Question regarding Time Machine recovery process.

[stop.the.clocks]

I cannot find the settings for Time Machine to overwrite the oldest files.

For example, I have a 1.5TB external HD for important content and a 2TB external HD setup with Time Machine. At this point the backup drive has been filled, but rather than deleting the oldest files backed up, it will simply stop backing up.

Any pointers?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I'm not sure there is such a setting to switch that off or on, eg thats what it does anyway AFAIK.

I found this https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2793221?start=0&tstart=0 which states "Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. "

So, perhaps you have something such an encrypted volume or huge video files or a large VM or two, and so TM is backing up these huge files each time even if the amount of change within each file is miniscule. In which case, you should exclude files like that and use a different non-TM backup strategy for those.