Time Machine doesn't have enough room to backup?

[chocolate632]

Hi everyone

So here's the situation. I tried to backup my iMac the other day and I got a message saying that I don't have enough room to backup. These are the drives:

External Drive: 500GB Lacie (31GB free of 499)
Internal Drive: 500GB Western Digital (433GB used, 65GB free, 499 available)

Shouldn't time machine just delete an older backup? I just checked now all my backups are gone except one from April. Do you think I should just reformat the external and backup again? 460GB is gonna take a while to backup over USB.

Thanks in advance

 

[gnasher729]

Hi everyone

So here's the situation. I tried to backup my iMac the other day and I got a message saying that I don't have enough room to backup. These are the drives:

External Drive: 500GB Lacie (31GB free of 499)
Internal Drive: 500GB Western Digital (433GB used, 65GB free, 499 available)

Shouldn't time machine just delete an older backup? I just checked now all my backups are gone except one from April. Do you think I should just reformat the external and backup again? 460GB is gonna take a while to backup over USB.

Actually, I would recommend to get a new 1 TB backup drive. Time Machine will only backup if your old backup plus the changes to the new backup will fit - it won't delete the old backup, in case something goes wrong while backing up and then you would be without backup. So having a Time Machine backup drive that is only a little larger than the drive you are backing up is not a good idea.

 

[chocolate632]

Actually, I would recommend to get a new 1 TB backup drive. Time Machine will only backup if your old backup plus the changes to the new backup will fit - it won't delete the old backup, in case something goes wrong while backing up and then you would be without backup. So having a Time Machine backup drive that is only a little larger than the drive you are backing up is not a good idea.

I was gonna buy a new 2TB internal and external, but I can't afford it right now... If I reformat the drive, should it work again temporarily? I would backup 430GB, then add a few files and backup again, ensuring I have more than one backup.