[Dogsbreath]

I use Hazel. I have it set up to keep the backups for a week then bin them if any older.

It is the most glaring error in OF and I am surprised that it still hasn't been tackled. If you have Hazel though it won't matter a jot!

[avandelay]

Originally Posted by Brian

Reminder: to request features, email the support ninjas; we do browse the forums as we're able, but we can't guarantee that every thread will get looked at by folks on a particular team.

I just sent an e-mail requesting some sensible limit on backups -- everyone here who agrees should do the same.

[Fiona]

Hi folks..

Its been a long time since I posted here. But I read here often. Thanks for all the wisdom that is shared here for the benefit of passive forum folk like myself. :-)

I'm not in the know at all about databases etc and Applescripts are another planet as far as I'm concerned.... but I do recall wondering when I first started with OF where all of my old tasks went... I guess I thought, 'to some happy tasking ground in the sky'..

I didn't know I was busy adding and adding to an ever increasing DB though... I am one of those folk who like to keep files, etc as minimalistic as possible.... but I wouldn't have a clue how to prune one back.. whee would I start? Surely OF give advice about this somewhere?

[Brian]

Happy to help! Pick one of your Macs, then run the "Archive old data" command - it moves completed actions and projects into a secondary (non-syncing) database on that Mac.

I'd also recommend setting up a repeating action to do that once a month, or on whatever frequency you prefer. (There won't be much benefit from doing it more frequently, but every 2/3/X months would work just fine.)

[DragonPensando]

Hi Brian. I've being reading this thread, and couldn't understand why OF keeps so many backup files, but it seems that for some reason you are not going to change that, so I guess I'll have to get used to clean the backups manually (I have backups that are more than an year old).

So, my question is: can I safely delete all my OF backups, except the 2 or 3 last ones?

[Brian]

Backups don't depend on each other, no, but depending on your backup settings keeping only 2 or 3 may only give you a couple hours' protection if you accidentally delete something you wish you hadn't.

Personally, I'd keep at least a weeks' worth around, but I'm pretty paranoid with regards to my data.

[DragonPensando]

OK, thanks Brian.

[DragonPensando]

I'm trying to improve the way I use OF, so don't be surprised if during the next days-weeks, I keep posting questions.

[boodster]

I found this thread when I was googling for another problem I am having with deleting backups, which is that it takes forever for my trash folder to empty when I do clean out my backups.

This morning, for example, I moved about fifty old OF backups to my trash folder (probably about 300 Mb in total), and then waited for about an hour for the trash to empty.

Why is this? I can delete over 18 Gb of old movies in about a minute, so why should it take so long to clean out OF files? It only happens with OF, so the problem can't be system wide.

Anyone else experienced this, or have any ideas?

[Brian]

I think I know what's going on here, Boodster - when a file is deleted, the information isn't actually removed. What happens is that the space on disk that file occupies is added to a list of spots that new files can be written to. The amount of space the file takes up isn't that big an influence on how long it takes.

What matters a lot more is the number of files - and in the case of an OmniFocus backup, what looks to you like a single file is actually a container for a collection of files. (You can see this by control-clicking an OmniFocus backup, then choosing "Show Package Contents" from the menu that appears.)

That said, an hour to delete 50 backups is a lot longer than I'd expect. If you contact our support ninjas, we'd be happy to investigate this with you.