Hi All: In the process of checking to see if I could/should upgrade to El Capitan I noticed that the partition holding the Time Machine backups appears to be full or nearly so anyway. The ext HD is a 2TB WD with 3 partitions, one of which is the full backup section but one of the others is empty. Can I switch over to the other partition so that the backups go to that empty one now? Is there some simple way to accomplish this? Just trying to get a little more time out of this mid 2007 OS 10.8.6 4GB with I believe lots of room left on it. We are very light and simple users and have barely scratched the surface of even this machine. Thanks Donna
switching partitions on ext HD
- Thread starter DonnaH
- Start date
DaveWT
Well-Known Member
The fact that the Time Machine backup partition is nearly full is not a major problem in itself. When the partition is full Time Machine will just delete some of the older backups to make room for the newer backups (and will tell you it has done so.) All this means that you will not be able to go so far back in time to recover something from way way back.
But if you do want to avoid that situation, and depending on how the partitions are arranged on the drive, you might be able to use disk utility to change the partitions to absorb some or all of that empty partition, getting the space added to the partition used by Time Machine. That involves more risk of course, so not to be done unless you are sure about it.
But if you do want to avoid that situation, and depending on how the partitions are arranged on the drive, you might be able to use disk utility to change the partitions to absorb some or all of that empty partition, getting the space added to the partition used by Time Machine. That involves more risk of course, so not to be done unless you are sure about it.
DaveWT
Well-Known Member
I should have added that you can just use Time Machine preferences to point to that empty partition if you want to just start using it for Time Machine. However that will be treated as a new backup and will have to do a full backup again (not just an incremental update to a backup) and will take a very very long time and depending on the size of that partition, may not gain you much advantage.
Hi Dave and thank you for the help. Well maybe I'll just let it delete the old stuff and carry on for now. The backups go back to June of 2013 now and I figure if I have't thought about finding anything yet I probably won't now!! lol Probably don't even remember whats on it anyways! If I feel adventurous one day maybe I'll try and add to the partition but I think for now I'll just let sleeping dogs lie. May just get someone to come and tidy it up, get rid of the junk, and then try El Capitan, if it lasts another year or more I'll be thrilled. Thanks again Dave. Donna
DaveWT
Well-Known Member
Yes that has been my approach with my Time Machine backups. Occasionally I will get a message saying it has deleted older stuff and gives the date of the farthest back backup as some time in 2014. Good enough for me. I can't even remember what I was doing a month ago, so the chances of going looking for something a year and a half ago is slim.