As Time Machine has changed, first to back up APFS volumes, then to create backups as snapshots, its needs have changed. This makes it complicated to decide which local snapshots you can delete without affecting its backups.
backup
Fundamentally simple: a preserved copy of a volume at a moment in time. How its size can only increase with time, how they’re managed, what they’re used for, and the tools for using them.
When I started my Mac up, its external backup storage was present as expected, but couldn’t be opened. It turned out that Time Machine had stopped backing up after 12:35 the previous day, but hadn’t reported the problem.
T2M2 is nearly 9 years old. Here’s a walk through its summary reports on Time Machine backups. and an outline of what you’ll see in its log extracts.
How to exclude folders and files from these services, with new problems apparent in macOS Tahoe over exclusions from Time Machine backups.
If you’ve got large files like Virtual Machines or media libraries on the Data volume on your Mac’s internal SSD, use this method to keep the size of its snapshots smaller.
Are you prepared for the removal of support for AFP in a ‘future version of macOS’? Here’s what you need to know, and what you should consider doing.
Backups don’t include everything. Here are details of those items excluded from Time Machine backups, and why they’re excluded.
The rules for preserving document versions are based on their being associated with the document’s inode number, and on the same volume. Here are the details and a way to preserve them whatever.
How do clone files and sparse files cope with being backed up and restored? Can they save space in iCloud Drive? Some of these answers may surprise.
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