I have a 1 TB startup disk of which never more than 350 GB are in use (from which about 100 GB of Parallels Desktop files are excluded from Time Machine backups). In effect I have about 250 GB that need to be backed up by Time Machine.
Strangely enough it happens every couple of months that Time Machine reports a backup failure because my 1 TB Time Machine backup drive would not have enough space. The only thing that I can do then (if I want to keep my old backups) is to take another hard drive and let Time Machine start from scratch (and then reformat the old drive after some time when I'm sure that I don't need the old backups anymore).
I had this first happen with a 500 GB backup disk, then changed to a 1 TB backup disk (four times the space of my backup data!). It certainly took longer until Time Machine stopped working, but it did not change the basic problem.
Time Machine seems to be too stupid to do what it should do - to delete old backups when necessary. Why is that so? Or what else could be the reason for this faulty behavior?
Strangely enough it happens every couple of months that Time Machine reports a backup failure because my 1 TB Time Machine backup drive would not have enough space. The only thing that I can do then (if I want to keep my old backups) is to take another hard drive and let Time Machine start from scratch (and then reformat the old drive after some time when I'm sure that I don't need the old backups anymore).
I had this first happen with a 500 GB backup disk, then changed to a 1 TB backup disk (four times the space of my backup data!). It certainly took longer until Time Machine stopped working, but it did not change the basic problem.
Time Machine seems to be too stupid to do what it should do - to delete old backups when necessary. Why is that so? Or what else could be the reason for this faulty behavior?