Absurd Time Machine Error - any ideas?

Hi everyone. I'm getting a repeated error on a "Failed" Time Machine backup:
"This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 38.88 GB but only 575.8 MB are available."
Does this ring any bells out there? The backup is to an external LaCie USB drive. Thanks in advance...

How much free space is actually on the backup drive? According to the error it's only 576 MB (Megabytes.) The backup requires 39 GBs (Gigabytes.) A GB is 1,000 MBs, so according to the error you don't have sufficient space.

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