How long do backups stay on the airport time capsule if I factory restore my computers

Connect an external drive to your computer and put the files on it. Any files you'd like to keep should be on at least two drives; one may fail at any time.

This can be done when the drive is hooked up to the Time Capsule, but the formats supported are more limited and the process will be slower.

(13169)

If you are using the Time Capsule with Time Machine, then backups are not permanent as they would be with most other backup tools. Here are the basic rules:

About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert

TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.

So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.

Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.

Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.

I Want to completely wipe my MacBook Pro and set it up as if new so that it is clear of files I don't often use but I want to keep those files on my Airport Time Capsule.

So, what you are telling us is that "those files" will only be on the Time Capsule. Have you thought about what will happen to "those files" when......not if....the Time Capsule has a problem?

Another way of asking the same question would be.......If a drive fails.....(it will, you just don't know when)......will you have another copy of "those files" on another hard drive?

If you don't......then you have no backups....and "those files" will be lost.

I just talked to apple and they said that files will stay on the ATC indefinitely as long as you don't fill it up.

so what this means is that nothing will be lost if only about three less-than-one-terabit computers are connected.

Everything on the Time Capsule drive will be lost when.....not if....it has a problem. So, if you don't have backups for the files that you store on the Time Capsule, you will lose all of your data......because you have no backups for "those files".

So....you will lose "those files" at some point. The only question is when.