First Time Machine backup not the same size as my computers HD

I just completed my first Time Machine backup of my computer's hard drive. I have a 160 GB hard drive (actual capacity = 148.73 GB) with 145.43 GB used. I expected my backup to be the exact same size or darn near close. When I did a "Get Info" on the backup, its size was 62.11 GB. I looked through some of the files of the backup and it LOOKS like its all there but can't be certain of it. I would like to know the answer to this and PLEASE PLEASE DON'T give me the run around! IE: go see this page, go see that page, click this link, etc.! Just give me the answer straight up. I've already been looking all over this forum and at other Time Machine websites and have NOT found a good answer. I would REALLY appreciate just a straight up answer! Thanks!

Would you like me to give you a complete list of every website I have looked at? Would that help? Well, here they are:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427?viewlocale=en_US
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D2.html
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071101005330768
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2655/leopardtime_machine_delete_files_folders_frombackup/
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial &channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=DeletingTime+Machine+backup+files+in+MacOS+X&btnG=GoogleSearch
http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26704/timemachineeditor
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342&start=75
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342&start=0
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D7.html
Those are all the websites I have visited in regards to Time Machine. Other then that, I have for the most part already stated what I have done. Hope that helps.

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How migrate from older time machine backup (not the latest)?

My old Snow Leopard Mac had a dying hard drive. In the last few days, files were disappearing left and right.
I bought a new Lion Mac, but I don't trust the Time Machine backup for the last few days and I would like to migrate the backup from just before the problems started.
I can't figure out any way to do this. Migration Assistant only offers to import the latest backup
And the full Time Machine Restore feature, which DOES allow you to pick a backup, only works on the original machine, which will not boot any more.
Can I somehow trick Migration Assistant by deleting the last few backups from the Time Machine drive and renaming the one I want to use to Latest? (I've made a copy of the entire Time Machine folder just in case...)
Any other way to do this? I'm sure many people are in this situation.

I have this same question. My hard drive died, and the last few Time Machine backups appear to be incomplete or corrupted. New hard drive installed now. Migration Assistant and Setup Assistant first refuse to even recognize my backup drive, then insist on migrating data from the newest backup instead of an older (but definitely complete and reliable) backup. So I haven't migrated anything and am still using my old (OS 10.4) computer until i get this straightened out. Ideas?

Link my Macbook with an existing time machine backup of the same macbook.

I am using time machine via an airport extreme with an external drive. This works fine most of the time. But sometimes time machine loses the connection with the airport extreme. Instead of refinding the backup location I have to set the whole thing up again and the macbook will start a complete new backup instead of taking the existing backup as a starting point. How can I tell time machine to use the ols backup as a starting point?

No. Only those Apps that are not installed on the new will migrate over.

Can I clone and time machine backup on the same external drive?

I recently purchased a WD 2 TB external usb drive. I want to make sure that I have good backups in case my Macbook decides to give up on me. Should I clone a copy of HD or just time machine backup? Can i do both on one external hd?

RobCob wrote:
I'm honestly only concerned about my photos and music.
You can Manually Backup your iPhoto Library and your iTunes Library to an External Drive without addition Software.
How to correctly move your media:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
Early iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD
It is important that the External Hard Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Time Machine backup not completed with error "The disk was not ejected probably..."

I have been using an UBS 3.0 capable external 2.5" hard drive from Lacie to backup my old 21.5" iMac for the last 2 years without problem.
Recently I bought the new late 2013 27" iMac running 10.8.5 and try to migrate the data from the Time Machine backup without success. After a while, Mountain Lion complained with the below error and only data before this message appear were migrated. When I connected the same disk back to my old iMac and ran disk utility, everything looks fine and I was able to complete the TM backup. Eventually, I managed to migrate the data using network copy, instead of TM backup.
Now that my new iMac is back online and I tried to setup Time Machine backup using the same 2.5" Lacie drive, the same error message appeared again in the middle of TM backup (after 3 minutes).
Wonder if anyone ran into the same issue and if there is an issue with the UBS 3.0 port on the new iMac, or there is a work around to this problem.
Any help or pointer would be highly appreciated.
Cheers,
Richard

The system is losing connection with the drive for some reason, likely because the drive is losing power and unmounting, but there could be other reasons as well. Do you have access to an external power supply for the drive? If so then connect tthat so it is not relying on the USB bus power to keep the drive running. I have also found this to happen with some USB 3.0 enclosures, and it appears to be a compatibility issue with them and Apple's USB 3.0 drivers, so another option is to get a USB 2.0 hub and use that for the connection. Things will not run at USB 3.0 speeds, but the drives will not continually disconnect.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

The initial Time Machine backup can certainly take a long time over wireless. Days, possibly. It's impossible for anyone here to be able to predict how long it will take, and wireless environmental conditions can change at any time.
Is there antivirus software running in the background
Only you can determine that. If you're using third party AV software, anything is possible.
NAS devices may not be compatible with Time Machine, regardless of what their manufacturers may claim. Even after the Time Machine backup completes, your backup may be unreliable. You may not discover that until you need to rely upon the backup for some reason, and corruption can occur months or years from now.
Time Machine supports the following backup configurations:
A locally mounted volume
Time Capsule
A volume resident on a USB hard disk connected directly to a Time Capsule or current production AirPort Extreme Base Station.
That's it. Any configuration other than the above list places you in an experimental category. If your backup fails, you're on your own.

HT3275 Time Machine backup not completed because "the backup disk image ....sparsebundle already in use"

Time Machine backup not completed because the "backup disk image"/Volumes/Data/MacBookAir.sparsebundle" is already in use. ??

Reboot the TC.. this is most common issue since Mountain Lion.
Look at the More Like This just on the right column.

Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine Backups". The backup disk is not available.

I have received an error message today - Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine Backups". The backup disk is not available.
I am using a WD 1.5tb Help!!! Everything is on there and the files are not showing. The WD SmartWare icon is on the Desktop but the Time Machine icon is not. When I save a file I open the Time Machine file and save it in there. What do I do? How do I get my files back?? I do not keep anything on the macbook pro. Help PLEASE!!!

Hi Yaann,
Thank you for your reply. Yes I did try that, but no luck.
After several hours of calls to a very unhelpful WD and further calls to Applecare, there was nothing anyone could do. Out of frustration when holding the WD 1.5TB hard drive, I smacked it (NOT recommended). Well, to my surprise the WD reappeared on my devices list. Let me tell you, I pulled my files off as fast as I could on to my MacBook Pro. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I confirmed that everything transferred back to the MacBook Pro fine. I spoke with the Applecare tech and he talked me through the set up on a new Lacie hard drive.
What I can say is that after further research into external hard drives and now personal experience - Lacie is the top of the line and you get what you pay for. I would NEVER ever recommend a WD to anyone. Given one, I would still through it away.
I was LUCKY.
I must say the support and understanding I received from Applecare was outstanding!! I would never own a apple product without applecare and from long term experience it is worth every penny.
All the best,

Time Machine Backup error - The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1).

I am getting a Time Machine backup error "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Extreme.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)."
Then a Finder window pops up with the backup directory in it. When I open it I see all the backups that were completed successfully and then the one there is simply always shows the data and .inProgress. I thought that maybe if I could delete the one that is perpetually in progress it would start a new one and run fine, but I won't let me delete it.

Reboot the TC.. or go to the 5.6 utility.. and disconnect all users.. to force it to reconnect.
C17 in troubleshooting.. to give more specifics to Kappy's comment.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Unable to access time machine backup. The folder "Documents" can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents.

My MacBook Pro with 750GB storage refuses to startup due to a problem with logic board (unfortunately I'm in Singapore and there is no Apple store here and zero customer support). I'm trying to access some of the files from the time machine back-up using my MacBook Air with 120GB storage, but I'm unable to open the backup. I receive an error message "you don't have permission to see its contents". Unable to access time machine backup. The folder “Documents” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.
I don't really want to migrate the data from the time machine to the MacBook Air as I simply don't have sufficient storage space on the MacBook Air. The iPhoto library which I'm trying to access is 200GB, which is more than the size of the MacBookAir.
Is there any way I can view the photos and documents stored on the time machine backup.
Thank you very much.

When you setup the Mac, you created a Admin user account with say name X
You ran Migration Assistant and it migrated user Y from the Windows machine.
User Y has different permissions than User X.
User X can't normally access User Y's account.
So what you do is log out of User X via the Apple menu and into User Y, this way you have permission to access the files.
If you want to transfer files from User Y to User X account
Transfer files between user accounts on the same machine instructions
Finder > Go menu > Computer
A window appears with your boot drive, double click on it to open
Inside is Users folder, double click to open it
Inside is your User accounts, double click on the one you want to send files too
Double click on the Public folder drop the files into the DropBox folder,
The permissions will change and can be used in the other user account when you log into it and moved to the appropriate folders.
Applications are typically installed and kept in the Applications folder which is a global access folder all users can access to run them from, but not all users can modify unless they are a Admin user.
Windows programs won't run on a Mac, but they can be instaled into a virtual machine program that is running Windows.
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?

First time machine backup from MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011) on time capsule is extremely slow - unusable!

I recently bought a Time Capsule 2TB.
First I set it up to create a new wifi network parallel to my existing wifi network. The first Time Machine backup on my MBP 13 connected via ethernet cable finished overnight (under 10 hrs for about 150 GB), as expected.
Then I found that my MBP was logging into my old network more often than to the time capsule network so that backups were not being made regularly. So I re-configured the Time Capsule to extend the exisitng network - all fine. Except that now Time Machine said it couldn't find the existing backup. After trying logging out and in, etc. I eventually deleted that sparsebundle to force Time Machine to start again new.
Now I get an estimated time of 2 - 3 days for the first backup - even via ethernet cable. Sometimes it hangs up and says something like 4000 days... I can't afford to hook my MBP up to the time capsule or even stay at home for this time to let it finish, and I know it should be faster than that!
I've tried a few of the tips I found so far in the forums, such as excluding my home folder from Spotlight, or even turning Spotlight off, but nothing has helped so far. Perhaps I missed some important step on the way.
Can anyone give me a reliable step by tep method to solve this problem. I don't want a geeky workaround, I want to plug in (o better, be in my wifi network) and make the backup work like Time Machine is supposed to do it. And I would like to keep on using Spotlight, too.
Thanks in advance!
Robin

Unless you have a desktop Mac you can back up to over your network, your choices are:
Spend a bunch on a Time Capsule, kind of a waste if you already have a wireless router.
Spend $100 or so on an external HD and have some inconvenience until Iomega updates.
Risk losing all your data.
It's your call, but a no-brainer to me.
Better: get a portable external. Once you get the Iomega working, start making regular "clones" to the portable and take it off-site so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, etc.

Why does power nap time machine backup not work on my August 2012 macbook pro retina?

Hello. I got a MacBook Pro with retina display in August of this year 2012. I have done the SMC ? firmware update and I have 10.8.2 installed on my machine. Power nap still doesn't seem to work. I have the button in energy saver preferences and I have clicked it so it looks like power nap should work. When I am running Time Machine backup with the time capsule and I close the lid (plugged into power) it appears that no progress is made when I reopen the lid. I have closed the lid with activity monitor running and with network displayed. When I reopen the lid it may take up to one minutes to come out of sleep. When it does come out of sleep I can see that there has been no network traffic. Eventually, time machine backup resumes and I can see several megabytes per second. When I closed the lid overnight, just to make sure backup didn't restart after lid closing, I saw that no progress had been made in backup when I reopened the lid.
What options are left if I already have 10.8.2 and I have done the required firmware? One person has mentioned a clean install but I really don't like to have to reenter all the different passwords and all the different preferences again unless that's absolutely necessary. Are there any other options left to try before a clean install?
One other bit of information. I have filevault turned on; however, it looks like others have a working power nap even with file vault enabled. If this is not an option, the power nap button should be grayed out when the machine is in filevault.
Thank you for any help.

Yeah I still have the same problem BTW; it still does not work.
The second I open the lid and take it out of sleep mode, it starts to backup automagically, but when it's sleeping EVEN when it's connected to AC power, TM backups do NOT work to my OS X Server.
I don't understand what the problem is here.
I didn't before but I do have FileVault turned on now -- should that make a difference?
In either situation it didn't work, but now that I think about it, I could understand why it wouldn't backup while asleep. Apparently the encrypted volume will stay encrypted during sleep and even at the lock screen; it's not until you open the lid and log in from the lock screen that it will unlock the encrypted boot volume.
But even still, I did *not* have FV turned on before, and this still did not work.
Is there some third party solution that can do what I want this to do?
Here's my use case:
1.) I have a mac mini at home that I use when I'm at home; it runs OS X server.app (bought and paid for) and has TM server turned on.
2.) I have a laptop that I mainly use at work and I don't use at all when I come home (ie. when I'm ready to head home for the day I close the lid and don't open it until I'm back at work the next day, but the laptop does come home with me every day).
What I want to have happen is this:
1.) The minute my laptop enters my home wifi lan (even though it's still asleep with lid closed) I want it to automatically backup the boot drive.
I thought that's what Power Nap was supposed to do, but then I found out that in order for this to work, you have to be connected to AC power; so then I tried that -- ie. every day I come home, I put my laptop in a docking station that has AC power, but TM backups while lid closed / sleeping STILL do not occur!
Thanks for your help everyone...Looking forward to a solution that works.
EDIT:
I found this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4158709
"It looks like Power Nap doesn't perform Time Capsule backups when the MacBook Air screen is closed."
So apparently that is yet *another* requirement to get powernap working. The lid can not be closed.
What is the difference between sleep with lid open and sleep with lid closed!?

Why is Time machine backup not working after Mavericks upgrade?

Why is Time machine backup not working after Mavericks upgrade?

I had the same problem due to the Fire Wire port. Apple tested it told me it is OK!, I tried a new cable, and have tested both ports on my back up device. I find it strange that as soon as I installed Mavericks. The drive does work using USB. It could be a coincidence, I don't absolutely know at this point, my back up drive ports could stop working, but I doubt it!

Doing a first time machine backup with OS X 10.8.3. Taking For Ever. Have a 24g flash drive and only 21 g to back up. What to do?

This is a brand new MacBook Pro. This would be the first time machine backup being done on it. Is that why it is too slow?

Note that a 24 GB flash drive is completely inadequate to use effectively with Time Machine. It will probably run out of space very quickly. You want at least 2-3 times more space on your backup drive than what you are backing up. Or you want to choose some other backup app that does not do incremental backups.
Get yourself a good hard drive. 200 GB would be cheap and would give you more than enough space to store many months (maybe years) of backups, unless what is being backed up grows significantly.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Does a Time Machine backup include the Apple_Boot Recovery HD?

I've done a Time Machine backup with the Apple_Boot Recover HD on my internal drive. (Mid 2011 MacBook Air - OS X version 10.7.2 - single user)
Two questions:
Did the Time Machine backup include the Apple_Boot Recovery HD?
If I subsequently need to restore the backup will Time Machine recreate the Apple_Boot Recovery HD on the internal drive?
Thanks in advance for your help,

If you run the command "diskutil list" in terminal, it will show if you have the rescue partition on your disk or not:-
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.2 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot                         650.0 MB   disk2s3
if you see the "Apple_Boot 650.0 MB" then you have the rescue partition.
I have just restored my machine from a Time Machine backup, and the Apple_Boot partition has dissapeared.

First Time Machine backup not the same size as my computers HD

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