MacOS – way to restrict Time Machine backups to a given size

I've been looking at this as well to limit the space a single machine can use when sharing a time capsule (slightly different application, but same concept). Here is what I found:

1. External Drive - The quickest and easiest solution. The backups and data are completely separate and won't interfere with each other. The main disadvantage is having the clutter of extra devices and cables.

2. Partition - This is probably the best option to ensure dedicated space for the backups and the other data. As such it is the least flexible if you want to reallocate space at a later date. The other disadvantage is that it is difficult to do in that you aren't able to do it from within the Air Port utility.

3. Sparse Bundle Size Limit - At first I thought this would be the best option because it is self-contained within the Time Capsule, is flexible, and not to difficult (though perhaps a bit tedious). However, it seems that there issues with some versions of Mac OS X not respecting the size limit. I am not clear yet on whether this is a bug or a feature. When moving my sparse bundles to a large Time Capsule, at first they all appeared with the smaller size, but then they were resized to the capacity of the larger Time Capsule.

Those options cover the 'prevention' approach to make sure that no more space is used than allocated. Another approach is to just let it be and then prune backups when needed. This a good way to go if you have a lot of room. I tried this before getting a new Time Capsule but it was just too tight of a squeeze in my case.

1. tmutil - As bmike points out, tmutil can be used to clear out old back ups, but was introduced with Lion so may not be an option for some people.

2. Delete Files - You can delete files from a backup by entering Time Machine, browsing to the file or folder, and selecting the option to delete from backup in the gear icon.

3. Force Thinning - By artificially increasing the backup space required, you can force Time Machine to run its thinning procedure deleting older backups. I attached a large external drive to my mac and removed it from the exclude list in Time Machine options. This allowed me to clear space from one machine's backup image to make room for the others. It worked, but the downside is that it can take a very long time. I imagine tmutil would do this more efficiently.

Be careful with sudo and making sure you pick the correct Mac's files since there is no undo or confirmation of the following command:

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/old_mac_name

The sudo command needs your password (and it won't echo to the screen, so just type it and pause to be sure you're dating the correct files before pressing enter). If you want to be safer, you can pick one snapshot to delete first to be sure the command works as intended. This is nice since it could take hours to clean up some larger backup sets and you want to leave the Mac confident it's deleting the correct information store.

You can use the tmutil tool to delete backups one by one.

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name/YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss

Since tmutil was introduced with Lion, this will not work on earlier OS versions.

If you want to get the current directory of backups (there can be multiple destinations defined and only one will be "current")

sudo tmutil machinedirectory