Pardon if this is a dumb question, but: Is it possible to delete the very first Timeshift snapshot in order to recover disk space, or must it be kept in case a restore is necessary? My very first snapshot was created back in Nov 2025 while using 17.3. I'm now using 18.1. I run "D" "daily snapshots" and keep five of them, and I have done one "O" = "on demand" since upgrading to 18.1
hmm yes you can.. i have mine being stored on the 2nd nvme but i think if you open files then other locations then zorin os you will see the timeshift folder open the snapshot folder in there i think you have the be in administrator to remove the ones ya want gone if you have nautlus installed you can right click the snapshot folder to see open as admin then open it and remove them
depending on how big they are it may take some time for them to delete you will see that in lower left on the screen in the files area they do have dates on them to help finding ones your looking for
It's better to remove them from timeshift directly...
2 Likes
You do what you want but removing manually like that it's really not a good idea...
I'm pretty much a noob, but I'm a big fan of Timeshift, and use it before I do any sort of major installation (e.g. new kernel, Clamav, anything that has the potential to disrupt my system and I won't know how to uninstall it). Personally I don't see a point in keeping very old images, especially of a previous version which is likely of no great value anyway, Zorin having moved on so much. If you absolutely have to go back to the beginning, it's no big deal to start from scratch - and I know, having done it many times over the past eight months... 
Inside the Timeshift app it does take a long time to delete - much like Windows cleaning the disk, hunting around for dependencies, I guess. Deleting it as administrator is faster, but I don't know if that messes up the incremental backups - but again, it's probably obsolete.
Me, I'd just get rid of it. It's too old to spend time worrying about. Just my five cents...
I agree delete from within Timeshift also much easier.
Right click the snapshot and choose Delete (immediate) or Mark for Deletion (removes next run).
Yes, that's exactly what I did, i.e. - went into Timeshift, right-clicked and selected Delete in order to recover disk space. My question was whether deleting the very first, original snapshot was safe to do after upgrading from 17.3 to 18.1 and subsequently doing an "O" = "On Demand" snapshot after upgrade?
For the "open as administrator" function in the context menu of nautilus it is required to install the nautilus-admin package first with
sudo apt install nautilus-admin
I've never done a restore using Timeshift, so I can't say for sure. However, as I understand it, the individual snapshots are independent of one another and do not build on each other, and each one can restore the system (with or without /home as setup in your timeshift settings), so you can delete any snapshots you no longer need.
However, if you want to revert to the state it was in during the original installation, it would be a good idea to keep the first snapshot.
Thanks, that was the answer I was looking for 
1 Like
I hope I didn't write anything wrong. You'd better wait for someone to confirm it.
No it's right...
1 Like
I also recommend that you drop from 5 snapshots a day to just 3.
I've just checked the properties of my 8 Timeshift images. You're right. I've seen it confirmed in other posts that if you install the OS and then restore a Timeshift backup then you're fully back to where you were at that point. My comment about dependencies is clearly wrong.
ive done a restore from timeshift its why i put them on a different drive so if i cant get in to Zorin i can reinstall it to main drive then point timeshift to drive i use and it see the timeshifts i created and then i hit restore and it has saved me several times as well as saved time redoing/setting everything up..if it ever did fail i also use rescuezilla and have a clone drive as a plan B
2 Likes
You are correct on both counts.
I know exactly how you feel, everytime I used Timeshift to make backups, it wouldn't stop, till it filled up a 1TB drive. I then thought, maybe if I limit the number of backups it does, it would fix that issue. Nope, it just took awhile, but it eventually maxed out the drive again, so I just gave up and stopped using Timeshift.
But yes, you can indeed delete your backups, though I know it doesn't make it easy to do.
Here's something which sort of confuses me. I have 22 Timeshift images (don't ask - new installation, over-careful, haven't got round to reducing them). Each one is composed of a 20GB folder, so 22x20GB = 440GB, right? But Disk Usage Analyser shows 26GB total for the Timeshift folder, so clearly it and Timeshift are smart enough to count only unique changed files - deltas. Am I missing something or is deleting a folder actually recovering very little disk space, not the multi-gigabyte that you would expect.
Thanks for your response. I don't do five snapshots per day. I do one Daily "D" snapshot and keep five Daily "D" snapshots.