best time machine backup for mac for online backup

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Note that this will find the oldest and newest backups and display a prompt to delete the oldest, which then requires you to enter Y and the admin password to finish.

To use it youll need an external storage solution such as an external hard drive (or SSD) connected via the USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire port on your Mac, the Time Capsule or macOS server on your network, or the external hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme base stations on your network.

Understanding Macs Time Machine Time Machine has its own scripts for housekeeping, but sometimes (such as when you see the Time Machine could not complete the backup error message) you may need to intervene to clean up space on your Time Machine drive.

Space can always be saved on your backup if you delete junk, cache and temporary files before you back up the computer.

Thats particularly true if you havent set up any exceptions in Time Machine preferences, and everything is saved, even applications.

Best Time Hine Backup For Online Backup Software Without Major

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Clean 500MB of Junk for Free Since every external storage device has its own physical limits, if you are going to keep that drive in the long run then its good to optimize your backups so that they occupy less space.

For that it is possible to compress Time Machine backups, but before you start deleting and compressing backups you need to understand how Time Machine works.

Time Machine uses File System Event Store, a hidden log macOS keeps of changes made to the data on each HFS formatted drive or partition.

But this wont list every file that has changed; instead, it will list the directories affected.

Time Machine uses this log to find out whats changed and what needs to be backed up.

When Time Machine does the first backup, it copies everything (except trash and system work files) and creates a dated backup folder (year-month-day-hhmmss) in the Backups.backupdb folder, placing hard links in it to all the backup copies it has just made.

Another dated backup folder is then created with the second backup, and this repeats each time.

There is a trick, however: the second backup folder contains hard links to the items that remained unchanged.

Compressing Time Machine Backups There are notable differences between the normal (or local) Backups.backupdb folder and a backup made over a network.

Local backups are stored in a single Backups.backupdb folder at the top level of the external hard drive.

If you are backing up your Mac over a network (be it wired or wireless), youll find the Backups.backupdb folder inside a container called a sparse bundle disk image.

While it works just as well as the local backup version, an extra step is needed to actually recoup the space gained by deleting earlier backups due to its format.

Unlike a normal folder or disk image, when you delete a file in a sparse bundle, it wont change the container size.

To recoup the space, run the following command in Terminal (replacing the Yourbackup entry with the necessary backup name): sudo su - root hdiutil compact VolumesTimeMachineYourBackup.sparsebundle What youll then see is: Starting to compact Reclaiming free space Finishing compaction Reclaimed X.X GB out of XXX.X GB possible.

Removing Old Time Machine Backups Old backups can be removed in many ways, but here is the simplest.

Enter Time Machine.

Navigate to the backup you want to remove.

Right-click on the backup in the Finder window of Time Machine, and select Delete Backup.

Time Machine will prompt for the admin password and then delete the required file.

Thats a bit clumsy if you want to delete multiple backups, so heres a Terminal command for this, which is very useful when deleting old backups: tmutil delete TimeMachineDrivePathToOldBackup Or, if you want to remove a backup from a specific date: tmutil delete VolumesBackupDriveNameBackups.backupdbMacComputerNameYYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS Deleting Old Time Machine Backups Automatically If you dont mind speaking with your Mac via Terminal commands, then its even possible to automate the removal of old Time Machine backups by running the following batch script.

Best Time Machine Backup For Mac For Online Backup