Freeing up space on Time Machine

[Cave Man]

So, I have an 8 TB Time Machine volume (USB) and a total of 5.3 TB of used space on 3 other volumes. The Time Machine volume has 481 GB free and Time Machine has just popped up with a message saying it needs 772 GB to do the backup. A "Get Info" of the last backup shows 6.81 TB used on the Time Machine volume, suggesting that 1.19 TB are available. Not sure why this has suddenly appeared because I thought Time Machine was supposed to free up space on the hard drive as it needs it. Any suggestions as to how to free up space on this Time Machine volume?

 

[vddobrev]

You can delete individual backups with the following command. Adjust the -p parameter to the exact path of the backup, usually a time stamp, etc.:

sudo tmutil delete -p <the path to delete>

 

[Cave Man]

Thanks for the reply. There's only one backup listed: 2021-11-17-093105. Clicking on the arrow reveals four volumes: MacHD, macOS-Data, HD1, HD2. In the old days, there were entries for each of the backups, but apparently that's no longer the case?

 

[vddobrev]

Well, it may be time to reformat the TimeMachine volume... and do a fresh backup.

 

[Cave Man]

Well, $#!+. It's started again. WTH is going on? It seems like it's not deleted older entries but the new way TM works it doesn't seem to keep each backup in a separate folder. This made it easy to delete older backups to free up room. Any suggestions? I shouldn't have to re-initialize my Time Machine hard drive every few months.