Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Help for files lost (?) from an external hard disk

Apr 9, 2012 6:10PM PDT

Hi all.

I use an external hard disk for backup of my mac with time machine (OS 10.5.Cool.

I have made something wrong and I have found important folders in the recycler bin. These folders come from external hd. They are backup folders (backups.backupdb) and others.

I have tried to restore them draggin and dropping. Some of them came back in the external hd in a while. For the others it takes hours to "preparing to copy" and then it has said "there's no space to copy" on ext hd.

It's strange. Files are now in the recycle bin (180gb), and the ext had should have lot of free space. But it isn't really so. Ext hd is not free of space even if these files are in the bin.

I ask for advices. I'm not also able to use time machine now (and i have "lost" old backups) for the same reason. Ext hd says that it has not free space..

Thanks and ciao
Bob

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Without knowing the size of the external HD,
Apr 9, 2012 9:49PM PDT

it would be difficult to say whether it is short on space or not.

Time Machine will, if it needs the space, delete some of the oldest backups. Usually it mentions when it has done this and usually you will not find the deleted backups in the trash.

Time Machine is not an archiving system, there is only so much data that the disk can hold before Time Machine needs to make room for newer data.

Open Time Machine preferences and see what the oldest backup is. Let us know.

I would think that the oldest backup is not the date that you started to use the Time Machine on this drive.

Data that you wish to archive should be transferred to other media, CD/DVD for instance

P

- Collapse -
thanks
Apr 10, 2012 12:24AM PDT

thank mrmacfixit,

it seems that in this case TM is blocked. It's not able to make a new backup (because there's enough space on exthd) and it's not able to free up space from the old backups.

This is the only drive I have used to make backup with these mac (I bought this drive new).

It's strange. It's not able to restore old backups and to make new ones..

Ciao

- Collapse -
Answer
possible workaround
Apr 12, 2012 6:31PM PDT

When you put files into the trash they are actually just moved into a hidden folder called .Trashes or similar on the root level volume where the files once were stored (/Volumes/name-of-time-machine-volume/.Trashes). They are still in the filesystem and take up the same amount of space on the filesystem as before.

Further Time Machine works with hard links, meaning every backup is a complete backup but files that didn't change are just hard links the corresponding file in the former backup. No space gets freed when you delete (delete as in "Move to Trash" + "Empty Trash") the source of a hardlink.

Perhaps the Finder performs an additional check whether there is enough free space to restore the files from Trash and that check does not take into account the characteristics of hard links. If thats the case you could try a possible workaround: Instead of drag and drop, try to open the Trash, right click on a folder and select "put files back". Alternatively move the files via terminal.

- Collapse -
Thanks. It would have been useful but..
Apr 12, 2012 10:45PM PDT

...but I used a brutal method. I deleted backup files on ext hd and I have emptied the trash and made a new backup with TM.

In any case there weren't a "put files back" on folder in the trash, maybe because my osx version is 10.5.8.

Thanks for sharing.

Roberto