Time machine backup failure

[Jonathan Brady]

Good morning all.

I have a WD 2TB passport external drive that I use as my time machine backup drive. I have been successfully backing up to it for several years.

For the past few weeks, time machine begins a backup and then abandons the process saying there is not enough room on the disk - the disk is nearly full it has to be said. However, I was of the understanding that time machine just bins off the oldest backup before writing the new one in such a case. Am I missing something? Please advise.


Jonathan Brady

[Sam - MacAmbulance]

Hi Jonathan

How much data is there to be backed up? If you have a 2TB disk and (for example) 1.5TB data, the backup drive will soon fill up with dated versions of your files. Time Machine will automatically remove older backups but it won’t remove the last version of a file.

If you’ve got plenty of large images and you edit them regularly, that can create lots of backup data. A 4TB or 8TB backup drive can be found quite cheaply these days, the 4TB MyPassport on Amazon is usually around £70-80.

_

Regards Sam Mullen +44 (0)7747778022 in...@macambulance.com www.macambulance.com MacAmbulance Ltd. Providing Affordable Mac/PC Support and Web Development

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[Jonathan Brady]

Thanks Sam. 

The backup is roughly 25GB but there is literally about 10GB left on the disk. There are other non time machine folders and files on the disk. I think what I will do is buy another passport drive and use it solely for time machine. Probably the wiser move, especially as the current drive has been knocking around for a several years now. 

Jonathan

On 5 Aug 2022, at 10:59, Sam - MacAmbulance <in...@macambulance.com> wrote:

Hi Jonathan

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/54C8FB1D-F2F2-48DA-A784-A9995C49BF6F%40macambulance.com.