HT201250 Time machine displays calculating size?

When trying to set up time machine for the first time with a 4tb Iomega external drive is displaying message calculating size for some time?

All sorted now, used some of the advice from Pondini's FAQs; thanks!

Similar Messages

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc.

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

HT1338 Error preparing Time Machine backup disc- size error usually not being multiples of 512, encryption

Trying to encrypt Time Machine backup disc getting message - Error preparing Time Machine backup disc- size error usually not being multiples of 512, encryption.

I got the same problem.
But I think it cannot be related to not being a multiple of 512.
As when I devide the number of bytes 3.000.592.982.016 by 512 is equals 5860533168.
3.000.592.982.016 / 512 = 5860533168.
So what could be the real problem?
With kind Regards

Time machine gives wrong size in lion 10.7.4

The hard drive has a total size of 250 gb but time machine gives wrong size of 750 gb??

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Select "system.log" from the file list. Enter "backupd" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. Post the messages from the last backup, beginning with "Starting standard backup."
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Do not post many repetitions of the same message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Time Machine backup disk size - total capacity of disk or just files used?

Hi folks,
After upgrading to Leopard, I'm trying to set up my Time Machine. My main HD is 175 Gig and all the OS and other files take up 37 Gig of that. The drive I want to use for Time Machine (a spare internal hard drive) is a 75 Gig drive with 74 Gig of space available. Time machine says this drive is too small to use.
According to the Time Machine documentation, Time Machine takes the _total size of the files_ to be backed up and multiplies that by 1.2. So in my case, since the total files on my 175 Gig drive take up 37 Gig, then I would need only 42 Gig for my Time Machine back up. So, in theory, my 75 Gig spare drive should work just fine.
The problem is that Time Machine is taking the total size of the entire HD and using that to calculate the size of the back up drive, which would be 210 Gig. Does anyone know why this problem is occurring? It seems like Time Machine is not calculating the needed back up disk size properly and is incorrectly including the unused disk space on my main HD.

Not sure exactly, but your drive really is too small. Yes, 37 gb plus workspace would do for your initial Full Backup, but subsequent incrementals could fill it up pretty fast. That would depend, of course, on how you use your Mac -- how often you add or update files of what sizes.
If you change your habits and, say, download a multi-gb video, then work on editing it for a few hours, you could eat up the remaining space very, very quickly.
Just to be sure, how are you determining space used? Via right-click (or control-click) and Get Info on your HD icon?
Also, do you have any other HDs connected? If so, exclude it/them, as TM will include them by default.
Three possible workarounds:
First, get a bigger drive. HDs have gotten ridiculously cheap -- 500 gb (or even some 1 tb) for not much over $100.
Second, use CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or a similar product instead of TM. CCC is donationware, SuperDuper about $30, I think. Either can make a full bootable "clone", and CCC has an option to either archive previous versions of changed files or delete them. CCC can be set to run automatically hourly, daily, etc. (I suspect SD can, too, but I don't know it's details). An advantage is, of course, if your HD fails you can boot and run from the "clone" until you get it replaced, then reverse the process and clone the external to the internal.
Note that these will take considerably longer, as unlike TM, they don't use the OSX internals to figure out what's been added or changed, but must look at every file and folder. In my case, even smaller than yours, TM's hourly backup rarely runs over 30 seconds; CCC's at least 15 minutes (so I have it run automatically at 3 am). And, if you don't keep previous versions, of course, you lose the ability to recover something that you deleted or changed in error, or got corrupted before the last backup.
Third (and NOT recommended), continue with TM but limit it to your home folder. This means if you lose your HD, you can't restore your whole system from the last TM backup. You'd have to reload from your Leopard disk, the apply all OS updates, and reload any 3rd party settings, then restore from TM. As a friend of mine used to say, "un-good"!

Time Machine underestimating backup size?

Lately it seems that Time Machine has been underestimating the size of each backup. What it originally says to be a 10 MB backup turns out to be several GB. As it's backing up, Time Machine will say "X out of 10MB backed up" or something along those lines, but when X reaches 10MB, X continues to grow and so does the original estimate of 10MB. It might then say "13MB of 13MB backed up" and it will continue on this way until it has backed up so much underestimated data that Time Machine tells me it can't finish the backup because it doesn't have enough space on the backup drive. (Time Machine should've deleted some backups beforehand to make space for the new backup, but it didn't know to because it had underestimated the amount of space necessary for the backup.)
I have already wiped the backup drive and deleted all the Time Machine preference files, only to still face the same problem. I'm backing up my internal 1TB drive (only 300 GB used) and my 500GB external drive (400GB used) to another 1TB external drive, so having enough space on the backup drive shouldn't be the problem, right? BTW, I'm running Snow Leopard. Any help is appreciated!

OK, I've solved it on my machine, but I'm not sure if It will work for you as it sounds like you may have already tried what I did. Plus you're in a different OS. Anyway, this is exactly what I did, I'm not sure if all the steps are necessary, but its worth a shot.
1.Turn off time machine.
2. Unplug all of your external drives (except the one you are backing up onto).
3. Reformat the drive you intend to back up onto.
4. Go into your time machine preferences and click options.
5. Add all but one of your folders to the list of things to exclude from the backups - make sure the folder dosent contain very much, I picked one with about 1.5 gig of stuff. Its ok if its a subfolder.
6. Turn on time machine and tell it to make a backup. It could take as long as an hour for it to do this but it'll get there, dont be discoured if it sits there calculating for ages. When it finally starts to backup it will do the thing where it continues adding to the amount but it won't go on forever. Mine stopped about about 4 gig.
7. Reopen the time machine preferences and deselect some of the folders in the exceptions list. Try and do this in small blocks.
8. Tell time machine to perform another backup. It shouldn't take nearly as long as it did the first time.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you have backed up the whole drive.
By the time I finsihed the 384 gig of data I was backing up was only taking up about 400 gig of space.
Also I'd really appreciate it if someone would explain to me why the **** what I did worked. Just in case I get a simliar problem again in the future.

Time Machine Back Up Size

I have just made a Time Machine back up to a NAS server, and so have been keeping a watch on the subsequent back-ups. I was a little suprised to see that the back-up immediatly following the initial one showed a size of over 1.5GB! There had been no significant changes made on my iMac so I just wonder why this would be so large?

oakie23 wrote:
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
I have just had my hard drive replaced and successfully restored form time machine.
That means TIme Machine's next backup will be a full one -- everything you just put on your internal HD will be backed-up again: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338
I then deleted a few old back ups from finder ( not a good Idea).
Correct. Your backups may be corrupted, perhaps hopelessly. Run a +*Repair DIsk+* on them per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
1. The calculated back up size is over 800gb when my hard drive is 500gb, I have excluded time machine backups.
Do you mean the figure underneath the +Do not back up+ box in TM Preferences > Options? If so, there must be something else attached to your Mac like another external HD, or perhaps you're running FileVault?
2. When I click on time machine the time machine screen default to places, desktop, how to I get it to look at my mac?
What you see there depends on how you get there. Start with a Finder window looking at, say, your home folder, before you click the TM icon in your Dock. For more detail, see #15 in the
Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

Hard Drive and Time Machine backup Different Sizes

I had a lot of difficulty getting Time Machine to work with my new Time Capsule. It seems to work now but I noticed that on the initial backup the size of the backup data on Time Capsule was roughly 148 GB and my hard drive size is roughly 159 GB. If I were to do a backup would I discover that some of my data is missing? Or is it normal? I have not excluded anything from the backup. Thanks.

I sorted out the problem on my end, and perhaps the same thing will you help Gadifer. In my Aperture preferences, Library Location was incorrect - for some reason there are two. In my case it should be ~/Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary, whereas it had become ~/Pictures/My Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary (I don't recall changing in manually, and wasn't aware that there were two). When I check them in Finder, I see that the former is several GB, and therefore my actual library, while the latter is only 538 KB.

HT201250 Time Machine backup error message.

I am unable to back up my computer as I get this message -
"This backup is to large for the back up disk. The backup requires 138.28 GB but only 124.10 GB are available. TIme Machine needs work spave on the backup disk in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machiine prefences to select a larger ackup disk or make the back up smaller by exluding files."
I would appreciate any help as I am lost. I opened TM and was unable to adjust the file size.
Thank you for your help!

Take a look here
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2142747?threadID=2142747&messageID=10782279 #10782279

Why is Time Machine displaying files only in the present not the past?

Hi,
My PowerBook G4 recently had its Logic Board replaced. Since Time Machine identifies the machine to backup thanks to its MAC Ethernet address and, since after a Logic Board switch my MAC Ethernet address had changed, I had to reconfigure TM so that the external hard drive reassociates with the new MAC Ethernet address and continues to backup in the same backup folder. For that I used this hint posted on MacOSXhints.com :
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101&query=time%2Bmach ine%2Blogic
While performing this hint enabled me to have my new backups in the original backup folder, and access all my backups through finder, I cannot view any backups in Time Machine star-field mode. Whenever I click on "Enter Time Machine" I correctly warp into the star-field, but I only see the present. I cannot go back in time and the time line on the side doesn't show any dates in the past. The finder window at the front displays only what is currently on my PowerBook HDD, and the finder windows that precede it are all dark grey, empty and un-clickable. What is peculiar is that when I click on Time Machine Preferences, the Panel can show the date of the oldest backup.
To sum up: Time machine has no problem backing up my files in the original backup folder of my external HDD (I can see all my new backups in the same backup database folder as the ones before the Logic board switch), I can access all my backed up files via Finder, but when I enter Time Machine star-field mode, it doesn't show me any of my backups. I really like the ease of use of the star-field mode, and I find it frustrating to have to look at my backups in plain old Finder.
What I don't know is whether hint I described above might have introduced errors that provoked the error or whether this might be due to the fact that while my computer was going for repair, I connected the external HDD containing my backup with two computers running Mac OS X 10.4 to retrieve some backed up files.
My case must probably be quite rare, but since I haven't found any solutions to this date, I'm posting it now.
I would be extremely grateful if anyone had a solution for this, or an intuition on the different parameters to modify to correct this Time Machine problem. Any contribution will be helpful. Thank you very much.

gbullman,
You say that the logic board was replaced? Then you will not be able to continue backups to the SAME backup set.
*_Time Machine Always Performs a Full Backup After a Full Restore_*
Actually, this is normal. Anytime your hardware has changed, or you have reinstalled the operating system again, Time Machine will perform a new full backup.
*Full Backup After Restore*
Bear in mind that in all cases Time Machine will perform a full backup after a full restore. This is normal. Time Machine will resume incremental backups after the full backup has completed. To view previous backups, Control-click or right-click the Time Machine icon in your Dock or Option-click the Time Machine menu extra and Choose "Browse Other Time Machine Disks," then select your previous backup volume. You will enter Time Machine and be able to browse your previous back ups and restore files. [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338]
So even on unchanged hardware, if you reinstall your system software and restore your user data, Time Machine starts anew, and you will not be able to resume backing up with the same history as the previous backups.
While there may be ways to fool/hack Time Machine into recognizing previous backups without performing another full backup, they are likely rather elaborate. Ultimately, though, in a couple of months, all the effort to preserve old backups may seem pointless. After all, Time Machine will eventually purge away that data anyways as it replaces it with new files.
It may simply be easier to begin a fresh series of backups while saving the previous backups until your satisfied that you have enough history built up. Then delete the old backups.
*Why Can’t I Resume Backups?*
You see, Time Machine was designed to restore your Macs’ immediate environment in case of system crashes or accidental deletion of user files. As a result, reinstalling your Mac OS system software or changing your hardware requires a fresh set of backups since older backups would not accurately represent the current state of your Mac.
Additionally, if a user has had to reinstall the system software, then resuming backups to the same set could later reintroduce the very issues that forced the reinstall in the first place. Furthermore, maintaining backups that were started with an older Mac, introduces the possibility of restoring system files that were never intended for the new Mac.
If you require long-term archival storage of files, then you need another backup strategy.
Hope this clarifies some things.
Cheers!

Time Machine same backup size every time

Anyone have any idea why Time Machine would backup the same amount every time? Every hour mine backs up 1.8 GB, unless I've added more than that to my hd.
I only back up the internal drive on my macbook to a 500 GB Time Capsule via wifi (802.11n only, 5GHz). Not that I figured it would make a difference, but it still does it if backed up via ethernet.
I've also noticed that as soon as it completes the backup, it will backup all over again - and not because an hour has passed. I'm not sure if it does this every time (but I think i does), or if it does it more than twice when it happens.
Thanks in advance!

See if the following might give you some ideas as to why...
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if this resolved your issue.
Cheers!

Limit Time Machine Backups Folder Size?

It there a way to limit the size of the Time Machine backups folder? I have 100GB of data on my MacBook's drive that TM is backing up to a 500GB external drive. In 18 months the backups folder has grown to 375GB. I'd prefer not to have to get another drive in 6 months, so can I put a limit on this somehow?

Roast Beef wrote:
It there a way to limit the size of the Time Machine backups folder? I have 100GB of data on my MacBook's drive that TM is backing up to a 500GB external drive. In 18 months the backups folder has grown to 375GB. I'd prefer not to have to get another drive in 6 months, so can I put a limit on this somehow?
That's exactly how TM is designed. It will use all the space assigned to it for backups.
You won't have to get a new drive in 6 months. Just un-check the +Warn when old backups are deleted+ box in TM Preferences > Options, and when the disk gets almost full, TM will automatically delete your oldest backups to make room for new ones.
Or, if you want to use part of that drive for other things, you can make a second partition for the other data. See item #6 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum. It tells you how to add a TM partition to a disk that already has data on it, but the procedure is the same.
Just don't put important data on that other partition without backing it up some other way.

Time machine Mail backup size

Hi everybody,
I don't understand why my Time Machine backups are around 1Go every time. Not every hour, but every 2 or 3 backups.
So my TM HD gets quickly full all the time.
I've used BackupLoupe, and I've realized that the problem comes from Mail.
It backs up around 750 Mo all the time.
Mail is set with an imap gmail account.
I've read the same issue here, but the post is archived :
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2205780?threadID=2205780
I've not read the size issue has been solved, so If someone can tell me how.
Thanks a lot,

From the Mail menu bar, select
Mail ▹ Preferences ▹ Accounts
Select the problem IMAP account, then the Advanced tab in its settings. From the menu labeled
Keep copies of messages for offline viewing
select
Don't keep copies of any messages
If you're not sure which account is involved, take this step in each one.
Another option is to exclude the hidden folder that contains the messages from your backups. You can do that in the Time Machine preference pane.

Time Machine : incredible calculation time required

I have started backing up with Time Machine and this is an example of what it gives .
In the beggining it calculated 6.000 days and after thirty minutes or so , it got to that conclusion .
I have done the full reset of Time Machine and restarted the procedure but nothing changed .
Currently , it needs 654 days .
It doesn't seem to make any progress.
What is the deal here?
Shall I leave it or does it need fixing ?
Thank you and have a great weekend.

Ok, now it has reduced the time in eight hours and it's progressing .

Time Machine Folder Calculating forever

Hey Guys,
I have a Time Machine Backup folder from July. If I try to connect to my MacBook Pro and read contents of the folders, I am unable to.
There is a red '-' Icon attached to some folders and when I click on them, the preview pane shows 'Calculating' and it stays like that forever (I left it overnight). From Terminal 'You have no permissions to access' or something like that.
There is a lot of stuff I need in that backup. Any help is really appreciated.
Thanks guys!
Uday

Yosemite is a dog..
Do you have another computer on the network running some functional Mac OS??
If not buy a USB drive. plug it into the Mac.. boot from recovery and try and use the TM to restore the whole backup (at a suitable time for your files) to the USB drive. Do this over ethernet with no wireless turned on.
Once you have a working recovery restart the computer from Yosemite.. and pluck the files you need from the USB drive.
You can also have a try with finder to do a manual restore.
Can't access old files on time capsule

HT201250 Time machine displays calculating size?

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