MacBook Pro :: Final Word On Time Machine Deleting Backups?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
Found that my MacBook was crashing often and had to reinstall Lion which seemed to solve the indescriminate crashes. But now my Time Machine is sitting useless as i cant turn it on even for a single backup manually or have it on continually as the Macbook will crash to the point where all i can do is restart with the power button.
Info:MacBook (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I had not downloaded anything or even had anything that was new to be 6 gigabyte, but I had deleted alot of useless programs from my computer which I saved about 4 gigabyte, but why would time machine backup a random 6gigs...then the backup for some reason didn't really finish and the last backup it stated was may 3rd which is wrong. Then a few minutes ago again I wanted to backup but then it took a whopping 9 gigs of whatever crap! OMG! That makes like 15-16gigs in total which is like 1/4 of my entire 'used' portion of the harddrive.
It seems that everytime I delete a program it just backs up white bytes or something and it even made my 420 gigs of free space all the way down to like 402 gigs. Sorry about the crappy grammar etc etc, but this is freaky and is pissing me off and stupid time machine won't even let us see what it is god dam backing up....and why on earth did apple make restoring from a backup ONLY from your disk? My leopard disk is broken (the one that came with my computer) and my restore discs are tiger, because apple decided to make them seperate....is there a program to merge all my time machine backups and see what time machine backed up new and also restore from a time machine backup? Or am I asking for too much, might as well email apple.
I switched from a Mac Mini to a Retina Display Macbook Pro. When I hooked up the external drive I've been using for Time Machine to the MBP, I went through the setup for Time Machine and it created a backup of the MBP. That is the only backup now showing when I enter Time Machine. How do I access the previous backups from the Mac Mini through Time Machine? If I open the external hard drive from the finder, I can see the backups on the drive.
Info: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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.
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?
both my MacBook and my time machine backups just got destroyed by the water sprinkers coming on. All I have left is the data on my iPhone. I keep all my iPhoto, music, contacts, calandar, and bookmarks on my phone. How will I transfer them to my new computer (even if it is a paid program, I REALLY need to keep this data. Also, how will I keep my new computer from deleting everything on my phone, ESPECIALLY my text messages, when I sync it for the first time? Again, a paid program would be fine because I REALLY need to keep this data
I have been using a 1 TB Iomega portable HD as my external HD for Time Machine backups of my early 2011 17" MacBook Pro with a 750GB Internal HD with only 190GB utilized. I just got a Time Machine message:
1) that backup couldn't be performed because of HD problem, and 2) to repair the HD with Disk Utility.
I ran DU Repair Disk and got the following Red Type messages interspersed between normal lines of DU activity reports:
"Invalid Sibling link"The volume Iomega_HDD could not be repaired."Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Can I recover the original and older time machine backups from my ext. HD in a procedure that would allow me to continue backing up with TM but restarting with the most recent recovered "uncorrupted" TM backup as the base, thus allowing me access to older backups?
Or is my ONLY alternative to start Time Machine afresh with a full backup today (on a new ext. HD!), and just deem all those valuable Time Machine backups as lost forever?
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?
I have just purchased a Toshiba Stor.E Slim hard drive, which I do not require for Time Machine back ups. Should I use the Tuxera NTFS driver, or should I format the hard drive for Mac? Is any benefit over formatting vs using the driver? I pretty much use Macs all the time, but there may be rare occasions when it would be useful to hook up to a PC.
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?
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.
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. What do you guys think? Have I messed up and how do I avoid a repetition?
Is it suppose to back up your whole HDD everytime? I thought the first time it was suppose to then after just stuff that was added to the Mac since the last backup?
I accidentally used time machine on my external hard drive and backed up everything. I only want to back up photos and music on this hard drive, but now it won't let me delete it. How can I wipe the hard drive and only save what I want?
I'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.
I started using Time Machine on Jan. 9th with an initial backup onto my LaCie Firewire drive (MBP 17inch SSD with three partitions). That backup was about 55GB. I am using the 'regular' settings on Time Machine - the LaCie Drive is the only item on the exclusion list (I guess Time Machine put it there itself). Since then TM does its thing every hour. When I enter TM I see all those backups. However, there's a big difference between the 'NOW' and all the backups, even the one just an hour ago. E.g., the download folder has now 47 items, whereas the backups all show 35 (the number of the initial backup). The Entourage database has also grown, but any backup shows the size of the initial backup.
I verified this by restoring a database and opening it in Entourage and sure enough the last message shows a date of Jan. 9th. TimeTracker shows many backups since the initial backup with 0 bytes or some smallish number of KB - only a few are in the MB range (total is around 150MB since Jan. 9th). Bottom line, TM does not really backup incrementally. Has anybody experienced this malfunction? What would be the solution to this problem? Any tweaks, settings to change? I'm using a Firewire 800>400 cable (9-pin to 6-pin, 24K gold-plated connectors) from SIIG - could this be the cause? But why would the initial backup work just fine plus all the others allegedly being performed?
i got a new hard drive and i am trying to copy time machine backups. I am using disk utility and it is taking days......it tehre any other way to move them besides using disk utility restore function? i tried to drag and drop didnt work.