Deleting old backups from Time Machine/Time Capsule

I've spent a long time deleting copies of old back ups from Time Machine today. In view of this am I right in assumming this should in turn reduce the size of sparsebundle on TC? If not, please can someone tell me how I can reduce the size of sparsebundle on my 2TB TC; my MacBook has 150GB HD and my sparsebundle is 500GB in size. I want to address the amount of backups I keep as I do not wish to have a TC clogged up with multiple monthly backups of data each month, which in my opinion is pretty redundant.

A sparsebundle file behaves differently than a normal file or folder. As you add data to the sparsebundle file, it expands as long as there is room on the drive. But, if you delete data from the sparsebundle, the size of the file remains the same, even though the data has been deleted.
You will be able to add more data to the sparsebundle, and it will continue to expand as long as there is room on the drive.
If you want to "compact" the sparsebundle file to have it indicate the exact amount of data in the file, there is a Terminal command that you can use for this purpose.
See the pink box in this link for excellent information provided by Time Capsule -- Time Machine guru Pondini:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/12.html

Similar Messages

Delete old Backups from Time Capsule

Deleting old Backups from Time capsule ist very slow.
How could it be faster?
Where can i change the preferences?
Which Programm changes Preferences?
If its possible answers in German;-)
Thanks

Deleting old Backups from Time capsule ist very slow.
Deleting Time Machine backups can be slow. Löschen von Time Machine-Backups können nur langsam voran.
How could it be faster?
Unfortunately, there isn't any settings that you can make to speed them up. Leider gibt es keine Einstellungen, die Sie vornehmen können, um sie zu beschleunigen.

Can I delete old backups from other devices if my new iphone 6 has a current backup with everything on my new phone?

Can I delete old backups from other devices if my new iphone 6 has a current backup with everything on my new phone?

Hi there dyarrell,
You can do this if you are confident that your current device has all of the data on it that you want to keep. The method for deleting the backup will be differnt depending on the backup method. Take a look at the articles below for more information.
Create and delete iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch backups in iTunes
iCloud: Remove an iOS device backup from iCloud
-Griff W.

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.

How to Delete old Backups on a Apple Time Capsule

I Turn off Time Machine on my mac and it just deletes the local backups. How do i delete old backups on my time capsule becuase i use it as a winodws backup drive to. I just want to free some space up. Thanks for your help if you supplied an answer.

Energizer7896 wrote:
How do i delete old backups on my time capsule becuase i use it as a winodws backup drive to.
That's one of the reasons it's not a good idea to mix Time Machine backups and other data on the TC's internal HD. See #C3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for some possible workarounds.

Time Machine delete old backups

My wife has a MacBook Pro and uses Time Machine on a 500 GB external drive. She is using about 160 GB on her MacBook Pro, but the Time Machine drive is now full and is not backing up current files. The Time Machine backups go back to 2010 and two or three versions of the operating system. I would like to delete old backups from Time Machine, as I understand that only files no longer needed in other backups will be deleted. Is there any reason this approach should be avoided? Are there instructions on the best way to do this? Thanks.

tomarm wrote:as I understand that only files no longer needed in other backups will be deleted. Is there any reason this approach should be avoided? Are there instructions on the best way to do this? Thanks.
yes, your wife ..
A: needs a MINIMUM of a second HD to archive data on
B: Yes, time machine "throws data out the window" when full
C: HD clones are more important.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Time Machine / Time Capsule
Drawbacks:
1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.
2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.
4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.
5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.
9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.
10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.
11. In the case of Time Capsule, wifi data storage is a less than ideal premise given possible wireless data corruption.
12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
Drawbacks:
1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).
2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
Advantages:
1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)
3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.

Auto-delete old backups

My time machine/capsule does not delete old backups, so it stops backing up when the time capsule is full. I tried deleting old backups from the sparseimages but it did not clear up any space. Any advice?
Thanks,
Glenn

You could also try compacting your Sparse Bundle if it happens again: type the following command into a Terminal window: sudo hdiutil compact /Volumes/DISK/mycomputer001a6f33001.sparsebundle. You should replace the MAC address with what you find by going to the Network Pane in System Preferences: write down the MAC address listed there so that you can substitute it into the Terminal command when compacting your Sparse Bundle. Make sure to replace 001a6f33001 with your Mac's Ethernet MAC address before attempting to run the command: otherwise you'll get an error message stating that the MAC addresses don't match since every Mac has a unique MAC address for their built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet.
Make sure to substitute in the volume name of your Sparse Bundle too: otherwise the command won't work right.

How to safely remove all backups from Time Machine/Time Capsule?

I plan to 'clean up' my Time Machine/Time capsule completely, whereby I want to make it impossible for third parties to recover all or part of these old backups.
After I have accompished this I want to start from scratch backing up my Mac.
Can you please let me have a step by step procedure to accomplish my goal.
Thank you in advance!

Muizen wrote:
Thank you WZZZ.
1) I am now specifically looking for info regarding deleting emails from backups.
It is my impression so far, that this is not possible?
Delete all backups of <home folder>/Library/Mail, per Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12.
And exclude that folder from future backups, per FAQ #10.
2) In addition I feel that being somewhat better in control of TM that it would be an advantage to really clean out TH completely and start a new back up, thereby systematically blooking certain matters from backing-up since there is no need for doing so.
How would I best accomplish this?
If the emails are all you're worried about, the procedure above will be fine.
But if you want to erase the TC's internal HD, see #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.

Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
Go into Time Machine.
Select the Macintosh HD.
Go back to one of the oldest backups.
Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.

Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

HT203177 how do i clear old backups from time machine to make more space

My 2TB Time Machine is nearly full. I am trying to back up a drive in a Mac Min that is starting to fail and wanted to do so on Time Machine. Unfortunately since my Time Machine is nearly full it will not back up drive without eliminating nearly all of the files on this Mini. I am okay overwriting the other backups already on the Time Machine but do not know how to force Time Machine to do so. Please any clues on how to make Time Machine overwrite other backups would be greatly appreciated.

About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert
TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.
Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.
As you can see Time Machine does prune old backups to make space, but eventually it may no longer succeed. Then you will get the alert. You can delete old backups if you wish, but only using the Time Machine application.

Doesn't Time Machine delete old backups when it needs more space?

I've had time machine running for a long time now. It worked flawlessly for quite some time.
Today it gave me the error that there was not enough free space on the disk to complete the backup (the error message says something like there is 360 GB of data on the Time Machine drive already, 140 GB of free space and it would require more than that to complete my backup). I have a 500 GB Time Machine disk and my Mac has a 500 GB hard drive, so I should technically never run out of space.
The Time Machine almost acts like this is the first time I've ever backed up, which is not true. Shouldn't Time Machine delete old backups to make space for the new? What's even weirder is that if I open the "Star Wars" window of Time Machine I only see one backup from March 31, 2011, but I have been running Time Machine for well over a year now. I'm totally confused as to what happened. Any advice on how to get my Time Machine back up and running (without buying a new drive) would help!

You see only one backup in the Time Machine window because Time Machine has deleted the older backups to make space to do the current backup.
Time machine needs some working space to do its backups, and so backing up a 500GB drive onto a 500GB time machine volume is not ideal.
However, I do essentially the same thing, and what I do, when I have this problem, is exclude things from the backup.
First off, figure out what you changed. If you moved things from one partition to another, then that will cause a backup of the size of the thing that was moved. This may be why you have a large backup.
When I have this problem, I exclude large things that have changed recently from the backup. This makes the backup smaller, and means that there is less working space needed. I do this until I get a successful backup. Then I remove things, one by one, from the exclusion list, and back up after each one.
So, for instance if you just put 4 new folders on your drive, each of which s 20GB of data and they are named A, B, C and D, add all four to the exclusion list, do a backup, then remove A from the exclusion list (leaving B, C & D on it) and do a backup, and continue like this, adding 20GB of backup data each time until none of the new data is on the exclusion list and you get a completed backup.
Another possible issue, if you use multiple partitions, is that Time Machine may be keeping an obsolete backup of a partition that you previously reformatted. To see if this is the case, go into time machine (The universe interface) and go back to the most recent backup it shows. Click on your computer and see what partitions show up-- are any of them old ones that have been reformatted and renamed? You may be storing a duplicate backup because Time Machine does not realize that the disk that went away isn't coming back (because it has been reformatted as a different partition)
You can right-click on these items and remove them from your backup by sleecting "Delete all backups of...." This will free up space as well.

When Time Machine deletes old backups......

My Time Machine disk is about to be full. I realize that when the disk becomes full, Time Machine will delete old backups.
I am not clear, however, exactly what this means.
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
I suspect it is #1 and #2. So if you had a computer where files are added over time (without meaningful deletions), this strategy will not help a lot---you just need to get a new disk.
Is another option to just make a complete new full Time Machine backup (losing all the intermediate backups)? How is this done?

Jeffrey Folinus1 wrote:
Is what are deleted:
1. older disk pseudo-images?
I have no idea what that is.
2. files which no longer are on the computer?
Yes. More to the point, files that were changed or deleted long ago.
Or is Time Machine actually deleting files which are still on the computer (but were in the old now-being-deleted backup)?
No.
When Time Machine does it's first, Full backup, it of course copies every file and folder on your system. It also makes a folder in your backups, named with the date and time of the backup. This folder appears to contain all those copied items.
But it doesn't. It contains "hard links" to the backup copies. Think of these as extra-fancy aliases.
Thereafter, TM does "incremental" backups. It copies only the files and folders that were added or changed, and makes another dated folder for that backup. In that folder are links to the new items, plus links to the items that didn't change: so they're cleverly named "multi-links." This is how TM appears to have many full, complete backups of your system when it obviously doesn't.
When TM deletes a backup, all that's really deleted are the folder and the links.
Consider what happens when you do a normal (not secure) deletion of a normal file: OSX basically "forgets" where it was, so the space can be re-used. TM is a little fancier: as long as there's even one link to a file, it isn't forgotten, so it's available to be recovered from any backup that has a link to it, and the space isn't re-used. When the last link is deleted, the copied file is forgotten.
Thus, when you delete a backup, the only actual backup copies that are deleted are the ones that have links in no other backup. So, for example, once you've done a Full backup and a single Incremental, you (or TM) can delete the Full without losing it's copy of anything current.
Another way to look at it is, *each backup is, in effect, a full, complete copy of your entire system the way it was at the time of that backup.*
So much for "fancy." The "extra" fancy part is, TM doesn't necessarily make another link for every single file and folder that didn't change. Instead, if a folder wasn't changed, and nothing in it was changed, TM makes only a single link, to the folder. When you consider that your System folder, for example, contains many tens of thousands of sub-folders and files that rarely change, you see how efficient this is.
For more details: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
and: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14

Time Machine Deletes Old Backups without warning!!

I have just lost loads of pictures and emails when my Timemachine deleted old backups. I was so happy to have an easy way to keep my iPhoto cleaned up while keeping all the photos for the future. I would load my all the photos from my camera, backup with TimeMachine and delete the "bad" unwanted photos, confident in the knowledge that these pictures are still there on my external. I looked forward to some future date when someone would write an easy piece of software to consolidate old iPhoto libraries and even go through TimeMachine and consolidate those photos too. But until that fantasy event, my pictures, even though not wanted were still there.
Not any more!!
I replaced my hard drive and reloaded my laptop from Timemachine and I think that was the event that sparked the dump.
There should be a special check box to make sure that NO backups are automatically deleted, EVER. They should be a way to make them Sacred!!
There should be a way to create a separate backup just for iPhoto because right now, there are no good ways to easily break apart or merge iPhoto libraries. At least what I was doing worked, (well.... until it didn't).
Any ideas??

nerowolfe wrote:
True, TM is not a classic archival system, but until the drive is full, the difference is moot.
No, the difference isn't moot.
I still have on my TM HD every file I ever had because it's only 1/2 full.
No, you don't. Read on...
Time machine has three levels of backups:
1) hourly - deleted after 24 hours
2) daily - deleted after a week
3) weekly - deleted only when the disk is full - these are the only deletions you will be warned about
Time machine is always deleting files. Every time it backs up, it deletes files.
But the OP's real question is why he was never warned about the old backups being deleted, as TM says it will do, archival stuff notwithstanding. Apparently TM simply ignores the user's request to be warned.
No, it doesn't.
That being said, as I asked in a post not too long ago, "how many have had a warning from TM that old backups are being deleted?" as one would expect when the TM preference box, "Warn when old backups are deleted" is checked.
It appears to me to be a bug.
I ask again if anyone has gotten this warning.
Nobody answered my previous post with a yes.
Yes.
Because Time Machine continually cleans up behind itself, it tries very hard to ever delete the weekly backups. The only time I've gotten the deletion warning was when my disk was full. I think I just avoided the problem by removing my old Parallels images from Time Machine and got back an extra 70 gig or so - good for another six months.
This is not a bug. This is how Time Machine works. It is unfortunate that the original poster did not fully understand this. The fact is that Time Machine backs everything up. If you create 100 files, it backs up the folder with 100 new files. If you delete 100 files, it backs up the folder with 100 less files. Then, the next day, it deletes old backups. The only one it keeps is the last one, with 100 less files.
It is correct to say that Time Machine is not an archival system. It is a backup system. If you want to save your files forever, you need to copy them to a location that isn't under the control of any sort of automatic software.

Time Machine is Deleting Old backups

Disconnected my MacBook Pro from its hard drives for two days. Re-connected, and ran Time Machine. It backuped up as normal. I walked away, seeing "49.8GB free of 499GB" on that external hard drive. I come back and Time Machine is "Deleting Old Backups ... " - and now 135GB free, and still deleting.
I realize that TM auto-deletes ... but does this sound "normal" to start its own deletions when there was 49GB remaining on a 500GB drive?
It's still deleting ...
Clint Bradford

If I said I connnected two disks, I apologize. One 500GB external hard drive is dedicated to just being a Time Machine backup for my 17" MacBook Pro.
Not sure what has happened ... but Time Machine cleared up space, and is now performing a 110GB backup ... kinda like it doesn't know it's the same computer attached to it.
This is NOT a critical problem ... I have full backup elsewhere. Just a little weirdness today ...
Clint Bradford

Time capsule and deleting old backups

Hi after performing a recent backup to an external drive I don't have much space left on the disk. It says that time capsule will delete old backups. Does this mean that any movies backed up in these early back ups will be deleted as I no longer have them on my MacBook due to the amount of space they take up?

Time Machine is not an archive, it is a rolling backup.
If you want to keep files permanently, you must not store them only in Time Machine. If you don't have space for the movies on your main drive, buy a drive to use as an archive, put those movies on it, and make sure that disk is backed up too, since if data exists in only one place it is vulnerable.
My family digital archive doesn't fit on my internal drive so it is on an external drive. I also maintain two exact backup copies of that external drive. One is in the fire safe at home, the other is in a safe deposit box, and those two backups are rotated periodically. If the original and the backup are lost due to fire, burglary, etc., the off-site backup means there is still a safe copy somewhere. Because I can't afford to lose those photos, movies, and financial records. Online backup is another option for making sure you won't ever lose data you need to keep.

Deleting old backups from Time Machine/Time Capsule

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