Applications :: Deleting Old Time Machine Backups On Schedule?
Dec 31, 2009
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.
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Jun 21, 2012
Can you schedule Time Machine backups?
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Mar 29, 2009
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?
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Oct 20, 2010
Why isn't TM deleting my old back-ups to make room for the new ones? I have 25 GB space left in my TM partition and 35 GB is needed for a new back-up but it keeps telling me it is failing to do the back-up for lack of space.
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Feb 9, 2009
I have just deleted some folders from Time Machine (by clicking on the gears and then clicking "delete all backups of ..... "), but I didn't get the hard drive space back on the Time Capsule.
I deleted about 50GB but Time Capsule reports having the same amount of space available as before the deletion.
Is this usual? How do I get the space back?
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Feb 29, 2012
I have a WD 500GB harddrive which has worked wonders for time machine, but I've noticed and canceled that the past 2 days when I've tried to "back up"
it starts to calculate the files then starts deleting old back ups, Either I've never noticed this before or this is abnormal?
Just thinking that to do time machine you need old back ups so it doesn't appear right to me.
Info:
Mac Pro, time machine
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Jun 23, 2014
I regularly back up my system ( every couple of weeks! ) and data to an external 2TB drive however I only really need a copy of recent state of system and data. Will it be good practice to enter time machine and go back to the old back ups and delete so that only recent backs up are maintained on drive. This would also free up space on my external drive? I just want to ensure deleting old back ups does not harm the integrity of the data.
Also i wanted to ascertain if it is possible to use time machine drive in another mac and simply drag and drop files from the latest back up onto this other computer?
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Aug 20, 2010
I got a new MBP awhile ago to replace my old MB, and am using the same HD for Time Machine backups. For awhile I wanted to keep the old backups around, but now that I'm fine without them, they're just taking up space, and they're not automatically deleting as the HD fills up, it seems that it only deletes backups of the computer that it's backing up when it needs the space. I know usually deleting Time Machine backups through the Finder is a really bad idea, but since I don't have the old MB to do it through the Time Machine interface any more, it's the only way. Would I be OK to do it that way, since I want to delete all the backups from that Mac? Or would I risk screwing up the backups of my MBP?
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Apr 29, 2012
I have a 1 TB external hard drive that I've been using as a time machine drive & also as a place to put random files i dont need on my computer and its starting to get very full. Most of whats on there is old backups from the past year & 1/2 that I have no use for anymore. is there a way to delete all of the backups that are on there right now without deleting the other files I've put on there. I have a bunch of projects and files on there that I cant put anywhere else and just format the drive. Basically, i need a way to delete all of my time machine backups off my external hd without deleting all my other files on there.
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Aug 7, 2009
Just wanted to know if the method I used to delete some back ups were save. What I did was just drag two back ups that I didn't need anymore into my trash, held option and clicked delete. I am asking this because I came across this video saying if I used this method, I would be "screwed" [URL]. Is the method I used safe, or did it some how mess up my TM or leave left over data?
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Feb 2, 2010
If you use a external harddrive, I assume you have to turn it on 24hrs a day? And when the mac sleeps does it still back up on schedule? Can I use a internal drive i.e. bay 2 or 3 etc?
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Mar 22, 2012
i need to schedule a back up for time machine?
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jan 5, 2011
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?
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Aug 29, 2009
I just got a new external hard drive (500 gigs), and already backed up my mac once. Now it does it every hour. But I want it to back up like once a day, not 24 times a day. How do I change the back up schedule?
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Sep 30, 2008
My 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.
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May 14, 2009
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?
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May 24, 2009
So 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"
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Jan 5, 2010
Tonight I followed the instructions someone had posted to this forum (and lots of other places online) to run the following in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 86400
Then I logged out and then logged back in again to reload.
This is supposed to change the Time Machine backup interval from 1 hour to once every 24 hours.
Maybe it does, but I noticed something weird: every time I load up Time Machine Preferences from the menu bar, the time to "Next Backup" changes by subtracting 1 hour or so from its previous value just a few minutes ago when I checked.
If I check again immediately, it is the same (e.g. Today, 9:20pm) but if I wait awhile and load it again, it changes to something like "Today, 8:20pm"
Not sure what's going on here and can anyone offer any comments if I even executed this command correctly in the first place?
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Nov 4, 2009
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?
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Dec 8, 2010
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.
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Nov 2, 2008
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.
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Dec 7, 2014
I 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.
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.
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 ?
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.
Info:
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
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Oct 12, 2009
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.
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Jul 20, 2010
I 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?
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Apr 24, 2009
I just got an external hard drive because I have thousands of songs that my macbook cannot hold.
I am using Time Machine to put everything on my external but I was wondering....if I delete the music on my computer so that I just have it on my external - will Time machine delete it off my external when it automatically updates since it is no longer on my computer?
I want to download more music but am scared of losing any old music.
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Jun 17, 2012
I 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)
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Sep 4, 2014
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)
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Jul 2, 2012
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)
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May 23, 2012
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
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May 27, 2012
Yesterday I used Migration Assistant to recover the contents of a failed MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard) from a Time Machine backup to a new MacBook Air (10.7.4). Using the same external disk for backups, I now have a folder for both the old and new machines in
/Volumes/time_machine/Backups.backupdb/
The instructions here
[URL]
explain how to reconnect time machine to the old machine's backups. Once I've done this and checked that I can access the old backups, can I simply delete the new machine folder to save space?
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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