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.

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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.

Deleting Backups from Time Machine to Make Room

Deleting Backups from Time Machine to Make Room
So, I went into my 1.5 terabyte back-up drive and deleted a number of the TM backups because the drive was getting too full. (I also use that drive to store “permanent” photo files in other folders.)
Evidently, the computer does not recognize the deletions because the drive shows the same miniscule amount of space as it did prior to the deletions.
I know people have talked about using “actions” button in the gear icon. However, I can’t find that.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Tek

Thanks for the reply, V.K.
Unfortunately, I deleted via the finder and then emptied the trash. :-}
I know now, (after the fact) that this was the wrong thing to do. However, I didn’t find a “delete” option within TM.
It all seemed “logical” at the time. . . and quite frankly, still does. Why the heck is TM so difficult to control? Why can’t one just set it for X number of backups and have an easy to access delete button? (grumble, grumble)
I looked at the FAQs, but am still not clear on how to find the “action” button. I am using a laptop with no “right click” feature. The mouse is a one piece model.
My backup drive is directly attached, but, only when I want to backup since I work on a MB pro laptop.
So please:
How do I correct this?
Do I need to format the backup drive and partition? I don’t want/need so many backups cluttering my drive. I need space for permanent photo archives which are very large. These are now merely in a separate folder on the backup drive.

How do I delete old emails from time machine?

How do you delete all old email backups from time machine?

Could we please get one more clue?
What email application are you asking about?

How can I restore an old backup from Time Machine to my iPhone 5?

I have the iPhone 5 that I had previously transferred my apps and other data to from my iPhone 4. Due to poor battery life, I had to restore the iPhone 5 as a new phone. This helped battery life but now I habve lost my text messages, App data and photos. I use Time Machine on my Mac so whayt do I need to do to get the data back on my phone. I'd like to do this without restoring the phone but rather syncing it with data recovered from Time Machine. I don't want to screw up the battery life again.

Hi ...
I've found a solution to my problem.
Time Machine locates extenal HDD backups differently depending if they were done via a network or via a USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt connection.
My initial backup was done via a direct Thunderbolt connection. I ran into the above issue b/c the second time when I tried looking for the backup file the HDD was conencted to my iMac and I was accessing it via a network conenction.
I simply connected the drive directly to my MacBook pro and ... voila. I was able to see the backup, select the iPhoto library and begin the restore.
Hope this helps.
BTW - I found this out by reading the 'blue box' selection on this page: http://pondini.org/TM/E2.html
(Thanks goes to Pondini!)

Cannot retrieve old backups from time machine

Two weeks ago I brought my iMac to the apple store for the hard drive replacement program.
I backed up everything before bringing it in and deleted most of my data.
When it came back, it looked exactly the same as how I brought in. (Most things were deleted.)
I tried to restore one folder to test out the function, and then I was off to work when I saw the files transferring.
After I finished work, the files finished transferring but when I go back into time machine, all my recent backups were from today and my previous backups were all gone.
Is there any ways to retrieve my old backups?
Some of my important files were only stored in this external hard drive...
Thank you...

Wimek,
According to this KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760)
"When upgrading from one Leopard-based Mac to a new Leopard-based Mac, and you wish to use Time Machine backups from the previous Mac, make sure the computer name of the new Mac (in Sharing preferences) is the same as your previous Mac's computer name was when its Time Machine backups were made. Afterwards, if the previous Mac is still on your network, give it a different computer name."

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

How to delete the old backup in time machine?

Hi all,
As I have use the TM for a year,the backup folder is on a network dirve. HOw can I delete the old backup (eg 6 months ago) in order to release more space?
Thank you
Gary

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
I'll assume you mean a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, not a Time Capsule or external HD connected to a Time Capsule or other Mac on your network.
If so, you can delete individual backups via Time Machine. See #12 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). That may not seem to gain any space, since the backups are in a rather odd container called a +sparse bundle.+ It won't shrink automatically when you delete things, but the space will be reused for new backups.
You may be able to limit the size of the backups by limiting the amount of space available to Time Machine on the NAS, but you'll have to use whatever facilities the NAS supplies, not OSX. Some allow the disk to be partitioned as on a normal disk, or allocate space to shares.

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.

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.

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 do I get old emails from Time Machine into a new Mail?

I have (I hope) email data in Time machine as of April 8 which I can't figure out how to get into my newly reinstalled version of Mail.
I took over my brother-in-law's iMac on April 8, and closed his User ID, saving it in a .dmg file. Now that he has a new computer, he would like his old emails, so I reactivated his user ID, and reinstalled his email accounts in Mail as of May 27. When I look at the Time Machine Backups drive, there is a data folder for April 8, but when I open my newly re-installed Mail and click on Time Machine it only goes back to May 27.
Is there a way to get at the April 8 data?
Thanks,
jrguest1

I set up an admin account for myself, logged on to it, and then followed the procedure in the help file to delete his account, saving it as a .dmg file. Then, when he asked for his old emails, I followed the procedure in the help file to restore a deleted user account and copied the contents of the .dmg into it.
I'm not entirely confident I got the restoration sequence right, since I find the order of steps in the help file confusing. But everything except the Mail data seems to be recovered.
Another source of trouble may be the email account settings: when I opened Mail under his log-on, there were no accounts set up: I recreated them using his email address and password, but Mail may well be treating these as new accounts, rather than re-opened old accounts.
Thanks, John

How to delete manually old backups with Time Machine

Hi there,
Found conflicting information on that topic.
Apparently, TM is supposed to delete old backups but it is just saying now that my backup drive is full and I still have 8 month old backups.
Would like to remove oldest ones.
Any idea?

Did un-checking the +Warn before deleting ...+ box not work?
If not, something is wrong. We need some more info to help you figure out just what:
How much data is TM backing-up (the +Total included+ under the +Do Not Back Up+ box in TM Preferences > Options)?
How large is your TM disk/partition?
How much free space is on it?
Is anything else, besides TM backups, in the same partition?
The whole design of TM is that you don't have to manage the backups yourself. As long as there's enough room, TM should do it for you.
You can make feature requests here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/, but don't hold your breath.

HT201250 How to retrieve external drive backups from time machine on hard drive without external drive connected

I am keeping my work files on an external drive which are backed up using Time Machine onto my computer's hard drive. I set it up this way so I can take my actual work drive with me if I need it. However, I just noticed that I can't see any of those files in time machine if the drive itself isn't plugged in, which makes this method useless. Is there any way to get to those, or do I need to reconfigure my backup system? I always thought if something happened to my hard drive I'd have a backup, but that won't work if I can't get to the files.

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

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

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

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