Not enough room for TM backups

[camner]

Today I received a message from TM saying that there was not enough room to make the current backup. Sure enough, the drive has only 50GB of free space and I have a new external drive to backup that has more than 50GB on it.

BUT, I thought MacOS "thinned" TM volumes when running out of space.

What am I missing about how TM space is managed by MacOS?

 

[hg.wells]

It will thin out backups, however it will get to a point where it can’t based on what you’re backing up.

It sounds like it’s reached that point.

 

[camner]

Thanks for your reply.

The time machine drive is an 8 TB drive. The new material to be backed up is under 2 TB, And the total to be backed up (new plus old) is about 4 TB. I would think that is enough, and TM should be able to make it all fit. but, I could certainly be mistaken.

 

[Fishrrman]

My advice would be to ERASE the ENTIRE drive, and start over.

Actually, I would recommend that you STOP USING tm and try either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Both will serve you better in that "moment of extreme need"...

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.

 

[camner]

Thanks for your reply.

I actually do use Carbon Copy Cloner. I use CCC to make a daily backup. I also use Time Machine to let me recover from idiot user error, when I delete or overwrite a file that I didn't intend to do that with. That doesn't happen often, but having hourly time machine back ups has saved my bacon more than a few times over the years I've been doing this.

I wouldn't disagree with someone who says that this may be overkill, and I confess to be a bit anal about backups.