Can you delete something Time Machine has saved?

Let's say you had a file on your desktop and you did a Time Machine backup on Monday. If you deleted the file on Tuesday, I know you could "go back" to Monday and retrieve it. But let's say you wanted that file permanently deleted. How would you do that?

Pondini's got your question answered, but note that, unless you have a specific reason for wanting that file removed from your backup (security issue, extremely large size, etc), you shouldn't worry about it. Just let TM do its thing, and at some point, once the TM backup drive fills up and TM starts deleting old stuff, that file will eventually be deleted.

Similar Messages

  • Can you delete older time machine backups

    I recently upgraded to a new iMac.  I had been using an external drive for backing up my previous computer.  I would like to use this same drive to back up my new computer; however, I need to delete some of the older backups in order to have enough space.
    My understanding is that Time Machine backs up incrementally; therefore, I am wondering if I go in and arbitrarily start deleting the oldest BUs if I will mess up the integrity of the backups.  I am reluctant to delete all of them until I am absolutely certain I don't need anything from them.
    Any help would be much appreciated.
    Thank you.

    I would let Time Machine 'do its thing' and delete backups as it is designed to. You probably won't hurt the integrity of the backup, but you could delete something you might want. How big is the drive? You could always buy a new drive and backup both computers to that and keep backing up the older computer to both drives. Having 2 separate backups on 2 separate hard drives is desirable because hard drives do fail.

  • How can you delete an app without losing saved data/progress?

    How can you delete an app without losing saved data/progress? Is there a way through iCloud? I have an 8gb 4th gen iPod touch. I have a lot of music, so with 8gb, space is limited. Some apps I have take up 20-30 MB. Some of these games I don't play that much, but I don't delete them because I have made a lot of progress (levels, scores, acheivements). It would be nice to delete some of these 30 MB apps that take up precious space, and them redownload them in the future when I have more space, but without having to start the whole game over.
    Also, I read somewhere that there might be a way to do this with iCloud, but I don't really know how.
    Thanks!

    This is the only way I know of.  It is messy though.
    How to transfer game saves between iOS devices, without iTunes, and without jailbreaking | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

  • How can I delete a Time Machine backup which did not complete?

    I was running a Time Machine backup when the disc got unmounted. Therefore I know all of the data is not backed up.
    I would like to delete that entry and rerun "Back Up Now" to start over.
    I tried deleting the folder with the latest time stamp on the drive and ran "Back Up Now". There was a very small amount of data that it then backed up.
    Obviously there is a large gap in manually managing this process and I would like to know the best fix.
    Thanks in advance.

    Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
    tmutil compare | open -ef
    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
    Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear below what you entered.
    A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
    Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
    Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
    Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
    At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
    Added:
    Removed:
    Changed:
    These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.
    Caution: Under some conditions, tmutil may falsely flag files as not having been backed up when in fact they have been. It can be confused by multi-linked files, or by files with a modification date earlier than the one in the snapshot. This will not be an issue for most users. If the results of the above procedure surprise you, inspect your snapshots directly.

  • How do you delete old time machine back ups?

    I have a 2009 iMac (currently on Snow Leopard) that has been using Time Machine (TM) to back up to a 2009 Time Capsule (TC) since new.  I have a 2011 Macbook Pro (currently on Snow Leopard soon to be Lion) that I would like to begin backing up using TM to the TC as well.  The problem is that I recently did one back up of the MBP to the TC and it used almost all of the remaining space on the TC.  Going forward the iMac has continued to back up to the TC creating space by deleting it's oldest back ups.  The MBP however says there is not enough space to back it up.  I am guessing that the TM for the MBP is unable to delete old back ups of the iMac to create space and since there is only 1 back up of the MBP it cannot delete that.
    So... long story short is it okay for me to go into the TC to delete old back ups of the iMac manually and if it is how do I do that?
    Thanks for your help in advance
    djbrown

    Is this more what you mean?
    Re: Can not delete sparsebundle backup 
    Nov 17, 2009 8:30 PM (in response to Ricardo Blach)
    +What I really need is to delete the old sparsebundle from the TC. How can I do that?+ 
    Open your Hard Drive and look for the Time Capsule icon under the SHARED heading. Click the TC icon and a folder will appear to the right. Double click this folder. 
    You should now see a xxxxx.sparsebundle file for each of the computers that have been backing up. The file contains the name of the computer and the MAC address so you should be able to easily identify the xxxxx.sparsebundle file that you want to delete. 
    Click the xxxxx.sparsebundle file to highlight it and then click the gear shaped icon just above and select Move to Trash. 
    Be very careful since you will not be able to retrieve the file if you make a mistake and delete the wrong file.
    That comes from https://discussions.apple.com/message/10595875#10595875
    ...and no, I don't think I'm related to that Dave Bean.
    david

  • Can you back up Time Machine and store files as well?

    Ive been reading on and on about Time Campsule, and in the early stages of it has been mentioned if you use this as a back up for your laptop (Time machine) to not use it as a storing place for files?
    For example,
    I have two macbook pro's.  I want to store time machine of both of my laptops onto time capsule, so if my hard drive dies, or laptop is stolen I can just restore from time capsule.  (That might be a question in itself, If my laptop is stolen can I restore from a back up in time capsule onto a new macbook pro?)
    But I also would like to store my photo's, songs, doc's etc.. onto time capsule as a stoarge drive, so I can just pull the files from each laptop and vice versa.  I was hearing if your going to be using time capsuel as a storage unit and putting your time machine to it as well, its not a good idea because the hard drive will fail? Is this still the case?

    I understand having all your data on a drive is not a back up. (I was wanting to use time capsule as a stoage drive "not a backup" along with time machine "to back up the whole computer.")  I guess what im trying to say is, can time capsule store files on it as well as use time machine? 
    So if time machine will take up all your space on your time capsule, will it delete the older back ups of time machine to create new space for the new backups? The hard drive in total is only 500gb of each mabook, that would be a total of 1TB.

  • Can you restore from Time Machine backup to a smaller drive?

    My 2008 Air's original hard-drive just died. I have a recent Time Machine backup. Since the laptop isn't under warranty, I am looking at buying a replacement hard-drive on my own (either SSD or 'standard'). My question is, if I was using ~70Gigs (and had a Time Machine backup to that effect) and place a 64G hard-drive into the laptop and attempt to do a Time Machine restore... what will happen? Will I be able to pick and choose what to leave out? Or will the entire restore fail? Thank you.

    As long as there is sufficient space on a drive you can restore to any drive. However, be sure the drive is properly partitioned and formatted. In your case you can not fully restore 70 GBs to a 64 GB SSD, but you can restore the operating system and some of your data. That means you cannot do a full restore but will need to pick and choose after you install OS X.
    Drive Preparation
    1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
    3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

  • Can you restore a Time Machine backup to a newly formatted disk.

    I am planning on reformatting my MacBook's hard drive, and then restoring my files to it, because of a problem I am having with Boot Camp telling me to reformat my disk and try partitioning again. Can I do this with Time Machine (i.e. wipe everything off my hard drive and then restore it with a Time Machine backup)? Would I just boot up from my Snow Leopard disk and then click on "+Restore Time Machine Backup+"? I am new to Time Machine, and haven't even performed my first backup, so please forgive me if this is a stupid question.
    Also, if I can do this, would it leave it exactly as it was before I reformatted or would I have to download all the updates again (e.g. my computer has Mac OS X v.10.6.2 installed. Would it restore to that or would it restore to v.10.6.0, the version that is on my Snow Leopard disk)?
    Thank you.
    James.

    yes, you can do it with TM but it would be safer to do using a bootable clone. to do it with TM boot from the SL install DVD, reformat the internal drive using disk utility in the utilities menu. quit disk utility and select 'restore system from backup" from utilities menu. follow the instructions.
    but as I said, it's better to use a bootable clone. make a clone to an external drive using CCCloner or Superduper. then boot from the external, reformat the internal using disk utility and clone the clone back to the internal.
    either method will give you your current system back so you won't have to reinstall anything afterward.
    Message was edited by: V.K.

  • Can I delete individual Time Machine backups using Finder

    I recent fount necessary to do a complete install and restore.  As I was having trouble with system performance, I chose to restore Applications from Time Machine and set the system parameters manually.  In the process, I wound up with some very large (50 Gbytes) on my Desktop.  I neglected to turn off time Machine backup while doing the restoration and wound up with several big(!) files in the back ups taken during the restoration.  There is nothing useful on the backups taken during the restoration and they have really filled  up my backup disk.  Looking at the structure of the backup disk, it seems you could just delete the backups after I started to restore things.  Are there other considerations?  Are there hidden tables laying around that might become unsynchronized?

    Hi Kappy,
         Thanks for the lead.  I did not realize there were these capabilities other than restoration in Time Machine.  I looked in the help for Time Machine and found this
    "You can move, copy, or delete the Backups.backupdb folder on your Time Machine backup disk as you would other folders. You can also delete folders within the Backups.backupdb folder. You can’t delete individual items inside the dated folders."
         Seems like I can just delete, with the Finder, the backups taken after I started the restore.

  • Can I delete older Time Machine backups?

    I have an extensive set of Time Machine back-ups on an external drive for a machine that I no longer own. I want to keep a back-up of that machine...but just one copy, not the multiple copies that exist now.
    My first thought was to simply delete all of the backup folders except the most recent one. But I don't know enough about how Time Machine works to know if that approach will work, or if the most recent backup somehow depends on all those previous folders, and I'll end up deleting important content.
    Can I delete the older folders? Is there a way to "compress" the backups so I have just a single, last snapshot of the machine?

    As Kappy says, you can do this via the TM interface, and from another Mac, but it's rather tedious.
    +Enter TIme Machine+ won't show you the backups from another Mac. But if you hold the Option key down while selecting the TM icon in your Menubar, it will change to +Browse Other Time Machine Disks,+ that will.
    Locate the backup you want to delete via the "cascade" of Finder windows.
    Then select the "gear" icon in it's toolbar and +Delete Backup.+
    You'll see a confirmation prompt, then one for your Administrator's password.
    When you delete an entire backup, it will disappear from the timeline and the "cascade" of Finder windows, but it will not actually delete the backup of any item that's also present in any other backup. Thus you may not gain much space on any one backup. The deletion is usually fairly quick, but sometimes quite lengthy (if you exit TM, you may see a progress bar for it). Unfortunately, you cannot predict which will be quick and which won't.

  • Can you disrupt a Time Machine restore safely?

    Hi:
    My wifes MacBook hard drive had to be replaced, and I'm taking her most recent back up (using Time Machine) and "restoring" the new drive so it matches the old drive before that one failed.
    I'm doing this directly using Time Machine, but the process appears to be stalled.
    Here's what I can tell you:
    Upon clicking "restore" within Time Machine, the process of preparing files to be copied began.  At one point a dialoge box came up asking me if I wanted to replace the newly installed drive with the chosen backup, keep both newly installed drive and backup, or stop the process by keeping the original drive (the newly installed one) in place.
    I chose replace and allowed the process to move forward.
    At this point I've got a box on my wife's computer that says "Copying 186, 573 files to Volumes", a progress bar and below the progress bar the text "0 KB of 72.51 GB -estimating time remaining........
    I can hear the hard drive where the backup resides working, and the blue light on the front flashing, as it does when information is going on or off the drive.
    However, the progress bar is that while and blue striped deal rather than a solid blue line advancing, and the text has said "0 KB of 72.51 GB -estimating time remaining........" for the last hour.
    I'm wondering if the process is frozen and I should abort it and start over, but worry that this will foul lots of things up that I won;t know how to fix.
    As an addendum, I just realized that at the same time as the restore is taking place, time machine was trying to back up!  I've just stopped that backup so there will be no "competition" for the restore.
    Any help and/or troubleshooting tips will be much appreciated.
    FYI my wife has an Intel Macbook running OS 10.6.8.
    SIncerely,
    Michael Stryker

    Yes, but permissions can get tricky.
    See Pondini.. grand master of the art of TM.
    See Q17.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

  • How Can I Delete all Time Machine Backup From Computer Hard Drive?

    Can somebody help me on this. I don't want to use time machine anymore because i have low volume External hard Drive(500GB) only but want to do manual buckup.

    Hi,
    If you no longer want to use the Ext Drive with TM...
    Turn TM Off and Erase the Ext Drive using Disc Utility...
    Cheers,  
    If you need more detail... See this Older Discussion:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/7185763#7185763

  • Can you setup 2 time Machines on a network?

    I have purchased a new Time Machine and still have the older one I was using.  I am interested in learning if I can still use the old time machine for additional file storage, and can I use it use it as a network router instead of the primary hub in my home network?

    Yes - you can set up the new time capule

  • Clean Mavericks Install - Can you selectively transfer Time Machine Contents

    Hello,
    My iMac, running OS X Mavericks, has been slowing down more and more for unknown reasons.  I've heard that this tends to be a problem in the OS X world and a clean install can be a remedy.
    I am familiar with the process of formating/clean installing in OS X; my concerns and unfamiliarity are with selective-file-pulling from my time machine backup, instead of using it for a full restore.
    Basically - once my iMac is back to a clean slate with a newly installed OS X Mavericks - my top priority will be getting iPhoto back in order.  I'm thinking that simply importing the iPhoto archive that can be found in the Time Machine backup will bring all my pictures back onto the computer, along with album titles, slideshows, etc, all within iPhoto.  Can anyone please confirm this?
    I've only ever done this kind of stuff in the Microsoft Windows world, where dragging and dropping folders from a backup drive is a possiblity, and I want to make sure I'm not incorrectly approaching all of this with a Window's mindset.
    Feel free to share your experiences, good or bad, with attempting this very strategy.
    Thanks!

    See Pondini's TM FAQs, for details.

  • Can you restore a time machine back-up more than once?

    Hi,
    About a week ago I tried restoring an old time machine backup to check that it worked - and it did. I now want to restore that same backup again. It's still there on the external drive that it was backed up onto, but no longer has a time stamp associated with it, and it no longer allows me o restore it. Any help would be appreciate d.

    I was not aware that such a limitation existed.  Try this:  (disable Time machine temporarily
    Click on the Time Macine HDD, and open ''Backups. backupdb' folder.  You then might see another folder with you name on it.  Open that folder which should show you a series of folders with a series of dates.  See EX.
    Select the folder with the date where the data that you want to retrieve resides.  Open that folder and keep opening folders until you get to the item you wish to restore.  Drag the item to your desk top.
    Ciao.

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