TidBITS Blog Post: Prune Your Time Machine Backups...
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Selective Pruning of Your Time Machine Backups
Time Machine users, rejoice! Pierce T. Wetter III has provided a modified version of the GrandPerspective utility (see "GrandPerspective and WhatSize Identify Disk Pigs," 2007-10-12) - a version that understands the use of file and folder hard links peculiar to a Time Machine backup.
You can use this modified GrandPerspective to scan your entire Time
Machine backup folder. For one thing, this tells you immediately how
big your Time Machine backup really is (something that's surprisingly
hard to find out otherwise). But, even more important, you can now look
for large files that are either (1) one-time entries you didn't really
need backed up, or (2) repeated backups of some large, occasionally
changing file. For example, in this screen shot, the large file
selected, artsyPhotos.ivc, is unnecessarily backed up three times (it's
the same as the large green file in the center and at the top-center of
the picture).
