Time Machine says Disk is Full

You can't cherry pick files to delete from Time Machine back-ups.

See If the Time Machine backup disk for your Mac is full

Apple says in summary: If you do run out of space, it’s best to connect a new backup disk. After you connect the new disk, open Time Machine preferences, then select it as your Time Machine backup disk.

Or you can reformat the backup disc and start your Time Machine backups again with that disc.

None.

The few safe ways to make more space on the Time Machine Backup drive is to Reformatted the drive and start a New Time Machine Regime.

That or retire the existing Drive and use a New and Bigger Drive.

At least 2.5x times larger in Drive Capacity than the Internal Drive.

Nonbmom wrote:

Yes, I am using a 1 TB drive. I have been using it about a year and it is full. Time machine says it will delete the old files to make room for the new ones. It does not seem to be doing this. Does it hurt anything if I manually delete the oldest backups from the drive?

I would advise against it.

What makes you think that TM is not doing what it says it is? Note that backups can take a bit longer as TM needs to make space before it copies data. I would give it a bit more time before asserting it does not work.

Or if you don't want to lose older backups, maybe it's time to get a bigger backup drive. They are pretty cheap nowadays, and you can transfer the existing one, and repurpose the old drive for something else, perhaps a separate backup.

The issue maybe the Internal Drive and not the External TM Backup Drive

How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac (macworld.com)

Yes and you risk loosing everything.

Once the drive and or Index File is corrupted it is gone - there is no recovery - period

That is a good point!

P. Phillips wrote:

The issue maybe the Internal Drive and not the External TM Backup Drive

How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac (macworld.com)