HT1338 Time Machine - local backups

I have a 2TB Time Machine connected to one Macbook with a 750GB hard drive...
Since Time Machine setup, the local Macbook drive seems to have been completly consumed...
Could this be due to "local" backup images on the Macbook? How do I clean it up?

Could be:
Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and enter or paste the appropriate command line. Press RETURN and enter your admin password when prompted. It will not be echoed.
To turn them ON: sudo tmutil enablelocal
To turn them OFF: sudo tmutil disablelocal
Note that turning them OFF will also delete all existing snapshots.

Similar Messages

How to delete time machine local backup?

My MacBook Pro is running out of hard drive space, and the culprit is Time Machine. Apparently Time Machine stores local backups on the hard drive when it is not connected to the backup drive, and then is supposed to delete them when it does backup. However, this causes huge problems because I'm running out of hard drive space. I ran the following in Terminal to turn off the local backups:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
However, that has not freed up the hard drive space taken by the local backups. Any ideas on how to reclaim that space?

bizlaw wrote:
My MacBook Pro is running out of hard drive space, and the culprit is Time Machine. Apparently Time Machine stores local backups on the hard drive when it is not connected to the backup drive,
No. It makes them at all times, whether the regular backup drive is connected or not.
and then is supposed to delete them when it does backup.
No, they're "thinned" automatically after 24 hours to one per day, then deleted after a week (or, deleted as necessary if your OSX drive gets over 80% full).
So your problem is almost certainly elsewhere. See Where did my Disk Space go? for the common culprits, and ways to find less-common ones.
Also see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #30 for the gory details on Local Snapshots.

Can't Delete Time Machine Local Backup

This is driving me crazy, I have tried everything.. I even completely wiped my drive and reinstalled Yosemite..
Basically the problem is that I have a 18MB Backup showing inside about this mac which shouldnt be there.. When I restart my mac it is gone then about 30 seconds later the 18mb backup appears out of nowhere.. I have tried disabling local backups which delete's all the other backups but just keeps a random 18mb one? Please help..
http://prntscr.com/5mn9wp

Yes it still stays.. The only time it ever disappears is when I restart but it just reappears after like 30 seconds

Time machine local to Network

I have three macs on a wireless network. all machines have a relatively large amount of data (over 120GB). i have a 2TB USB drive lying around that i wanted to use for time machine backups. what i want to do is to "seed" the backup of the other machines by attaching the USB drive to them, doing a local backup (very fast) and then setting time machine to point to the USB drive that will be shared by one of the machines all the time. is there a way to trick time machine to recognize the backup it already did on the USB drive if it is not attached locally? my testing has shown that time machine wants to do a full backup when i mount the drive over the network, but then again i don't have much experience with time machine and cannot find any settings other than backup location.

seb_mbp wrote:
I have three macs on a wireless network. all machines have a relatively large amount of data (over 120GB). i have a 2TB USB drive lying around that i wanted to use for time machine backups. what i want to do is to "seed" the backup of the other machines by attaching the USB drive to them, doing a local backup (very fast) and then setting time machine to point to the USB drive that will be shared by one of the machines all the time. is there a way to trick time machine to recognize the backup it already did on the USB drive if it is not attached locally?
No. Time Machine stores backups differently when done locally (in a Backups.backupdb folder at the top level of the volume) vs. over a network (a Backups.backupdb folder inside a rather odd container called a +sparse bundle).+ You can't switch from one to the other.
Your best bet is to partition the drive, so the Mac being backed-up locally has it's own, exclusive space. The other two can have their own partitions, or can share one. See #4 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If possible, connect the source and destination Macs to the network via Ethernet cables for the first, full backup. It should be 2-3 times faster than WIFI.

Time machine local snapshots bugs ?

Hi,
I started using time machine to backup select folders to an external HDD hooked up via USB.
I noticed that during preview, the created dates of files for local snapshots are always incorrect. They are all timestamped to the year 2000.
You can see from the screenshots. The first shows the file with the correct timestamp.
In this one, the created date is now incorrect.
In some cases, the file may change into a folder in the local snapshot and you will not be able to preview it anymore.
I cannot replicate the folder problem now, but I have had this happen to regular txt files.
Any ideas?
thanks
Matt

Hi,
I started using time machine to backup select folders to an external HDD hooked up via USB.
I noticed that during preview, the created dates of files for local snapshots are always incorrect. They are all timestamped to the year 2000.
You can see from the screenshots. The first shows the file with the correct timestamp.
In this one, the created date is now incorrect.
In some cases, the file may change into a folder in the local snapshot and you will not be able to preview it anymore.
I cannot replicate the folder problem now, but I have had this happen to regular txt files.
Any ideas?
thanks
Matt

Time machine multiple backup drives question

Time machine to backup to my 2TB MyBook drive. I wanted a second backup on a portable 1TB, so in time machine settings, I selected the 1TB drive, and then clicked the "Replace" button, instead of the "Use both" button. Currently the 1TB drive is backing up from scratch.
So will I be able to select my 2TB MyBook drive after the 1TB is backed up and disconnected? I mean, can I resume time machine backups where I left off?
Most of what I've read (after the fact) seems to suggest that I should have clicked the "Use both" button, then just removed the 1TB drive.
-Thanks

I find tm doesn't remember the drives anyway. I have a dedicated drive for lion and mountain lion as I have both lion and mountain lion installed on my mac. When I'm in either os and connect the appropriate drive and start tm I still have to go in and select the drive. Tm says there are no older backups, but there are, until the new partial backup completes. Then it lists al the backups on that drive.
Now maybe if you leave tm on all the time it might work differently but I don't care for it creating local snapshots and I only connect the externals when I want to do a backup.
So bottom line is you shouldn't have any problem when you connect the other drive. At that time, when you have to select that original tm backup drive, you can click the option to use both.

Time Machine nuking backups, starting from scratch!

ok, i just received this warning:
and now i't doing a backup that is slated to take more than "several hours."
is this common? how often can i expect this?

Hello,
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-bac kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076

Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created

Iet up my new time capsule day and it's working great. Now that I've got everything sorted out, I'm ready to do the initial time machine back up on it. I went into preferences, changed the backup location to my TC and clicked 'back up now'. Very quickly I get a message that the backup failed: "Time Machine Error - The backup disk image could not be created".
I've searched the apple support area but haven't been able to figure this one out. Can anyone help, please? This is an initial backup. (FYI, it worked great on my old external drive.)
Many thanks

I had the same problem. I installed my Time Capsule, fired up Time Machine and got an error that said "The backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 436.8 GB but only 182.2GB are available."
Coincidently, these are the same sizes as the space used and the space available on my iMac's drive.
I looked in /Volumes and saw that the sparsebundle was being created on the local disk and not on the main disk. Trying to backup again gave me the "Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created." message.
I poked around the forums, and found a post about the machine name setting in sharing. I decided to give it a look, and lo and behold, I did not have a machine name. So I gave my box a name, kicked off Time Machine again, and it worked.

Time Machine Local Snapshot - perhaps not enabled?

I've read that there is confusion about the Time Machine Snapshot function, but I am still not convinced mine is working.
Have just purchased my MacBook Pro (& loving it) and am doing my Time Machine backups to a 3rd party external HD via firewire 800. When away from my desk I can not get into Time Machine at all and am presented with the message Your Time Machine backup can't be found and when I look at the Time Machine Setup under System Preferences there is nothing at all there to indicate that local backups are enabled.
As I thought the whole purpose of the local snapshot was that files could be retrieved while on the road, I feel something is not right with my setup. Advice appreciated thanks

Perhaps these Links may be of assistance...
Time Machine Local Snapshots Laptops
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878
Time Machine...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Time machine local snapshots are taking up significant amount of hard drive space.

Hi there, my hard drive had become close to full and I got a warning message so I started a clean up. I have moved my iTunes media folder and my iPhoto picture folder to my Time Capsule external hard drive as well as deleting unnecessary apps and files. I was able to free up quite a bit of space but in looking at the hard drive in "About this Mac" the backups section is taking up 120.53 GB of my 250 GB hard drive. In my internet research it appears the "backups" section represents the Time Machine local snapshots when the designated drive is not available. Is there a way to decrease the space that the snapshots are taking up? 120 GB of my hard drive seems a bit excessive. Any advice is welcome, thanks!

what is confusing is why I would get a warning message that the disc was becoming full if there is 128GB worth of files that should have been automatically deleted?
You didn't get the warning because of that. You got it because of the files that you moved to another volume, and perhaps others. The local snapshots contain some of those files. They're available, for the time being, in case you need to restore them. Eventually they'll be deleted.

Time Machine deleting backups?

When Time Machine is finishing taking a backup of my Mac, why does it delete something, maybe old backups, even if I have nearly 200GB free space on my external disk?

And now it's stuck with 18,9MB and canceled
6.4.2014 13.36.37,783 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Starting automatic backup
6.4.2014 13.36.37,895 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@WDMyCloud._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeMachineBac kup
6.4.2014 13.37.06,076 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup using URL: afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@WDMyCloud._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeMachineBac kup
6.4.2014 13.37.06,099 mds[79]: (Normal) Volume: volume:0x7fd3e386f000 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:0 SpotLoc:(null) SpotVerLoc:(null) occlude:0 /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup
6.4.2014 13.41.52,245 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachineBackup/Samu - MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine -varmuuskopiot
6.4.2014 13.42.13,441 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Backing up to /dev/disk2s2: /Volumes/Time Machine -varmuuskopiot/Backups.backupdb
6.4.2014 13.47.45,821 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Will copy (2,6 GB) from Macintosh HD
6.4.2014 13.47.45,845 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Found 1010 files (2,72 GB) needing backup
6.4.2014 13.47.46,251 com.apple.backupd[1294]: 3,51 GB required (including padding), 183,9 GB available
6.4.2014 13.52.22,072 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: assertion failed: 13C64: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [38D1AB2C-A476-385F-8EA8-7AB604CA1F89]: 0x25
6.4.2014 13.52.22,090 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: assertion failed: 13C64: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [38D1AB2C-A476-385F-8EA8-7AB604CA1F89]: 0x25
6.4.2014 13.52.22,332 com.apple.prefs.backup.remoteservice[1380]: Bogus event received by listener connection:
<error: 0x10aae4b50> { count = 1, contents =
"XPCErrorDescription" => <string: 0x10aae4e60> { length = 18, contents = "Connection invalid" }
6.4.2014 13.56.31,228 com.apple.backupd[1294]: Cancellation timed out - exiting
6.4.2014 13.56.31,245 com.apple.backupd-helper[869]: XPC error for connection com.apple.backupd.xpc: Connection interrupted
6.4.2014 13.56.31,245 com.apple.backupd-helper[869]: Not starting scheduled Time Machine backup: Failed to send message to backupd
And yeah, that deleting takes hours (about 10 last time).

Can I use Time Machine to backup ONLY an external drive?

I am having problems with the internal HD on my iMac and Disk Utility is telling me I need to reformat the drive and restore from backup. Only problem is that my 3TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive I was using for Time Machine recently failed (think it may have happened during an electrical storm brownout). Yep, I know, ***** to be me
The issues with the internal HD are preventing the iMac from booting and I would prefer not to have to purchase various repair software to find one that really works such as Disk Warrior or similar ((despite it getting very good reviews). I suspect it make be HFS corruption but no way to really tell that I am aware of.
I have setup an external drive with Yosemite and booted from that so now my old internal drive is seen as an "external drive".
I am using Disk Utility to make an image copy to a new 3TB external drive I purchased. Writing the DMG is going to take some time.
What I would like to do is to set up Time Machine to backup to a separate external 3TB hard drive (the second one I purchased) and have TM create a backup of ONLY the old internal drive - not the new system as well as the old internal unit.
Is this possible and if so can anyone advise how to do this. Does not seem I can exclude the system drive I am now booted from so that it is not backed up. (This makes sense that TM would be designed this way given its primary purpose is to backup a system).
If TM cannot be configured in this way, is there another option I can use?
Thanks
Andrew

Thanks for that advice. I have heard of it but a friend who does IT support at a University nearby suggested using Disk Utility to save an image - hence this is currently underway at present. Once this is finished I will try Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have another friend who has an older version of CCC - do you know if an old version will work ok or if only the latest supports Yosemite?
Also once I have the clone completed from CCC, is the process then to reformat the old internal drive and then clone from the CCC external drive back to the internal and then reboot and trust all is well?
Appreciate your help Csound1.
Regards
Andrew

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

On imac 10.6.8 using current version of Aperture. How can I access the Aperture Library on my external hard drive that I use with time machine for backup? I can only access the application but not the library..

Go into Time Machine (the program not the bundle on the extrnal disk) and using Time Machine's browser go to the Folder where the library lives. You could look in the library bundle in Time Machine but that won't really tell you much,
If you want to make sure it truely has backed up your library you will need to restore it and open the restored library with Aperture.
If all this still has you confused you need to read up on Time Machine in order to get a feel for how it works, for what it is doing and for how to restore files from it.

How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme

How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme? I used to be able to but now time machine will not recognize my hard drive to select as a backup when plugged into my airport extreme. I'm not sure what happened or changed. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

First thing to do is go to the Pondini tips page, then follow the link to his full TM site for all the details.

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

HT1338 Time Machine - local backups

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