Can I choose how many Time Machine backups I want?

Thanks!

Isn't there a way to do it with Time Machine, however? I'm trying to keep my Mac as "original" as possible 🙂

Is there perhaps a way to delete old backups? I don't mind doing that manually from time to time.

Also, I just noticed that in my Time Machine preferences (in the System Preferences), there's a tickable box that says something like "Notify me after old backups have been deleted", so I guess it's possible, perhaps even automatically?

Edit: I believe I found a solution. I went to Time Machine, and you have these finder windows appearing. I right-clicked on one and one of the options was "Delete backup". I didn't click it because I'm a bit scared, this will delete only the selected back (finder window), right?

Thanks very interesting 🙂

But how come Time Machine doesn't delete them then? I mean, they don't get overriden for me. I get a message that there's no space on that disk and the backup couldn't be finished.

AnaMusic wrote:

See Section C here...

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

Thanks, I guess I'll delete some backups. But it should still delete them from alone, so it isn't really a solution 😟

If I go to Disk Utility, and then I select the partition, I should hit the tab "Delete" and there do further options, right? I'm so scared to delete the whole external hard drive, I have many important things on it. Also something tells me it would delete the whole partition, which I do not want, I only want to remove it's content (the backups). Is this the right way or not of doing it?

I decided to go to the backup volume through the Finder window and do delete them from there. I put them all to the bin except the latest. It worked fine so far and in Disk Utility it showed me more space was available now.

The weird thing is that I can't trash them now. When I try to empty the trash, it tells me there's protected files in there. It asks me if I want to delete unprotected files only, or all files. I click all files and it "counts" all the files to delete, but at the end they're still here.

Tried also secure emptying, but didn't work. Anyone know?

SOLVED IT! I had to disconnect the external hard drive, apparently it's a well known bug... 🙂

Sorry for the quadruple post but... seems like I was wrong. I just connected the hard drive again, and now the stuff appears again in the trash, and I can't delete it. 😟 I could sit and cry.

etresoft wrote:

It sounds like you have a backup drive that is too small and that you are storing other files on it in addition to Time Machine. Both are virtually guaranteed to cause the problems you descibe. Time Machine needs to have space to work and you aren't giving it the space it needs. External drives are very inexpensive. I suggest getting a new one. There is really no other option.

Sorry, but what you're saying is just wrong. 🙂

Why would I buy a new hard drive? I have 3 TB of space on that hard drive, I have made a partition of 500 GB for Time Machine to use and lots of things I'm not backing up because it isn't needed. The solution is not buying a new hard drive, the solution is deleting old backups. I made 100 GB of space this way. 🙂 I don't need backups that go back a year. I'm actually not exactly sure what the point of it is, maybe it's for people who after a few years realize they deleted files they should have kept. But I'm not like that, thank god! If I delete something, then I delete it forever and with a good reason. If my hard drive fails, I'm not going to load a backup from 3 years ago. 😀