I've got a 1TB external hard drive that I use as both my time machine backup and external storage, being new to macOS I didn't realise that OS creates snapshots rather than add to the initial backup I think.
My question is what is the easiest way to trim all the old snapshots and just have the most recent backup?
Definitely listen to the above posters. They're far smarter than I am.
That said, if you're someone like me and you want to "reset" your time machine backup, just format the drive and turn off/on Time Machine.
I have 1 Time Machine hard drive and 2 CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) drives of my MBP. I use both because I like the way both work. CCC will also do snapshots if you want it too, but I only have Time Machine doing snapshots. CCC also has a "Safety Net" feature that saves changes/deletions to the free portion of the disk and automatically manages space.
Like the above posters said, let Time Machine do its thing. It automatically manages space, will fill it up, and delete old needless copies as time goes on. Don't worry about the space of the disk - definitely reserve it 100% for Time Machine backups if you can, especially because it is only 1 TB.
My 3TB Time Machine disk is over 1.2TB full even though my MBP is using 200GB, because of the movement of data that I do, snapshots that are created, and what not. I enjoy what TM does (and CCC). Being able to go back and restore a file is vital for what I do and the amount of data that I work with. Snapshots are great and not a waste.
If you don't care for them, CCC does backups that are more like disk imaging (you can turn off Time Machine and Snapshots as well as Safety Net). Highly recommend that as well.
