Impossibly large Time Machine backup

Hi everyone, I apologize in advance if this issue has been addressed in another question, but it is particularly difficult to search for, the keywords resemble that of many many issues. The problem is this; I recently began Time Machine backups to a Western Digital My Book World. It is a 2TB drive. The drive that I wish to backup is a 1TB internal drive that has 650GB of information on it. Setting up the system was fairly simple, but achieving a successful backup was more difficult. It took more than 6 tries for the backup to finish entirely, encountering several errors along the way. At this point, I have a successful backup as per the information in the Time Machine preference pane. The trouble is, I would like to continue backing up (obviously) but I encounter an error that I have never seen before. The backup process begins by preparing, which demands a lot of processor allocation (more than normal) for over 3 hours. Once the preparation is complete I am presented with a fairly common error informing me that my backup is too large for the target disk. This is the interesting part: the window says that there are 1120GB available on the disk (accurate) and the backup requires 31200GB (yes, 31TB). Obviously there is something going on here that isn't right. When I explore the Time Machine preferences, it reassures me that the total backed up data is just over 650GB. There is no way I should require 31TB of free space. I appreciate any help with this issue, and I hope it something simple! I would also like to add that I can't reformat the backup volume because is has specific Western Digital network drive software that I do not know how to restore onto the drive. Thanks again!

Hi Patrick, there are far easier,faster, more reliable ways to bckup in my opinion if you'd be interested.
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html

Similar Messages

Large Time Machine Backup and Airport Extreme Bottleneck

Network Configuration:
Wall-Cable Modem (no wireless)-Airport Extreme-D-Link Switch (to extend the ports)-Devices
Three devices are plugged into the Airport Extreme. A wired connection directly from this computer, the D-Link Switch, and another remote wired connection.
In the switch I have plugged in, among other things, a Drobo5N NAS with 16TB worth of disk storage (netting 11 roughly usable space).
I am a photographer who has been at it awhile (10 years plus), so I have a large cache of picture files stored in RAW format.
On my local MacPro I have a pair of 1.5TB disks installed internally in a RAID 0 array for nearly 3TB of storage. I use most of it. The MacPro otherwise is unremarkable. I reconfigured it with an SSD boot disk and it has the original HDD drive along with an extra to fill out the remaining bay. My overall storage requirements for backup are 3.05TB.
I started the TimeMachine backup over the network and the performance seems slow. It ran some numbers out of the console and it looks like it's copying an average of about 5GB an hour on average.
I tried to do a quick review of the router settings but when I called up the Airport Utility it takes an extremely long time to show information. Since I started this thread, the message "Reading settings on (my) Airport Extreme" has been up, then finally as I was typing this line the information came through. It seems the router may be a bottleneck, but I am not sure.
The backup has been running 4 days and is about halfway done.
So where to go from here? Is this kind of performance in Time Machine the norm? Is the Airport causing this problem? If so, do I need to check for some sort of software upgrade or missing configuration? Not sure where to go next, but I am pretty sure I can move more than 5GB per hour over my network.
Any help appreciated.

Answered in your other thread. Please don't double-post. Thanks.

Large Time Machine Backups

Before updating to mavericks my macbook pro retina was only backing up changes from the last backup. After mavericks it always seem to back up 33.7 gb of data eachtime it runs.
My usage scenario is copying about 10 gb of data to a folder (folder is excluded from backups as after I'm done it is deleted everyday) then delete it. After emptying trash I start backing up daily, sometimes weekly. Other than that there is no change made by me in the file system or os. Can anybody help me reduce the size of backups or return it to normal?

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
tmutil compare | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the Terminal 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.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Time machine backup is extremely large!

After I upgraded my MacBook Pro (Mid-2012) to Mavericks, I decided to do a backup on my Seagate 500GB GoFlex drive using Time Machine. It started to clear all my old backups and still did not have enough space. So I reformatted the drive and started to back up an initial backup of 383GB. It took over 11 hours, with (unfortunately) a couple of disruptions because the drive was accidentally disconnected. However Time Machine says that I have successfully backed up.
Today, I backed up a second time (it's an automatic hourly backup) and was faced with an extremely long waiting time for "preparing..." (over an hour). An error message then appeared saying that the backup was 211 GB and that I do not have enough space in my drive. (see insert image)
What I would like to know is, why is my second backup so huge? Am I doing something wrong? And what should I do to salvage this? (I know hourly backups should typically not take more than a few GB of space, from experience.)
Thank you all for your help, I appreciate it.

I also have been seeing unexpectedly large Time Machine backups after the initial large backup after upgrading to 10.9, like 1-2 GB. I'm not doing anything other than surfing the web and checking email.

How to copy from time-machine backup of iTunes copied to external drive onto micro SD card

del Name: MacBook Air M
Have a new MacBook Air 6.2, Processor:Intel Core i5, 1.4, Memory: 8 GB, HD: 256 GB
It operates OSX Yosemite 10.10.1
I downloaded fresh copy of iTunes 12.01.26 onto the air.
I have a large time machine backup of iTunes songs a previous iTunes libraries (194 Gb)
This is stored on an WD 1 TB external drive using a 3.0 usb cable.
How do I copy a selection of iTunes songs (approx 40GB in size) from the external drive
onto a 64 GB SD card. The card fits with a nifty adapter into the expansion slot of the macbook air.
Grateful to know step by step approach

Thanks for the advice. My time machine iTunes backup includes several previous backups and is approx 164 gb in size. My SD card is 64 gb. How can I restore chosen directories so that it fits the SD cards capcity
Thanks - again

TIme Machine backup grows too large during backup process

I have been using Time Machine without a problem for several months, backing up my imac - 500GB drive with 350g used. Recently TM failed because the backups had finally filled the external drive - 500GB USB. Since I did not need the older backups, I reformatted the external drive to start from scratch. Now TM tries to do an initial full backup but the size keeps growing as it is backing up, eventually becoming too large for the external drive and TM fails. It will report, say, 200G to back up, then it reaches that point and the "Backing up XXXGB of XXXGB" just keeps getting larger. I have tried excluding more than 100GB of files to get the backup set very small, but it still grows during the backup process. I have deleted plist and cache files as some discussions have suggested, but the same issue occurs each time. What is going on???

Michael Birtel wrote:
Here is the log for the last failure. As you see it indicates there is enough room 345g needed, 464G available, but then it fails. I can watch the backup progress, it reaches 345G and then keeps growing till it give out of disk space error. I don't know what "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD" implies, maybe this is a clue?
No. It's sort of a warning, indicating that TM isn't sure what's changed on your internal HD since the previous backup, usually as a result of an abnormal shutdown. But since you just erased your TM disk, it's perfectly normal.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
2009-07-08 19:37:53.659 FindSystemFiles[254:713] Querying receipt database for system packages
2009-07-08 19:37:55.582 FindSystemFiles[254:713] Using system path cache.
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Backup content size: 309.5 GB excluded items size: 22.3 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 345.01 GB requested (including padding), 464.53 GB available
This is a completely normal start to a backup. Just after that last message is when the actual copying begins. Apparently whatever's happening, no messages are being sent to the log, so this may not be an easy one to figure out.
First, let's use Disk Utility to confirm that the disk really is set up properly.
First, select the second line for your internal HD (usually named "Macintosh HD"). Towards the bottom, the Format should be +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ although it might be +Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).+
Next, select the line for your TM partition (indented, with the name). Towards the bottom, the Format must be the same as your internal HD (above). If it isn't, you must erase the partition (not necessarily the whole drive) and reformat it with Disk Utility.
Sometimes when TM formats a drive for you automatically, it sets it to +Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).+ Do not use this unless your internal HD is also case-sensitive. All drives being backed-up, and your TM volume, should be the same. TM may do backups this way, but you could be in for major problems trying to restore to a mis-matched drive.
Last, select the top line of the TM drive (with the make and size). Towards the bottom, the *Partition Map Scheme* should be GUID (preferred) or +Apple Partition Map+ for an Intel Mac. It must be +Apple Partition Map+ for a PPC Mac.
If any of this is incorrect, that's likely the source of the problem. See item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum for instructions, then try again.
If it's all correct, perhaps there's something else in your logs.
Use the Console app (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
When it starts, click +Show Log List+ in the toolbar, then navigate in the sidebar that opens up to your system.log and select it. Navigate to the +Starting standard backup+ message that you noted above, then see what follows that might indicate some sort of error, failure, termination, exit, etc. (many of the messages there are info for developers, etc.). If in doubt post (a reasonable amount of) the log here.

Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup. However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails. And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external. Sort of a catch 22. Any ideas?

Trying to use a new, larger external hard drive for my Time Machine backup. However, every time I start the backup, it gets started then fails. And, I can't delete the few files that did save on the external. Sort of a catch 22. Any ideas?

Is it a USB hard drive? USB hard drives have the problem of not giving full speed if they are hooked up on the same bus as keyboards and mice. Double check your profiler to make sure that is not a problem. If it is Firewire, make sure there aren't other firewire devices in use at the same time. I recommend not only keeping a Time Machine backup, but also a clone, and if you do use Time Machine, to make sure the Time Machine drive or partition is at least twice the size of the original drive.

HT201250 Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller ext

Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?

50maz wrote:
Hi, I hope this question won't seem too basic but if I want to use a new larger external drive for my time machine backups, will it do a new full backup the first time I plug it in
Yes, it will do a full backup.
and if so, do I really need all the old backups on my smaller external drive?
Only if you want to be able to go back in time to those previous Time Machine backups. When you plug in the new larger external drive, you will only be able to go back as far as the first day you plugged it in and ran the first Time Machine backup on it.

Time Machine backup created on Mac with a large hard disk. What happens when restore to MacBook Air with small SSD drive?

What if a Time Machine backup was created on a Mac with a large hard disk, e.g. 500GB iMac - and I buy a new MacBook Air with a small SSD hard disk e.g 128GB. What happens when I need to use the larger Time Machine file to set up the new MacBook Air? What happens to all those files that can't fit on the smaller SSD drive?

It is not the HD size, but rather the size of the data it contains. If you right-click your 500GB drive and select "Get Info" you can see how much is actually being used.
Naturally if you are using more space than the new drive has, then you have to make some choices about what you want to keep and what you want to keep archived.
I don't know what options are available but you may simply have to do a manual restore of files you want, in groups.

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my info back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos.I see the photos in my HD. What should I do

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my files back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumbnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos. I see the original photo files in my HD. Is there a way to link the Iphoto thumbnails back to the original files?

Use the Firewire cable and t boot the old Mac's hard drive to the new Mac's desktop and transfer your entire iPhoto folder.
Use Disk Utiliy to erase'format HFS+ Journaled your TimeMachine drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new boot drive to the external, it's hold option bootable.

Move a large folder into another folder without the need of a time machine backup?

I have a large folder (FolderX) about 40GB and i was wondering if it is possible to move the folder into another folder, but also move it in my time machine backup so it won't see the need to backup, because it will cost me a extra 40GB of storage while the folder is allready on the backup HD.
So to give a picture:
Current situation:
Macintosh HD > Users > Username > Documents > FolderX
Wanted move:
Macintosh HD > Users > Username > Documents > Work > FolderX
Is this possible?

Did you copy the TM files, or move them? If you moved them, the repository is destroyed. Erase the volume and start over.

Used Time Machine Backup Today- Now This backup is too large for the backup

Hey Everyone!
Some advice please,
My Hard Drive recently crashed. Fortunately, I've been using Time Machine. Apple Store gave me a new Hard Drive (for free), and I came home and restored to Time Machine. I am very impressed, and have lost no data or applications.
So now I have a problem. I can no longer back my hard drive, presumably because there were so many changes to the software today. I am getting This backup is too large for the backup volume. What is the easiest way to delete my old time machine backup and start from scratch with my computer in its current state? Everything seems to be working smoothly, so I don't see any reason to keep my old backups. Any suggestions? Is there any logical reason why I would keep the old backup?
Message was edited by: David Selevan

Thanks Barry!
I called Apple (had to anyway for a new OS Leopard DVD) and he had me go into Disk Utility and choose Erase Disk (as you suggested). I didn't have to do any formatting.
The next step was to go into System Preferences and select Change Disk and set it to None. After that, he had me choose Change Disk again, and select the USB drive, and click Use For Backup.
Now it's backing up the new version of my computer. Problem solved. Thank you.
After having to get an brand new Hard Drive today, I highly recommend that everyone purchase some kind of external hard drive and run Time Machine regularly. Although the backups get large, I've never experienced such a pleasant experience getting my files back after a hard drive failure. This is awesome technology. I can't believe 95% of my applications still worked.
David

My Time Machine backups are significantly larger, and slower, over WiFi than Ethernet

My regular hourly backups from my Time Capsule began acting up a month ago. They were abnormally large (25-100 MBs) and took a long time--once, six hours.
I connected my Time Capsule to my MacBook Air through ethernet to repair the disk through Disk Utility, (I turned Airport off on the Air, but not the Time Capsule), and then to rebuild the Spotlight index for the Time Capsule.
Backups over ethernet work just fine now. The backup will happen in two parts, of around 200 KB each, and take two or two and a half minutes. But when I turn Airport on the Air back on, reconnect to the WiFi network, unplug the ethernet cable, and immediately start a new backup over WiFi, the two parts balloon to around 20 MB each, and the backup takes hours.
This is a backup over ethernet, which took 2 minutes, 21 seconds:
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/External HD/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.70 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Copied 1082 files (104 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.70 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Copied 429 files (153 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air/2012-05-11-225349: 733.41 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air/2012-05-11-200538: 733.41 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
This is the second backup after that one, done over WiFi. (The first was incompletely recorded by Time Machine Buddy, but took around half an hour.) It took 1 hour, 54 minutes, 50 seconds:
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/External HD/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 26 KB of 20.6 MB, 98 of 98 items
Copied 1485 files (22.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.72 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Error: (-8084) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/foxmarti/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ehjqi949.default/places.sqlite-wal to (null)
Copied 1941 files (27.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Eject

slyfox1908 wrote:
I live in an apartment building so there are a number of WiFi networks around.
Not to mention cordless phones, microwaves, etc., any of which can interfere.
On iStumbler, my network shows up twice--once on channel 149, with signal strength of 50-65% and noise of 15%--and again on channel 10, with signal strength of that wildly varies from 20% to 90% and noise of 20%. Other networks in the building are on channels 1, 2, 6, and 11. The graph of channel 149 is very smooth, while the graph of channel 10 is choppy.
It's probably using 149, as those numbers are pretty good. Press Alt/Option before clicking the Airport icon in your menubar to see which band it's using.
Watch the band it's using while running a backup. Try other channels in the area of 149. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a "hit and miss" thing.
Why are there two networks? Is that part of the problem? My Time Capsule is located about three feet right and a foot below my desk, so I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be 100% for both channels.
It's a dual-band router. As I understand it, OSX will pick the best signal.
I really want to know I have a clean, safe, accessible back-up before I replace it though. Right now I don't trust the Time Capsule.
Do at least your last backup via Ethernet.

Time machine backup to large to migrate to MBP

Hi everyone,
I really hope someone can help me with this problem.
A while ago I took a time machine backup of my old macbook pro, which I no longer have. Now I want to use migrate assistant to get all my old files, applications, settings etc. onto another macbook pro. The problem is that the backup on the external hard drive is 339 GB, but the hard drive on the "new" macbook pro is only 320 GB. Is there any way for me to retrieve my files from the time machine backup without getting another computer with a larger hard drive? I don´t mind losing 20-30 GB of my old files, as long as I can get most of them back.
Ingibjörg Högna

With a new MBP you want to use Migration Assistant instead of TM Restore, that should eliminate a few GB, like the OS, which may not work on the newer one anyway.
If you are restoring a backup made by one Mac to a completely different Mac
Important: If the backup you are about to restore is from a completely different Mac, use theMigration Assistant to transfer data from the backup, as described in the next section.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4413

How does one SUCCESSFULLY transfer Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk drive using OSX 10.5.8

I have read a number of articles about how to transfer a complete Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk-drive. Some of these articles are specifically for OSX10.6 users, which are not applicable to me since I am operating with OSX 10.5.8.
However, I have tried several times to use the Disk Utility 'Restore' function, dragging my old time-machine volume into the 'Source:' box and my new volume into the 'Destination:' box. This works, of sorts, BUT the newly created volume on the new larger hard disk-drive remains the same size as the original volume on the old Time-Machine HDD, with no apparent way of increasing the new volume's size. So I am not really any better off:
E.g. the total capacity of my new HDD is stated by 'Disk Utility' to be 465.8 GB, of which I'm told 228.2 GB is used for the Backups.backdb folder, but only 4.6 GB of free space is actually available. Yet under the 'Partition' tab of 'Disk Utility' it tells me that there is still 236.4 GB of available space.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue without upgrading to OSX 10.6?

First, how did you prepare your new drive? See:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
If you plan to partition this new drive then be sure you create a larger partition for TM than your old volume.
Next, clone your old TM volume:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Impossibly large Time Machine backup

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