How many GB does a typical Time Machine backup have?

I have always backep up my Mac to a 500GB external USb hard drive (Seagate, pretty small). It is only filled up about 90 GB so far and its been about a year. (my backups are NOT every day, mostly every two weeks. Every backup is about 2-3 GB and takes 10-15 minutes to complete.
I recently got a Seagate GoFlex Home for wireless backups. However, my first backup says over 200 GB to back up with a wait itme of 7-8 hours. This doesn't seem right... Am I doing something wrong?
I also still haven't found out a way to transfer my old Time Machine Backups to the new GoFlex.
It's backing up right now, and I am continuing to do so until I get a reply that says I shouldn't be. If anyone has an answer, please reply A.S.A.P.
Please Help.
Thanks in advance.

Well I cancelled this backup already, to figure out the prolem first.
Via the Widget, this is what i have so far:
Starting manual backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/GoFlex%20Home%20Backup
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/GoFlex Home Backup-1 using URL: afp://[email protected]/GoFlex%20Home%20Backup
Disk image /Volumes/GoFlex Home Backup-1/Andrew's Mac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Andrew_MAC
Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Finished scan
Found 60626 files (195.01 GB) needing backup
235.04 GB required (including padding), 1.66 TB available
Copied 26836 files (1.62 GB) from volume Andrew_MAC.
Backup canceled.
Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/GoFlex Home Backup-1/Andrew's Mac.sparsebundle
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Could the 200 GB backup be because i changed the name of my home folder and now its backing up the permissions changes of all of the files?

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How many ways to restore from time machine backup

I inadvertantly reformated an external hard drive with my iPhoto library. I have it backed up with time machine but am having trouble getting to the backup from time machine while iphoto is open. Never shows any backups.
There is device called Time Machine Backups in Finder.From there I follow a path backups.backupdb/<computer name>/2012-06-02-222911/Pictures/Pictures/iPhoto Library which from the size and date modified looks like my iPhoto Library. Can I simply copy this file to my newly formatted drive to restore? Is there someplace that explains in greater detail than help what the meaning of the device "Time Machine Backups" and the contents are?

Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I can't imagine anything TMwise not covered.

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

The section titled "Restoring data from Time Machine backups" in the following may help: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

HT201250 How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

TS1211 I lost one calendar from my Mac Osx 10.5.8 system on G4 how can I find it from time machine backup?

I lost one calendar from my Mac Osx 10.5.8 system on G4 how can I find it from time machine backup?
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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5176639

Time machine backups have slowed considerably since my installation of Mavericks -- why?

Ever since installation of Mavericks, time machine backups have slowed to a crawl. The message preparing backup used to to take 10 seconds to a minute, now it takes 5 minutes. The status of the backup used to show 10mb's of 80 mb's backed up, and take under 1 minute, now it takes 5 minutes. Finally cleaning up notice, and the time to clean up has increased significantly. My backups go to an external HD (7200rpm) connected vis firewire 800, that has approx 180 gigabytes available of its 1 terrabybyte capacity.

I upgraded to Mountain Lion a few weeks ago. Everything was fine with Time Machine until a few of days ago.
Same problem others described: extremely slow, taking hours to back up just a few MB.
I verified the Time Capsule drive and my Mac hard drive - no problems found.
I then erased the Time Capsule and started Time Machine. It did the full backup in a fairly reasonable amount of time (several hours, but not unexpectedly long).
When it started its first incremental backup, it reverted to the same problem: extremely slow, but it did finish eventually.
I then shut down the Mac and restarted (power cycled) the Time Capsule. Then I started up the Mac and told Time Machine to back up now. It backed up 30+ MB in just a few minutes, so it seems back to normal. We'll see how it goes when the next scheduled backup starts up.
But you might try rebooting the Time Capsule (and your Mac).
By the way, when it was in the middle of the extremely slow backup, I disabled Norton Anti-virus and it didn't seem to speed it up any. But I left it disabled after I rebooted the Time Capsule and had a successful incremental backup, so I'm not sure yet if Norton is a factor.

How do I back up a Time Machine Backup

I recently had to reformat the external drive that I use for Time Machine's backup. In the course of doing so, I wiped out several months of TM backup.
What did I need to do to save TM's backup to, say. a CD, so that I might have restored it to its pre-reformat condition? Would it be sufficient to turn off TM, save out the external drive's Backups.backupdb folder, restore that folder to the reformatted drive, and then turn TM on again? Are there other files that need to be saved for this to work or anything else that needs to be done?

Peter Sims wrote:
I recently had to reformat the external drive that I use for Time Machine's backup. In the course of doing so, I wiped out several months of TM backup.
What did I need to do to save TM's backup to, say. a CD, so that I might have restored it to its pre-reformat condition? Would it be sufficient to turn off TM, save out the external drive's Backups.backupdb folder, restore that folder to the reformatted drive, and then turn TM on again? Are there other files that need to be saved for this to work or anything else that needs to be done?
SuperDuper allows a TM backup to be backed up.
v2.5 now available!
The latest version of SuperDuper! can store a bootable backup alongside Time Machine backups, copy Time Machine backups to other drives, run scheduled copies on demand, and polishes and improves many other aspects as well...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

How can I tell if my Time Machine backups are encrypted?

Hi - I would really appreciate it if someone could help me find out if my Time Machine backps are actually encrypted.
I know that there is an 'encryption' option when choosing a disc for Time Machine to backup to, but the problem is I cannot remember whether or not I actually ticked it (as it was a couple of years ago).
Other info that might be helpful:
- The disk I use Time Machine to backup to is actually a Apple Time Capsule
- I do have FileVault2 enabled on my mac
- I have never encrypted the Time Capsule disc itself (via Disk Utility or anything similar)
- One possible clue might be: When I go into Time Machine preferences, and click on 'Select Disk...' (as if to choose another disk to back up to), and select the disc that Time Machine currently backs up to (i.e. the Time Capsule disc), it does show an 'Encrypt backups' checkbox at the bottom of the window... however this checkbox is unchecked and also greyed out.
Thanks in advance
a_quinn

a_quinn wrote:
- Because I originally created this Time Machine Backup (to the Time Capsule) back in my 'OS X Lion' days,
I wondered; you posted in the Mountain Lion forum, but your profile still says Lion.
that means that my backups now (and moving forward) will continue to be un-encrypted
Correct (as of now, anyway). You cannot encrypt existing network backups. I doubt that will be available in the future, and would take forever.
- The only way to encyrpt my backups now, moving forward, is to remove this Time Capsule disc (from Time Machine Preferences), and start all over again ensuring that I check the checkbox next to 'Encrypt Backup' when selecting the Time Capsule's disc to backup to.
Well, in theory it's possible, but would take forever, squared.
You could archive the TC's contents to a USB drive connected to it, per #Q6 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule).
Then delete the original, start a backup with encryption, and as soon as the encrypted sparse bundle is created, cancel the backup.
Mount the sparse bundle, open the disk image, and delete the Backups.backupdb folder inside it.
Connect the USB drive to your Mac, mount that sparse bundle, open its disk image, and copy the Backups.backupdb folder to the one on the TC.
Depending on how large the sparse bundle is, that could easily take a couple of days, at least, even connected via Ethernet.
Just for testing one day, I encrypted a very small set of existing test backups on a F/W 800 drive - 6 dated backups using a whole 12 GB. Took an hour.
An alternative would be, just do the "archive" and keep the USB drive "on the shelf" for a while. You can always connect it to your Mac and access those backups via the Browse Other Backup Disks option.
Trying to keep a couple of years worth of backups usually isn't a good idea. It's a very complex structure, so the odds of damage increase, it takes much longer to populate the TM browser, and it works slower and slower, and if you didn't need something for 6 months, are you really going to need it in 2 years?

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

Time Capsule: How can one limit size of Time Machine Backup?

So there appears to be no easy way of partitioning the hard drive in Time Capsule. If this is so how does one limit the size of the Time Machine backups folders?
I want to use the hard drive to act as a normal storage device for various files but I understand that Time Machine will keep on increasing the size of the backups folder until it eventually runs out of space on the hard drive partition. Since one cannot re-partition the hard drive how can Time Machine be allotted only a specific portion of the hard drive? I don't want the hard drive to be filled with Time Machine backup folders.

Thanks BSP. Yes I am aware of the ability to limit the folders that TM backs up. I use this capability, But that certainly is not the solution I want.
I have not bought Time Capsule and probably will not buy it unless Apple fix this 'problem' and make the hard drive in TC behave like any other hard drive.
Why is it that Apple comes up with innovative designs which are let down by being 'crippled' in some way? Apple TV is another good example; can you steam from DVD Player? No. Can one steam a presentation directly from Keynote? No. With a little more thought Apple's products would be great. But, alas, this is not the case.

Miggration assistant does not see time machine backup disk

I recently had a power surge that fried my hard disk. Erased the disk, reinstalled Mountain Line and when I get tot he dialogue box for Migrating all my setting and files etc from my Time Machine Backup it cannot see the disk. It sees the Bootabel backup I made on a partition on that disk but not all my Time Machine Back-ups. The bootable disk is in Lion not Mountain line and does not contain all the latest settings, applications etc. How can I get to the latest Time Machine Back-ups? Help Please!

See Pondini's Excellent information here...
Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC
Also See the Second Chance to Use Setup Assistant here...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/SetupLion.html

Lion ate my Entourage folders. How to import to Mail from Time Machine backup?

Hello,
I upgraded to Lion after doing a Time Machine backup. Entourage is now not supported and I'm up and running on Mail except I don't have my old e-mails that I stored in subfolders. Many were important/current items that I need, help!

Ok so after you entered the Terminal command, did you open Finder and see your user Library folder? If so, you should be able to find your Mail folder inside Library. You should then be able to open Time Machine by right clicking the Time Machine icon in the upper right part of your menu bar and selecting Enter Time Machine. Once inside Time Machine you should be able to navigate to your user Library folder then the Mail folder.

Mavericks Migration assistant does not see time machine backup of older Lion Mac

Used to have a Macbook Pro. It was stolen (circa July 2014). Luckily I had up to date Time Machine Backups. The Macbook Pro was completely up to date running the latest OSX Lion (circa July 2014) when stolen.
Bought a new Macbook Air just now (Mar 2015).
Plugged in the old Mac's Time Machine Backup Disk, Migration Assistant doesn't see the old Mac's Backups.
So I setup the new Macbook Air without restoring.
Plugged in old backup drive, am able to navigate to old Mac's Time Machine Backups.
Tried running Migration Assistant many time , but still it does not see the the old Mac's Time Machine Backups. (although they continue to show in the drive if I navigate to it)
Pls help so I can migrate the old Mac to the new Mac!!!!

Thanks Turbostar.
Well, I think there should be solution to use TIME CAPSULE restore as it should I mean I bought Time Capsule because it is easy to use and I really do not want to solve any issues or make any workarounds.
I think APPLE should resolve this ASAP. Meantime maybe anybody knows any trick about this issue?

Post Lion: How to get access to old Time Machine backups?

Hi,
I did a clean install of Lion. Before doing this, I cloned my Snow Leopard Macintosh HD onto another partition. After installing, I ran Time Machine using the same HDD for my previous SL install. Time machine must have recognised I am running the same hardware laptop, and renamed the folder under Backups.backupdb. It created new backups, but left my SL backups alone. When I enter time machine, I can view all my backups from the Lion install, but the rest are all greyed out.
If I bootup into my old SL partition and access Time Machine, do I risk corrupting the Lion backups? If yes, is there another way to access these backups from Time Machine on SL? I've tried moving the folders under Backups.backupdb but they are protected.
The reason I want to do this is I want to run both OSs for a while, until all my apps are Lion compatible.
Many Thanks,
Prashant.

_prashantp wrote:
I did a clean install, which is why I have this issue.
That's correct.
When you erased the drive, it got a new UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier), so even if it has the same name, it's treated as a different drive, and the "old" one is no longer connected.
You can still view the old backups. See #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
EDIT: Sorry, I misread your post. You have two volumes being backed-up, both connected. Use the same procedure to look at the volume you want.
One caution; if you have the Lion drive being backed-up by Snow Leopard, and use any of the apps that use Autosave and Versions, the backups will fail because of the hidden /.DocumentRevisions-V101 folder on the Lion volume (and the /.MobileBackups folder). Either exclude those folders or your whole Lion volume from Time Machine on Snow Leopard.
Similarly, if you use any of those apps on Lion to edit any files on the Snow Leopard volume, it will create a /.DocumentRevisions-V101 folder on the Snow Leopard drive, too.

How can I delete all the Time Machine backups to make room for more? And how do I force the trash to empty?

I moved a bunch of my husband's files from his Macbook (which is dieing) to my iMac. I created a user for him on my iMac so he'd be able to keep his stuff separate from mine. All is working great except my Time Machine is now unable to backup. The total of used space on my hard drive (including the recently added user's files) is about 420 GB. The amount of capacity of my external hard drive is 999GB. I think Time Machine failed because there was all of a sudden so much more data and a new full backup would be more than the unused capacity of the HD? Regardless I don't need any old backups. I have all my files and all his files. So I moved all the backups from the external HD to the trash. Apparently that's a no no. I can't fully empty the trash now and that is making my iMac crazy slow.
1) Can anyone tell me how to force the trash to empty?
2) Is there a way to delete the whole external HD and start over with a new full backup via Time Machine? In Disk Utility I try to erase the partition and get an error "Volume Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk." Then I try to Unmount it and get another "Unmount failed. The disk Backup iOmega could not be unmounted. Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk." I turned off Time Machine and tried again but with the same errors.
The external HD is called iOmega. It only connects to the iMac with USB. Any help is much appreciated!!!!

Try this instead:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup volume from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
4. Click on the Erase button.
You will need to reconfigure Time Machine preferences for the backup.
FYI: Never remove Time Machine backup data except through the Time Machine application. If you aren't sure about using Time Machine then visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things related to Time Machine.

How many GB does a typical Time Machine backup have?

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