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hkaps

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 30, 2009
2
0
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." That's good advice for some people, but 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.

Is there software out there that can do that for me?

Thanks!
 
Reduce the size of the Time Machine partition, and add a new partition for your movies, etc. The smaller partition size will force Time Machine to drop off old backups sooner (it won't be able to go back as far in time). This way, you can still let Time Machine "do its thing" - which, I believe, is the best option. The whole idea of the Time Machine method is to remove the user from the "when do I backup?" equation.

Just FYI: the backups (by date/time) you see in the Finder aren't all the same size. They look like it, but only the changed files actually reside in each backup (hourly/daily/weekly). The rest are hard links to the actual files.
 
@gr8tfly

Wow! This is the first time here I see someone advertising Newton as part of their Mac heritage. :) I do still miss it....
 
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