Can I delete Time Machine backups on Tahoe 26.5.1?

[Pinenut]

How do I delete backups from Time Machine running on Tahoe 26.5.1? My external drive is running out of space. There does not appear to be a way to do this in Time Machine.
thanks.

 

[Bigwaff]

You don't need to delete any backups. Time Machine should delete older backups automatically to make room for new backups. Are you seeing an error or message that the disk is full?

 

[Pinenut]

No I am not, it I have backups back to Jan 2023. Is that normal?

 

[Nermal]

Is your external disk dedicated to Time Machine or are you using it for general files as well?

If the former, then TM "should" automatically delete old backups like Bigwaff has said above. However, if you have a lot of data, or if the disk is too small, then you might indeed get "disk full" errors: this means that there isn't enough space to keep a backup history. I'm not sure exactly what to do in that situation apart from using a bigger drive.

Edit: You sneaked your reply in while I was typing. In short, don't worry about it: if you check again next month then you'll probably find that your earliest backups will be from February.

 

[Pinenut]

Thanks. I will check next month. I only use this drive for Time Machine. I just got a new SSD type and I want to use that also, so I have redundancy. Thoughts?

 

[Bigwaff]

I alternate between two external TM drives - one an SSD and the other a mechanical HDD. I think it makes sense to have more than one TM backup drive.

 

[Bazza1]

No I am not, it I have backups back to Jan 2023. Is that normal?

It depends on how big your Time Machine backup is. As noted by Bigwaff, older backups are deleted as space is required, but if you have a larger drive, the further back your TM will be able to go before deletions happen.
But unless there's a software / hardware issue, while your drive may look like its getting full, the app should maintain space for recent backups.

As a sidebar to this (not affecting your external drive but your Mac's internal one) there may be occasions where your TM wasn't able to access your external drive for whatever reason at the appointed time. If that's the case, it will save the backup to your Mac's internal drive. These may add up over time, taking valuable storage space. You can see if these exist by opening Terminal and typing -

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

- then hit Return key. It will either tell you none exist, or list them. If you wish to delete them, type -

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /

- then hit Return key.

 

[Pinenut]

It depends on how big your Time Machine backup is. As noted by Bigwaff, older backups are deleted as space is required, but if you have a larger drive, the further back your TM will be able to go before deletions happen.
But unless there's a software / hardware issue, while your drive may look like its getting full, the app should maintain space for recent backups.

As a sidebar to this (not affecting your external drive but your Mac's internal one) there may be occasions where your TM wasn't able to access your external drive for whatever reason at the appointed time. If that's the case, it will save the backup to your Mac's internal drive. These may add up over time, taking valuable storage space. You can see if these exist by opening Terminal and typing -

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

- then hit Return key. It will either tell you none exist, or list them. If you wish to delete them, type -

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /

- then hit Return key.

hi again,
I have never used Terminal before and I am a little hesitant. When I just now started it, just to see, I got this message

Last login: Wed Jun 24 09:05:14 on ttys000





The default interactive shell is now zsh.


To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.


For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.


Mac:~ myname$


I am the administrator and I don't have any users/groups defined. Just FYI

I assume if I do decide to run the above command, I start typing after the $. right??

I am by no means an expert user.

 

[ignatius345]

I would not monkey with Time Machine via Terminal. If you break something, you lose all your backup versions. It will automatically start purging the oldest snapshots as it runs out of space.

I agree about redundancy if backup history is important to you. You can easily just keep swapping Time Machine drives back and forth, or you could use your new drive to make backups via another method like Carbon Copy Cloner (which will also do full checks on your backup files to make sure they’re not quietly going corrupt).

IMO it’s very much worthwhile to keep one of your backups off site. Here’s my setup:

- Time Machine backup (daily, always connected)
- Carbon Copy Cloner backup (monthly, kept offsite)

If disaster struck and I lost my iMac and Time Machine drive, I could go to the offsite drive and retrieve files there. Anything in the gap between monthly backups would be saved in iCloud Drive.