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Lion Local Backups?

B

BAC5.2

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2011
186
2
I noticed the other day that my disc space was getting consumed at an ALARMING rate. Not only that, but that Time Machine (I have a time capsule in the basement) seems to be backing up an EXTRAORDINARY amount of data (15 to 30 GB per "session"/hour).

Of my 500GB Momentus HDD, I only have 90GB left.

Looking at "About This Mac", I think I found out why.

ScreenShot2011-10-19at80805AM.png


It seems... excessive... that I have 100GB of backups on my local drive when I have a 3TB drive in the basement for backups.

Is there a reason for these local backups? Can I disable them? Erase them? Anything to reclaim 1/5th of my harddrive?

Thanks!
 
From the terminal if you issue the following command you will disable local snapshots.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Apple implemented local snapshots if you're not connected to your time machine volume.
 
maflynn said:
From the terminal if you issue the following command you will disable local snapshots.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Apple implemented local snapshots if you're not connected to your time machine volume.
Click to expand...

do local snapshots disappear the next time your plug into your external drive that you do your time machine backups on?
 
Will that delete the old backups, and reclaim my 100GB of storage?

Why would that feature still exist if you have a TM backup disc enabled? I have backups every hour for 24 hours, every day for a month, and every week for all of time. And they decided that I needed backup images locally TOO?

Crazy.

----------
iisforiphone said:
do local snapshots disappear the next time your plug into your external drive that you do your time machine backups on?
Click to expand...

Definitely not. I have a Time Capsule, so it backs up constantly on my home network, and 1/5th of my hard drive is consumed by these local backup images.
 
Disabling local backup eliminated "backups", but just converted them to "other"

Didn't free up any space.
 
I just checked mine. I have only 15.56 GB of space on the HDD being used for local backups, and I only connect to my backup drive maybe twice a week.
 
GuitarG20 said:
I just checked mine. I have only 15.56 GB of space on the HDD being used for local backups, and I only connect to my backup drive maybe twice a week.
Click to expand...

ya ive been doing some research, im not at home where my MBP is so i cant check mine, but else where it says once you plug into your external drive to do the backup those go away, seem like the local snapshots are just backups in between when you plug into the external

although the OP says thats not true so im confused
 
The backups have disappeared after running the Terminal script, but the "other column" has jumped up.

Total storage is up a bit, but not 100GB.

ScreenShot2011-10-19at22941PM.png
 
I did. The above screenshot was taken after emptying the trash.
 
Nope. Just rebooted. Still have an "OTHER" capacity of 165Gb.
 
But it INSTANTLY jumped 50GB when I got rid of the backup section. Seems odd.

I'll look into the program.
 
So you switched TM off, then back on and that was it?

Edit: Just tried, and it didn't change anything. Still 165GB of "other" when there was 110GB before.
 
BAC5.2 said:
So you switched TM off, then back on and that was it?

Edit: Just tried, and it didn't change anything. Still 165GB of "other" when there was 110GB before.
Click to expand...

no i had 16.8 GB of Backups i plugged into my time machine backup external drive, and started the backup it recognized that backup to be 16.8 GB and did its thing, when it was done i assumed that 16.8 was gone from that summary screen but it wasn't, so than i turned off time machine and back on and it was removed on that summary screen?

i also thinks its just a bug because before i tried that thing with time machine i used finder and click my hard drive and get info it showed my free space minus the backups, it was just that summary screen showing it still there

hope that makes sense
 
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