chris4macz

Q: "backups" eat memory

Hi community,

at first, my problem is not the time machine or capsule. To get more memory on the hard drive i did delete some gigabytes music. Easy, no problems. But i didn't get more memory after deleting some music. Now i have less memory then before because what i deleted in music i do now have in "backups". When i go on the "Apple" button "about this mac" and then "hard drive" i see 44GB backups. Whats that?? Before i didn't had that. I don't know what it is and where it is and how i can clear off to get my needed memory on the hard drive. Just for information, i do have a time capsule and use time machine, but don't see a connection. Thanks for help.

Bildschirmfoto 2016-01-01 um 22.37.08.png

...on the other site, when i open hard drive utility i see these "Backups" shown as "others" as you can see on the next picture. The strange here is that my mac says i have 32,67GB available but among them he says i have 77,04GB free, so what??? I don't understand, please help me. I just want to know how to clear off these "backups".......

 

Bildschirmfoto 2016-01-01 um 22.45.11.png

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Jan 1, 2016 1:56 PM

Close

Q: "backups" eat memory

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by Kappy,Solvedanswer

    Kappy Kappy Jan 2, 2016 4:13 AM in response to chris4macz
    Level 10 (270,288 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 2, 2016 4:13 AM in response to chris4macz

    About Time Machine local snapshots backups created when your backup drive was not connected. Although they take up space on the disk drive the OS will automatically delete them as more space is required. So, you can ignore them.

     

    Time Machine Snapshots

    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. Press RETURN again.

     

    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.

  • by Allan Eckert,Helpful

    Allan Eckert Allan Eckert Jan 2, 2016 4:13 AM in response to chris4macz
    Level 9 (53,464 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 2, 2016 4:13 AM in response to chris4macz

    "To get more memory on the hard drive i did delete some gigabytes music. Easy, no problems."

     

    If you backup something and then delete the original files from your computer that make the backed up file a candidate for deletion from the backup. So not only is the original gone then but so is the backup copy of the file.

     

    What you need to do is get another external disk drive and move any data you wish to delete from you computer to the external disk drive.

     

    You should also add the external disk drive to your Time Machine backups.

     

    P.S. By the way, the term memory is usually used for RAM or Random Access Memory which is temporary. On the other hand what you are talking about is usually referred to as storage and is space on either a hard drive or solid state disk for the permanent storage of data.

  • by chris4macz,

    chris4macz chris4macz Jan 2, 2016 5:03 AM in response to Kappy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2016 5:03 AM in response to Kappy

    Hey Kappy,

    i think i have understood everything, even i talked to you every time in "memory", you knew that i was meaning "storage"! Now i know.

    Even if i could ignore the problem as you told me, because enough space would be there if i needed it, i disabled the "snapshots", never heard that before, thanks! I also took  a backup some time before on an other external hard drive, so i could handle it easily without having fear of loosing any data.

    So thank you again, good job!