Just Erased Mac How to Start Again

Monday, 03 August 2020 11:02 - (647)

Information technology's inevitable—your Time Machine backup drive is going to fill up. Time Machine is smart about backing upwards only files that have changed, but later on months or years of usage, the drive will run out of space. What happens and then?

Before nosotros explain, some background. On its first backup, Time Machine copies everything on your startup drive to the backup drive. After that, Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the by 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. If yous change the same file multiple times per mean solar day, every mean solar day, yous'll take numerous versions of information technology in your backup set so that you tin go back to whatsoever item version.

So the first thing that Time Machine does when your backup drive fills upwards is offset deleting those older versions, beginning with the oldest ones. It warns y'all when this starts happening and tells you what your oldest remaining fill-in is. In general, this approach works well, since you lot probably don't demand all the older versions of changed files as long as Time Machine always retains the well-nigh recent version in the backup.

Eventually, yet, even this technique runs into the wall of hard drives having only so much chapters. When that happens, backups will start declining, and this notification volition appear after every backup attempt.

Click the Details button in that notification to open the Time Auto pane of System Preferences, and you'll larn more than.

You have four options at this indicate, but two of them may non exist all that helpful.

Delete Old Backups

I possible solution—albeit likely a short term 1—is to delete old backups. You might be tempted to look in the Backups.backupdb folder on your Time Machine drive and delete some of the dated folders within. Don't. You take no idea what you'll exist deleting, and you lot'll likely corrupt the entire Time Machine backup, rendering it useless.

Instead, use a utility similar GrandPerspective or OmniDiskSweeper to identify folders or files that are both large and unnecessary. Navigate to i of those items in the Finder, select information technology, and then cull Enter Time Machine from the Fourth dimension Machine carte bar icon. In one case in Time Machine, click the Action bill of fare (the gear icon) in the toolbar and choose Delete All Backups of Particular.

Alas, this arroyo may non accept much of an result, since it'due south hard to know how many backups Time Motorcar has stored.

Exclude Large Folders from the Backup

Another arroyo that Apple mentions is excluding items from the Time Machine fill-in. To do this, open System Preferences > Time Machine and click the Options push. Then drag the desired file or folder into the "Exclude these items from backups" list and click Save.

The merely problem with this advice is that it'due south helpful only earlier your backup drive fills upwards. Time Machine won't reclaim infinite used by newly excluded items that already exist in your backup.

Start Over, Either on a New Drive or after Erasing Your Existing Backup Drive

I of the bang-up features of Time Auto is that information technology stores previous versions of files, as nosotros've discussed. But you lot probably know if you lot're the sort of person who needs to go back to such previous versions, or if yous simply use Fourth dimension Automobile so you can restore all your data in the event of a drive failure. If the latter is true and you don't much care about previous versions of files, a good solution is just to start over, either on a new bulldoze or after erasing your electric current drive.

Evidently, erasing your current drive means that you won't take any Time Machine backup at all until a new ane completes, which is a risk. And, of class, if that drive filled upwardly once, it will exercise and so again, potentially fairly quickly unless yous exclude some large folders. Merely, if you want to become down that path, open Deejay Utility, select your Time Car drive in the sidebar, and click Erase. And then become into the Time Automobile preferences again, click Select Disk, and selection your newly erased drive. You may have to select it under Backup Disks and click Remove Deejay offset.

Getting a new, larger backup drive and starting over with it is easier and more sensible, though more expensive. Once you've connected the new drive, just open the Fourth dimension Machine preferences, click Select Disk, and select the new drive.

Or, rather, in an ideal world that would be true. You need to make sure that the new backup bulldoze is formatted properly for Time Motorcar. Cull About This Mac from the Apple tree menu, so click Arrangement Study to open the System Data app. In its sidebar, click Storage, select the drive at the top, and make sure File System is Journaled HFS+ and Partition Map Type is GPT (GUID Sectionalisation Table).

If the drive isn't formatted correctly for Time Machine, open Disk Utility, select the bulldoze in the sidebar, click Erase, and cull Mac Os Extended (Journaled) from the Format popular-up card and GUID Partition Map from the Scheme pop-upward menu. So click Erase to ready it for Time Auto use. (This will, of course, delete all the data on the drive, and then brand sure that's OK start!)

Finally, make sure the permissions on the new drive are set correctly. Select the drive icon in the Finder, cull File > Get Info, click the triangle next to Sharing & Permissions, and make sure the "Ignore buying on this volume" checkbox is unselected. Y'all may demand to click the lock icon and enter an administrator username and password.

Copy Your Existing Backup to a New, Larger Drive

What if you want to retain all those sometime backups? That's entirely possible, though it will take a long fourth dimension to copy. Follow these steps:

1. Connect both the old and the new backup drive to your Mac via Thunderbolt, USB, or Firewire.
2. Brand sure the drive is formatted properly for Time Machine, and if it's not, reformat information technology in Disk Utility every bit noted above. Also, verify that the permissions are set correctly, as in a higher place.
3. Turn off Time Machine and so it doesn't try to back up while you lot're copying its information. In the Time Machine preference pane, deselect Support Automatically, or click the Off/On switch, depending on what version of macOS you lot're running.
4. Elevate the Backups.backupdb folder from the old bulldoze to the new one to re-create information technology. You may exist prompted for your administrator name and password.
5. When information technology finishes, a day or two later, follow the instructions above to select the new drive in the Time Machine preferences and make sure to turn Time Machine dorsum on.

One concluding annotation. It may exist tempting to use an alternative method of copying the Backups.backupdb folder, simply resist the urge. Time Machine uses special bulldoze structures to work its magic, and only the Finder is guaranteed to re-create them correctly.

(Featured paradigm based on an original by Denny Müller on Unsplash)

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Social Media: What should you do when your Time Car backup drive fills up? We investigate the options in this piece:

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Source: https://www.mbsdirect.com/mbs-blog/article-your-time-machine-drive-just-filled-up-what-should-you-do