Ventura Time Machine: Exclude Macintosh HD, delete old backups

Our friend, @Owl-53, has provided good guidance on how to exclude drives and volumes from being backed up by Time Machine. Take care of that in the Time Machine settings.

As for deleting specific parts of the Time Machine backups, that is not an option. It cannot be done.

If you need make more space for your TM backups, you will have to either erase your current backup drive and start a fresh backup, or get another drive and start a new backup. There is no other option.

Question # 1 >> Exclude files from a Time Machine backup on Mac

Add " Macintosh HD " to the exclusion list

Question #2 - No, you can delete or not cherry pick older Time Machine Backup Snapshot

Do so may corruption the index file used by TM BAckup

If this should happen, you are likely to loose ALL your Backup Snapshots

Hi Peterpatter

As it fills up, TM automatically culls the older backups; however I would like TM to cull further up the line to create more space. Can this be arranged?

Yes it can but you have to do that manually and better to do one timestamped backup at a time using tmutil command:

Sudo tmutil delete -d /Volumes/Name_of_backup_disk  -t  Date_of_TM_backup

For “Name_of_backup_disk” add the name of your backup drive, noting the name is better with no spaces as

in “My_M1_TM_Backup”

Date_of_TM_backup: is the individual backup you wish to delete in the form of: yyyy-mm-dd-hhmmss

eg 2025-07-13-090839

I advice leaving the first/original timestamped backup alone.

I am not aware and doubt that you can do it automatically.

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You can reformat your existing TM backup as APFS using disk utility but obviously you will loose all your existing time machine backups.

Another consideration is how old your LaCie drive is. The older it is the greater probability of failure but that’s like how long is a piece of string. I would guess that your 2-year-old drive has a few more years of reliable use.

Purchasing a new drive, then formatting APFS (it is advisable to format a new drive however it comes) has the advantage that you can keep your old backups for possible use.

So your choice:

- Do you want to retain the old backups?;

- The age of existing disk and

- What you can afford?

My good colleague @ D.I.Johnson answered your question

Just reiterate

Question #2 - No, you can delete or cherry pick older Time Machine Backup Snapshot

Doing so may corruption the index file used by TM BAckup

If this should happen, you are likely to loose ALL your Backup Snapshots

Hi Peterpatter

The issue of deleting files and/or date stamped TM backups has been raised in this and other discussions.

It is true at the moment it does not seem possible to safely delete a single file/folder within TM backups as you could do before – more the pity.

One can though safely delete specific time-stamped backups eg  yyyy-mm-dd-hhmmss, using the recognised terminal command TMUTIL and that is well documented on the net. Bit of a sledge hammer approach but if you need a file deleted from TM this is the only way to get rid of it if TM doesn’t get rid of it in a day/month.

It is slightly easier if the backup drive is formatted HFS but it can also be done if formatted APFS, obviously I have done both successfully.

There are sceptics and howls from certain quarters that say the sky will fall in and TM might not work when you really need it. That could be said about anything and I have seen no documentary evidence that either formatting the drive HFS or AFPS or carefully removing individual date stamp backups with TMUTIL has any bearing on TM usefulness or reliability. It is of course up to the individual to assess any possible risk however unlikely.

So you can safely remove individual time-stamped TM backup using the standard TMUTIL in terminal whether the backup drive is formatted HFS or APFS.

To state the obvious flaw in this sort of micro-management of TM's time-stamped backups; they do contain files that have been added or changed since the previous backup, which in turn contains new and changed files from the backup before that, and so on.

So while one may technically delete these time-stamped backups to reclaim space, it really is not in the user's best interest to do so. Does one know what data is being discarded when a backup is deleted? I think not. Maybe it's credentials updates made in the Passwords app? Maybe it's revisions made to a dozen different office documents or business contracts. Maybe it's browser bookmarks, or songs and albums added to the Music app or downloaded podcasts or Logic Pro projects or several month's worth of new photos that were added to the Photos library.

The point is, something is being discarded when these backups are deleted, and one will only discover what has been lost when one tries to recover that data.

Backups are made for a number of reasons and undermining oneself in this manner is not wise.

There are reasons Apple doesn't provide guidance for culling Time Machine backups.

Hi peterpatter

You have 4TB drive and my guess is, without knowing the existing data size on your mac, it will have ample room.

So I would include rather exclude. So if you backup your external boot drive and you don’t use it to store your data then you will be using very little space on your TM backup. It is better to backup and decide you didn’t need rather than say, “Oh I wish I had backed that up!!!!!”.

If you have attached drives that are backups themselves then you can exclude, as pointless backing up a backup of backup. (Amongst other backups I have two attached drives running TM simultaneous, neither backup up the other. Similarly I have a Carbon Copy Cloner backup that is excluded from both TM backups)

Just make sure that wherever you are storing your data, you back that up. Data, for example, is documents, spreadsheets, photos, emails etc.

The first TM backup is likely to take hours but after that TM will do its thing quietly and you won’t notice it happening. It will do that hourly by default.

You can set up a routine to run TM at various intervals not a simple task – I did that many years ago but the important thing with any backup is that it is done automatically. Human failing I know all too well that you forget to do the backup then there’s  ‘bother!!!!!!” exclaimed.

TM won’t run if your computer goes to sleep which is sensible, so it might be set to back up hourly but won’t if it is sleeping for hours.

So I would recommend setting up TM and let it do its own thing and include rather than exclude certainly for the time being.

Hi Peterpatter

I do not know what /User/Shared/adi is but also don’t know why it should be excluded.

I suggest you go and have a look at what it contains and check how big it is.

Backup Plus and Time Machine backup (My new 4TB HDD) I agree, as I said before, you don’t backup backups.

I understand that you are booting from an external SSD so I suspect that “Macintosh HD – data” is part of the

internal drive but seen by TM as external.

Normally this is THE type of drive you want to backup as it contains your user(s) accounts and all your running data. If you don’t intend to use the internal drive for data then it can be excluded. You might see if you can rename the internal Macintosh HD – data (just add a character) on your computer (NOT the external boot drive) via Disk Utility then check the TM exclusion list to see if it now shows the new name. From that you’ll know it is the internal drive. Even if it hasn’t changed the name, reboot and check again to make sure.

Let us know how you get on.

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data that could be left over from an old version of Microsoft Office. ‘~’ refers to your current user account. Navigate to ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data and check the dates when last modified.

If you don’t have Microsoft office installed and working then you can leave as excluded.

Time Machine Backup Utility will expect the drive to be formatted in APFS / GUID Partition Map

Notation > > it is good practice to dedicate the Entire Physical Drive to the Sole purpose of Time Machine Backups

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

The assertion that "you can safely remove individual time-stamped Time Machine backups using tmutil whether the backup drive is formatted HFS or APFS" is stated far more definitively than the available evidence supports.

The fact that no documentary evidence has been seen demonstrating a negative impact on Time Machine reliability does not constitute evidence that no such impact exists.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, particularly when discussing backup integrity and disaster recovery scenarios that may only be tested when a restoration is required.

More importantly, HFS+ and APFS Time Machine backups are architecturally different. APFS-based backups rely on snapshots and a fundamentally different storage model than the hard-link structure used by HFS+.

While Apple provides tools such as tmutil for managing backups, it does not necessarily follow that every operation carries identical risk characteristics across both formats under all circumstances.

The relevant question is not whether tmutil delete usually works—it generally does—but whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude that deleting individual backups has no possible effect on future backup integrity, restore reliability, snapshot consistency, or edge-case recovery scenarios.

No evidence has been presented to support such a broad claim.

A more defensible position would be: "Apple provides tmutil as the supported mechanism for deleting individual backups, and there is no widely documented evidence that its use routinely causes reliability problems on either HFS+ or APFS Time Machine volumes.

However, as with any modification to a backup set, users should recognize that the absence of reported problems does not prove the absence of risk, particularly in uncommon failure or recovery situations."

If you have used or are using Time Machine Backup Utility  you maybe able to Restore the Deleted Files 

For future purposes

To truly protect your non replaceable Data

Have a 3-2-1 Rescue Plan in place and always current

3 Backups using 2 methods and 1 off site incase of natural disaster or un-natural disaster.

Each of the above should be done to a Dedicated Single Purposed External Drive 

Below link is intended to augment what TM Backup does 

https://bombich.com

How to schedule a backup

D I Johnson

R: My responses are in italics and proceeded by R: to your comments in normal text

To state the obvious flaw in this sort of micro-management of TM's time-stamped backups; they do contain files that have been added or changed since the previous backup, which in turn contains new and changed files from the backup before that, and so on.

R: Me thinks you have missed the point. I raised the issue, for others say deleting TM backup cannot be done

although I know they can. I am perplexed why you call it a ‘flaw’ – it nothing of the sort.

R: The OP, I understood, wanted to delete TM backups and I gave him a solution for others said it was not

possible.  I don’t care nor question why. I, perhaps others, want to delete TM backup because TM now will not allow individual files to be deleted so have to delete a whole time-stamped backup. That is our choice.

R: Yes to state the .... obvious if you delete TM backup you are deleting amended files between the time before to the time after. It is a tautology.

So while one may technically delete these time-stamped backups to reclaim space, it really is not in the user's best interest to do so.

R: That is completely up to the individual and if I, for one, want to delete a TM backup I am doing it for a reason, assessing any downsides, therefore it is by definition in my (our) best interests. We are the judge of that, no one else.

Does one know what data is being discarded when a backup is deleted? I think not.

R: If one wants to find out that is not hard because you either know what you have changed before the proposed deleted TM backup or you can open that backup and inspect. It could also be that TM will delete it in two weeks automatically anyway. I, for one, let TM do its thing in that respect I do not check what I might loose when TM does its automatic culling.

Maybe it's credentials updates made in the Passwords app? Maybe it's revisions made to a dozen different office documents or business contracts. Maybe it's browser bookmarks, or songs and albums added to the Music app or downloaded podcasts or Logic Pro projects or several months’ worth of new photos that were added to the Photos library.

R: Absolutely, ..... obvious again. So I give people the courtesy by assuming they know that and then make a

judgement of the consequence of delete or not. Again I doubt any or extremely few people stop TM doing its automatic culling. If you need to keep, say a copy of an amended spreadsheet in that particular, TM backup then it is easy to extract it before you do the deletion.

The point is, something is being discarded when these backups are deleted, and one will only discover what has been lost when one tries to recover that data.

R: Yes as above, .... obvious, but you can check before deletion and it might get deleted by TM at later date

anyway. Of course if you are deleting several hourly backups it is like a lot of people who only set TM to run daily, are the wrong? No of course not. So the conclusion is that TM should run every microsecond to make sure we keep everything, not very rational.

There are reasons Apple doesn't provide guidance for culling Time Machine backups.

R: So what are they? Please provide link(s) to Apple's stated reason? I would like to know especially as apple’s tmutil command ‘allows’ it.

R: Again going back to the reason for my posting is to tell people there is safe way to delete TM backups and I

do not question people’s reasons for doing it. It is their choice and their chose alone to weigh up the benefits against the consequences.

I do not disagree with most of your response to my post, my friend.

Need_help_give_help wrote:

...

R: Me thinks you have missed the point. I raised the issue, for others say deleting TM backup cannot be done

although I know they can. I am perplexed why you call it a ‘flaw’ – it nothing of the sort.

The "flaw" I noted was that in the micromanagement of TM backups one may delete files and data that will later be discovered to be important.

[...]

R: ... So I give people the courtesy by assuming they know that and then make a judgement of the consequence of delete or not. Again I doubt any or extremely few people stop TM doing its automatic culling. If you need to keep, say a copy of an amended spreadsheet in that particular, TM backup then it is easy to extract it before you do the deletion.

After a long career in public service I no longer assume what people know or don't know. So as I participate in the Community I may provide a bit of info in a thread for the consideration of the OP and others who will come looking for guidance.

Arguably, the vast majority of users don't give a thought to backing up their data until it's too late. Those who do, may or may not have an understanding of the potential consequences of mismanaging a backup set. What I posted was simply food for thought.

[...] There are reasons Apple doesn't provide guidance for culling Time Machine backups.

R: So what are they? Please provide link(s) to Apple's stated reason? I would like to know especially as apple’s tmutil command ‘allows’ it.

I cannot speak for Apple as to their reasons for doing anything. I do know that it used to be possible to single out a file or folder for deletion of all of its backups within the TM interface and that is no longer possible. I'm unaware of any Apple documentation that explains the reasoning behind removing that feature. Apple is secretive that way. I could speculate but we're not really supposed to do that here in the Community.

The fact that there are Terminal commands to do a thing doesn't mean that doing that thing has no detrimental consequences.

[...]

R: Again going back to the reason for my posting is to tell people there is safe way to delete TM backups and I do not question people’s reasons for doing it. It is their choice and their chose alone to weigh up the benefits against the consequences.

My reason for posting was to provide some additional guidance and perspective that the OP might use in the calculus of their decision to delete the TM backups or not. Neither did I question their reason for doing it.

Again, I don't disagree with most of your posted response.

Your consideration of the OP's questions and your participation here in the Community are appreciated. 🖖🏽