Time Lapse Folder pruning

My Time Lapse folder has reached 209 GB after 24 years of using my DB’s and 9 on this computer (Pan 6). We never make use of Time Lapse and wonder if I can just delete all of the data in the dozen or so folders under Time Lapse in Application Support. Some of them reference temporary file sets that were last used years ago and some are updating as of today.

I tried looking at the slices in the Time Lapse app and deleting “before a certain date” but the error message says it can’t find xxx date and doesn’t do anything. There are two folders last updated in 2015 and 2019 that are 120 GB and 88 GB respectively.

I did just change the setting for Total Recall to never - not sure if that’s where to turn off Time Lapse

Thanks for any guidance, Scott

Total Recall and Time Lapse are different features. Total Recall is basically crash recovery. It periodically saves the state of all your open databases in one large file, which is deleted if Panorama quits normally. If that file still exists when Panorama launches, it knows the last quit was abnormal and gives you the option of resuming from the last state it saved.

Time Lapse preferences can be accessed from the Time Lapse wizard. Choose Global Preferences… from the Setup menu.

I just tested this, and with everything set to zero, it still saves a backup whenever you save, but the next save simply causes that backup to be replaced by a new one.

I also tried removing TIMELAPSEFOLDERS.DAT from the Preferences folder, as well removing the entire TimeLapse folder. Panorama will simply replace them with new ones as soon as you save a database, or open the Time Lapse wizard.

You might want to copy some of the more recent folders to a flash drive or something, and then delete TIMELAPSEFOLDERS.DAT and the TimeLapse folder. Set your Time Lapse Preferences to save fewer backups.

Dave - thank you for testing the different scenarios. I appreciate your insights and contributions to the forum on many topics, too. ~ Scott