My Time Machine program keeps alerting me that it is deleting old backups. Should I be worried about this message?
Time Machine, Apple's built-in backup program in Mac OS X, is intended to be set-it-and-forget-it software once an external hard drive or wireless Time Capsule device is connected to the Mac. Unexpected alerts about old backup files being deleted are part of Time Machine's maintenance routine when the backup drive becomes too full.
Depending on the size of the external drive, the backups Time Machine deletes because of lack of space can be quite old. You can see the date of your oldest backup file by opening the Time Machine preferences - either from the icon in the Mac's top menu bar or by clicking the Systems Preferences icon in the Dock, then clicking the Time Machine icon. The Time Machine preferences screen lists the date of the oldest backup file there, as well as the time of the latest backup session and when the next one is scheduled.
If you would rather not get an alert message when the program needs to delete an old backup file, you can turn off the warning. In the same Time Machine preferences box, click the Options button. On the next screen, remove the check from the box next to “Notify after old backups are deleted†and click the Save button. Apple has more on using Time Machine here.
