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Do you wish to learn how to delete Time Machine backups as your storage is full? Time Machine saved the backups on the external drive, and there are times when you want it clear. If you do not know how to delete Time Machine backups, here is the solution for you. This blog post covers the simple method explaining how to delete backups from a Time Machine. First, let us find out what it is and how it operates.
What Is a Time Machine Backup In Mac?
Time Machine is the in-built feature of Mac, which helps in taking automatic backups. Time Machine backup can help you keep a complete backup of the system files, apps, emails, photos, and other documents. If the Time Machine is turned on, it will automatically take backups of your system. This backup is helpful when you face a system crash or need to look at the old backups. These backups are all saved up in an external device. It can be anything from a USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire drive. Whenever the disk is full, Time Machine deletes the oldest backups. It will regularly keep a backup of the past 24 hours, which is done on an automatic hourly process. It can keep up the backup for each day in a month as well.
How To Delete Backups From Time Machine?
Mar 28, 2019 Apple's built-in Time Machine app makes it simple to back up Mac data. You don't have to back up everything on your Mac, however. Here's how to selectively back up content using the Time Machine app in macOS Mojave. Great backup drives. Our 2019 favorite: G-Technology G-Drive 1TB ($70 at Amazon).
- May 21, 2020 Safely deleting these files and “cleaning up” Time Machine may fix any issues you’re having with backups. To do this, you’ll need to first turn Time Machine off: Open System Preferences and go to the Time Machine tab deselect Back Up Automatically. Next, clean up Time Machine’s working files: Open Finder. Go to your external hard drive.
- To use another Mac on your network as a Time Machine backup destination, complete these steps on the other Mac: Choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click Sharing. From the list of services on the left, select File Sharing. From the list of Shared Folders on the right, Control-click the folder that you want to use for Time Machine backups.
- From time to time you may see the following message when Time Machine attempts to back up your Mac: Time Machine could not complete the backup This backup it too large for the backup disk.
- Time Machine is a great tool that automatically makes backups of your Mac onto an external drive. What's really great about it is that it's built into macOS itself, so every Mac comes with it automatically.
Step 1: Open Menu Bar and then go to the Time Machine icon.
In case you do not see the Time Machine icon on the menu bar, it might not have been added there. No worries, go to the Apple Menu.
Here you can click on the System Preferences.
Now you can easily view the Time Machine icon.
To add a Time Machine icon on the Menu bar, right-click the option to “ Show Time Machine in Menu bar.”
OR
Go to the menu bar; click on GO. Now you will see the multiple options in the drop-down menu.
Click on Applications.
Step 2: As you will view the Time Machine, you need to click on it.
This will instantly open up the Time Machine application for you, and you will be able to see the old backups on Mac.
Step 3: Once you have opened the backup on Time Machine, you can proceed to the next step. This is how to delete the Time Machine backups, using the Finder.
Step 4: Finder will help you clear the Time Machine backup and make space on the external drive. It lets you delete files and folders individually, but they have to be in the Backups.backupdb folder. Other items can not be deleted individually, so you have to delete the backups from Time Machine entirely.
Note: Do not use any other app like Terminal to delete backups from the Backups.backupdb folder.
Remember, if you are trying to make space in the external drive, and that is the reason behind clearing the old backups, you can reduce the storage. This can be done before the backup of Time Machine. One must always clear the junk and duplicates present on the storage. This will help you to keep an organized backup on Time Machine as well.
We suggest using Disk Clean Pro, a Mac cleaning application at the most affordable rate ever. This is a must-have cleaning app for your Mac, which gives you some amazing features to optimize Mac. It runs a complete scan of the disk on Mac and then shows the junk, duplicates, old downloads, and other miscellaneous data like mail downloads. This will help you clear out much space on your Mac, and thus, when the Time Machine backup is formed; it will not be cluttered. Thus, making more space in the external drive to use.
Verdict-
When you are willing to clear the external drive space, you learn how to delete backups from Time Machine. This simple procedure will help you in deleting the unnecessary backups. If you are clearing your Mac for unwanted data, using DiskClean Pro also proves to be a great help. It will reduce the files uploaded in the backup for Time Machine. Download it now on Mac to keep it clutter-free.
We hope that this method helps you understand how to delete Time Machine backups on Mac. We would like to know your views on this post to make it more useful. Your suggestions and comments are welcome in the comment section below. Share the information with your friends and others by sharing the article on social media.
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To use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac, you need any of these types of storage devices:
- External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule
After setting up the storage device, you can use Time Machine to make a backup of your Mac. And after making your backup, you can use Time Machine to restore files from your backup.
External drive connected to your Mac
Time Machine can back up to an external drive connected to a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire port on your Mac.
External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac) or AirPort Time Capsule
Time Machine can back up to an external USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac model) or AirPort Time Capsule.
- Make sure that the USB drive is formatted for Time Machine.
- Connect the drive to a USB port on your AirPort base station, then turn it on.
- Open AirPort Utility, then select your base station and click Edit to view its settings.
- Click the Disks tab in the settings window.
- Select your backup disk from the list of partitions, then select ”Enable file sharing”:
- If more than one user on your network will back up to this disk with Time Machine, you can use the Secure Shared Disks pop-up menu to make sure that they can view only their own backups, not yours. Choose ”With accounts” from the menu, then click the Add (+) button to add users.
- Click Update to restart your base station and apply the settings.
AirPort Time Capsule
Time Machine Apple
Time Machine can back up to the built-in hard disk of an AirPort Time Capsule on your network.
Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
To use another Mac on your network as a Time Machine backup destination, complete these steps on the other Mac:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing.
- From the list of services on the left, select File Sharing.
- From the list of Shared Folders on the right, Control-click the folder that you want to use for Time Machine backups.
- From the shortcut menu that opens, choose Advanced Options.
- From the Advanced Options dialog, select ”Share as a Time Machine backup destination.”
When setting up Time Machine on your other Mac computers, you should now be able to select the shared folder as a backup disk.
Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
Many third-party NAS devices support Time Machine over SMB. For details, check the documentation for your NAS device.
How to format a disk for Time Machine
Time Machine supports all Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formats and Xsan formats. If the disk isn't using the correct format, Time Machine automatically prompts you to erase it when you connect it to your Mac:
If you need to erase the disk manually, use the Disk Utility app to erase using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Time Machine can't back up to an iOS device or disk formatted for Windows. And if your disk uses the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme, some of its partitions might not be available for use with Time Machine.