How do I delete an old time machine backup folder?

[rbpeirce]

I've googled this to death and all I can find is ways to delete old files or directories, not the backup itself.

I know Time Machine can/will delete old backups when the disk gets full, but I have a 1.5Tb partition and have used less than 1Tb. I only want to keep the last three months, so a backup named 2021-12-hhmmss is too old and could be deleted. Under other circumstances I would just use Finder and delete it, but this is Time Machine and I understand all these folders are linked together somehow. I don't know if this is safe or if there is a better way.

I am currently on an M1 Pro laptop running Monterey and Time Machine is on an attached APFS HD. I mention this because I understand somewhere along the line Time Machine changed the way it did backups. For example, under Mojave all the backups were in a sub-directory. Under Monterey they are at the root of the drive. I don't know if the backup structure itself has changed but it may have.

I still have some computers running Mojave and Time Machine so I guess I should know how to delete those as well.

 

[MacInWin]

TM is a very complex piece of software and the backup structure is equally complex. That is part of the reason that you should not delete a backup from Finder. Finder does not have the code to reconnect the links in a deleted backup. Time Machine will make space available as it needs it.

In your case, you want to recover the drive space that appears to be free on the backup drive. Under Monterey, you can't do that. However, also under Monterey, the drive has to be formatted to APFS, so you can create a new Volume in the Container with the backup Volume and use that to get to the space on the hardware. APFS Volumes dynamically share the empty space in the Container in which they exist, so by adding a new Volume you get access to that free space. Just be careful to leave enough space fee in the Container to allow both Volumes the space they need.

 

[chscag]

I've googled this to death and all I can find is ways to delete old files or directories, not the backup itself.

It has to be done within Time Machine and the process will take quite a bit of time to complete. Open Time Machine and allow it to display all the backups on the right side of the screen. Choose the backup you wish to delete by highlighting it and press delete. Then wait until it finishes and once again displays the backups on the right side of the screen. Repeat the process for each backup you wish to delete.

You can only delete one at a time and must wait until it finishes before moving on to the next one. All very time consuming. It may be easier to just start over with a new backup sequence rather than delete old backups. Since you are already using SD to backup in addition to TM, you will still have a current backup to rely on.

 

[rbpeirce]

In your case, you want to recover the drive space that appears to be free on the backup drive. Under Monterey, you can't do that.

Not exactly but the same result. In my case I just want to keep the last three months of backups. It appears I can't do that. Ok.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, you can, if you use the process chscag suggested. But it's slow and you won't really recover much space.

 

[rbpeirce]

Open Time Machine and allow it to display all the backups on the right side of the screen. Choose the backup you wish to delete by highlighting it and press delete.

I tried that and it doesn't work for Mojave or Monterey.

From the previous message it appears there is nothing that will work with Monterey. What is needed is an option that says to just keep the last X days, weeks or months.

For Mojave I discover that you can select a backup, click the gear icon in Finder and select delete. That does sort-of work but it doesn't really do what I want it to do. As a test I deleted 1/18/22, which was between 1/11 and 1/25. I now have 01/04, 01/11 and 01/15-01/20. There are no further backups for January. I may have done something wrong. Fortunately I picked a date that wasn't critical.

 

[rbpeirce]

Well, you can, if you use the process chscag suggested. But it's slow and you won't really recover much space.

I must be doing this wrong. In Monterey, I enter Time Machine and select the desired backup. It loads. I press the delete key and nothing happens.

 

[rbpeirce]

Mojave I discover that you can select a backup, click the gear icon in Finder and select delete. That does sort-of work but it doesn't really do what I want it to do. As a test I deleted 1/18/22, which was between 1/11 and 1/25. I now have 01/04, 01/11 and 01/15-01/20. There are no further backups for January. I may have done something wrong. Fortunately I picked a date that wasn't critical.

Apologies. I had 12/11, 12/18 and 01/04. I deleted 12/18 and was left with 12/11 and 01/04. When I deleted 1/18 I was in the one month one day window and didn't realize it. I used right-click instead of the gear; same result. This seems to work for Mojave but I can't make it work for Monterey.

 

[chscag]

I must be doing this wrong. In Monterey, I enter Time Machine and select the desired backup. It loads. I press the delete key and nothing happens.

You do not have to load the backup. Just make sure it's the one selected and press backup. It does work but as stated takes time to delete.

 

[MacInWin]

I am pretty sure you have to stay in TM while it deletes, too.

 

[chscag]

You do not have to load the backup. Just make sure it's the one selected and press backup. It does work but as stated takes time to delete.

@rbpeirce @Jake

Well, it appears @rbpeirce is correct. Apparently something has changed in Monterey, because I can no longer delete individual backups using the method that previously worked. I just tested this with my backups and the system won't allow any individual backup to be removed.

It appears because of the security and locking down of the system in Monterey that removing old Time Machine backups is no longer possible.

 

[rbpeirce]

You do not have to load the backup. Just make sure it's the one selected and press backup. It does work but as stated takes time to delete.

Step-by-step, I enter time machine, select a date from the display at the right edge and click the delete key. Nothing happens. I have to be doing something wrong.

 

[MacInWin]

Users have no authority to do anything on TM Volumes in Monterey. Read post #2 again. You can get access to the extra space on the backup drive by creating a second Volume within the Container. You cannot do anything with the TM Volume, that belongs to TM and only to TM. I think that changed in Monterey, but it may have changed earlier, when TM moved to snapshot storage instead of hard links.

I think it's even not possible to delete a TM Volume, once it's created. You CAN erase the hardware and reformat the hardware, but I don't think users have authority over TM Volumes to do anything. Could be wrong, but others have reported that TM Volumes resist erasure and format.

 

[rbpeirce]

Thanks. That's pretty much what I concluded. I was able to partition the drive and later adjusted the partition size with no problems. At this point I'll just leave it alone. I really don't need another 0.5Tb for data.

 

[MacInWin]

@rbpeirce, I'm glad you got it sorted. But let me encourage you to stop thinking in terms of partitions and partitioning. The new APFS approach is cleaner and, IMHO, much more user friendly. For example, if I have a 1TB drive and partition it for two drives, I pretty much have to decide in advance how much space to give each drive. Yes, I know that partitions can be adjusted later on, but that is a tedious and risky process and doesn't always work as expected. So let's imagine that I divide the drive in half, 500GB for Drive 1 and 500 for Drive 2. Then I put 300 GB of data on Drive 1 and 200 GB of data on Drive 2. Later on I discover I need to add 300 GB, and I want it on Drive 1, but it's too small. And even Drive 2 is too small because I won't have sufficient spare space on the drive for the operating system. I have a drive with 500GB free that cannot hold 300 GB of data.

In the new APFS scheme, you have ONE partition with one or more Containers. I think one is sufficient, but if a user wants more than one, it's possible. The Containers are fixed in size at the time they are created, much like partitions. Inside the Containers are Volumes, which mount and appear as drives in macOS. The beauty is that Volumes can be created and deleted with no impact to the other Volumes in the Container. And all of the Volumes in a Container have access to all of the free space in the Container, dynamically. Volumes are also not fixed in size, but dynamically adjust. For example, let's take that 1TB drive and put one Container on it, then two Volumes in that container. If I then put files on Volume 1 for 300GB and on Volume 2 for 200GB, there will be 500GB free space remaining in the container. The beauty of APFS is that the 500 GB is available to BOTH of the Volumes, so if I have 300 GB more data I need to add, it can go to either Volume. Let's say I put it on Volume 1. The used space on Volume 1 now is 600 GB, the used space on Volume 2 is 200 GB and both share the remaining 200 GB of free space on the drive, with no intervention from me, no fiddling with partition sizes at all. Both have sufficient headroom for the OS, even though it is shared. To the OS, each drive appears to have 200GB free space!

Yes, it's a paradigm shift, but I find it to be one of the better things built by Apple recently.

 

[wenfeen]

I've googled this to death and all I can find is ways to delete old files or directories, not the backup itself.

I know Time Machine can/will delete old backups when the disk gets full, but I have a 1.5Tb partition and have used less than 1Tb. I only want to keep the last three months, so a backup named 2021-12-hhmmss is too old and could be deleted. Under other circumstances I would just use Finder and delete it, but this is Time Machine and I understand all these folders are linked together somehow. I don't know if this is safe or if there is a better way.

I am currently on an M1 Pro laptop running Monterey and Time Machine is on an attached APFS HD. I mention this because I understand somewhere along the line Time Machine changed the way it did backups. For example, under Mojave all the backups were in a sub-directory. Under Monterey they are at the root of the drive. I don't know if the backup structure itself has changed but it may have.

I still have some computers running Mojave and Time Machine so I guess I should know how to delete those as well.

I had been struggling with the same issue with Monterey which is much more complex. What finally worked was to reboot in Recovery mode which I actually had to do 3 times until I succeeded with erasing the Time Machine. In Recovery, there is the ability to erase using Disk Utility as well as deleting the volume. I had to experiment quite a bit before I was able to erase and partition my external drive formatting with APFS. One partition is used for backing up with Super Duper, and the other partition is used for Time Machine. It's working fine now, but wasn't easy.

 

[MacInWin]

In Recovery, there is the ability to erase using Disk Utility as well as deleting the volume.

That same function should be available even if not in Recovery. Disk Utility will allow erasing and deletion of the TM backup volume as long as TM is turned off. No need to boot to recovery for that.