Avoiding Time Machine Deletions?

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Level 1

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Avoiding Time Machine Deletions?

I want to preserve my family photos and videos on an external hard drive as I am filling up my MacBook Pro storage, meaning I need to remove some videos from my MacBook so I can add more. It sounds like Time Machine will write over old files to keep more recent updates. Is there a way to mark certain files on the external hard drive as ones that should NEVER be deleted by Time Machine? Or is there a better way? Thanks for your help.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on May 2, 2012 9:55 AM

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Answer 1

Niel

Level 10

726,923 points

May 2, 2012 9:57 AM in response to Rick650

Copy them to the drive outside of the Time Machine backup, or put them on a different drive. Having all the copies of any given file on a single drive won't help when that drive fails.

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Answer 2

Cerebro

Level 3

562 points

May 2, 2012 1:11 PM in response to Rick650

Time Machine is not designed to serve as permanent storage. It is an incremental back-up tool. As space on the volume is needed, it will, eventually, delete the oldest back-up(s) to make room for the newest one. If you have files you want to save that are no longer on the volume that you are backing up, they will, eventually, be deleted as the archive of their original storage location gets pushed further and further back. To keep them, permanently, they need to be saved to a separate partition or volume that is not assigned to Time Machine.

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