Can I manually delete older backups of Time Machine?

I have an external drive for use with Time Machine. I only want to keep the latest backup. Will it cause a problem if I go into the drive - select the older dated backups - right click and move to trash?
I don't want to wait for the disk to become full so time machine can delete them, as I have other files on the hard drive, and will add more.
Thanks

So if I partition a 1tb external hard drive, I can allocate 500GB for my time machine backups,(which will allow time machine to fill that 500gb space up and delete when necessary) and the other 500GB for other backed up files?
Yes.
Would this be a better method than having my time machine backups and other files together on the one partition?
Yes.
Is the reasoning behind not sharing the time machine drive with other non TM backups because it wastes more space as TM just keeps using up more until it's full?
Sort of. The problem with sharing TM backups with other files is what you described. A volume specified for TM backups eventually becomes full as a normal consequence of using it. At that point you are faced with the problem of adding more, non - TM backups to a volume that has reached its capacity: you can't. Tampering with Time Machine backups increases the possibility of corruption should you delete backups in a manner not consistent with the way Time Machine creates and maintains them.
Time Machine's biggest advantage is that it requires no user intervention, and is ideally suited to those who lack the discipline or skills to routinely perform this tedious exercise. Its biggest disadvantage is that is has few configurable options, and none that address your specific goal.

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Can't browse some older backups via Time Machine interface

Problem started after updating to Yosemite. I am running 10.10.1. I can find all my backups, going back to 2010 in fact, when browsing my external FW800 hard drive directly in the Finder. But if I click the menubar icon and choose "Enter Time Machine," I can see some recent backups for some folders, but I cannot access some older backups that I know are there on that same drive. The window title bars in the TM interface are totally grayed out for those older backups. But again, there are all on the same FW800 external HD, and I can search them just fine and extract the files just fine using the Finder.
Is the Time Machine interface totally broken in Yosemite?
Clearly there is nothing wrong with my external FW800 HD, otherwise I wouldn't be able to manually browse and extract files via the Finder. And yes, it makes regular TM backups every day too. It's only the "Enter Time Machine" UI that is partly broken. I say "partly" because some backups (very recent) display, but I cannot access all the backups. It's very strange.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you.

We need some clarification on what your requirements might be, since you state that you want to be able to open Time Machine and see backups that were made since you installed Yosemite.....AND....older backups on the drive that were made before you installed Yosemite.
When Yosemite is installed it is supposed to add all of the data included in the Yosemite operating system and combine that with your history of backups with other operating systems. For a number of reasons.....Yosemite does not always do this.....so what happens is that Yosemite starts a whole new "master" backup of your Mac at the time and then begins to add incremental backups since Yosemite has been installed.
When that happens, and you click Enter Time Machine from the menu bar at the top of the screen, you will only see the backups that have been made since Yosemite was installed. Other backups are grayed out on the Time Machine interface display and cannot be accessed......even though the backup data is present on the hard drive, and you can see the data or folders displayed using the Finder.
If you want Time Machine to display current backups.....AND....older backups when you click Enter Time Machine, your only option would be to try to reinstall Yosemite to see if the new installation will display current backups and older backups on the same Time Machine interface.
There is absolutely no assurance that this will be successful if you try it. Your call on that.
What might work......IF.....you can lower your requirements to have both new and old backups displayed on the same Time Machine interface.....and instead have current Yosemite backups displayed on one Time Machine interface and the older backups on another, or separate Time Machine interface.......is to try the Browse Other Time Machine Disks option.
You do not mention at all whether or not you have tried the Browse Other Time Machine Disks in this post or in your video. I assume that you tried this, since it is mentioned in Pondini's documentation and also other Apple Time Machine documentation, and it also did not work for some reason.
But, if you have not done this......and you can lower your display requirements......you might want to try.
1) From your normal Mac desktop, make sure that the "dock" , normally at the bottom of the screen, is displayed......and that the Time Machine icon is displayed there as well.
2) Control-Click.....or.....Right-Click the Time Machine icon to see if an option to Browse Other Time Machine Disks is displayed
3) Click on Browse Other Time Machine Disks
4) If an option to use another disk is displayed, click on the disk to highlight it, then click Use This Disk
What happens when you do this?

Why can't I delete old backups from Time Machine?

I can actually delete them, but cannot empty them from the Trash Can.
Any ideas?

You should avoid deleting backups yourself, but you are determined to do it anyway read the following, courtesy of Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini:
12. Should I delete old backups? If so, How?
Your question is likely addressed in the third paragraph from the end.

I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash

I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash.

Using Finder (deleting Time Machine backups) to manage Time Machine files is a mistake. The remedy is somewhat easy, but you will lose all the files on that TM drive.
If there is nothing elese on the Time Machine drive, try reformatting the drive with Disk Utility. This will effectively remove the files from that drive from the trash. If you have files on this drive, temporarily copy the files to another drive, then reformat the TM drive.

Delete multiple backups in time machine?

Is there a way to delete multiple backups in TIme Machine and not have to delete old files one by one by slow one by one?

pcp0827 wrote:
Is there a way to delete multiple backups in TIme Machine and not have to delete old files one by one by slow one by one?
Yes, sort of. You can delete indiividual backups, or all backups of selected items,via Time Machine. See #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. You can only select one backup at a time, but they're deleted in a separate process, so you can select another before the first one completes. When you exit from Time Machine, you may see one or more progress bars for the individual deletions. (As noted there, never delete anything from your backups via the Finder.)
But you really shouldn't have to do that. Time Machine will delete your oldest backups automatically, when it needs room for new ones.

How do I delete all backups of Time Machine in OSX 10.7.2?

I had some huge photo files (100gb) that were on my computer for a few weeks and have now been processed and deleted. I suspect that Time Machine backed them up on my external hard drive. How can I delete all backups from Time Machine and start with a fresh series of backups?
Tks

That would work also.
I like to reformat the disk just to rebuild the directory when I clean one.
Allan

How to delet old backups in time machine

How to delete old backups in time machine.
I have no space left for new backups

See Here > Should I delete old backups? If so, How?
From Here > http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

How can I see another mac backup on time machine?

how can I see another mac backup on time machine?

Bob thanks, but that didn't solve my problem, I went to question 17 and went into the Browse my Time Machine and it also didn't find or recognize the other Mac. I know it's in there because when I open the other Mac and Enter the Time Machine, I can see it through that Mac, and I have the same problem there, where I can't see my Mac.
In short, when I back up a Mac (doesn't matter which one) I can verify its backup as long as I use that Mac, but I cannont verfiy the backup on that Mac using another Mac and vice versa.
Also, I never used to have to do anything to see both on the same Mac. So I don't know what changed.
There must be another way.
Thanks

How can i delete a 'backups' from time machine for a computer i no longer have

i have been using my time capsule for a few years now, everything was great until my imac died and i had to replace it
when i did, the time capsule worked perfectly, as it allowed me to "migrate" all my backed up data onto my new machine, joy
but now, as it wants to start its backups of the new imac, there just isnt enough disk space on the drive, and i suspect this is due to every file on my new machine is marked as never have being backed up which means i need like 400G, and most of the time capsule's space is still consumed by the old backups
how can i remove this old back up from the time capsule without reformatting the whole drive (i have other machines that are still using the backup service and i dont want that interrupted)
it just seems like, since i am no longer on the old machine, i cant access that machine's backup in order to delete them (through the time machine interface), and i cant seem to find a single tutorial on how to do this that is written in non-programmer speak (i really dont feel comfortable cracking open terminal and command-lining this sort of thing)
am i just nuts or is this really all that uncommon a problem with no easy solution?!?
any advice is appreciated, thanks in advance

how can i remove this old back up from the time capsule
click here for instructions.

What items do you delete from backup on time machine to make more space available

What items do you delete from back up on time machine to make more space?

There's no need to do that unless Time Machine has reported a Disk Full alert. In this case you can:
1. Delete older entries using the Time Machine application to free up sufficient space.
2. Get a new and larger Time Machine backup drive to replace the old one.
3. Erase the backup drive and start over.

Restoring to an older backup via time machine?

I restored my iPhone yesterday to clear some things up. When I did it, there were still some problems, so I restored as a new phone and Sync'ed it to iTunes. When I did that all my contacts were different than before.
I want to restore an older backup, to a time when my Phone was how I wanted it. I read here that iTunes keeps only 1 backup. I use time machine. I'm wondering if my Time Machine has a copy of an older back up. If so, where would I find it, and how would I go about doing it? Thanks!

those of us who use time machine might do well to double-check our backups.
i started having trouble with my iPhone and decided to restore. unfortunately, it seems that the last backup i made managed to preserve the problems i was having with my phone, so i decided to restore my next latest backup from time machine. i navigated to ~/Library/Application Support/ but much to my dismay there was no sign of the MobileSync folder! i went through all of my older backups and there was still no sign of it. i checked my time machine options and this directory had NOT been added to the "do not back up" pane. makes me wonder what else time machine might be skipping unbeknownst to me.
just a friendly FYI...

Can I manually recover files from a Time Machine backup?

I'm just about to perform a fresh install of OS X Lion. I plan to re-install the apps I need from scratch so only need my files backed up (iTunes/Aperture library, documents folder etc). At the moment I have time machine backing up to an external USB disk.
Do I need to copy my Music/Pictures/Documents folders to another USB disk before doing a fresh install of Lion or can I just copy/paste them from my time machine backup disk (would save a lot of time)? I don't want to do a time machine recovery, recover preferences or apps etc - just manually recover my data.
Thanks.

JBF80 wrote:
I want to copy all of my files, but not settings or applications. I'm happy to copy/paste the Documents, Pictures and Music directories from the TM disk.
Well, that is what I said ("You can customize what to transfer")

Lost older backups after Time Machine restore

After a disk crash, I had to replace the drive in my Intel Core Duo Mac Mini and reinstall Snow Leopard. The restore from Time Machine on my external Firewire drive worked perfectly, bring back all my apps and files.
However, Time Machine no longer lets me go back into the older archives to restore files. I have only backups beginning after the reinstall.
Worse, Time Machine now says I'm out of space on Firewire drive, as if it wants to back up the entire system again.
Any way to get my old Time Machine back?

No, don't do that. Moving, deleting, or changing things in your backups can corrupt them.
But, very carefully, look at the drive via the Finder.
There should be a single Backups.backupdb folder at the top level, containing one folder named for your Mac. Inside that is a series of dated folders, one for each backup (plus a "Latest" alias). Inside each of those is what appears to be a complete duplicate of the folder structure on your drive. If your last backup failed or was interrupted, there'll be an "in.Progress" package, too.
It's possible the crash corrupted something. One result might be TM starting a new "sequence" of backups. If so, there will be a second folder inside the Backups.backupdb folder. To view those backups, use the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). To delete them, see #12 there.
How large is your TM drive, compared to the amount used on your internal HD? If it's more than 2.2 times, there should be room for a new backup. If not, your only choices are to start fresh with a different drive, or erase the current one and start over.

Deleting past backups from time machine disk

Hi all
I was wondering how do you delete old time machine backups?
Josh

Hi Barry,
I don't know about Josh's reasons, but I can give you two from my personal experience:
1) If you use an OS X Server that shares one of its drives as a Time Machine location for the clients, they will create sparsebundles (containing the Backups.backupdb) on the share. The also do backup thinning, but if the drive runs out of space and more than one backup is currently running it is possible that the backup fails due to free space suddenly being not available anymore. It usually works fine with only 1 concurrent backup.
2) You want to move your TM partition to another drive/partition and it is a little too big for that. Deleting some old backups can help.
Björn from frozen Germany

Can I force a full backup in Time Machine?

I recently set up one of our users with a new iMac that came with OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Instead of getting their info by importing from a Time Machine backup, I set them up manually because they wanted a number of changes made to their account.
Previously, this user had been on a MacPro running OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I used the same external drive that they had been using with Time Machine on the MacPro as their Time machine drive on the new iMac, via an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter, and didn't reformat it. When I turned on Time Machine in 10.9 it made a backup that took several hours, so I assumed it had made an initial full backup.
They had a problem and I booted the iMac from the Recovery partition and selected to restore from a Time Machine backup. I was surprised that only two full backups showed, and both were of their MacPro with 10.6.8. We came up with another way to get the lost data back, but it was very time consuming. We were able to restore individual files from their Time Machine backups, just not able to do a complete restore of the drive.
I double checked and nothing is excluded in the Time Machine System Preferences.
I would like to be able to restore this user if they have a problem in the future, but it appears that unless I can force Time Machine to make a full backup that this may be impossible.
Is there a way to force a full Time machine backup with the OS X 10.9.2 that they are now running?
Thanks in advance for any help with this.
Chuck Hildebrand
Iowa Public Television

If you have a spare, emptry hard drive of sufficient capacity, then you can clone the backup drive to the empty drive. Do not attempt to simply copy using Drag and Drop since there are invisible files you may inadvertantly omit.
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the empty drive. Source means the old backup drive.
Alternatively, replace the backup drive with a new drive. This would be simpler than the above.

Can I manually delete older backups of Time Machine?

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