Limit Time Machine Disc Space

I am using an external NAS for backup. I backup up a few computers to the array. The array only has one volume right now. After a lot of reading it doesn't seem like you can limit disc space with time machine. Is there a way to limit the disc space TM uses vs. consume the full drive then delete old files? I would prefer not to drop the volume and partion the discs if possible. Any other options?
Thanks for any assistance.

Not a good choice because the Time Machine backup drive needs to have much more space than the size of the hard drive you backup. If you need storage space, then buy another drive to use.

Similar Messages

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    I agree that the easiest option is to start over with Time Machine but then I lose 3 months history
    Not if you set the old TM disk off to the side unplugged and turned off. If in the next couple months you discover you need a file that isn't in the new TM data you can always connect the old and search for it. You don't trust it any longer so it isn't like you're going to reformat it and use it for any other purpose, right?

  • Time Machine Disc Unmounts Itself

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    Jan 20 16:43:34 Master-Control-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[90769]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Timeless Connections
    Jan 20 17:57:37: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
    Jan 20 17:58:07: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
    Jan 20 18:16:33: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
    Jan 20 18:17:03: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
    Jan 20 18:33:26 Master-Control-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[90769]: Copied 3032 files (79.1 GB) from volume Timeless Connections.
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    Jan 20 18:37:47 Master-Control-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[91797]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Timeless Connections
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    Jan 20 20:07:57 Master-Control-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[92546]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Timeless Connections
    Jan 20 20:31:42: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
    Jan 20 20:32:12: --- last message repeated 3 times ---
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    Jan 20 22:39:20 Master-Control-2 com.klieme.TimeMachineScheduler[93729]: false
    Do you see anything useful? What's this about the "UUIDs don't match for volume"? I know it is Unique User ID but I'm not sure what it is telling me. What doesn't match?

  • After clean Install how to assign time machine disc

    Hi,
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    "After a clean install" you don't give enough information so I'll take a guess. You installed Leopard now want to restore your backup of TM. You did it wrong. Boot with the Leopard DVD or other means(I use a Leopard boot partition on a hard drive) once you select you language, go to Utility and select restore from TM backup. It will either recognize the disk you have the TM backup on or ask you to connect it.

  • Laptop doesn't recognise back-ups on my old Time Machine disc

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    Hi brat1836
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  • Limit Time Machine backup/sparsebundle so one machine doesn't hog all the time capsule space?

    Is this possible?
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    No. That is not how a Time Capsule and Time Machine work. All backups are adding to existing backups.
    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.
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    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.
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  • 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?
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    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.
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  • Limit Time Machine

    Hi, i know there are alot of unsolved topics of this, but my situation is a bit different. On 10.5 I was able to limit the space using quotas, I even wrote down the steps so i wouldn't forget. What i did...
    1.- Enable quotas on the disk
    2.- Share and add R&W access to the user
    3.- run edquota on that user (workgroup manager quota didn't seem to do anything). Set the hard quota to something (in the test i did i set it to 33GB just to fill it up fast just to see if it was working)
    After that, on the client side, i selected the disk and it said the disk size was 33GB, used it for a while copying new files to the client and backing up until i got a disk full)
    So that worked as expected.
    I upgraded to 10.6, did the same but now Time Machine is reporting 16TB (size of the volume). Now another test on 10.6 I did was set the quota to something small and filled it up with random files, for the last bit i did a little bash script to write characters to a file until my quota was caped. Now i was left with 0 space left.
    After that i went to time machine and tried to backup and it failed.
    So the quota worked even for the time machine files, but the server is reporting the volume size and not the size of the quota as it did on 10.5.
    Did something change, did i completely miss something . I saw this working, that just makes it that much more frustrating.
    Message was edited by: geermc4

    Solved.
    This is what i had
    Quotas for user me:
    /Volumes/Drobo: 1K blocks in use: 768224, limits (soft = 0, hard = 367001600)
    inodes in use: 321, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)
    This is what i should have done
    /Volumes/Drobo: 1K blocks in use: 768224, limits (soft = 0, hard = 367001600)
    inodes in use: 321, limits (soft = 0, hard = 367001600)
    Edit. that's on edquota btw.
    Message was edited by: geermc4

  • Limit Time Machine Disk Usage (Drobo)

    Is it possible to set a software limit on the amount of disk space used by Time Machine?
    I have a Drobo device which is currently working very well with Time Machine. However, there is a small feature which I can see becoming a problem.
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    Well, not in Time Machine, but using Disk Utility in leopard you could create a 300 gig partition without erasing any of the data on the drive (the new Disk Utility allows for non-destructive re-partitioning).

  • How can i properly regain Time Machine HD Space

    i goofed somewhere
    My time machine exeternal drive is full
    So i spent ONE HOUR deletely backups,Only keeping Oct 31,Nov 30 and Today
    so i could regain space for new backups
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    i emptied the trash..........679,484 items deleted
    Why didnt i regain HD Space on this external drive?
    Where can i look?
    Its a Toshiba Portable External HD
    should i install Toshibas cd rom and re-do everything?
    thanks

    If lots of disk space disappeared rapidly, a likely scenario would be that you're running something like VMware or Parallels, editing iMovie or iDVD files, have a very large Entourage mail DB, or generally are doing something where large (many-MB or GB+) files are being updated throughout the day, and thus big updates are occurring every hour. The documentation describes how to exclude system files, which at least in theory can be easily restored from the installation media, how to exclude certain directories or files which are large and/or frequently updated, etc.
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  • HT203176 My start-up disc is nearly full.  I have another disc, an ex-time machine disc, that is available.  How do I make it known to the system so it can be used?

    I am getting a message that my 250 gb hard drive is nearly full.  I have deleted many files without making much difference.  I am unable to update any software now.  I have a 500 GB drive that was used for Time Machine but is now available to use.  I have cleared the data from it, now how do I make this drive available to the system?

    You can't.
    Move some more data to that other drive to free up space on the startup drive.
    Don't forget to empty the Trash.

  • Time Machine Disk Space Problem

    I have approximately 1TB of data (as confirmed by Time Machine) and I purchased a 1.5TB external backup disk to dedicate exclusively to Time Machine backups.  However, Time Machine will not backup because according to Time Machine there is not enough space (not even for an initial backup).  I have read discussions that suggest Time Machine uses 20% more space than the backup data (https://discussions.apple.com/message/17944550#17944550).  If that is true, I should have more than enough space.  Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?  Why is 50% of extra space not enough?  Thanks for your help.

    Did you partition and format the drive before using it?
    Drive Partition and Format
    1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
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  • Time machine disk space use

    My time machine backups are working great.
    I have just noticed that my Mac HD has used 105GB of space but my external drive, using time machine, has used 168GB. Why the difference? Is this normal? Thanks.

    runningman5 wrote:
    My time machine backups are working great.
    I have just noticed that my Mac HD has used 105GB of space but my external drive, using time machine, has used 168GB. Why the difference? Is this normal? Thanks.
    That is perfectly normal. TM does not just have your current HD data, but also everything you have erased and/or changed over the time you have been running it. You can recover a file that you deleted months ago because it's still on the TM drive; hence the larger file volume.

  • Time Machine / Disk Space / iPhoto(?)

    Ok, I'm not techy so please bare with me!!
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    Time Machine automatically deletes old snapshots to make room for new ones, but it won't delete the last previous snapshot of any disk.
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  • Best way to repartition external hard drive to give Time Machine more space

    I have my external 2 TB hard drive segmented into 2 equal 1 TB partitions. The first partition is my time machine back-ups. The second is media files.
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    Debonya1 wrote:
    I have my external 2 TB hard drive segmented into 2 equal 1 TB partitions. The first partition is my time machine back-ups. The second is media files.
    I also have approx 500GB of storage left on my 1 TB internal Mac HD. I keep receiving an error message that Time Machine cannot complete because it needs more file size. I have 185 GB available and it needs 225 GB.
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