When I first started using Time Machine, it showed backups for 15 days or maybe even a full month. Somewhere along the way it has changed to only showing 5 days of backups. I can not find an option for choosing how many days to back up. Is there one? How can I get back to longer periods of backups.
I remember once that TechTool Pro told me the disk I was using was close to full. I turned that option of notifying me off because I thought Time Machine would just start dropping the oldest days and recording the newest days automatically.
I've turned TM off right now as you can see in the pict.
I've seen this happen before more than once. It happened to me when I made a hard drive swap. Installed a new drive and cloned back to the new drive. The actual backups are still on the drive, just not available through the Time Machine interface. TM started a new backup in my case.
I never did bother to figure it out. I just wiped the TM drive and let it start fresh. Have you replaced the boot drive or anything recently? Has it shown only 5 days for a while or is it a new development?
Looking at my TM picture above, that is what it looks like. All the data are there way back maybe a month, but only a week shows up. I had turned of TM and was about to wipe the external drive TM is on and start over. I thought maybe I should ask before doing that as maybe I would screw up things. -*-*-*-*-
So, now I've started on the drive Zero Out Data selected; Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I thought Time Machine would just start dropping the oldest days and recording the newest days automatically.
Am I missing something ? I too thought TM would only back up new or changed files , not make 10 copies of the same file ? Is that whats happening
As I understand it, Carp, I could have a file called "Ethel's Vacation Plans" and it gets backed up every day for say 30 days if that is what I have room for on my TM backup drive. But, so does everything else on my computer unless I exclude it in the prefs. I haven't excluded anything except another hard drive I use occasionally and that I do exclude.
So I have 30 copies of Ethel's Vacation Plans and I could get the original one back or the one I revised 3 days ago.
I use TM but damned if I could find much information about using it. I've looked everywhere and even Apple's docs don't really give you much information.
Maybe someone will come along and give you better info.
I just know I was glad I had TM when I deleted all the email on my Comcast account! Phew!
I've had some success by simply deselecting the backup volume and then re-selecting it in the TM pref panel.
Tooooooooooooo late! I'm already erasing the drive. Wish I could have tried that one. If it happens again, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for chiming in.
#452072 - 10/27/0901:15 AMRe: Time Machine help
[Re: starmillway]
MacBozo Nut Dood
Registered: 04/21/02
Posts: 17704
Loc: Pinellas Park, Florida
My oldest backup is August 23rd. I know that TM is only backing up changes since then since it is only backing up a few MBs at a time. However, if I get info on the latest backup, it shows it as 63 GBs which indicates that it is referencing the original/oldest backup.
I think that makes sense. Let me ask this: If I started my document Ethel's Vacation 30 days ago and made revisions every day for the next 30 days, would I have the document 30 times so that I could just get say the document with the fifth day's revisions on it and not the next 25 days?
#452074 - 10/27/0901:28 AMRe: Time Machine help
[Re: starmillway]
MacBozo Nut Dood
Registered: 04/21/02
Posts: 17704
Loc: Pinellas Park, Florida
I think that's the plan. I don't know if TM backs up the entire document, but it does keep track of all changes to the original. Yes, you can get the fifth day version.