How I solved my Time Machine/not enough free space mishap

[Prodo123]

I had 210.81GB available on my hard drive. My external Time Machine backup refused to copy over my iTunes folder, whether it was through Time Machine or direct copy. My iTunes library is 174.73GB so it should fit fine, but apparently it was giving me this error for no reason!

My Time Machine drive is a FW800 drive partitioned for 2.5TB of backup and 0.5TB of personal use.

I thought it was because the current iTunes library was taking up too much space, so I'm deleted that. Disk is very healthy, Momentus XT on SD28. It still gave this error.

Then I disabled the Time Machine local snapshots through:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

and it instantly freed about 140GB of space from my internal drive. After that, the copy went fine.

 

[samac92]

Just turning time machine off then back on again will delete all local snapshots.

 

[Prodo123]

Just turning time machine off then back on again will delete all local snapshots.

No, it won't.

 

[tunerX]

Are there any negatives when you disable local snapshots?

 

[Prodo123]

Are there any negatives when you disable local snapshots?

Not that I'm aware of. As long as you keep an external Time Machine backup, that is.
I've heard somewhere that it might disable Versions as well. Any info on this?

 

[samac92]

No, it won't.

Yes, it will.

"If you turn Time Machine OFF, Time Machine will immediately stop creating new ones, and start deleting all existing snapshots (that may take a while)."

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/30.html

 

[Prodo123]

Yes, it will.

"If you turn Time Machine OFF, Time Machine will immediately stop creating new ones, and start deleting all existing snapshots (that may take a while)."

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/30.html

How would this explain the fact that when I turn off Time Machine, the atorage capacity stays the same for 2.3 weeks, but when I use this terminal command and free up 140GB instantly?

 

[samac92]

How would this explain the fact that when I turn off Time Machine, the atorage capacity stays the same for 2.3 weeks, but when I use this terminal command and free up 140GB instantly?

You can view where local snapshots are stored by going to finder > go > go to folder and entering /Volumes/MobileBackups

When I turn time machine off, this volume disappears instantly. When I turn time machine back on, the volume appears again but all the snapshots within the folder have been deleted.

This is how it should behave. If it isn't for you then I imagine something is wrong.