How to set-up Time Machine after Restore

Question

After having restored an entire system back from Time Machine, it looks to me as Time Machines wants to completely backup all data already held on the hard-disk. With this effect, the harddisk is not big enough. I do not want to buy another disk. Is there any way how to persuade Time Machine that it should use the existing data on the disk?

Answer 1

Hi Aulia,
I don't believe that you will be able to have Time Machine understand that you only want it to continue with the same data : once it has detected that a file changed, it makes another copy, even if you know that it's the same file : it's based on messages telling it that a file has changed, not on files comparison.
I think that the "inprogress" file will be replaced by another one if you let TM do it's job : it won't make a third copy of your data. If there is enough space on the disk, you can let TM continue, and try to manage with the following trick, with patience and much care.
Make sure that the "Action" menu is visible in a Finder's window (it is if you did not customize the toolbar to remove it), and dive into Time Machine. Select a item in the window : the Action menu now has an item that should read "delete all backups of this element" (or something like that : I'm translating my French version). Take care that "all" here really means ALL versions in the backup : the only copy left would be on your main disk.
The next backup may not make a fresh copy unless you help it a little : after all, there was no message telling TM that the original was changed, since it was not ! Just do anything in the folder containing the item that you deleted from the backup (like creating and immediately deleting a folder there) : this will tell TM that something has happened there, the next backup will check the folder, detect the missing element and make a fresh copy.
Having only one copy of a really important folder may not suit you, even if it's only for the short delay until the next backup. You can make a copy of it, and run TM to backup the copy (a right click on the icon in the dock shows a "backup now" item). You now have a backed up version, you can delete the original, and all the backup copies of the original with the previous method. But if you rename the copy back to it's original name, it will be saved again... just iterate one more time !
I hope that this can help you, but please do not hesitate to try and validate your method on small copies before you delete something in your backup !
PS : I just tested my proposals with my 33Gb iMovie Events folder : a new copy of an event folder is created in the backup each time you rename an event, and I gained more than 40 Gb by deleting all previous redundant versions.
At least, it works for me !