Full Elements drive - how to delete and prevent

#1

I’ve been happily, and ignorantly, doing backups from my mac (10.5.8) to my elements 500 gb drive untill yesterday when it told me it was full partway through a backup. I have about 130 gb used on my computer and the WD drive is full up at about 466. (I assume there’s working space that keeps it from filling all the way up to 500.) I tried running it again asking it only to back up photographs and documents but it didn’t respond at all.

My questions are:

How can I delete some redundant files to make some room?

And, more basically (I really am ignorant about it all): How does the thing work in the first place? Does it save every version of every file? Is there any way to ask it to be more specific? If I haven’t made changes to files since the last backup does it just ignore those and only deal with the ones that were changed?

I imagine that the photographs are the hog (on my computer it’s about 70 gb but I do a fair amount of editing via Lightroom) and I will probably get a separate drive just for them (I already have a separate drive - one that I just manually move what I want to move, not using special WD software - as a second back up for them but will probably get another primary storage or back up unit for them as well.)

Appreciate forthcoming education! Thanks.

#2

I don’t know much about Macs. Is there a way to set a size limit or number for the backup location? It seems theres hould be some control so it would automatically delete old backups. Now on storage never trust important data to just one drive internal or external no matter who makes it.

Joe

#3

jeorf wrote:

doing backups from my mac (10.5.8) to my elements 500 gb drive

 

(I already have a separate drive - one that I just manually move what I want to move, not using special WD software)

Hi there, I am a bit confused… As far as I know the Element drives come with no software for backups… So are you sure you have an Elements? Or are you backing up the files with Time Machine? If you are using TM then that’s a backup included with your Mac and is not related to the Elements…

o.o

#4

Oops! You’re right. My other backup is an Elements (far more simple!). This one is a My Book.  I am not using Time Machine.

Thanks for reconsidering… Same questions hold.

#5

Well that being the case you could go into the drive and you’ll see a folder called “smartware.swstor” if you have a newer drive or a “wd_smartware” folder if not.

Both folders can be navigated to erase the files you want, but sometimes this can make the whole backup become corrupted and displayed as “additional files”…

If I were you I’d erase the whole thing to start over, and before setting the backup go to settings> set up software> file history and set it to 1 if you don’t want extra copies in the future.

I use TM though… 

#6

Pizza guy - THANK YOU! It worked great. Doing a new backup now.

#7

Any time :slight_smile:

#8

Thread moved to WD External Drives: External Drives for Mac.