I'm using Time Machine onto an external hard drive, but there is more than 60GB of 'backups' in my MBA's internal storage. How do I minimize or remove that? I'll plug my Lacie external in everyday and utilize Time Machine... Any thoughts?
MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012), iOS 6.1.3
OS X Lion- About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and enter or paste the appropriate command line. Press RETURN and enter your admin password when prompted. It will not be echoed.
To turn them ON: sudo tmutil enablelocal
To turn them OFF: sudo tmutil disablelocal
Note that turning them OFF will also delete all existing snapshots.
OS X Lion- About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and enter or paste the appropriate command line. Press RETURN and enter your admin password when prompted. It will not be echoed.
To turn them ON: sudo tmutil enablelocal
To turn them OFF: sudo tmutil disablelocal
Note that turning them OFF will also delete all existing snapshots.
"backups" dont actually take up any available space. Add up the space in the other categories to verify.
What exactly do you mean by "backups don't take up space"? Everything I've read indicates that they take up available space to a point...
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the available space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as "Backups." The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself.
What are the benefits and the purpose of having these local snapshots? I'm backing up using time machine onto my external hard drive everyday.
If you are away from the Time Machine backup drive the snapshots assure that important changes will be backed up. These backups are done on the hard drive. When you are back home and connect the normal backup drive Time Machine is supposed to transfer these snapshots onto your backup drive, then delete them from your computer.
Ahh I see what you mean. So if I see the storage free space on my computer is at 20GB because there is 50GB of backups on my local storage, I shouldn't worry about having too little storage available?
correct.
Local snapshots are a safety net in case you delete a needed file that hasn't been backed up to Time Machine. They are not transferred to Time Machine. They're deleted automatically when they expire or when space falls below a certain threshold. You don't need to delete them yourself under any normal circumstances. Just ignore them unless you need them.
I'm just so worried that my computer always has only 20-30GB of 'free storage'... I shouldn't have that concern? Time Machine will adjust if I need more storage for anything?
I shouldn't have that concern?
That's right. You should rely not on free space (as shown in the Storage display), but on available space (as shown in the Finder info window) to gauge whether you're in danger of running out of disk space. Space used by local snapshots is available. Don't let the available space on the startup volume get below about 9 or 10 GB.
Thank you so very much.
How do I check the available space on the startup volume?
Select the icon of your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you renamed it) in the sidebar of a Finder window, and open the Info window. See how much space is Available.
Hi...Just in case you are still having problems I thought I would share a simple fix I found after having read all the posts in this thread which were all very helpful and relevant. I have a new Macbook Air with 250G of storage and wanted to transfer all my work files onto it which came to 108 G. Problem was, there were already 150 G of storage used by these backup snapshots! So I just turned off my Time Machine and they all went! I intend to turn Time Machine back on again but I understand that it only takes snapshots that use space that is available so it should adapt to the new environment!
How do I minimize the backups stored on my Macbook Air?
