MacPro Time Machine suddenly writing local backups. Why?

[minifridge1138]

Hello all,

My time machine disk (a separate drive in its own bay) was getting full so I deleted some backups I don’t need.

Now, it has decided to only write local backups and it’s filling my boot drive.

It seems Apple got rid of ‘tmutil disablelocal’.

When I turn time machine off it deletes the files and everything’s fine. But as soon as I turn it on my disk starts to get full again.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[adam9c1]

without diving further, perhaps delete the TM drive, and start again?
TM service will write to the root drive if it can't locate the TM drive.

 

[h9826790]

Hello all,

My time machine disk (a separate drive in its own bay) was getting full so I deleted some backups I don’t need.

Now, it has decided to only write local backups and it’s filling my boot drive.

It seems Apple got rid of ‘tmutil disablelocal’.

When I turn time machine off it deletes the files and everything’s fine. But as soon as I turn it on my disk starts to get full again.

Anyone have any ideas?

How you “remove some old back manually”? Sounds like you damaged the original image file, which makes TM cannot “continue” the backup.

TM will automatically remove some old backup, better not to manage it manually.

 

[bist]

Time machine is now doing local snapshots on the boot drive.
- Local snapshot can no more be disabled.
- The only "fix" I've found is to purge all snapshots on a regular basis with "sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 999999999 4"

The last 2 parameters are :
- How much space do you want (In bytes)
- Urgency (1-4)

 

[minifridge1138]

How you “remove some old back manually”? Sounds like you damaged the original image file, which makes TM cannot “continue” the backup.

TM will automatically remove some old backup, better not to manage it manually.

I went into time machine, selected some folders whose contents I don’t care about, and selected “delete all backups” of those locations.

 

[h9826790]

I went into time machine, selected some folders whose contents I don’t care about, and selected “delete all backups” of those locations.

That sounds like the correct method. And if you right click the menu bar icon to start a back up. What will it shows? Preparing? Cleaning? Or can’t find the disk?

 

[minifridge1138]

I got impatient and decided to reformat my Time Machine drive and start over. 17 hours later and everything's working as it should. Annoying, but not the end of the world.