Should I be deleting TM back-ups?

[MiniD3]

Hi Guys
I have a late 2012 27" iMac, has been running OK but notice the SSD is slowly filling,
I'm a photographer and all my images are stored on an external drive, trying to just keep, for the most part, just have software on the Mac,

I'm sure I deleted these backups a long while back a couple of years ago, I think these are the back-ups?

and the list goes on,
thinking the last one is this,

Should I be deleting all the previous back-ups?
Gary

 

[Taz Mangus]

Hi Guys
I have a late 2012 27" iMac, has been running OK but notice the SSD is slowly filling,
I'm a photographer and all my images are stored on an external drive, trying to just keep, for the most part, just have software on the Mac,

I'm sure I deleted these backups a long while back a couple of years ago, I think these are the back-ups?
View attachment 575234
View attachment 575234 View attachment 575235
and the list goes on,
thinking the last one is this,
View attachment 575236
Should I be deleting all the previous back-ups?
Gary

Latest does point to the latest backup date. Hopefully you are using Time Machine itself to delete the backup and not manually deleting them.

 

[MiniD3]

Not sure how I deleted a couple of years back, (70 year old geriatric Mac guy)
How should I delete the old ones?
......Gary

 

[DeltaMac]

Time Machine does not usually need your help.
It will begin deleting the oldest backups automatically, if it begins to run low on space.
If you decide to do some cleanup on your own, be sure (as Taz Mangus suggested) that you use Time Machine to delete backups. Don't manually drag the old ones to the trash.

Wait a sec - are those backups on your internal hard drive?
If they are, you should connect an external drive to use for your Time Machine backups. Use the settings in Time Machine to point to your external as the destination. The internal backups should be replaced, and you can likely delete all those on your internal drive that still exist after a week or so.

 

[MiniD3]

Much appreciated,
I have all the back-ups going to the external HDD
......Gary

 

[Weaselboy]

I have a late 2012 27" iMac, has been running OK but notice the SSD is slowly filling,

I'm confused. That Backups.backupdb is the Time machine backup typically on your external drive, and TM will start to delete those as the backup drive gets full. You should not manually mess about in there or you risk breaking the backup set.

This has nothing to do with your internal SSD getting full. TM makes what are called local snapshots that can begin to fill the internal drive. But the OS manages that also, so you should have to worry about it.

If you want to zero out the local backups space used, just turn TM off then back on.

 

[MiniD3]

Tks for the info,
I may need a close look around the system, do have a lot of things going on like LR, although that is on an external drive, just installed FCP, I guess that would be a factor also,
Will have a close look just in case I have put some new stuff in there and not on the external drives
......Gary