Delete unwanted backups from Time Machine?

[kirkbross]

I left some large external drives mounted overnight and (I think) Time Machine backed them up and quickly maxed out my TM drive.

How do I undo this mistake to free up Time Machine space?

Lastly, Time Machine doesn't seem to work very reliably in Yosemite and second. Mine only goes back a day or two but I did a clean install of Yosemite and started a fresh Time Machine about 3 weeks ago.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I left some large external drives mounted overnight and (I think) Time Machine backed them up and quickly maxed out my TM drive.

How do I undo this mistake to free up Time Machine space?

Lastly, Time Machine doesn't seem to work very reliably in Yosemite and second. Mine only goes back a day or two but I did a clean install of Yosemite and started a fresh Time Machine about 3 weeks ago.

The way you tell if your external hard drives are backed up is to open a finder window on the Time Machine hard drive, then browse to the backups folder, then in the folder that is the same as the name of you machine and finally a date folder. Do you see your external hard drives listed as folders?

 

[Bomb Bloke]

If you do, then don't try to remove them using Finder itself; odds are this'll lead to corruption of your backup structure.

Instead, open up the actual Time Machine interface, select the folder you wish to remove from your backup, and the little gear icon which shows up should have an option to delete it.

If you check out Time Machine's settings (in System Preferences), you can also opt to exclude certain locations from future backups.

Note that Time Machine automatically removes your oldest backups in order to make room for new ones, if need be. It (very helpfully) notifies you after it's gone ahead and done this.

 

[KALLT]

If you do, then don't try to remove them using Finder itself; odds are this'll lead to corruption of your backup structure.

Instead, open up the actual Time Machine interface, select the folder you wish to remove from your backup, and the little gear icon which shows up should have an option to delete it.

If you check out Time Machine's settings (in System Preferences), you can also opt to exclude certain locations from future backups.

Note that Time Machine automatically removes your oldest backups in order to make room for new ones, if need be. It (very helpfully) notifies you after it's gone ahead and done this.

I concur, especially with the first part. In my experience, Time Machine is very fragile, so I would use the tools that Apple provides.

 

[idoccurt]

I concur, especially with the first part. In my experience, Time Machine is very fragile, so I would use the tools that Apple provides.

I use carbon copy cloner...that way you have a boot disk as well