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Time Machine Backup Only Goes Back 24 Hours

I opened Time Machine to get a copy of a file from a couple of weeks ago, and discovered my backups only go back about a day. I looked at several folders, and they're all the same. I used to be able to retrieve items from months and even years back, and now nothing. Have all my older TM backups been lost? Fortunately, I have other backups, so I'm wondering, what's the point of TM?


FWIW, my backup drive has a 2 TB capacity with 35 GB free. It's backing up a 1 TB internal drive. TM says a full backup is estimated to be 877 GB. When the drive gets close to full, does TM dump old backups? Though it's been near full for a long time, and I've never had this problem before.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Sep 12, 2021 11:21 AM

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15 replies

Sep 13, 2021 11:53 AM in response to BDAqua

I do programming, so I create and edit LOTS of files all the time. A drive 2x the size of my internal drive has been doing fine since 2015. If I'd have know TM was going to start dumping older versions of my files, I'd have gotten a bigger backup drive. Luckily TM is not my only backup, so TM is looking a bit redundant, not to mention pointless for backups. I'm assuming it's still useful for transferring files/settings to a new computer.

Sep 20, 2021 7:24 AM in response to BDAqua

I started the copy of my 2 TB TM drive on Thursday afternoon. It took about 33 hours to prepare for the copy (9,296,358 items), and finally Monday morning it's finished. BUT IT'S NOT! There isn't enough space on my new 6 TB drive to copy 2 TB from my old TM drive. It says it now has only 12 MB free and couldn't complete the operation. WTF?!?!?!?

Time Machine Backup Only Goes Back 24 Hours

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