back ups from today. The last 2 years have just disappeared.

I've browsed the TC and can't find any evidence of other sparse bundles.

Has anyone had this issue? Any joy with bringing the old back ups back?

Thanks in advance

 

[old-wiz]

It sounds like you are trying to use TimeMachine for archiving, which is not what it is designed for. All backups eventually get deleted and overwritten with newer stuff. For archiving you need something else.

 

[Chiquon]

Thanks for the quick Old-Wiz....I definitely have a few more grey hairs than I planned this week!

Every 6 months I do an archive, but am relying on TC as a back up solution in the interim.

I thought that TC deleted the oldest back-ups first, and that this was (partly) driven by space on the TC.

I still had 400GB of space left on the 1TB Time Capsule and it overwrote everything.

This just seems plain wrong?..

 

[old-wiz]

You should be able to get something from a few months ago back. I would think the oldest backups would be deleted first too. I've never had need to go back more than a few months. I thought space was the big issue.

 

[Chiquon]

I've double-checked and no back-up data shows prior to today. It looks as though it thought it was backing up everything from scratch.

Guess I just got unlucky!

Thanks again Old Wiz.

 

[PurdueGuy]

There was an update a while back that fixed some wireless TC syncing issues, and forced some users to start from scratch. I was one of those users, so I had to wait while it re-backed up 100 GB.

Did you just update anything? Check the "Console" logs, and search for "backupd" to see if there is anything in the log about why it did what it did. You won't get anything back, but might be able to help prevent anything in the future.

 

[Chiquon]

Hmmm...thats a good thought. I've checked software updates and the console logs. I was wondering if it would show that the sparsebundle had become unreadable/corrupted and needed to be rewritten. There are no updates listed and the back up logs just potter along as if nothing happened.

To add insult to injury our 2nd Time Capusle has just died on us! Serial numbers indiciate it is part of a faulty batch. I'll be heading back to Regent Street Apple Store tomorrow!

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

If you've done a TimeMachine restore, it'll restart TimeMachine as well.

 

[logandzwon]

I do not know what happened to you, but what you explained is not the correct behavior. If you replace the TC it'll start a new backup of course. If you do a reinstall and restore it'll consider your machine a new install, but leave the old backups in place. The backups are actually sparebundles so even if a file got corrupt what you explained should not have happened. Strange.

 

[Chiquon]

I've been thinking through all the things that I might have done differently on the day Time Capsule decided to overwrite everything.

I hadn't replaced any kit, done any reinstalls or updates. I had however installed Sophos antivirus....partly out of curiosity.

I'd set it up to scan my local drives and at one point it locked onto the TC mounted back up volume. I cancelled it and thought no more of it.

Apart from some glitches in the early Time Capsule days, I've never had a problem with them since. It seems a bit too much of a coincidence that the antivirus scan happened just before the sparsebundle rewrite.

 

[chrfr]

I do not know what happened to you, but what you explained is not the correct behavior. If you replace the TC it'll start a new backup of course. If you do a reinstall and restore it'll consider your machine a new install, but leave the old backups in place. The backups are actually sparebundles so even if a file got corrupt what you explained should not have happened. Strange.

I just had all my Time Machine backups cleared out the other day. I was moving a bunch of data around on disks in my Mac Pro, and Time Machine saw about 300GB of changed files. Having only a 500GB Time Capsule, it wouldn't all fit so it deleted all the old backups, then popped up an error that there was not room. Not a perfect backup system by any means.

 

[Hal Itosis]

I just had all my Time Machine backups cleared out the other day. I was moving a bunch of data around on disks in my Mac Pro, and Time Machine saw about 300GB of changed files. Having only a 500GB Time Capsule, it wouldn't all fit so it deleted all the old backups, then popped up an error that there was not room. Not a perfect backup system by any means.

That's quite true... and something to keep in mind, when tinkering around with our files. And it's not just moving items which will cause that result, but simply renaming a folder could also trigger a large backup to occur.

E.g., say in our ~/Movies folder we have a subfolder called 'My Videos' which holds 20 gigs of stuff. If we rename that subfolder to 'My Viddys' or something, then all 20 gigs gets backed up again, on the next run. One might imagine that Time Machine could/should simply do a hard (directory) link using the new name and thereby not need to copy anything... but it doesn't work that way. [not sure why exactly]