Mac backup files

posiview · 12 Sep 2015

Hi, I have 2.7TB back up files on my eternal hard drive!

In the folder named backups.backupdb there are dated folders dating back to when I bought the drive.

Do I have to keep all these backup folders or can I just keep the latest 1 or 2?

Cheers.

dejongj · 13 Sep 2015

I wouldn't mess with it manually unless you know what you are doing. How timemachine works is that it will automatically delete the oldest backups if it requires more storage. If you want to use that same drive for other use, then the best way would be to reduce the size of the volume and keep general data in the newly created volume.

But as drives are so cheap, why not just buy one for the other needs/purposes and leave that one to do your backups.

Leroy4bz · 13 Sep 2015

I was up till 2am trying to access bloody Time Machine backups. I deleted all my music, thinking I was just erasing the Playlists

jakeblu · 13 Sep 2015

Leroy4bz said:
I was up till 2am trying to access bloody Time Machine backups. I deleted all my music, thinking I was just erasing the Playlists

You just go back to a time before you deleted your music, or are you having other problems accessing. Have to say I've always found it straightforward

dejongj · 13 Sep 2015

jakeblu said:
You just go back to a time before you deleted your music, or are you having other problems accessing. Have to say I've always found it straightforward

Exactly, just have the time machine disk accessible. Go into iTunes, press time machine and select the hour before you mistake and restore. Job done.

posiview · 13 Sep 2015

dejongj said:
But as drives are so cheap, why not just buy one for the other needs/purposes and leave that one to do your backups.

@dejongj That's a good point.

Might as well buy when full.

As an aside, once I move onto a new drive are there any maintenance need to used drives?

Cheers.

dejongj · 13 Sep 2015

Not really. The time machine is self maintaining. And OSX HFS doesn't fragment like FAT does, you will be fine.

Andy Taylor · 19 Sep 2015

posiview said:
Hi, I have 2.7TB back up files on my eternal hard drive!

In the folder named backups.backupdb there are dated folders dating back to when I bought the drive.

Do I have to keep all these backup folders or can I just keep the latest 1 or 2?

Cheers.

If you start deleting stuff inside backups.backupdb then you will break your historic backups, so don't.

posiview · 19 Sep 2015

Andy Taylor said:
If you start deleting stuff inside backups.backupdb then you will break your historic backups, so don't.

Cheers, Andy.