I had a backup fail, and now I was notified that there is only 3% disc space on my Mac, when I can see from folder info that there is over 10%. I suspect that this is something to do with the way T.M. works.
Is there a way to reclaim the disc space? T.M. is currently failing to back up my data so I am having to offload stuff from my hard drive to an external drive which is a hassle.
Thanks.
iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14
It appears that you don't have enough free space on your boot drive to create the local snapshot so TM and do a backup. Try moving enough files off the drive to give you a minimum of 10GB of free space, more if possible.
One way to free up space is to move Photo library(s) to an EHD that is formatted according to the following screenshot:
plus your music files, either iTunes or Music libraries. I try to keep a minimum of 20-25 GB of free space to facilitate optimal system and application performance.
It appears that you don't have enough free space on your boot drive to create the local snapshot so TM and do a backup. Try moving enough files off the drive to give you a minimum of 10GB of free space, more if possible.
One way to free up space is to move Photo library(s) to an EHD that is formatted according to the following screenshot:
plus your music files, either iTunes or Music libraries. I try to keep a minimum of 20-25 GB of free space to facilitate optimal system and application performance.
WD enclosures can be flakey, the drives are fine but the enclosures are are unreliable. I would format the TM drive using Disk Utility and start a new back up.
Thanks for replying. My system must have detected that you're on the case, as spontaneously it's begun backing up again. Weird! If it doesn't finish and gives an error, I will let you know what it tells me (I think that it just said 'Time Machine can't back up' with no other information the last time it failed.)
I am using a W.D. external USB 3 drive, correct.
That's so helpful. I don't actually have that many photos on my system, but I rounded up about 190Gb from my HD that I can put elsewhere, and T.M. does seem to be much happier, as you say. Fingers crossed.
Does Time Machine give you a message as to why it's failing? You are using an external drive as your Time Machine destination correct?
??????? Mike was not talking to you Benjamin he was talking to bwardapple14.
All seems to have stabilised and TM seems to be functioning normally now. Goodness knows why it stopped working before; TM seems to have mind of it’s own sometimes.
Haha spoke too soon! TM is failing again. I'm attaching 2 screenshots of the error message.
Any ideas, folks? Thanks!
I had two 2 TB W.D. external USB 3 drives die within a month of being new, never bothered even getting them replaced.
Thanks fellas!
Do you mean the Erase option in Disk Utility?
Both me :)
T.M. backup failed and now my hard drive is full
