My time machine is backing up my whole drive repeatedly, what do I do?

yeah I stood in line for this dang leopard, got it, did a clean install, installed my programs, then backed up with time machine. Now time machine is supposed to back up only the changes you make right? well I have a 150gb external drive and the first back up took up 40 gb, but the subsequents backups are also 40 gb, and now my external hard drive is full after three backups....what do I do??????? am I doing something wrong?

Reboot the TC.. ie pull out the power cord.. count to 10.. plug it in again.
TM has not released the disk after the last backup.
Read C12 in Pondini for more info.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
This is asked 5-10 times every day.. and the More Like This still doesn't show the other instances.

Similar Messages

When using Time Machine to back up to external drive, does Time Machine back up content in your Trash folder?

When using Time Machine to back up to external drive, does Time Machine back up content in your Trash folder?

Go to System Preferences (under the Apple menu) > Time Machine and click the Options button. Click the "+" button in the lower left. In the resulting dialog, check the Show invisible items checkbox. Go to your home folder and look for Trash. Click the Exclude button in the lower right.

Time Machine not backing up 2nd external drive, remove option grayed out

I have two external hard drives, 300gb (firewire) and 500gb (usb). Time Machine is backing up to the 300gb. In Time Machine's options, the 500gb is excluded from being backed up, and the remove option is grayed out.
The 300gb Time Machine Backup drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended. The 500gb drive is formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32).
I know the backup drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended, but will it not even back up other drives that are FAT32?

I am having a similar problem. I initially set it up 3 days ago and had it back up just the iMac to Time Capsule (about 120 GB) which it did no problem (I initially had my LaCie drive excluded). I then un-excluded my other drive, where all my photos and music reside (about 130 GB). Since then, it keeps trying to back up about 102 GB each time. Looking at the list of backups it does not appear that it has ever successfully backed up the LaCie. I am not aware of any error messages, but I have not been home much. I normally shut down the computer at night but I have been leaving it on trying to let Time Machine do its thing. All I can say is that every time I am at the computer TM is running and it always looks like it is in the middle of backing up 102 GB (usually seems to be near the beginning, never seem to see it more than halfway done). Looking at the TM panel it says the latest backup was 2 days ago. I'd appreciate any advice!

Using time machine to back up additional external drives

My mac mini contains a 160 gb hard drive. Aiming to keep this free, I connected a 500 gb WD mac-specific hard drive. I also use this drive when attempting to access work files on my macbook pro. When using time machine, which backs up to a 1 TB WD hard drive (also attached to the mac mini), I cannot figure out how to use time machine to back up simultaneously the contents of the native (160 gb) drive in the mac mini and the contents of the portable external drive (500 gb). *Is there any way to set time machine to accomplish this?* Please help - I really need to continually back up the contents of the portable drive as well.

carbon copy cloner will do this. you set up a scheduled job (can be daily, weekly, etc. & even every hour!) & is free to use (donations accepted).
http://www.bombich.com/ccc_features.html

Using Time Machine to back up an external drive?

I have an external HD containing my iTunes library attached to my Airport Extreme Base Station. Is it possible to use Time Machine to back up the AEBS-attached HD onto a different HD? I would connect the new HD directly to my MacBook and in an ideal situation, Time Machine would create a fresh back-up of my AEBS HD (iTunes library) every time I connected the second HD to my MacBook.
I may be making this more difficult than it needs to be. I just want to be able to back up my iTunes library to a second HD which I still have to purchase.
Any ideas?

Yes, just be sure the drive is online and not in the exclude list. Note that TM can only backup to one designated backup drive. If you add a second drive for backup, TM cannot use it and the currently designated backup drive simultaneously.

Is it possible to use time machine to back up a hard drive?

Is it possible to use time machine to back up a 1 hard drive onto another, then periodically update the backups just like I usually do with the Mac HD onto an external?
Thanks!

kidboy wrote:
Is it possible to use time machine to back up a 1 hard drive onto another, then periodically update the backups just like I usually do with the Mac HD onto an external?
Thanks!
I don't know what you usually do but Time machine is a backup software. it does back up one (or more) hard drives to another. it's not a mirror utility though. it makes and keeps regular incremental backups and you can restore from any time point in the past you have a backup for. i suggest you consult pondini's FAQs at the top of TM forum
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018
also see TM 101
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
check out this tutorial too to see it in action
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics
Message was edited by: V.K.

Will Time Machine also back up an attached drive?

I have a MacBook Pro and an external FireWire drive (dedicated to recording audio).
If I attach a second drive (USB if that matters) to be my backup, and then I launch Time Machine, will it back up the data from both my laptop drive and my audio drive? Or will it just back up my laptop drive and I'll have to manually copy the files from my audio drive?
Thanks for any help in understanding.

Yes, Time Machine can back it up, if it's formatted HFS+ (any flavor of +Mac OS Extended.)+
If by chance it doesn't, check the exclusion box in TM Preferences. If the drive is listed there, select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.

Time machine only backs up one internal drive

I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 running 10.8.5 with 3 internal drives. Time machine sucessfully backs up the 600GB boot drive but has stopped working with the all important 3TB Data drive (half full). The remaining 4TB drive is for Time machine backups. Only the boot drive now sucessfully gets backed up with Time machine backups but not the Data drive.
I have tried everything I can to try to get it to work again and here are some of my steps taken:
- Checked to see if the Data drive has not bee excluded from Time machine backup options. No it hasn't been excluded.
- Check Smart Status on all drives - all good.
- Use Disk Util to verify all my drives - all good, no errors.
- Stop Time machine, formatted the Time machine backup drive and restarted Time machine. Still not backing up my data drive.
- Reset Time machine by following http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html - Still no change.
- Remove the Data drive from Spotlight indexing with Spotlight - privacy settings and then re-add it to Spotlight indexing - Now it does a full backup, but no more incremental backups are created when files on the Data drive are changed. And the full backup of the Data drive disappears from the Time Machine backup a few days later!
The Time machine logs just shows - "Will copy (Zero KB) from Data".
I have tried to follow the troubleshooting hints on http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html but can't seem to find any other clues to help me with my problem.
Does anyone else see this before and have any suggestions?

I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, they may not work as described.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
{ diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list; } | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (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 (command-V).
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

Time Machine and backing up external hard drives

Time machine will not back external hard drives I have connected to my Mac Pro. It works fine with the 3 hard drives mounted in the computer. Is this the way Time Machine is intended to work or am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance for your assistance.

According to Disk Utility, GUID and AFP are both ok for a non-bootable drive with either CPU. The difference is when you want to make a volume bootable.
Since TM volumes are not bootable, it shouldn't matter UNLESS you have some other bootable system installed on the drive.
Right now, the drive on my Intel iMac is partitioned AFP and the one on the PPC powerbook is GUID. They both appear to be behaving themselves. The iMac has had one instance (since the last partition job) of a massive backup which occurred right after I changed the exclude list and the PPC has had no massive backups (other than the initial one). On that one, I built the exclude list BEFORE the initial backup.
- gws

Can I use time machine to back up computer hard drive AND contents of an external HD (contains only photos) onto another external hard drive (standalone HD for backups only)? PLEASE HELP!!

I keep my photo files on a separate external hard drive, separate from my laptop hard drive. And I want to be able to use time machine as the back-up system to back up BOTH the computer's hard drive AND the external hard drive.... and i want all of the "back-up" information contained on a separate standalone external HD. So in the end, I have a 250GB computer hardrive, a 1TB external hardrive, and I want to have a 2nd external hard drive that will be the location to store the "back-ups" (using time machine) which will be either a 2TB or 3TB harddrive.
I am in dire need of help....

Yes, just make sure that they are not excluded in Time Machine.

HT201250 How do I use Time Machine to back up an External Drive to another External Drive?

Hello,
I have two 8TB Western Digital External Hard Drives with Thunderbolt ports. I have already set up a 500GB G-TECH Mini to use as the Time Machine backup for my MacBook Pro. Now, I would like to set up one of my 8TB drives to be the back up for my other 8TB drive, yet I seem to only be able to back up the MacBook Pro with Time Machine.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Connect both 8TB externals to the computer, then do the following:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility in 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. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the 8TB drive to which you will copy. Source means the 8TB drive you will copy.

How to disable Time Machine from backing up to hard drive

Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8) will not install onto iMac (under OSX 10.7.4) because: "hard drive is Time Machime backup disk" error message. However, TM Preferences does not show the iMac HD as a TM backup Location Option - it only shows the LaCie External Drive - which has been the storage drive receiving the Time Machine Backup. How do I remove/prevent Time Machine from looking for and/or backing up to the iMac Hard Drive if the TM Pref does not list the iMac Hard Drive as an option? Note: The iMac HD icon on the desktop is a "Time Machine image" (blue Drive icon w/white white counter clockwise arrow). Thanks.

Check to see if you have a file called backups.backupdb on the hard drive you are attempting to update.
If the install procedure see such a file, it might think that it is a TM backup drive.
Allan

Time Machine cannot back up to G-Drive slim which is connected, but does not appear in Finder.

my MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) using OS X Yosemite10.10.2 has properly connected G-drive Slim, but it does not appear in Finder;
On Screen pop up Warnings:
"Back up Failed Time Machine couldn't back up to "G-Drive Slim" " and
"Disk Not Ejected Properly Eject "G-Drive Slim" before turning it off."

Does the drive show in Disk Utility? Try a restart.

Time machine not backing up entire hard drive on initial back up. Why?

I bought a new 2TB desktop hard drive to use in backing up my 27" iMac (2011, OSX 10.7.5) and performed the initial backup today. The backup went smoothly but I was perplexed with something I saw.
Disk Utility tells me that my internal hard drive (Macintosh HD) contains 173.95GB of data but the initial backup that TM did contains only 94.2GB. So, why is there such a large (~80GB) discrepancy between the two drives?
I did not elect to exclude any items from the backup in the TM preferences.
Many thanks,
Bob

If it wasn't clear, I used Time Machine to perform this initial backup. Sorry.....

I would like to use time Machine to back up to a network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it

I currently have a mini server (OSX10.8.5, server 2.2.2) that I am using Time Machine to back up 4 external drives that are connected to the server via firewire 800. I would like to use Time Machine to back up to a windows network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it for use.
Can this be done
Thanks for any and all help

The supported targets for Time Machine backups are local (direct-connected) disks, and network targets include Time Capsule, a disk hanging off the current-generation AirPort (though not earlier AirPort devices), and OS X Server systems.
The Time Machine storage is based on the HFS+ file system, so I would not expect TM to work with SMB file services.
While there are hacks to allow Time Machine to access network drives, I would not consider those to be reliable. Skim the forum and the 'net for related details, and for previous discussions of setting this up and the related issues that can arise.
Remember to test the recovery with whatever you decide to use; whole point of backups is the ability to restore the data, after all.
If you want to learn more about Time Machine, Pondini is an excellent resource.

My time machine is backing up my whole drive repeatedly, what do I do?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for