Time Machine external drive filling up

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Level 1

23 points

Time Machine external drive filling up

The external drive I use for Time Machine on my iMac is starting to fill up. The backups go back a very long way (ie almost three years). Does Time Machine automatically delete the earliest backups as the external drive fills up or do I have to delete these manually? If manually, is there any harm in my deleting all the back-ups up until say a month ago, or should I keep the very earliest backups on the basis that these will contain eg system information that might be useful if I have a major crash?

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 20, 2019 4:00 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,970 points

Dec 20, 2019 9:15 AM in response to maxharley

Trying to manually delete Time Machine backups is a MAJOR no no,!!!! Just leave it alone and it will remove the oldest backups first. When you start tampering with TM it will begin failing. Just leave it alone!

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Answer 2

maxharley Author

Level 1

23 points

Dec 20, 2019 9:02 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thank you. But if I want to delete a whole stack of previous backups rather than just one or two to make room for new backups, can I safely do that manually? Or do I need to keep the earliest backup(s) to keep vital system information?

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