How do I get rid of old Time Machine snapshots?

Question

How do I get rid of old Time Machine snapshots?

I have a 2011 MacBookAir with Mavericks OS, and my problem is the only about 7 GB of the 120 GB of storage remains free. "About the Mac" indicates that Applications are really hogging the storage, and I wonder if Time Machine is doing the hogging, because I have not backed up to the hard drive in months (for some reason, connecting that external drive does not make it show up on my desktop).

I don't care if I lose all those old backups from 2011-2015, so how do I delete those? (I've read that Time Machine will delete them when I'm down to 5GB or something lower but I want more space than 5GB)

MacBook Air (13-INCH, MID 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 23, 2017 2:53 AM

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Answer 1

macjack

Level 10

111,292 points

Jun 23, 2017 6:29 AM in response to Joel Patterson

The Storage tab does not always report correctly. Look in About this Mac > System Report > Storage. It may be different. Try rebuilding Spotlight index.

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

Omni DiskSweeper can locate and delete those files. It can also give you a more accurate read of disk space than Finder or Storage Tab of About this Mac. Itcan show you the precise size and location of all your files. It will inventory your disk starting from the files that take up the most space. It can also give you a more accurate read of disk space than Finder or Storage Tab of About this Mac. If you want you can even delete files from OmniDisk Sweeper. But be careful some of the items may be important to your system.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, please see Apple Support Topic

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867

Also, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:

iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash

In Photos: File ▹ Show Recently Deleted ▹ Delete All

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Answer 2

anonyme4321

Level 6

17,325 points

Jun 23, 2017 4:01 AM in response to Joel Patterson

Hi,

In Terminal, type:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

After a moment or two, your Mac will automatically purge all the local snapshots from your startup disk, giving you back all that free space.

To re enable local snapshots :

sudo tmutil enablelocal

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Answer 3

Jun 23, 2017 6:23 AM in response to anonyme4321

Thanks, it has been a couple hours since I typed 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' and I don't see the free space yet (when I go to About This Mac, Storage). I have also done a cold reboot in that time. Still down to 7.7 GB with lots of GB taken up by the green "applications" bar.

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