SL time machine just deleted all my backups...

[cRuNcHiE]

I initially backed up to the Firewire drive (140GB at a rate of about 1.2GB per minute and all was well.

In Snow Leopard i noticed that without any hacks it also has the option to backup to a network drive. I have a QNAP NAS and also an Airport Extreme Basestation. As the QNAP doesnt support HFS i thought i'll just plug my drive into the Basestation even though i heard it wasn't the fastest thing to use..

Anyway, to cut a long story short, i open time machine, re-select my time machine drive as the location has changed from being firewire to being attached the Basestation and time machine then says ' analysing changed files' or whatever that similar message is, then it says copying 0.1MB of 143Gb .....

i stop it, go and check the drive and it has deleted the whole lot and is trying to start again!? WTF??

It didn't format the drive as other data is still on that disk.

Kinda loses my confidence in it when it will happily delete 143GB without even asking me

 

[tibi08]

Did it delete the older backup to make room for the new backup?

 

[maflynn]

Do a search and you'll see that this has affected many of us.

Not sure what's going on, but in my case Time Machine thought my entire hard drive changed and to make room it deleted all of my backups (w/o telling me).

I now use two methods to backup my data. Carbon Copy Cloner which goes on my FW drive and Time Machine to Time Capsule.

CCC is used for those times, I truly mess the system up
TM is used for my need to retrieve an older document that changed accidently or deleted.

Because of issues with VMware and LightRoom, I don't back up my VMs or my LR library but rather make sure CCC has been run (I use CCC weekly)

I found that CCC works great on my mobile hard drive so I can have a backup offsite, incase a thief comes and steals my stuff, or I have a fire.

 

[cRuNcHiE]

I've dug a bit deeper and i can still see the backup folder for yesterday there but its only 2GB now and pretty much all of the links to files don't work.

Oddly though, according to Time Machine, 355 GB of 489GB if free (134GB used HMMM!) so its buggered something up somewhere!!

Im gonna unplug it and plug back into firewire and see if the data is really there and the Airport is just being daft.

I backup my important stuff like photos,docs and music to a QNAP NAS drive using Chronosync, i just thought i might as well use a spare drive on the Basestation as it supports it.

The fact that TM deleted ANYTHING without ever asking me strikes me as extremely worrying!

 

[cRuNcHiE]

Ok plot thickens!!

The data is still there when i plug into my MBP via firewire. It looks like it may be some kind of permissions issue? As the Basestation made another folder on the drive and it wont let me access that when plugged into my MBP via firewire ( says contact network admin for permission!)

 

[dacreativeguy]

I experienced a similar problem. I decided to plug my existing TM backup drive into my Airport Extreme and it started creating an entirely new backup folder for my computer. My only guess is that the hardware profile is different enough going from local to airport connection that it needs to start from scratch. Same thing happened when a computer died and had to be replaced under warranty, but that is to be expected.

Anyway, after canceling the backup and plugging back into the Mac directly, the mac wouldn't recognize the old folder for adding onto the backup. Still wanted to create a new folder. So I went into TM and restored one file from that backup folder. After that, TM once again recognized the existing backup folder and all is well. You may want to try this.