Today I noticed that the hard drive LED is constantly on.

Introduction

TimeShift is a program for automatically saving the state of the operating system on disk according to a schedule. The state of the OS can be restored by the user at will to the date of the so-called “snapshot”. Which must first be created - manually or automatically according to a schedule. With the Linux EXT4 file system, the method of creating a snapshot of the state is rsync (copying), and with BTRFS, the more time- and disk-space-efficient BTRFS method. My filesystem is EXT4, so the only way to copy is "rsync". Creating a backup copy of the EXT4 file system reduces the amount of free space and causes high load on the hard drive.

1. Finding out the reason for the high load on the hard drive

To find out a program that intensively uses the hard drive, I ran the utility iotop which I installed earlier

sudo apt update
sudo apt install iotop

You need to launch iotop as a superuser using the command sudo iotop or in a superuser session after the command su -:

su -
iotop

The iotop command showed me many, specifically 2 processes simultaneously copying data, with the names timeshift and various call parameters.

2. Stopping running Timeshift processes

Stopping the process from the graphical utility Start - Administration - Timeshift will not work if the snapshot creation process has already begun.
Therefore it is necessary to remove, i.e. Force termination of running timeshift processes:

killall timeshift

3. Disable Timeshift schedule

In the graphics utility Start - Administration - Timeshift

you need to go to the settings and uncheck all the options for creating a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. snapshot.

If no schedule is specified, Timeshift assumes the "disabled" state.

4. Cleaning the Timeshift folder

If snapshots were created in the TimeShift program, they can be deleted in the Start menu -> Administration -> Timeshift utility.
But this will not help clean up the disk from an incompletely created snapshot, the creation of which was interrupted.

First, let's find out which drive the pictures are saved to. This can be seen in the Timeshift utility in the Settings menu - tab "Place".
Or with the command:

timeshift --list-devices

If the first lines indicate
Mounted '/dev/sdb5' at '/run/timeshift/76012/backup'- this means saving pictures is configured for the device /dev/sdb5.

Compare with command output lsblk- device name for the root folder.

lsblk | grep /$

For example, if
└─sdc1 8:33 0 111.8G 0 part /
This means that the root folder "/" of this operating system is located on the device "/dev/sdc1".

*If the location saving snapshots Timeshift is located in the same place as the root folder "/"(for example, disk /dev/sda5), execute the command from the root superuser context:

rm -r /timeshift

*If the location saving pictures Timeshift and the root folder "/" are different devices(for example, the Timeshift device is /dev/sdb5, and the “root” of the file system is on the disk /dev/sda5), execute the commands from the root context:

mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt
rm -r /mnt/timeshift
umount /dev/sdb5
exit

Where /dev/sdb5 is the name of the device on which TimeShift snapshots are saved.

5. How to find out the size of a folder in Linux

You can find out the total size of a folder with subfolders and files with the command:

du -sh folder

where folder is the name of the directory, for example /mnt/timeshift or /timeshift .

Since I interrupted the process, I will not be able to find out the maximum size of the timeshift folder. Its size depends on the settings on the “Users” and “Filters” tabs (inclusions and exclusions) and on a recently installed operating system it is about 30 GB. In any case, snapshot creation can be done not according to a schedule, but manually in the "Start" menu -> "Administration" -> Timeshift or from the command line of a Terminal window.

Addition from 03/18/2026 - manual creation and deletion of snapshots of the Linux operating system using timeshift from the command line.

6. Manually creating a snapshot and restoring the OS state by calling timeshift from the command line

The following commands must be run as superuser (su -), or using sudo or from the initial boot menu in recovery mode ("root").

To take a photo manually:

timeshift --create

First, the program will determine the size of the operating system files ("Estimating system size...") - it takes 2-5 minutes. Then it will immediately begin creating a snapshot in a folder like /run/timeshift/33228/backup.

To create a snapshot on another storage device, you need to use an additional key --target-device indicating the device name. For example:

timeshift --create --target-device /dev/sdc5

To restore from a snapshot manually:

timeshift --restore

The program will promptly request a backup storage device "backup device" in dialog mode and offer a list of snapshots for restoring the OS state, if they exist on the specified device.

To view available images, use the command

timeshift --list

"Advanced options for ... Linux" -> "recovery mode" -> "root (Drop to root shell prompt)".

7. Manually delete a picture or all pictures

To delete a photo:

timeshift --delete

To delete all pictures:

timeshift --delete-all

Links:

• https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift (GitHUB website may not open on different providers).
• https://ru.linux-terminal.com/?p=4050 - how to use TimeShift in Russian (the website opens in the Russian Federation).

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