Time Machine not deleting old backups, running out of space

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Level 1

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Time Machine not deleting old backups, running out of space

I use Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive. Time Machine is supposed to delete old files so it never runs out of space, but it's not doing that, it has kept weekly backup folders all the way back to when I set this up in 2022 and the drive is now full so Time Machine can't function. What could be going wrong here? I'm on a 21" iMac running OS 15.3.1 with 140.76GB of its 245.11GB storage used; the backup volume is a Western Digital 2TB external HD that's only showing 72.65GB left available.

iMac 24″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 27, 2025 10:47 AM

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Answer 1

MRA30 Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 27, 2025 3:37 PM in response to muguy

I thank you for your answer and apologize, but I have mis-diagnosed my problem: I failed to notice that the error messages that I get each hour when Time Machine tries and fails to back up say that my external HD is "Read Only", even though under sharing and permissions for that HD "System" has read/write privileges. Sadly it looks like the cure for this requires buying another HD, switching Time Machine to that, and then if I want, re-formatting the original HD to see if it will work again.

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Answer 2

muguy

Level 10

92,974 points

Feb 27, 2025 10:54 AM in response to MRA30

That leaves plenty of room on the drive, unless you're trying to backup 70+ GB of new files.

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Time Machine not deleting old backups, running out of space

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