Delete Old Time Machine Files?

Hey.

I've heard that the (ideal) way to to time machine backups is to think of them as something along the lines of a library. When you have filled up one disk with backups then the thing to do is... Buy another disk and then start backing up with that one. That way you will have all of them there forever.

That being said, how much do you want all of them there forever? I guess one could aim for strategic savepoints, but the trouble is you probably won't know which of them are strategically optimal until something (God forbid) goes wrong.

Personally... I'd leave them be.

 

delete old backups in the Time Machine interface by clicking the 'cog' wheel in the Finder window and click Delete this backup or delete all backups.

 

Well, that does work, but what a clumsy interface. And how about deleting multiple backups? Would it be terrible to just delete the backups from the filesystem on the Time Machine disk?

 

Time Machine will manage itself. Open Time Machine prefs, it will show you how long it will keep backups for.

It keeps:

Hourly Backups for 24 hours
Daily Backups for a month
Weekly backups until the disk is full

at which point it will start deleting some older stuff

 

Mine never deletes old backups. It just tells me that my disc is full. Why would that be?

 

Mine said full , then said it will start deleting old backups.
It only did that once.
So it appears to delete old stuff and add new stuff, but doesn't say anything about do that now.
Perhaps there is a log somewhere that has more detailed info on what is going on.