Written by
Connie Yang
Summary: This post offers tricks to force-delete backups when Time Machine is not deleting old backups. It also explains why the Time Machine disk doesn't automatically delete old backups and becomes full.
Apple claims that the Mac Time Machine can clear up old backups to make room for new ones, but it doesn't. Some users found that Time Machine is not deleting old backups automatically but says "There is insufficient free space on the backup disk." or "Your backup drive does not have enough storage to perform the backup."
Don't worry. It's not a tricky problem. We offer solutions to free up the full Time Machine backup disk and explain why Time Machine does not delete old backups.
Why is Time Machine not automatically deleting old backups?
Does Time Machine overwrite old backups? The answer is yes. But why it seems that Time Machine does not automatically delete the oldest backups to make space for the newer ones?
Time Machine is an accumulating backup tool because it retains past backups. If you choose to backup hourly, Time Machine deletes the oldest backup from the past 24 hours' backups when it needs the disk space for a new incremental backup, so do the daily and monthly backups.
Even with regular automatic file clearance to minimize disk usage, the backup drive will gradually fill up as time goes by. Thus, it's not that Time Machine doesn't delete old backups, it's that the amount of the deleted old backup is much less than that of the new backup, especially when you turn on automatic Time Machine backup.
Besides, if you're backing up multiple Macs to the same destination drive, then Time Machine on one Mac won't clear the space used by the other Mac's backups.
Share the reasons for Time Machine not deleting old backups with more people.
Time Machine not deleting old backups, what to do?
The issue of Time Machine not deleting old backups arises because the number of deleted old backups is significantly less than the number of newly added backups. In other words, the backup frequency is too high and the backed-up files are too large, making it hard to notice that Time Machine removes the old backups.
Thus, the key points to resolve the Time Machine backup disk full problem are to reduce the quantity of the backup data, lower the backup frequency, manually delete the old backups, or switch to another user-friendly backup tool.
In the following part, we state the details of each way.
Manually delete the old Time Machine backups
Can you delete old backups from an external hard drive? Of course, you can manually delete the old Time Machine backups to free up much more disk space.
Here's how to delete Time Machine backups:
- Connect your Time Machine backup drive to your Mac.
- Open Finder and select your backup disk from the sidebar. If your backup drive appears on the desktop, you can directly open it here.
- Select the backup you want to delete and move it to the Trash. You can also remove certain files or folders of the backup only.
- Empty the Trash to release the space the deleted backup occupied.
Turn off the automatic Time Machine backup
Time Machine allows you to back up your Mac manually or automatically. If you choose to automatically back up your Mac hourly, daily, or weekly, your disk will run out of space quickly, making you mistakenly regard that Time Machine does not delete old backups.
Thus, if Time Machine keeps running out of space, go to check if you've enabled automatic backup. If you have, disable it.
- Click the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and select Open Time Machine Settings. Or, click the Apple menu > System Settings > General > Time Machine.
- Click Options.
- In the Backup Frequency field, choose Manually.
Exclude unnecessary files from backups
The larger the amount of data you back up, the quicker the Time Machine backup disk will be full. You can stop Time Machine from backing up unnecessary files to extend the space storage.
- Click the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and select Open Time Machine Settings.
- Click Options.
- In the Exclude from Backups field, click the add button (+) to add the files or folders you don't want to be backed up.
Switch to use another backup tool
Since Time Machine keeps running out of space, why not change to use another backup tool? iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac is a disk management utility that allows you to quickly clone your Mac startup disk for backup. It also supports backing up files and syncing file changes of Macintosh HD - Data (the user data volume) to recover accidentally deleted files.
If you would like to back up your entire Mac to an external hard drive, use the Clone feature of iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac.
- Download, install, and open iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac on your Mac.
- Connect the external hard drive to your Mac. Ensure that the external drive has a larger capacity than your Mac startup disk.
- Select the entire startup disk and click Clone.
- Select the external drive as the destination and click Start Cloning.
A prompt will warn you that the cloning will overwrite data on the external disk. Click OK to start cloning. - Wait for the cloning process to finish.
If you prefer to back up and sync the data on your Mac locally for quick recovery when accidental deletion happens, you can use the File Keeper feature of this tool.
- Download, install, and open iBoysoft DiskGeeker for Mac on your Mac.
- Select the Macintosh HD - Data or macOS - Data (the user data volume) and click File Keeper.
If you have partitioned other APFS volumes on your startup disk, you can also back up files on them. - Click Turn On on the pop-up to turn on this service. Then, it will immediately start backing up the target volume.
When you need to restore files from the backup later, open this app, click File Kepper, and follow the on-screen guide to find the backups.
Tell others this user-friendly and easy-to-manage backup tool for macOS.
Reformat the Time Machine backup disk and restart the backup
If the Time Machine backup disk is full and you don't want all the old backups, you can reformat the Time Machine drive and then start over the backup.
Before reformatting, go to Time Machine settings, select the disk, and click the remove button (-) > Forget Destination to stop it as the backup disk first. This is to prevent the disk reformatting process from failing.
- Open Disk Utility from Launchpad > Other.
- Select the external drive and click Erase.
- Set a name, choose APFS as the format, and use GUID Partition Map as the scheme.
- Click Erase.
Now, go to Time Machine settings, set the disk as the Time Machine destination, and start backup.
Change a larger drive for backup
Perhaps you use your Mac holds a huge amount of your essential files and you often make changes to them. So, you have to back up your whole Mac frequently.
In that case, you are suggested to use an external drive with a larger capacity as the Time Machine backup disk. The capacity of the disk should preferably be several times the total amount of data you want to back up.
Share the above ways to give assistance to those who also think Time Machine doesn't automatically clear up old backups.
