Time Machine issues (hourly vs. daily backup)

[austinenoch]

So last Thursday I decide that I want to take movies that are currently in a folder on my external hard drive and put them through a Time Machine back up. My MacBook only has a few available GB, so I move one or two onto the MacBook's hard drive and wait for Time Machine to back them up. It completes it's hourly backup, and I'm able to delete the file off of my MacBook and restore it through Time Machine. So for a couple hours, I copy, back up, delete, copy, back up, delete until all the movies are in Time Machine. I'm able to look at different hours of the day and see all of them. There they are. Right there. Awesome.

Fast forward to today.

In Time Machine, I go to Thursday, April 10th, and all I can see is one back up at 2:41pm. And I only see one movie. The rest? No idea. Judging by the amount of available space on my external hard drive, I do not think they were deleted. Very perplexing. Can anyone explain to me what has happened? Maybe even point me to where the flicks might be? I need to watch the Goonies. Badly.

 

[FJ218700]

from Apple support:

"Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term. Put another way: You’re well covered."

never rely on TM to store files. By its design, it only will keep files that are on your MacBook. sounds like it got full, then deleted what it thought you didn;t need anymore.

sucks

 

[wilfried]

Time machine saves the first backup of the day each day. So if you create a file and delete it between the two backups, the backup of the file is deleted along with the intervening hourly backups. Likewise after a month when it goes to weekly backups, files that were create and deleted within the week disappear.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Time machine saves the first backup of the day each day. So if you create a file and delete it between the two backups, the backup of the file is deleted along with the intervening hourly backups. Likewise after a month when it goes to weekly backups, files that were create and deleted within the week disappear.

This is good stuff to know. But how exactly do you know this? I'm another user out there trying to understand TM better.

 

[wilfried]

I've read information to that effect (though I can't at the moment cite the source), and by observation. I've seen files files disappear under these circumstances, and I've also seen the total size of the Time Machine backups shrink (the drive isn't full so it hasn't deleted any old backups). It shouldn't never shrink if actually kept everything in every incremental backup.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I've read information to that effect (though I can't at the moment cite the source), and by observation. I've seen files files disappear under these circumstances, and I've also seen the total size of the Time Machine backups shrink (the drive isn't full so it hasn't deleted any old backups). It shouldn't never shrink if actually kept everything in every incremental backup.

Ha, no source. Like I should believe you
Actually I just looked at the Time Machine prefs, it says those things right there just as you had stated Wilfried. I guess I should open my eyes a bit.