Delete Time Machine Backups

I don't really understand what's going on with your backups, so I'll leave it to your judgement whether or not to erase them. Just be sure that you do what I mentioned previously regarding making sure you've got all the files and making sure you've got another backup somewhere else before erasing it. (Most likely, those DVDs that you made from the TM backups are no good, and should not be considered as a backup.)

Is time machine used for backing up files forever? Doesn't it start erasing files once the drive fills up? All I want to do is get one copy of each file on the GoFlex and then erase it so I can then set it up properly to use with TM again. I'm confused about the differences between the different days of TM backups. What is the difference between these (2011-12-07-050851 Dec 7, 2011 5:08 AM) & (2011-12-13-003852 Dec 13, 2011 12:38 AM)?

Is there any way to simply see what's different so I could grab it, erase, and move down the list until I have what I want and a clean drive?

First, you should NEVER, EVER touch your Time Machine backups in the Finder! (I really wish Apple would make that more difficult to do, as it gets people in trouble all the time, but no such luck yet.)

Time Machine is NOT an archival backup (ie, it doesn't keep stuff forever). It will always keep the latest copy of every file on your hard drive, at a minimum. Beyond that, it stores older files as long as possible, until it needs to delete the oldest to make room for newer files.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying you want one copy of each file in the backup, since there are many versions of the same files, as well as copies of old deleted files, etc. If you want to restore all your personal documents from one particular point in time, just go to your user folder, enter Time Machine (through the menu or by opening the Time Machine app), go to that point in time and restore everything to a different location.

For more details about Time Machine, I highly recommend reading as much as you can on the following site:

http://www.pondini.org

I found that it's not true that TM deletes files when it gets full. It deletes changes information and replaces it with new info, but when it's full, it's full. And, not being able to delete old files yourself makes the backup external HD unusable.

That's absolutely not true.

I used TM. I started getting messages in the middle of backups saying that my external HD was full, and the backup would cancel out. If what I said is absolutely not true, why wasn't TM deleting old files and backing up?

Sounds like you had insufficient space for your backups. See:

http://pondini.org/TM/C4.html

My external HD's capacity is 500 GB, backing up approximately 154 GB of info. I would say my backup HD was sufficient.

Thanks Thomas, I will read that.

Here's what I'm talking about when I say I want one copy: say its the first time I'm using time machine, and TM performs a backup of 120GB of files and one of them is a photo of my childrens first day of school; then three weeks later there's another backup that has a new video of the kids at a hockey game, but to make room for my almost full HD on my MacBook, I delete the photo of the first day of school; when TM performs a back up, what happens to the school photo? Because I made backups to the DVDs, I deleted those files from my MacBook to make room thinking I was safe. Now there's files mixed in the TM backups that I want but don't know where they are. There's a total of 269GB of data on the GoFlex with 28 different dates of backups. Do I need to restore each one of those to a different location and then go through them to get what I want? Isn't there a duplicate time machine scanner software out there? There should be!

My external HD's capacity is 500 GB, backing up approximately 154 GB of info. I would say my backup HD was sufficient.

Then you had something wrong with your backups. As this is not related to downtownbarber's problems, I'd suggest any further discussion should be on a separate topic.

TM performs a backup of 120GB of files and one of them is a photo of my childrens first day of school; then three weeks later there's another backup that has a new video of the kids at a hockey game, but to make room for my almost full HD on my MacBook, I delete the photo of the first day of school

That is not a good idea at all! TM will probably not delete that photo from the backups right away, but it will eventually.

You need to have more storage space - either another external drive, or a larger internal drive - so you don't have to delete photos to make room for more stuff. You also need to make sure that everything you put on any external drives gets backed up somewhere else.

Because I made backups to the DVDs, I deleted those files from my MacBook to make room thinking I was safe. Now there's files mixed in the TM backups that I want but don't know where they are.

That's a pretty significant problem. I don't know whether the stuff you put on those DVDs is any good or not. TM backups are complex, and are not just normal files and folders. So you may already be missing data that you were relying on that backup system to preserve, and even if the DVDs are good, you'll still have a lot of work manually digging through all of them to look for files that have been deleted from the TM backup.

As for examining the TM backups themselves, there are some tools for doing that sort of thing. See:

http://pondini.org/TM/A2.html

You said to not go into finder to access Time Machine, and I just tried to enter through the TM application but it's not set up. It asked me if I wanted to but I want to ask you if it's safe to do so first? Not to set up and start backing up necessarily but to enter it the proper way.

I also think I found out the hard way how complex TM is when I did all this stuff. I ended up with a umpteen thousands of thumbnails in my iPhoto libraries! Fortunately I found Duplicate/Thumbnail Annihilator which got rid of most of them.

What would you do in this situation? Is there a company out there that I could give my drive to and pay to have it organized?

I just tried to enter through the TM application but it's not set up. It asked me if I wanted to but I want to ask you if it's safe to do so first?

See:

http://pondini.org/TM/17.html

Does Time Machine backup sync files from iPhone backups? I had some notes on my iPhone that were being backed up to my previous Mac in iTunes that I can't find. Back in March I took my iPhone to the Genius bar because it wouldn't sync properly in iTunes, when I added or unchecked anything in iTunes my storage would go over capacity. Theyv'e never seen that before and didn't know how to fix it so they did a hard reset and took my iPhone back to the set up as new. They said they did a backup but I lost my notes and photos. So I was hoping that a restore from one of the time machine backups would put my older iPhone syncs back in the iTunes library? Is this possible? Thanks

I've just tried the method advised in this discussion - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3245341?answerId=17262605022#17262605022 and seems to be working, slowly!