Time Machine on my Mac has kept backups of my machine since December of last year. I have no need for that many backups, and they are taking up space on my external HD. Is there a way to have backups older than say, a month deleted automatically?
View 1 RepliesI keep getting the error saying that my backup will not fit in the backup volume, but shouldn't Time Machine automatically delete old backups to make room for new ones?
Hardware:
2.2 MBP 10.5.7 (120 GB internal HD)
120 GB External HD (USB)
I decided to reinstall Leopard, Erase and Install. Everything runs much faster of course. I'm doing some restoring from my Time Machine HD. I don't want a complete restore, I'm just grabbing folders here and there from my TM HD and restoring it. I'm doing a backup now and so far it has deleted over 20GB of my backups and it doesn't seem to be stopping.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI'm lost in trying to delete the backup directories created by Time Machine. I've moved disks around on my network and TIme Machine doesn't seem to remember that it's backed up a given system to a given disk previously, after moving the disk to a different server. So I'm content to start over and I went to /Volumes/Backupdisk/Backups.backupdb and tried 'sudo rm -rf *' to get rid of the existing backups in preparation to start over. It wouldn't let me remove them getting the error 'Operation not permitted'. I note that 'ls -l' shows a lot of rwxr-xr-x@ with the @ sign at the end and I'm assuming that this is a hard link, but I don't know. I'm also thinking this is why rm won't work - multiple hard links?
I really don't want to re-format the disk. BTW I am currently trying to use Time Machine to delete all the file but that is taking FOR EVER and I'm not sure its actually doing anything. Its been about 30 minutes and there's been not reported increase in disk space. Its like its still preparing to delete.
So I'm in the process of fixing up an old Power Mac Dual G4 MDD for my Dad. I'm installing all the software he'll use, setting all the pref panes, etc... I've turned on Time Machine, and when I give him the computer for Xmas I'd like for there to not be remnants of this setting up process. Right before I shut off the computer for the last time before giving it to him, how would I delete all of the old backups and just leave the "current" backup?
View 3 Replies View RelatedMy Time Machine backups are getting rather large and I really don't need backups dating back six months. Is there a way to go in and delete certain dates?
View 10 Replies View RelatedI have an external HD and have botched up all the time machine backups pretty badly. (deleting backups, adding things to the time machine disk not using a TM backup, etc).Â
I just want to delte everything and start over from scratch.Â
There appears to be several threads regarding deleteing Time Machine backups but I can't seem to get the correct answer to delete the entire backup folder (Backups.backupdb). I move the location of my backups files and they are working fine now so I want to delete the folder on the disk it used to backup to. How can I do that? I have everything backedup to the proper disk so I don't need this folder any longer.
View 14 Replies View RelatedI used Time Machine to backup my laptop (Mavericks OS X 10.9.3) onto an external hard drive. Time Machine created multiple backups over a period of time, and I wanted to delete some of the older ones to free up some space. However, I now have 5 different backups in the trash, and when I attempt to empty the trash (secure empty) the trash window pops up and counts over 200,000 items for deletion, but then disappears and deletes absolutely nothing. Now, the trash is always full when I connect the external drive. I tried to move the backups back onto the external, thinking maybe there were too many files for my Mac to handle, but the computer simply started copying the files instead of transferring them. I don't want to reformat the drive or anything like that because I don't just use it for backups and would lose a TON of other work (music, pics, etc.).Â
How to get the trash to delete these backups? It's not just that the backups won't delete, but I can't delete ANY other files from the external as long as those backups are in the trash.
I did try holding the alt/option key while emptying the trash, but that didn't work at all.
Is there a way to delete a range of time machine backups, say all dates from the first backup to 1/10/2012 (as an example). I know how to delete a single backup for a given date/time through the TM interface, however, deleting them one-at-a-time is rather laborious and time consuming if I wanted to delete a large number of them to free up space. Is there a way to select a "range" to delete, or am I stuck doing it one backup at a time?
Info:
PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I am trying to delete time machine backups from trash. It doesnt allow me to do this because it says certains things are running?
Info:
imac
time machine backups won't delete from my trash can
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Ipads, Macbook Pro, Iphones
I recent fount necessary to do a complete install and restore. As I was having trouble with system performance, I chose to restore Applications from Time Machine and set the system parameters manually. In the process, I wound up with some very large (50 Gbytes) on my Desktop. I neglected to turn off time Machine backup while doing the restoration and wound up with several big(!) files in the back ups taken during the restoration. There is nothing useful on the backups taken during the restoration and they have really filled up my backup disk. Looking at the structure of the backup disk, it seems you could just delete the backups after I started to restore things. Are there other considerations? Are there hidden tables laying around that might become unsynchronized?
Info:
iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
i have a macbook with an internal drive of which about 230gb if full and used.
I have a 250gb external which i have been using to back up with time machine, done it several times over a few months.
Now there is like 70gb left on the external, and when i try to back up, it says failed, not enough space on external.
But i thought when there is not enough space, it simply deletes and backs over older time machine backups.
Ok, so I have been running on a MacBook for over 2 years, now I want to be able to restore everything from my MacBook Time Machine Backup to my Mac Mini?
View 4 Replies View RelatedMy Time Machine has been making the usual regular backups for a few months onto my Time Capsule. I just found that all the backups prior to about a week ago have vanished. It's not a disaster (I think) as I assume that the current backups reflect what's on my iMac (I haven't had to delete files from it yet).
Where did they go? Why did they go?
A possible connection: My TC is 500GB; my iMac 1TB. I recently put extra files for temporary use onto the iMac hard drive - Time Machine said (in effect) 'that's too much, try removing certain folders from the backup'. I excluded said folder and things seemed okay, but it would be at around the time I did that that my old backups have gone.
I don't know if its supposed to do this or not because I am a new time machine user. I have a HFS + Backup Drive using the GUID partition table that is used by time machine. Yesterday I had quite a few backups in my backup directory, today I come on to find that some of these backups are missing. Does it delete some backups?
View 2 Replies View RelatedSo I thought maybe I just needed to tell Time Machine to use that harddrive again. I went into preferences, and selected "change disk," and then picked my external HD again.
It made a new backup, though. Now, when I go into my backups.backupdb folder, I see two folders, one is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15"" and the other is "XXXXXXX MacBook Pro 15" 2"
I'm looking for a program that will let me delete old Time Machine backups on a schedule. I am aware that TM will delete old backups once the drive is full. However, I don't want to let TM fill up my hard drive (having a ton of backups is not useful to me, and I use my hard drive to store movies as well), and I don't like having to manually delete backups when I want to add more files to my external hard drive. I've read many forum posts that recommend "just letting TM do its thing."
I'm just looking for a way to minimize the number of backups that are kept so I can keep plenty of open space on my hard drive for when I add to my movie collection. I'm already using TimeMachineEditor to back up less frequently, but what I would really like is a program that will automatically delete an old backup every time I add a new one. Ideally, I'd like to back up once a day and keep a week's worth of backups. So, once I have 7 backups on my hard drive, the next time my computer backs up the oldest of those 7 will automatically be deleted.
Just wondering if anyone has had a similar problem with the Time Machine. I bought a 500gb Time Capsule last July and it has been running perfectly until a few days agp. I noticed that all my backups were no where to be seen (when entering Time Machine on my MBP) and that it was doing a full backup.. The backup took the guts of 36 hours.
I've come home today to find that all backups are gone again and it is doing another full backup!!!Any ideas what is wrong here?
I have an external that I use with Time Machine, however I don't need incremental backups. Rather, what I would like is only one backup so that I can save space. In this backup, however, I would like specific things to change that change on my computer, as TM already does with its incremental backups. So basically I just want to condense the function of TM into one single backup that will update whenever I back up again. I realize this is not the primary function of TM, but is there any way to make this possible? Or is there any other software that would do this? I've heard of Silverkeeper and Retrospect, but never used them.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have not had to restore anything from backups for a while, however in the past, before installation of Yosemite I have on occasion had the need to restore a file or folder, mostly from the ~/Documents folder.and never had a problem.Â
I recently upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.1.
Now when attempting to restore a folder that resides in the ~/Documents folder I find that there don't seem to be any backups available. In can see a timeline to the right of the Time Machine screen that goes back many months, but in fact the only folder that I seem to be able to restore from is the Applications folder. None of the other folders show any available backups, however I know there were backups.
The documents folder is of course not on the list of folders/files to exclude from the backup.Â
How can this be fixed ? Is this perhaps a file permissions error on the timemachine hard drive that can be foxed with the disk utility?
I don't use iCloud drive or iCloud backup or at least I don't think so. Are there any settings that pertain to Time Machine in relation to iCloud backup that I should check ?Â
This behavior greatly concerns me. I've had a hard drive crash several years ago. Fortunately I did not loose a lot, only a few ripped CDs in the iTunes library which were easy enough to rip again. That crash was the reason I bought an external backup drive the next day an Time Machine has served me well since then. I don't want to loose the work I have in the documents folder.Â
Info:
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
I have a question about how time machine deals with programs. I am rethinking my backup solution because my 17MBP has had its HDD replaced three times. I have been running winclone for my windows partition and it is simply amazing. I was wondering if I back up from time machine, do all of my programs fall back into place perfectly with serial codes, etc. maintained? I ask because I am in the process of choosing the automated TM backups, or just doing CC clones myself because of how simple it is to restore a backup from a clone.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have my Mac on a TM backup on a 500gb HDD and its been backing up for about a month now. The maximum space is just about 500gb but time machine has brought it to 338gb with each backup taking 10-20gb. Is this normal? On my other Mac (an aluminum imac C2D), the backups take roughly 80gb of space and on my MBP im already up to 159gb worth of backups. Is there a way to minimize the size of backups?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI plan to 'clean up' my Time Machine/Time capsule completely, whereby I want to make it impossible for third parties to recover all or part of these old backups.After I have accompished this I want to start from scratch backing up my Mac.
Info:
iMac 27" i7, Mac OS X (10.6.6)
I just switched from hdd to ssd and i want to resume my Timechine backups, but it says that I have incorrect date and time set in my mac.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effects on using other programs. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2)
I've backup my Macbook Air Using time machine before reformat it to have window partition.However, after installing OS Lion 10.7.4, how do I restore back all my application and data on my last backup from time machine?
Info:MacBook Air
I want to delete all back ups of itunes in my time capsule since i'm doing the new organization method in itunes 9. How do i achieve this?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI bought a 500gb Time Capsule last July and it has been running perfectly until a few days agp. I noticed that all my backups were no where to be seen (when entering Time Machine on my MBP) and that it was doing a full backup.. The backup took the guts of 36 hours. I've come home today to find that all backups are gone again and it is doing another full backup.
View 2 Replies View Related