Time Machine drive out of space?

[tompatrick]

I know it is not much of a trouble but I thought it would be great learning. Can someone suggest me as how to optimise my drive because I am getting the below error.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

I suspect you have the Warn when old backups are deleted option checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, if so your backup will fail with the message as your screen shot.
Uncheck the warn option and you should then get a message that TM will delete your oldest back up to make room for the new one, and it will create the back up.

 

[tompatrick]

I have unchecked the option but didn't recieve any message from TM? How much time will it take? Can't I manually delete some old backups?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Running TM now on full disk will get back ASAP.

 

[tompatrick]

Should I give a restart to my Mac or a day will be gone to bring things back to normal?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

I am using my 2010 macbook backup drive as it is full so preparing the back up is taking a little time but will post screen shots when done.
Main thing is to keep external drive connected but close TM. Then right click TM icon in the dock and open TM preferences from the menu, once the TM window opens right click the mounted external disk and choose backup now.

EDIT:

TM is at the cleaning old backup stage, has taken 20 mins so far.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Reason things took so long was that TM had to delete some old backups fires. Here are the screen shots of the steps I took, hope it helps