I have a 1TB LaCie external drive that I've been using for Time Machine for a little over a year. Currently the backup fails because "The backup disk needs 83.92 GB for the backup but only 50.14 GB are available." I thought that Time Machine would delete older backups to make room for new ones. Why doesn't it do that to make enough room on this drive?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
Although Time Machine will periodically remove old content, it does not suddenly wholesale purge as must storage as necessary to fulfill a backup that is too large to fit on remaining storage. With only 50GB left on your Time Machine drive, you need a larger replacement drive as this has become a planning issue to continue reliable backups.
Although Time Machine will periodically remove old content, it does not suddenly wholesale purge as must storage as necessary to fulfill a backup that is too large to fit on remaining storage. With only 50GB left on your Time Machine drive, you need a larger replacement drive as this has become a planning issue to continue reliable backups.
Right, except....I back up my iMac M1 using Time Machine to a 2 TB partition on a 5 TB external drive. I'm now getting an error message that says "...Not enough space on external drive to complete backup." So I have the same question. Doesn't TM automatically delete the oldest backups to make room for the newest one(s)?
Why does Time Machine say it doesn't have enough space for a backup? Doesn't it delete older backups?
