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Disabling Local Time Machine Backups

SayMilesAway

SayMilesAway

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 11, 2011
206
0
Florida
I backup my mac with time machine to a external hard drive. I just used the terminal command to disable local backups. My questions is, this is exactly what it sounds like, just disables local, won't mess with my time machine back up to my external? Thanks.
 
SayMilesAway said:
I backup my mac with time machine to a external hard drive. I just used the terminal command to disable local backups. My questions is, this is exactly what it sounds like, just disables local, won't mess with my time machine back up to my external? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Stopping the local backups means that some amount of the automatic versioning ( saving different copies of a document that is being changed ) is disabled.

The time machine backups will continue to work ... it just prevents a bunch of interim backups to your internal disk being done between backups to the external disk.

You should however check periodically to make sure that your backups are really taking place.
 
i hooked up my external hdd and now i have a backup file in my trashcan that will take years to delete apparently. i guess this is from disabling local backups and then backing up on my external. I removed the time machine partition on my external and tried again but the files came back to the trash can. when i unmount the disk they disappear. seems I'm going to have to reformat my external to get rid of this grrr...
 
SayMilesAway said:
i hooked up my external hdd and now i have a backup file in my trashcan that will take years to delete apparently. i guess this is from disabling local backups and then backing up on my external.
Click to expand...

Personally I turn off the time machine backups ( set preferences to OFF ) after I am done with a backup and turn it back on ( and select the correct disk partition ) before the next backup.

It is a fair amount of manual work to do it like this but it is the way I want to proceed. I also rotate in and back out disks periodically from my backup rotation.

I have 2 external USB disk caddies ( thermal take ) and 3 disks in the current setup. One system at work and the other at home.

You have to think about the setup that is workable and makes sense for you!

I never get a big backup file in my trashcan but just maybe for you this is from disable the local backups ( the leftover stuff that is now getting ditched ) instead of as a result of hooking backup the external drive.
 
Right, I shouldn't have messed with it. Only reason I did was in preparation of my SSD that will be coming in Monday. Just want to be able to have as much disk space free as possible.
 
I disabled the local backups on my MBP and I've not looked back. I need the space more then TM's ability to store backups on my local drive
 
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