How much will TIme Machine Grow

Will time machine keep growing until it fills up the hard drive set to run it? Do I have to make a partition on my drive to contain time machine so I can use the drive to hold movies and such other data?

Here's a basic explanation:
About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert
TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.
Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.
You do not want to 'constrain' TM or you may get a 'Disk Full' alert which means either get a new backup drive or erase the existing backup drive. So, how big should the TM backup drive be? At least twice the capacity of the drive being backed up. You can partition your drive, but make sure the TM partition is large enough.
As a general rule you should have drives used exclusively for backups, and have other drives for storage needs.

Similar Messages

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    Message was edited by: joshz

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    Click to view full size
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    It'll backup all except items you add in the exclude options as below:

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    graciebethgrant wrote:
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  • I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

    I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

    If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
    iTunes: library on EHD
    iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
    Roger

  • Will Time Machine back up iTunes media  on a different internal drive

    I have my iTunes media on a different internal drive.
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    I have two other internal drives, each 750gb.
    Does Time Machine back those drives up as well? Or does it contain itself to the OS disk?

    Stephen,
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    Scott

  • How to restore Time Machine multiple drives

    Hey, fellow Mac-ers.  I have a new situation for me, and some questions on how Time Machine works.  I have a Macbook Pro, bought it from Apple, set up Time Machine, and voila, everything is awesome.  But, now I have upgraded it to a second hard drive (made the Superdrive external), and Time Machine appears to be backing up the iTunes and iPhoto libraries that I moved to the second drive.  Great.
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    A.2.  Or, let's say the second drive (a standard hard disk instead of SSD) dies, can I just restore that volume?
    A.3.  Or, let's just say I have 2 new blank hard drives, will Time Machine just restore volume-to-volume like it was backed up?
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    Exactly what happens with Time Machine (TM) in yosemite is somewhat of a mystery to all of us.
    But if you want to know some basics of how TM works.. it is here.
    http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
    Read at least the first two articles.. and at least glance over FAQ and Troubleshooting so you know what is in there.
    The stuff at the bottom of the home page about using TM as recovery is also very helpful albeit rather old.
    TM is designed to be very automated.. and not require user intervention on any major scale. So lots of times people do not know that their backups are not working or have failed.
    I think you are better reading the background than me jumping in to answer the specifics.. except to say the multiple volumes is covered in Q32 of FAQ.
    You will also see that finding out the exact details of what TM is doing is not super easy.
    Read Q7-8 in the FAQ.
    But the guy who wrote it all up.. James Pond died a couple of years ago now so it is not up to date past Mountain Lion. Most of it is still relevant.. but Yosemite has been very unreliable.
    I have taken to recommending people use an alternative.. there are several third party backups.. The first article you read from above will show you how TM is different from the clone type backups.. let me encourage you to use a cloner. I use Carbon Copy Cloner. It costs $40 but can produce a bootable clone to any external drive. The end result is a backup you can test in a matter of moments that it works. And as a clone it copies everything. That doesn't stop you using TM.. it is excellent for what it does.. (once we get past the buggy introduction of Yosemite at least).
    There are a number listed.. Superduper has long been popular and Chronosync has also got a following. I find CCC works great.. but I am not connected.. and I paid my $40 and will have to pay to upgrade when I can stomach Yosemite for more than an hour, so I am not on a free ride.

  • Can you upgrade the wifi card and if you can how much will it cost

    hi i just got a macbook not the pro its the white one and i find it has  a hard time grabbing my wifi and i know its the wifi card because i have 2 iphones and ipod touch and 2 laptops not including my macbook and all of them have no trouble holding the wifi connection so if anyone can help me out i just want to know can i upgrade the wifi card and if i can how much will it cost
    ps i cant do any of take it apart my self and install it i just wan to know how much it will cost going through apple
    thanks

    Why do people think they are postiing in a notebook forum when if you look around, this is clearly something else.
    If you really want a new Mac you have to buy one. That is part of the fun of owning laptops, they are not upgradeable.

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