All Files preference is not really all files?

Question

Time machine must not really back up all files as it says in the preferences, as a significant difference exists in my set-up between file number counts on the drives (both individually and collectively) and what is reported by Time Machine as the contents of the Backup.backupdb file set. Whether or not this is partially accounted for by hidden files (and why would not they be backed-up, too?) is not clear. For example, my System drive reports "using" =105.7 GB, drive B=214.8GB, and drive C=148.9GB, total = 469.4GB. But the Time Machine backup says it is accounting for only 368.4 GB of content of those 3 drives. That about 101 GB left out in the cold, so to speak. All volumes are formatted the same way (Extended and Journaled), and when you add up the file item counts, there is a similar disparity of many hundreds of thousands of files. Even if I count the hidden files, it still is quite a huge difference. An Admin user account has a quite small amount in it, so if other accounts are being ignored, that cannot account for the disparity. What does Time Machine NOT back-up? Why not? Should I be using other software that captures "everything" more completely for serious back-ups?

Answer 1

jansp wrote:
For reasons I cannot explain, I cannot launch any widgets or even get into the Dashboard, even by direct launch attempts.
That's an indication of something else wrong. I'd suggest doing both +Repair Permissions+ and +Verify Disk+ on your internal HD via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Don't be alarmed by the mostly-spurious messages the +Repair Permissions+ will send, but +Verify Disk+ reports errors, you'll have to boot from your Leopard Install disc to fix them. Post back if you need to do this but need help.
So I'm stuck there. Will I have to re-instal the system to get Dashboard running?
That's a separate issue. Let's resolve this one first, if we can, and if the repairs above don't fix it.
(Obviously, I'd want a full back-up before installing a new System, right? So I'm wary of relying on the TM backup less those 101 GB). I checked, no "exclusions" on list. I suppose some of this could be a result of compression or incomplete blocks being more efficiently packed, but really, that much? Also, the file number counts are way off.
TM does not compress data. As posted earlier, your backups should be nearly the size of what's used on your internal HD, but there are automatic exclusions of things you don't need that almost certainly explain the difference. Where are you getting the "file number counts"? The unique structure of TM backups and the way various apps count files aren't always the same.
Please advise on getting the widget to operate. THANKS!
As long as it's now been, the widget most likely won't show your first backup anyway. In fact, they may be gone from your logs entirely, as OSX rotates them out after several days.
So, let's try to look at your logs directly. Use the Console app (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
When it starts, click +Show Log List+ in the toolbar, then navigate in the sidebar that opens up to your /var/log folder, click it's expansion triangle, then find the system.log.0.bz2 etc. files. These are your previous system logs. Select the last one (probably number 7) and click to open it.
It opens at the end (bottom). Look for the date and time of your first backup. If the backup was before the dates in file 7, it's logs are gone. If was earlier than what's in the number 7 file, work back through the files until you find the right time period.
Type backupd in the Filter box in the toolbar. This will select only messages from TM backups, but all run together instead of separately for each run as the widget does. Each run will have a different +Process ID+ (the number enclosed in square brackets after the backupd process name).
Navigate to the +Starting standard backup+ message for the backup, then see what follows. There should be various messages from the backupd process, ending with "Backup completed successfully." Copy and post the whole group here (shouldn't be more than a dozen messages).
PS: I can do a full Retrospect back-up (always have but only weekly) and it does reflect file size and count as expected. Maybe I should just continue that and skip TM?
That's up to you. One of the main advantages of Time Machine is it's very fast hourly incremental backups, giving you an excellent chance of recovering a previous version of a file that you changed or deleted in error (or used Save rather than +Save As+ on), or that somehow got corrupted.