How much space does time machine take up on hard drive?

Can anyone let me know how much hard drive space time machine takes up?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Time Machine keeps copies of everything on your system (except a few things like system work files, most caches and logs, and trash), so the first backup will be a bit smaller than the amount of data on your system.
Subsequent backups will copy things you've added or changed, but doesn't delete the copies of the old versions, or of things you've deleted, so you can restore them if you find you've deleted or changed something in error, or something has gotten corrupted. Thus Time Machine will need considerably more space. IIn most cases, it won't delete it's copies until it runs out of room.
It varies depending on how you use your Mac, but a "rule of thumb" is, it needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).

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How much room does Time Machine take

I have a Macbook Pro with 120GB HD. I wanted to know how big of an external HD I need for Time Machine. I also want to know if I can use it as a HD for large files (imovies) and have that separate from the Time Machine application.

You can put files on the TM drive, but sooner or later you wont be able to. Time Machine will use up as much space as you give it, so regardless of the size of the drive you connect, sooner or later Time Machine will fill it up with backup information. The time it takes to do this will depend on the size of the files you use and how often you edit them. Basically, the larger the drive the better, but it all depends on the two factors: file size and frequency of editing. When Time Machine fills up the drive, it will delete the oldest backups and replace them with new ones dynamically, keeping the drive full but updated with the most recent content. Unfortunately this will mean you wont have any space to put other files on the drive. If you have files on the drive, time machine will fill up the drive around those files and when you delete them, time machine will use up that new space. Basically this means the free space on the Time Machine drive is a temporary thing that will only get smaller and smaller until it will be nonexistant. The best solution for this is to partition the drive into two volumes, and use one for TM and the other for regular disk space (the problem with this is knowing how much to designate to each volume).
I think Apple should put in limits for Time Machins so it only uses a given number of MB/GB on a given drive, and also make it so the Time Machine backups can be dynamically reduced in size by deleting the oldest backups until the database size is reduced to the desired number of GB. I've given feedback to apple about this, and I suggest others do the same. As it currently is, your Time Machine partition is reserved by the system for one purpose only, and other uses for that partition are temporary and limited.

How much space does Time Machine need?

My computer's hard drive is 100 GB, so I created a 100 GB partition on my external hard drive for Time Machine, before I really understood how it worked. Of course, I eventually got a message saying it was out of room. If I understand correctly, Time Machine will continue to back up changed files, but it can no longer maintain a complete series. Rather, it will be forced to delete older backups to make room for newer.
Anyway, do you think a 200 GB partition would be big enough? Or does it simply depend on how much work you do on your computer (or how many files you change and how big they are)?
I'm thinking of reformatting my 500 GB external hard drive into five partitions...
100 GB for cloned copy of my hard drive
200 GB for Time Machine
Three other partitions for quickly backing up and/or storing websites, graphics, music and things that take up too much space on my computer.
I still don't see a tremendous need for Time Machine, as I very, very seldom go searching for lost files. However, I suspect there may be occasions when it might come in handy.
Thanks.

Really depends how much stuff you do, how many files you change each day, how much stuff lands on your computer for a few days then is deleted (for example I have several GB of photos on my Mac for a few days until I do some work on them and drop them on the company server, so I have lots of stuff getting backed up into Time Machine that doesn't even stay on my Mac)... It doesn't hurt to have a backup of them locally in case something goes wrong on the company server...
So what I'm saying is, it totally depends on what you do with your Mac... I've got a 120GB drive, getting backed up to a 500GB drive, and I figure that gives me a year or two of not having to think about it. Drives are so cheap now you are best to just go a bit bigger for the convenience of letting it backup everything..

How to reinstall from time machine onto a new hard drive?

how to reinstall the system from time machine to a new hard drive?

If you are connected to the internet you can do this.
Boot your computer and immediately hold down command, option and R (three keys together). This gets you connected with internet recovery.
See this article for more directions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718.
This process installs an OS on your blank drive. You can then boot from the fresh OS installation and restore from your Time Machine back up.
Note that you cannot boot from a TM back up.

Does Time Machine backup other external hard drives?

I am using a Seagate 500 GB to backup my data. Will Time Machine backup another external hard drive on which I store my iMovie projects? If so, how do I access them in the Time Machine mode? Thanks in advance.

nachdenki wrote:
strange, my external HDs were added to the exception list automatically. maybe because they wouldn't fit on the time machine volume.
It seems to depend on when the drives were connected. When you first turn Time Machine on, it only excludes the TM drive itself, and any drives not formatted HFS+.
If you connect a drive later on, that drive will be excluded automatically.

How much space does a DVD take up?

how much space on an iPod does the average, say about 2 hours long, DVD take up?

yeah, i agree with tvp. With the standard setting, I get around .76 to 1 GB a piece

How much space on Time machine?

Okay, so I'm totally new to this, and don't know much about anything.
How do I check how much space I have left on my time Machine?
Had a PC before, where I just went to 'My Computer' then checked whichever drive I wanted to check space on. Is there a similar way to check this on the time machine?

Gems_ca wrote:
Okay, so I'm totally new to this, and don't know much about anything.
How do I check how much space I have left on my time Machine?
Had a PC before, where I just went to 'My Computer' then checked whichever drive I wanted to check space on. Is there a similar way to check this on the time machine?
It's similar to Windows. Right-click on a desktop disk icon, TM for example, and select "Get Info"
You will get all the information about the drive you need.

How much space does ios 8 take up?

Thinking about trying an Ipad mini 2, can anyone tell me how much space the OS on these devices uses? Thanks

yeah, i agree with tvp. With the standard setting, I get around .76 to 1 GB a piece

How to restore a Time Machine Backup onto two Hard Drives?

Hey guys,
configuration as following:
I got a SSD, which contains all system stuff as well as apps. Further there is a HDD on which all kind of Multimedia is stored. I've put a symlink from my Home Folder to that Multimedia-HDD: Users/IceThunder -> Volumes/Multimedia.
Before my Mac crashed - I still don't know what was causing that - i backed up everything, so now I find two folders (System and Multimedia) in my .backupdb folder. If I use Time Machine to restore the state before it crashed it only offers to restore everything(?) on one specified disk, which is not what I want to.
Is there a way to get back an exact copy of the former state? How can I tell Time Machine to restore folder "System" on my SSD and folder "Multimedia" on my HDD?
Thanks in advance
IceThunder

Time Machine should restore to the disks from which the backups were made as long as each has the same name as before. For more help on this see Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help.

How much space does a boolean takes up

Hi.
I know an integer primitives takes 32 bits
how many bits does the java boolean takes up. 2 bits ?
also, would it be the same as the Boolean object ?
Anyone can help answer this question ? thank you :)

Hi.
I know an integer primitives takes 32 bits
how many bits does the java boolean takes up. 2 bits
also, would it be the same as the Boolean object ?
Anyone can help answer this question ? thank you :)Why 2 bits? One bit is enough, but I doubt this would be an
efficient way to store it from an access time point of view.
I think it should take some minimum number of full bytes that
are eficiently accessible on a given architecture(4 or perhaps 2 or 1). The language specification does not prescribe any particular size.
Allocate yourself a huge boolean[] and check the increase of size of the
VM, this should give you an idea. Boolean, on the other hand, is an object, pretty sure it's a small one (as small as a boolean), but the overhead of a Boolean[] should be bigger (the objects and the references to them).

Why does time machine say my wireless hard drive doesn't have enough space when it clearly does?

I have a 2 TB western digital hard drive connected via USB to my airport extreme (Y2012) that i've been using the past 2 years to connect to wirelessly. The hard drive has 2 partitions, ~1 TB each. 1 partition for backing up, the other for storing media. Recently I deleted my macbook pro backup. My macbook pro has a 500GB hard drive, of which about 120 GB is free.
Since I deleted the old time machine backup disk image and told time machine to start a new backup, I am now receiving an error. It's telling me there isn't enough room on the drive, when the 1TB partition i'm trying to use (as i've sucessfully done in the past) has nothing on it. 1 full TB free, and my macbook pro can't backup a 500 GB hard drive, which isn't even full itself.
PLEASE HELP!! I have a macbook pro early 2011, and I never know when the board is going to go koput again and I don't currently have a backup of my stuff while this problem persists.
Thanks!

Start with Section C in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Where can I see how much space mac mail is taking on my hard drive?

I have a gmail, yahoo mail and icloud mail that I access on Mac Mail. Does it take up much space on the HD? I'm assuming they are all stored on the web servers but where do I look on the Mac to find what space they are taking up on my Mac?

In the Finder, hold the Option key and then choose Library from the Go menu. Then locate the folder called "Mail," and get information on it and note the calculated size. In addition, do the same for the Mail Downloads folder, and these two should constitue the majority of the space used by Mail and its configured accounts.

Does Time Machine support an external hard drive attached to Airport?

I was interested in setting up my external hard drive to my Airport Extreme base station and use Time Machine wirelessly. I have seen a few different answers on the forum and I'm wondering whether this is possible. (I do not have Time Capsule.) If so, can you provide an easy step by step as to how to set it up. Thanks!

Yes it's possible. Connect the drive and open Airport Utility. Click on the Manual Setup button. Then click on the Disks icon in the toolbar. Select the disk and turn on Sharing.
You can then open TM preferences where the shared drive should appear in the list of drives. If it does not show up then you will need to "mount" the drive by selecting Connect to Server from the Finder's Go menu, then double-clicking on the shared drive's icon to login as a registered user.
Note that this is not supported by Apple.

Does time machine automatically backup external hard drives?

Hi
I have 4 external disks connected to my macPro and a 5th which I am using to backup too. In the TM prefs I have selected the drives & specific folders that I DON'T want backed up. Can I assume it will back EVERYTHING ELSE up, including the external drives?
I conducted an experiment - I unmounted one of the external drives (my main Logic projects disk), then entered TM. I COULDN'T FIND the Projects disk even though the BackUp disk was still mounted! So if there was a problem with the Projects drive HOW would I access my backed-up projects?
I don't have much faith in TM at the moment.
Cheers
Chris

Hi
Time Machine will back up the files for all users, as well as the system files.
best,
Matt

HT3275 how do you uninstall time machine on an external hard drive?

I am using a seagate hard drive and discovered that since using it my space on my macbook is depleting. Don't know where it went so i want to start over and regain my hard drive space and use the back up only to store music and Logic pro data! PLEASE HELP!!!

Well, this is not easily answered. You can shrink existing partitions in order to add additional ones. But in order to add space from one partition to another that can only be done by first removing the lower partition first. If that partition has data, then it will be lost. Unfortunately, Disk Utility cannot manipulate partitions in place. You need a third-party utility for that, iPartition 3.4.1.
Now with that said I'll pass on a bit of advice. Do not us your Time Machine backup drive for extra storage. External storage and backups should be kept on separate drives. I suggest you get a separate drive for your storage or Time Machine backups.
If you use Disk Utility you can shrink your Time Machine partition, but the only way to put that space in another partition is to first delete the storage partition, then recreate it with a larger capacity.

How much space does time machine take up on hard drive?

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