I am receiving a notification that says that I am running out of storage space. I backed up time mating to an external hard drive. Can I delete some files to make room?

I am receiving notifications that I am running out of storage space. I backed up my mac book using an external and time machine. Can I delete some files to make room?
If so,
When I want to restore from my time machine, can I pick and choose, say certain songs, photos or documents?

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. You can also use the Time Machine application to selectively remove files, but that may be ineffective if you have to free up GBs of space.

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    - Start iPhoto.
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    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
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    https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
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    From: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
    To move your iTunes Music folder to another disk or partition:
    To change the location of your iTunes Music folder, carefully follow the instructions in the AppleCare® Knowledge Base document "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder."Additional information can be found in iTunes Help.
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thexlab.com/105/ 00000849.html
    Laptop users may want to consider having two iTunes libraries: a small library of current favorites on their computer, while their complete library resides on an external hard drive. Utilities like iTunes Library Manager enable you to easily have multiple iTunes libraries you can use with your account.  https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7689/itunes-library-manager
    To move your iPhoto Library folder to another disk or partition:
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    https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager
    Hardware — Bigger disk/SSD:
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  • I have been backing up my photos to an external hard drive. I usually choose the photos, copy and paste them to the EHD. It has started saying "an item named "unnamed.jpg" already exists in this location. I don't know what to do.

    I have the MacBook OS X 10.5.8, 2.4 GHz, 2 GB. I have been backing up my photos to an external hard drive since I purchased it. I usually choose the photos, copy and paste them to the EHD. It has started saying "an item named "unnamed.jpg" already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the one you're moving? Don't replace/Stop/Replace". I don't know what to do.

    Thanks Jim, I kind of thought that was the answer, but was hoping against hope that I was just missing something. Like I said, it's not a big problem. One work around I've found is to name a folder on the external hard drive the same as the name I give the folder to import to and then choose this folder to back up to. I still get a subfolder inside that folder named Imported on...... but at least it's in the folder with my chosen name.
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    Jack

  • Simple question, does TM delete oldest files to make room for the newest?

    "Time machine could not complete the backup. This backup is too large for the backup disk." (requires 12.37 Gb, only 7.34 available)
    On the 500Gb TC, why can't it delete 12.37 and continue?
    It was working fine, using TM for three systems, 2 MBAir, 1 MMini.
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    Does TM delete oldest files to make room for the newest?
    If the backup were bigger than the TC, that seems to be the only thing TM/TC can't handle. True?

    I'm taking this Q down because I know the answer is true, so I've stated the wrong Q.

  • How can you back up your ipod onto your external hard drive that you're using in time machine?

    I just bought an external hard drive and want to put my ipod music on it but can't figure out how.  My ipod has music that my itunes library on my computer doesn't have.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    I would also suggest you get a 2nd, much larger hard drive, partition it if desired, move your data to it, and start a 2nd Time Machine backup on it. You can set Time Machine to alternate between the 2 drives by adding the new drive to System Preferences/Time Machine. If you want to make a copy of your current backup on the new drive, you can do that using the Disk Utility Restore tab. If you chose to do that, make the copy first since using the Restore tab erases all data on the drive or the partition.

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