Big Sur and Time Machine backups to external

[chaos2oo2]

Just bought a new MacBook Pro with Big Sur preinstalled and somehow I don't get how Time Machine now is working.

Until now I disabled automatic backups and choosed an external USB HDD as my backup destination. Every now and then I connected the USB HDD an started a backup manually. Everything was working fine so far.

Now with Big Sur I choose my USB HDD as my backup destination, but after the backup is done also an 'com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots' is created on my local HDD - which is not what I want.

Even more when I access all backups from the USB HDD the created backup seems not to be used....only the local backup seems to be used, as I even can access the backup with my USB HDD unplugged.

Whats the sense of the USB HDD then?

 

[estherau]

that's unsettling. I will wait to see what others reply to this.

 

[coolbreeze2]

I believe Big Sur does not allow users to turn off local snapshots. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. That being said, there are 2 ways you can delete the local snapshots.

You can delete manually using Terminal.app. Here are the instructions: https://www.macworld.com/article/231067/how-to-delete-time-machine-snapshots-on-your-mac.html .

You can download a free utility called OnyX, which not only will delete local snapshots with a click but has numerous other features. Here is the website: https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/index.html .