Can i delete backups on time machine

It keeps every hourly backup for 24 hours, then one backup per day for the previous month, and one backup per week from every month before that. Time Machine will ask you if you want to delete backups when you start to run short of space. If you use the disk for other things, you increase the chance of it failing.

You can use the same method to remove them from a network drive. There is another way to manually delete Time Machine backups, using Terminal and the tmutil command. If not, use the method above. As with all Terminal sessions, you should back up all your data immediately before you start and makes sure you follow the instructions carefully, typing the commands exactly as they appear.

In addition to deleting Time Machine backups, you may need to delete snapshots sometimes. The snapshot is saved on your boot drive until Time Machine can connect to the backup drive again. The snapshot files should be managed automatically and deleted when they are no longer needed. CleanMyMac X has a tool that will do it for you in a few clicks. Whether you want to delete a complete set of Time Machine backups or just local snapshots, there are a number of ways to do it.

The most complex, but also the one that gives you the most control, is to use tmutil in Terminal. By Ruslana Lishchuk. However, there are rare occasions where you still need to take matters into your own hands. How to remove old backups in the Time Machine app The safest and easiest way to delete backups is using the Time Machine app.

Follow these steps to use Time Machine to delete backups: 1. Connect your external backup drive to your Mac 2. Alternatively, use the Finder window to navigate to the file or folder you want to delete 4. After selecting the date or file you want to delete, click the ellipsis … button in Finder and choose to either Delete Backup or Delete All Backups of [Your File] 5.

Open Finder and select your backup drive from the sidebar 3. Find the folder for the backup you want to delete 5. To delete a backup, drag that folder to the Trash 6.

Disable the option to Back Up Automatically 3. To get past this, you need to temporarily disable SIP. Select a user account and enter the password to log in 3.

Run the following Terminal command to disable SIP: csrutil disable 5. Now restart your Mac and empty the Trash 6. You can even restore your entire Mac in the event of a catastrophic hard drive failure. Written By Ruslana Lishchuk.

Use your Mac to the fullest! Sign up and get: Effective tips on how to fix Mac issues. Reliable advice on how to stay safe online. Mac-world news and updates. Start Now. Disagree Agree. This method is safe and effective. You can also use Finder to delete Time Machine backups. You can follow this step-by-step guide to remove old Time Machine backups:. When you use Time Machine to back up your Mac computer, the local snapshots also automatically starts, once every 24 hours.

These local snapshots will be stored on your Mac. Like the Time Machine backups in the external hard drive, your macOS will begin to automatically delete the oldest snapshots.

But if you are worried about it, you can remove the local snapshots from your Mac. After these steps, the local snapshots will be removed from your Mac internal storage. If you regret it and want to enable this feature again, you can follow this guide:.

Although we show you the way to remove the local snapshots on your Mac, we advise you not to do this. The guide is just for special needs. These are the three methods to delete Time Machine backups on your Mac.

The first method is highly recommended. You can directly see which backup file you are deleting. So it is safe. The second method is not so safe by contrast, and the third method is not recommended.

This article shows you three methods to delete old Time Machine backups. You can select one method according to your situation. Click to tweet. As mentioned above, before you delete a Time Machine backup, you need to make sure that it is needless. But it is still possible that you delete some important Time Machine backups by mistake. If so, how to recover your lost and deleted Mac files if there are no available Time Machine backups?

You can choose to use professional Mac data recovery software. Here, you can try Stellar Data Recovery for Mac. This software is specially designed to restore your lost and deleted files on a Mac computer. As long as the files are not overwritten by new data, this software can work to get them back. Besides, it can recover various kinds of files like images, videos, documents, music files, and more from multiple data storage devices including internal hard drives, external hard drives, SSDs, SD cards, memory cards, pen drives, etc.