Backup Drive Incorrectly showing full storage in Time Machine

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Backup Drive Incorrectly showing full storage in Time Machine

Hello, I've been trying to back up my computer, like I previously have, on my external hard dirve - Seagate Backup Plus Slim. The drive contains 1 TB of storage.

However, Time Machine said the drive didn't have enough space for this backup. I then went and deleted absolutely every single previous backup off my drive to make space. That should have fixed it, but it did not. It shows that there is only 360 MB available on the drive and 999 GB used on the drive - even though, like I said, it has zero backups on it currently and there's nothing else I can delete. Please help!

I have an iMac running Mojave 10.14.6

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 12, 2024 12:14 PM

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rkaufmann87

Level 10

149,200 points

Jul 12, 2024 12:24 PM in response to hlongbot

You should NEVER EVER delete individual Time Machine backups using Finder. If this is what you have done then you need to erase the drive and start Time Machine over.

Also, unless you have internal storage is 512 GB or less then a 1 TB Time Machine drive is simply not enough space!! You should have a Time Machine backup External Hard Disk of 2-3 times the capacity of your internal storage. For example if your internal storage is 1TB, you should have a 2-3 TB Time Machine EHD.

I would strongly recommend that you get a higher quality External Hard Disk with more storage, what comes to mind is the https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-elite-pro which is a much higher quality drive than your Walmart quality Seagate.

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Backup Drive Incorrectly showing full storage in Time Machine

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