Time Machine drive down to 10% storage: Shouldn't TM delete more older backups?

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Level 1

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Time Machine drive down to 10% storage: Shouldn't TM delete more older backups?

Hi,

I have a mid-2012 Macbook Pro running High Sierra (10.13.6), and use a 1TB local Passport drive for my Time Machine backups. My drive has only 10% space left (90 GB), and doesn't seem to be deleting old backups any more (I have them from 2017 on). Less than 10% space left on my backup drive is asking for trouble.

There is a LOT of contradictory information about manually deleting old TM backups--even here on the forums. I can't afford a new backup drive at this point. Is there a way that I can free up space on my drive by removing old backups manually, and how can I do that in High Sierra? Or do I simply hope that my drive doesn't crash while I save up the money for a new drive? Other recommendations welcome.

Thanks.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 26, 2019 9:17 AM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

155,714 points

Feb 26, 2019 10:14 AM in response to MariePaul

Less than 10% space left on my backup drive is asking for trouble.

Time Machine will eventually require 100% of any backup drive's capacity, upon which it will automatically begin to delete older backups. Make no attempt to delete them on your own. Doing so is likely to corrupt the entire backup, rendering it useless.

Or do I simply hope that my drive doesn't crash while I save up the money for a new drive?

One and only one backup does not comprise a robust backup strategy, so obtain that additional backup drive as soon as you are able to do so. Hope is not an effective strategy for anything, and any hard disk drive can fail at any time... the source drive, the backup drive, or if you're really unlucky, both, simultaneously and catastrophically. Considering there could be factors common to both of them, it's not that unrealistic a possibility.

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