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I use an 8 TB external hard drive to back up with Time Machine and from time to time, I try to clear up space by deleting my old back ups. The problem is that it takes over five hours and I constantly have to deal with error messages about files being in use. Any ways around this? Please feel free to contact me directly. hanks in advance.
[Email Edited by Moderator]
• When you ask Time machine to delete an old backup, it consolidates the old backup into more recent backups so that nothing is lost.
• When you use the Finder to throw an old Backup in the Trash, some files will be discarded, and every dated backup in your backup SET is now missing those files.
Time machine constructs an enormous database to keep track of every file stored, and not save more than one copy.
Each dated backup contains only the unique files changed at that backup. the files not changed are "included' by links to the previously-saved versions.
So consolidating old backups takes a while. But using Finder to discard them damages your Backup SET.
Time Machine will automatically delete old backups if it needs more space.
Deleting files on my back up drive
