How can I manually delete old backups to free space for Time Machine?

Question

I use a Time Capsule for backup and now I want the drive to back up data from an extra Mac. But the drive is filled up with old backups from Mac 1. There simply is not enough space available for the backup for Mac 2.

I get this error message when running Time Machine backup:

Time Machine could not complete the backup. This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 28.68 GB but only 626.2 MB are available.

Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files.

I know Time Machine itself is able to remove old backups when it needs more space. But in this case it does not remove any Mac 1 backups to make space for Mac 2.

Question is, how do I do it manually?

Answer 1

Be careful with sudo and making sure you pick the correct Mac's files since there is no undo or confirmation of the following command:

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/old_mac_name

The sudo command needs your password (and it won't echo to the screen, so just type it and pause to be sure you're dating the correct files before pressing enter). If you want to be safer, you can pick one snapshot to delete first to be sure the command works as intended. This is nice since it could take hours to clean up some larger backup sets and you want to leave the Mac confident it's deleting the correct information store.

You can use the tmutil tool to delete backups one by one.

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name/YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss

Since tmutil was introduced with Lion, this will not work on earlier OS versions.

If you want to get the current directory of backups (there can be multiple destinations defined and only one will be "current")

sudo tmutil machinedirectory

If you back up to a network share, you may have sparse bundle storage and if so, that needs to be compacted as well.

sudo hdiutil compact /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name.sparsebundle

Answer 2

The easiest way is to:

1. Enter time machine (on the Mac whose backup you want to delete)
2. Go to the point in time you want to delete
3. Select the icon that looks like a cog in the finder and choose 'Delete Backup' (in Mavericks: Right click in the finder window and choose 'Delete Backup')

This ensures the backup catalog remains accurate and the integrity of your data stays intact.

Answer 3

For Mavericks/Yosemite

1. Enter time machine
2. Select the backup
3. Right click on the backup (on the finder window)
4. Select 'Delete Backup'

It will ask the password and you are done

Answer 4

I've been asking myself this very question, and the answers on here certainly helped. However there's an aspect that's lacking which may be a new implementation "detail" that didn't exist when this question was answered.

tmutil delete does indeed delete backups, but doesn't actually reclaim the space they took, at least not in any guaranteed way. I spent about 2 whole days deleting backups from >2y ago, which according to final completion message amounted to approx. 400Gb of data. I did see the free backup space indication go up correspondingly once, but after the next backup I was down again to only 7% available space (858Gb used instead of around 450Gb). That really had me stymied.

The answer to that mystery is given here: http://blog.hawkimedia.com/2012/08/reclaiming-a-timemachine-volumes-disk-space/ In short, you have to compact the sparse bundle that actually holds the backup if it is hosted on a networked disk, or on a disk that is not formatted in HFS+. I don't have TM backups that are not hosted in a sparse bundle so cannot check if using tmutil delete does reclaim free on those. It might well do and the fact it doesn't on a Time Capsule may simply be a peculiarity of the sparse bundle protocol. The command to execute after sudo tmutil delete is sudo hdiutil compact /Volumes/YourTimeMachineDisk/YourBackupName.sparsebundle . In my case that reported

Starting to compact…
Reclaiming free space…
...................................................................................................................................
Finishing compaction…
Reclaimed 403.2 GB out of 583.5 GB possible.

The good news is that this command took only a fraction of the time tmutil took, spending much less time seeking on the disk and using less RAM (in fact it completed in the time it took me to write this answer).

Answer 5

This script will automatically find the oldest TM backup for your computer, tell you which is the oldest and newest backup and provide you with a prompt to delete the oldest backup. You must enter Y and enter your administrator password to delete it.

bash script:

COMPUTER_NAME=$(scutil --get ComputerName)
NBACKUPS=$(tmutil listbackups | grep "$COMPUTER_NAME" | wc -l)
OLDEST_BACKUP=$(tmutil listbackups | grep "$COMPUTER_NAME" | head -n1)
LATEST_BACKUP=$(tmutil latestbackup)
echo Latest backup: $LATEST_BACKUP

if [[ -n "$LATEST_BACKUP" && "$LATEST_BACKUP" != "$OLDEST_BACKUP" ]]; then
     echo -n "$NBACKUPS backups. Delete oldest: ${OLDEST_BACKUP##*/} [y/N]? "
     read answer
     case $answer in
         y*)
             echo Running: sudo tmutil delete "$OLDEST_BACKUP"
             sudo time tmutil delete "$OLDEST_BACKUP"
             ;;
         *)
             echo No change
             ;;
     esac
 else
     echo "No backup available for deletion"
 fi

Answer 6

If Time Machine is really only backing up differences, deleting in reverse order is not what you want. Plus given that each delete can take some time, having a script that will delete the next one when the current one completes would be nice.

Following user36971's sample script above, I've written up one that'll delete all backups from the one specified and earlier:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ]
then
    echo "must specify backup id: YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS"
    exit 1
fi

FOUND_BACKUP=0;
BACKUPS=""
while read line; do
    if [[ "${line}" == *$1* ]]
    then
        FOUND_BACKUP=1;
    fi

    if [ "${FOUND_BACKUP}" == "1" ]
    then
        BACKUPS+="${line}"$'\n'
    fi
done < <(/usr/bin/tmutil listbackups | tail -r)

if [ "${FOUND_BACKUP}" == "0" ]
then
    exit 1
fi

printf '%s' "$BACKUPS"

echo -n "Delete above backups? [y/N]? "
read answer
case $answer in
    y*)
        while read line; do
            if [ -n "${line}" ]
            then
                echo Running: /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/tmutil delete "${line}"
                /usr/bin/sudo time /usr/bin/tmutil delete "${line}"
            fi
        done < <(echo "${BACKUPS}")
        ;;
    *)
        echo No change
        ;;
esac

Do note I did not include the computer name check in my script, so if you're sharing one backup drive with multiple computers, you may need to add an additional check.

Answer 7

just open up a terminal,

#sudo tmutil disablelocal

this should free up space without deleting TM backups

Answer 8

Here is step-by-step what I did to delete my old backup

1. Open Time Machine Disk
2. Locate and open the folder Backups.backupdb
3. Go to view by date and choose oldest on top
4. Select the backup you want to delete
5. Open Teminal and type sudo rm -rvf
6. Drag and drop the old folders you want to delete in the Terminal Window
7. Enter you user password at the prompt

Go take a coffee or watch a movie, when the process is done you may have to repeat it again for some folders that don't want to delete.

When all your old folders are gone, Time Machine needs to update its database. Here is a way to force Time Machine to update.

1. Enter Time Machine and go to the oldest Backup which is still listed
2. Select it and click on the little gear and then choose Delete Backup
3. Enter your password and wait a few minutes
4. Quit Time Machine interface and come back again. Now you should have your Time Machine listing the correct backup.