In 5 years I have never had this problem and now I've dealt with this twice in the past two months. The first time around I just decided to get a new external hard drive, but the warning came up again that there isn't enough space. Isn't it supposed to be over riding the oldest backup?? So frustrated...
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)
Hello there, missla29.
The following Knowledge Base article offers clarification on the functionality of Time Machine and offers some recommendations for your situation:
Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Particularly:
Additional Information
If your backup drive fills up
As your backup drive begins to fill up to its capacity, Time Machine intelligently deletes the oldest backups to make room for newer ones. It also alerts you if the "Notify after old backups are deleted" option is selected in Time Machine preferences.
Consider the following options if your backup disk is filling up often, causing your oldest available backups to be erased sooner than you might want:
- Use an additional drives for your backups or transfer your backups to a new, larger drive using the steps inTime Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive.
Tip: You can also browse the original backup drive for past backups by using "Browse other Time Machine Disks"--to see this choice, hold the Option key then click the Time Machine menu in the Finder (to see the menu, "Show Time Machine status in the menu bar" must be selected in Time Machine preferences.
- Reduce the amount of information being backed up by adding to the "Exclude these items from backups" list in Time Machine preferences, as mentioned above. Your backup drive will fill up less often.
- Delete file(s) that are no longer needed (such as from your desktop, Documents folder, or other Home folder locations), so they will no longer be backed up. You can also enter the Time Machine restore interface and find files that can be removed from the backup drive itself to conserve space. To do this, select the file(s) and from the Action pop-up menu (gear icon) in the Time Machine Finder window choose "Delete All Backups of...". Be sure to only delete files you are sure you won't need or want to restore later.
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.
Time Machine disk needs more space x2! Got new external hard drive...shouldnt it juts be replacing old files?
