Time Machine just deleted all but 1 of the backups...

[big_malk]

I noticed today that Time Machine was taking an awful long time to do a backup, but I didn't think much of it until an alert popped up that said it was 150GB short of space. There's no change I gone near 150GB of changes to anything today, since the last hourly backup.

I looked at the Time Machine HD, and there is only one folder left inside the backup.backupdb/Mac Pro/ folder, and in Time Machine there is only 'Today' left in the time bar thing. So it seems months of valuable backups have just vanished for no good reason!

Is there any way to find out what Time Machine is trying to backup, and why?
And I assume there's not much hope of restoring my lost backups?

 

[yetanotherdave]

Have you made any changes, like your machine name, that could have prompted it to start afresh?

 

[macuser154]

Whenever your External Time Machine is low on space, Time Machine will start to delete old backups. This could be your problem.

 

[big_malk]

Have you made any changes, like your machine name, that could have prompted it to start afresh?

I've tried recreating my iTunes library, but, as I understand it, that just remakes the library file which is only about 20Mb. There's no new folder in the backups folder that would suggest it think it's a different machine or anything.

Whenever your External Time Machine is low on space, Time Machine will start to delete old backups. This could be your problem.

It has 60GB free, so there was no need to delete all the backups, I don't know why it thinks it need all this extra space