Time Machine question

[old_shooter]

I use Time Machine on a macbook pro. I back up to a 4 TB SSD. I have backups going back about a year. Recently TM stopped backing up. It reports about 150 GB of space available on the SSD. I back up my 2 TB internal HD. Some reports say TM will automatically delete old backups to make room for the new backups. I'm not seeing this.

I think I'll reformat the 4 TB SSD and start over with backups. Am I missing something? Thanks.

 

[Nick on the Baltic]

It should automatically delete the oldest backups to make space.

Have you maybe changed your laptop, or done something to makeTime Machine think it is a different machine? It won't delete backups from another computer.

Have a look at the disk with Finder to see exactly what's on there. Maybe also run a check of the disk with Disk Utility.

 

[Barry Twycross]

Time machine got very flaky in recent versions, and would spend and inordinate amount of time backing up my photos, and failing. Also backing things up unnecessarily. It's supposed to delete old backups to make space, but is flaky about it.

I moved on to Carbon Copy Cloner, where the developers care about getting it right, unlike Apple. CCC can do much the same that TM does, but faster, and in a more transparent way, and has very responsive tech support for when something goes wrong. (Which is usually operator error.)

 

[lightandaprayer]

It sounds like you could be experiencing a common issue where the target backup drive does not have enough free-space for Time Machine's requirements.

Usually there will be a system message alerting the user; perhaps there was such a message and you dismissed it without registering it, something many of us do reflexively.

The linked article describes the issue and what you can do to get Time Machine up and running again:

What to do when Time Machine backup is full Macworld article.

 

[Zeee]

I use Time Machine to back up my OS which contain all my apps and the LrC folder to an external drive. The LrC folder contains the catalogue and previews.

I store my photo files on a separate external hard drive. They are backed up to a 3rd external drive daily using Carbon Copy Cloner.



The drive that backs up my OS also got full once so I just reformatted and let Time Machine start new backups. I then got the two extra drives.

 

[old_shooter]

To close the loop, I purchased Carbon Copy Cloner and upgraded to a sandisk 8 TB SSD. I probably would have been fine reformatting my 4 TB SSD and using Time Machine. CCC allows me to exclude files such as Lightroom previews (mine is 250 GB) which can easily be reconstituted. CCC does snapshots. I do hourly backups and most take 4 seconds. Even incremental photo imports are quickly backed up. Very happy with the new system.

 

[Zeee]

To close the loop, I purchased Carbon Copy Cloner and upgraded to a sandisk 8 TB SSD. I probably would have been fine reformatting my 4 TB SSD and using Time Machine. CCC allows me to exclude files such as Lightroom previews (mine is 250 GB) which can easily be reconstituted. CCC does snapshots. I do hourly backups and most take 4 seconds. Even incremental photo imports are quickly backed up. Very happy with the new system.

Glad it is working for you. CCC is slick.