Time Machine not deleting oldest backups?! Disc full.

What is wrong with Time Machine in Yosemite?
For years I have been using it and when the backup drive gets close to full I will be warned that the oldest backups will be removed to make space for the new ones.
It even says in System Preferences. "The oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full"
Why then does this not appear to work anymore? My Time Machine drive has become full and it REFUSES to back up now!
What must I do? Erase the whole drive and start again? Any answers appreciated.

Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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  • Time machine not deleting oldest backup on full network drive

    Hi All,
    I backup my iMac over the network to a share on a mac Mini. After around three months, the share is full. I expected Time Machine to just start deleting old backups, but it is not.
    Time Machine gives me the following error:
    "This backup is too large for the backup volume".
    This is correct, but i thought Time Machine should have just deleted the oldest backup in this instance? Or does this not work when backing up over the network?
    Thanks in advance for help and advice.
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    mdavis75
    Message was edited by: mdavis75

    I have the exact same problem, but I am not using TM over a network... Only my local Mac Pro w/ a 600gb external drive. I recall back when I first got Leopard that time machine did in fact ask me if I wanted it to delete old backups after the drive filled up. Then one day it randomly decided to not delete old backups anymore... Instead displaying the same error message you get.
    Can anyone help? (Besides telling me not to back up certain files, and to do it less often. Those are BS solutions! I want my entire HD backed up every time automatically erasing old backups when necessary. Is that too much to ask for?)

  • HT3275 Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

    Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

    Unfortunately, when this happens, Time Machine cannot erase enough space to create room for the new backup. Your options now are:
    1) Add a new Time Capsule or a hard drive to the USB port on the existing Time Capsule and continue with backups
    2) Manually delete backups from Time Machine....which is a long and tedious process.  After a few hours, not much space will be reclaimed and it will not be long before the Time Capsule is full again
    3) Erase the Time Capsule....if you really do not need all the old backups from months ago....and start over with a new Time Machine backup and move forward again

  • Why does Time machine not delete old backups

    I dont understand Why time machine is not deleting old backups. As it worked first time with the same size backup drive as the drive its backing up, I assumed it would just delete the old backup as needed. Do I need a bigger backup drive?

    Roglee wrote:
    I just want it to delete the old backup & replace it so i just have a copy. I guess i could just re format the drive each time but that just seems a waste of my time when TM should do this for me!
    If this is all you want to do, turn off Time Machine, download SuperDuper! and use it for free. This will clone whatever drive you want and the free trial will erase your back up drive each time. I can't remember if it will let you choose what to back up or if it wants the entire drive. Also, I'm not sure if the Scheduler works with the free trial. Below are some verbiage for SuperDuper!. Looks like if you want Scheduling you will have to purchase a license.
    Download Now! 
    You can download SuperDuper! v2.7.1 right now and back up and clone your drives for free— forever! 
    Buy Now!
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    Time Machine will keep making back ups and when it determines it needs space, it will delete older back ups. But it doesn't delete older ones each time it backs up.

  • Backup disk is full ... Time Machine not deleting old backups

    In my Time Machine preferences it says "The older backups are deleted when your disk becomes full." Well ... my disk is full but Time Machine is not deleting its old backups to make more room.
    So now TM is failing to backup.
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    Ramone

    ramonekalsaw wrote:
    In my Time Machine preferences it says "The older backups are deleted when your disk becomes full." Well ... my disk is full but Time Machine is not deleting its old backups to make more room.
    So now TM is failing to backup.
    What message does it send? See #C2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
    It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.
    Any suggestions for freeing up some disk space and getting back to getting backed up?
    Do you have other data on the disk, in the same partition? If so, that's not a good idea, and may be the source of the problem. See #3 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).

  • Time Capsule not deleting old backups when full

    I have a number of drives attached for alternating backups through Time Machine. When a generic USB drive I have gets full, it sends out a message saying that it will have to delete the oldest BU, which is fine by me. My relatively new tall Time Capsule just tells me to reduce the number of files I'm backing up or get another drive.
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    Incremetnal backups are small, so Time Machine usually does not have any trouble deleting a few of oldest incremental backups to make room for new small incremental backups.....but....450 GB is not an incremental backup, and Time Machine will not be able to delete enough data to make room for the large backup that it is being asked to complete.
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  • Time machine not deleting old backups...

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    I believe I was told that If you had older backups like ML and your disk is getting full it will not delete these because you are now backing up a new OS (Mavericks).  It only deletes older backups of the same OS you are now using.

  • OS X 10.7  Time Machine not deleting old backups to make space

    after upgrading to 10.7, Time Machine no longer deletes old (over a year old) backups to make space when needed.  Drive now full.  Cannot manually delete and Time Machine does not seem to have a function to perform a deletion.

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    Time Machine Troubleshooting
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  • Time machine not deleting old backups of recovery partition

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    Time Machine Troubleshooting
    Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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  • Time Machine is Deleting Old backups

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  • Time Machine Managament of oldest backups

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    Thank you Linc and etresoft. The backup finally finished, I checked some older files, and it works as you describe.
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  • Time Machine Not Overwriting Older Backups

    Time Machine is telling me that the 1TB backup disk is full, albeit there is 62GB of available space (why is TM stating it's full?). In any event, TM is not overwriting the older backups. How can this be enabled?
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    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.
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  • How to prevent time machine from deleting certain backup folders?

    So, I have problem undrestanding time machine. Time machine has made a backup of my files in Nov 2012 and another backup from Jan 2013. There is some files in Nov 2012 that I want to keep them forever and never be deleted. So, they were backed up by Time machine (I have deleted those files from my computer so they're no lonegr excist in my compuetr). Althought they do excist on my time machine under the Nov 2012 folder, I am not able to modify them at all for example, I'm not allowed to copy them somehwere else. Since, I can not make another copy of them, I am worried if time machine delete my Nov 2012  in future and then they will be gone. Can someone please help me in modifying/ controling my folder so it won't be deleted in future? 

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    For some reason my time machine isn't consolidating backups at the end of the day/week/month. On my time machine drive, I currently have hourly backups going back over 2 months.
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