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User profile for user: GlimmerTwinTX
GlimmerTwinTX Author
User level: Level 1
33 points

How does one safely delete old Time Machine backup files?

I'm trying to find a way to safely delete Time Machine backup files from my external G-RAID hard drive. Time Machine currently keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily for the past month, and then weekly for all previous months.


It is these previous months where I would like to go back a couple of years and delete most, if not all, of the intra-month backup files, the objective being to reduce backups beyond two years ago to roughly month-end files, eliminating the ones in between.


I started to simply delete the folders for the above-described backups in Finder, but thought better of it, as I'm not sure how Time Machine would react to the missing folders/files. I saw a post that indicated they might get stuck in my Trash bin. Another post suggested deleting the backups from within the Time Machine interface, but I could not figure out how to do that.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,


Scott

iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 11, 2019 10:54 AM

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,290 points

Posted on May 12, 2019 7:19 AM

Asking that question makes me thing you don't know how Time Machine works.

The incremental backups of unchanged files are not taking up space. Only changed files are backed up. Unchanged files appear to be in the incremental backup because a hard link to the original file is made. A hard link is just a file reference in the disk directory. No additional data is copied. The file reference points to the original file. Short of there being what appears to be a lot of monthly backups, there is no functional reason to do what you want.


If there are files you no longer wish to back up, use the Time Machine interface to delete those files. Find them in the backup history, ctrl-click on them, then choose the option to delete them from the contextual menu.


Deleting files or folder from the Time Machine backup will destroy the backup.

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
116,290 points

May 12, 2019 7:19 AM in response to GlimmerTwinTX

Asking that question makes me thing you don't know how Time Machine works.

The incremental backups of unchanged files are not taking up space. Only changed files are backed up. Unchanged files appear to be in the incremental backup because a hard link to the original file is made. A hard link is just a file reference in the disk directory. No additional data is copied. The file reference points to the original file. Short of there being what appears to be a lot of monthly backups, there is no functional reason to do what you want.


If there are files you no longer wish to back up, use the Time Machine interface to delete those files. Find them in the backup history, ctrl-click on them, then choose the option to delete them from the contextual menu.


Deleting files or folder from the Time Machine backup will destroy the backup.

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How does one safely delete old Time Machine backup files?

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