Hi, I'm wondering if it's possible to set Time Machine so that it keeps a specified number of backups (discarding the oldest backup every time it creates a new backup). You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive. Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle. Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room. Time Machine "thins" it's backups hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. However, at some point it will not longer be able to free up enough space for the next backup. Time Machine already does that automatically. Huge USB-attached external backup drives are cheap! Whatever the method, why is it so important that you limit yourself to just two or three backups?Īncient Computing Proverb: " You can never be too rich or have too many backups. I use Time Machine to backup everything, alternating automatically between a 1TB locally-attached external drive and 2TB network-attached-storage server. Again, if the drive isn't attached, Carbon Copy Cloner automatically runs the backup the next time the correct external drive IS attached. I schedule an automatic weekly incremental backup of my constantly-growing iPhoto library to a different external USB drive, also attached only for that specific backup. If the drive isn't attached when the cloning is scheduled, I've selected the option that Carbon Copy Cloner automatically runs the cloning the next time the correct external drive IS attached. I schedule an automatic monthly full bootable clone of my iMac internal drive to an external USB drive that is only attached for that backup. Note that if the archives cumulatively consume less space than the limit requested and the destination volume is full, CCC will prune all of the archives.ĬCC will prune archives that were created more than "xx" days ago. CCC will continue to prune the oldest archive until the requested amount of free space has been achieved. If your destination volume has less free space than the limit that you have specified, CCC will prune the oldest archive. If the newest archive is larger than the limit that you have specified, that archive will be pruned in entirety. When the cumulative total exceeds the limit that you have imposed, CCC will prune the remaining, older archives. Starting with the most recent archive, CCC will determine the amount of disk space that each archive consumes. Keep the size of the archive below (MB/GB) The Carbon Copy Cloner features list is here: Īutomatically prune archived content before copying files Csound1 answered the first question exactly as I would have.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |