Time Machine Backup Question

I'm using an external HD with Time Machine, it backs up every hour. My HD is 500GB and I've had it going since April 2008

My question is: How does Time machine let me know it is going to re-write over all the backups once HD is full? Or is there a way I can set it up to ask me first before it backups over the first lot of backups..

Thanks

I posted in this forum as it relates to my HD, sorry if it's not the right forum, I'm not sure where this fits in.

I don't think many of us have hit that point yet. At first numbers were tossed around as far as how much space your backup HD needed vs. your internal HD (i.e. a 500gb internal drive needs a 1tb backup drive for Time Machine to keep from filling up quickly). Turns out Time Machine doesn't need as much space as we thought it did. My personal opinion is now that 1.2x the HD of the drive you are backing up is sufficient for a TM backup drive.

My point is that most of us, haven't hit that point yet. I have a 500gb Time Capsule and a 160gb HD in my MB. At this rate, I will have 10 years+ of backups before the Time Capsule is full. It's a non-issue for me.

Thaanks for that
My internal HD is 320GB so I guess it has a way to go. Actually now that I think about it again, I went into my backups and my first folder of backups is May 2008.

External HD for backups via Time Machine
Capacity: 465.64GB
Available: 336.71 GB
Used: 128.93GB

I guess I need to watch the used amount to know when it's coming close to overwriting all my backups. OK I've kinda answered my own question.

Open Time Machine Preferences --> Click Options --> Check " Warn When Old Backups Are Deleted "


Hope this clarifies your concern.

Cheers
McBie

For the average user 1.5 times the internal is probably OK. My TM backup is already more than double the used space of my internal drive after only 4 months of use. I install and remove a lot of stuff from my machine and a lot of those are GB and larger files/folders. For my use, can definitely see my 1TB drive filling up in less than a year with probably under 150GB of used space on my internal.

Everyone's use is different, so keep track of your use is the best way and McBie has shown you the way to have it let you know when it's about to start deleting the oldest stuff.

Excluding your Downloads folder from the Time Machine backup will help keep it from filling up too quickly. Also exclude your Parallels/Fusion folder, Aperture Library, and your Microsoft User Data folder (only if you use Entourage).

Jaygray said:

Excluding your Downloads folder from the Time Machine backup will help keep it from filling up too quickly. Also exclude your Parallels/Fusion folder, Aperture Library, and your Microsoft User Data folder (only if you use Entourage).

Click to expand...

Why would you exclude your Aperture library ?