Time Machine Questions

So I take a fair amount of photos regularly for my business but I was noticing my external drives filling up faster than I thought they should until I recently got the," Time Machine Destination disk if full," message. So I'm digging into the problem and it seems TM takes over the destination disk and fills it up then looks for another external drive and fills that up, too!

I have no problem with the one drive--that is what it's for--but the other is for my photos and now it's just about full! Of course it's not a simple process to remove old backups, etc. because, well, it's not easy and the newest backups are on the drive with my photos!

So I'm somewhat perplexed as to how to solve the problem. Here are the issues as I see them:

-TM wants to fill up everything--I need to be able to limit TM to only the drive(s) I am using for TM backups.
-I need to get rid of the old backups (from 2008ish) to free up space so I can work again.
-Need to know how to keep this from happening again.

I don't just use TM as my backup, been using CrashPlan as well and I'm planning on getting a NAS setup. I am also looking into a way of archiving the photos I don't need easy access to but that's another thread.

Anyway, looking for help on this. There doesn't seem to be much help I can find by Googling it unfortunately.

Thanks!

I'd start with an Apple forum. Tons of expertise in there.

But, you control where TM writes, in the Preferences. And yes, it will use all space you allow it to fill. So if you have a drive which is also used for other reasons, you need to partition it. Use only the partition you designate for TM, to be used by TM.

I have a 2TB drive partitioned with 1TB for TM backups. TM manages this space for me. If you go into Preferences you can select what drives, and/or which partitions are used.

regards,
chmod

chmod wrote in post #15897465
I'd start with an Apple forum. Tons of expertise in there.

But, you control where TM writes, in the Preferences. And yes, it will use all space you allow it to fill. So if you have a drive which is also used for other reasons, you need to partition it. Use only the partition you designate for TM, to be used by TM.

I have a 2TB drive partitioned with 1TB for TM backups. TM manages this space for me. If you go into Preferences you can select what drives, and/or which partitions are used.

regards,
chmod

The problem is, the preferences aren't very useful. I never set up the 3rd drive to be used for TM backups yet it's still doing it. And, no matter where I've looked, I can't seem to find an answer to how to do this properly or how to remove TM backups which are already done. The answer is always, "TM deletes the oldest backups when it's out of space." That's great but how do I correct what it's done already once I figure out how to get it to stop using my 3rd drive?

I can't recall hearing about a case where Time Machine simply commandeered a disk like that. It seems odd. The oldest backups should simply be deleted and the process should go on, but apparently that is not your case.

Albert Nam wrote in post #15899369
I can't recall hearing about a case where Time Machine simply commandeered a disk like that. It seems odd. The oldest backups should simply be deleted and the process should go on, but apparently that is not your case.

Yeah, I thought it was strange as well. I can't find anything anywhere about something like this either.

The drive I want to use for TM backups was the first external drive I'd gotten. About a year and a half later I got the 2nd external for my photos but never set it up to have TM use it because I didn't want TM to use that drive.

Interested in your case, Rick. I'm getting into Mac for the first time (though I worked for Apple in the early '90s and use Macs at my other job) in large part due to the fact that Win8 is a total flop with regard to backing up external drives (Seriously MS, get a grip...). I wish you luck figuring this one out. Hate to say it, but an Apple forum sounds like your best bet. Btw, I'm getting an i5 Mac mini.

twoshadows wrote in post #15919672
Interested in your case, Rick. I'm getting into Mac for the first time (though I worked for Apple in the early '90s and use Macs at my other job) in large part due to the fact that Win8 is a total flop with regard to backing up external drives (Seriously MS, get a grip...). I wish you luck figuring this one out. Hate to say it, but an Apple forum sounds like your best bet. Btw, I'm getting an i5 Mac mini.

I've been a Mac lover for a looooong time. My first Mac was a Mac Plus (and I played on a 128k believe it or not). I don't really like the direction they've been taking from a UI standpoint. They've really screwed up on that. Still easy (overall) to use but not like it used to be.