Time capsule backup doubled in size

[matt3526]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a new Macbook pro. The first thing I did is to copy everything from my old mac using migration assistant. Everything went ok and when it finished I got a prompt asking me if I want to use my old time capsule backup with this mac. I said yes, as there are old versions of documents I might want to come back to.

The problem is that this backup has now nearly doubled in size. My old mac was 500gb, my new mac is 512gb but the time capsule backup is ~940gb. As I am backing up other macs I can't afford for it to be this big, but I also don't want to just delete it. Does anyone know how I might be able to shrink it back to its original size?

Thanks

 

[marzer]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a new Macbook pro. The first thing I did is to copy everything from my old mac using migration assistant. Everything went ok and when it finished I got a prompt asking me if I want to use my old time capsule backup with this mac. I said yes, as there are old versions of documents I might want to come back to.

The problem is that this backup has now nearly doubled in size. My old mac was 500gb, my new mac is 512gb but the time capsule backup is ~940gb. As I am backing up other macs I can't afford for it to be this big, but I also don't want to just delete it. Does anyone know how I might be able to shrink it back to its original size?

Thanks

That's not a problem, that's how TM works. The files on the new machine are considered fresh data, so they were added on to the old backup without replacing anything from the old machine. Over time, old data will be pruned to make more space for new data. It won't impede the other machines as they will prune data also to ensure new data can be added to the backup drive.

The only way to shrink it is to do some manual pruning through the time machine interface but then you risk losing versions that you already said you'd prefer to keep. But it is possible to do so, just tedious and risky.