time machine help

[bobbypotluck]

I have an external hard drive set up for time machine on my macbook pro. It can hold 750GB, and about 600 of this is already taken up by time machine backups. My question is, is there a way to delete older backups or limit the number of backups time machine takes? I want to make a partition on the hard drive to allow it to be a time machine for my other computer as well but there is currently not enough space for that.

Can i delete older backups, and how can i adjust to settings in time machine to take up less space? currently it's set up to delete older backups when there is not enough hard disk space. I don't see any option to perform what i'm trying to do, which would be limit time machine to like...2 or 3 backups. Thanks

 

[ChrisA]

I have an external hard drive set up for time machine on my macbook pro. It can hold 750GB, and about 600 of this is already taken up by time machine backups. My question is, is there a way to delete older backups or limit the number of backups time machine takes?

Time machine does this for you automatically. When the drive really does fill up it will delete older copies of files.

In Time Machine's Preferences dialog box there is a check box for saying if you like TM to notify you when it does have to delete older files.

 

[bobbypotluck]

Time machine does this for you automatically. When the drive really does fill up it will delete older copies of files.

In Time Machine's Preferences dialog box there is a check box for saying if you like TM to notify you when it does have to delete older files.

I am aware of this. Is there a way to delete my older time machine backups to free up space to make a new partition? or should i just completely wipe the drive and partition it, then start off clean with a new time machine backup on the space i want to alot?

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Yes there are a few things you can do.

Drobo has just released a new piece of software that is also available for any hard disk.

It looks like a very solid idea. Just look up drobo's web site and the program for limiting time machine. It might be what you are after.

 

[snowmoon]

Yes there are a few things you can do.

Drobo has just released a new piece of software that is also available for any hard disk.

It looks like a very solid idea. Just look up drobo's web site and the program for limiting time machine. It might be what you are after.

It creates a NEW TM sparsebundle, but can't limit one that is already in use.

If you don't mind starting over you can use the applescript utility located here.

http://code.google.com/p/backmyfruitup/

CreateBackupVolume.zip contains the utility in question.