Time Machine and Decluttering my Macbook Air Hard Drive

[Judydent]

Hi all
This will be 3 questions, in effect, 1 concerning Time Machine and 2 concerning decluttering my hard drive:
1. Can someone tell me the easiest way to know that time machine has backed up my mac air?
2. I'm backing up now so that I can run disk aid to try to resolve the slow response time between clicking and getting a response. My wifi is through Iinet in Melbourne and is fairly good do I don't wan't to factor in any wifi issue. So, the question is, can you offer any suggestions as to the quickest way to identify videos that may be slowing down/clogging up my start-up disk.
3. What is the best way to save photos, videos and music to my Passport backup drive so I can remove those items from my Macbook Air late 2010 hard drive so those items don't slow down the computer, and so I can readily access those items when I want to? Additionally, is that a good idea?

 

[Judydent]

Hi all
This will be 3 questions, in effect, 1 concerning Time Machine and 2 concerning decluttering my hard drive:
1. Can someone tell me the easiest way to know that time machine has backed up my mac air?
2. I'm backing up now so that I can run disk aid to try to resolve the slow response time between clicking and getting a response. My wifi is through Iinet in Melbourne and is fairly good do I don't wan't to factor in any wifi issue. So, the question is, can you offer any suggestions as to the quickest way to identify videos that may be slowing down/clogging up my start-up disk.
3. What is the best way to save photos, videos and music to my Passport backup drive so I can remove those items from my Macbook Air late 2010 hard drive so those items don't slow down the computer, and so I can readily access those items when I want to? Additionally, is that a good idea?

Thank you, Spawn_Dooley, you answered all the above questions.
JD

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

If you click on the Time Machine icon in the upper right menu bar it will tell you when the last back up was performed ... you can also see the backed up files if you go into your Time Machine drive.

A 3rd party app like WhatSize or Grand Perspective can graphically display the disk usage within a file system. So you can see what files are taking up the most space. Some 3rd party apps by default are set to launch whenever you start up your Mac so you could look for those next time you boot up & go into their respective Preferences to disable this feature.

I save my photos/music to an external HD which is handy for freeing up space on your internal drive but the problem of back-up still exists. My way around this is to have a 2nd external HD solely for Time Machine & I get Time Machine to also back up my photos/music folder on the other ext HD. You set this in System Preferences ~> Time Machine ~> Options then click the + to add files or folders.