Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!us.feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!news-1.dfn.de!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Tom Stiller Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Time Machine: "Oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full." Date: 27 Apr 2014 00:01:09 GMT Organization: Old Men With Beards Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <260420140059398443%star@sky.net> <1lkrd3n.11dmsa251ywt0N%dempson@actrix.gen.nz> Reply-To: clusterfux X-Trace: individual.net rhbHE56PSW4jLFQZ6Z6fxQKj6Fej/WypPn0oA7Ktqbz2q9h7TK Cancel-Lock: sha1:FvioJ8uewk06fsdGVWVNPJh/11k= User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Darwin) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.system:58930 On 2014-04-26, David Empson wrote: > Davoud wrote: > >> That's fine by me. I'm a backup paranoid after losing a WordStar >> document from my Osborne I in 1982. >> >> But it appears not to be working. TM says it can't backup because the >> disk is too full. Based on the quote in the title, I expected it would >> delete old backups to make room and go about its business. >> >> What don't I know? > > To clarify, there are two possible scenarios and I'm not sure which one > you are encountering. > > (a) If you are trying to back up a new computer to a drive which is > already being used for Time Machine backups of other computers, then the > new backup can only start if there is enough free space. Time Machine > will only delete old backups from the same computer in order to free up > space for new backups. > > Note that some instances of computer/drive replacement might result in > Time Machine thinking it needs to start a new backup rather than > continuing an existing one. (I encountered this once when I was running > somewhere around 10.5/10.6, but not when I had a similar situation > around the 10.8/10.9 timeframe, so Apple may have improved the logic in > later OS X versions.) > In this case it may be possible to use the shell command: inheritbackup {machine_directory | sparsebundle} ot accquire the old backup. I used this technique to "inherit" a backup sparsebundle produced on an old MacBook by its replacement.