My time machine says it need more room to complete back up, how do i make more room? up

My time machine says it need more room to complete back up, how do i make more room?

Delete the old backups..
There is a reason though for this to happen. Tell us what model Time Capsule you are using and what size disk it has .. how much free space is available and how much is now required. If you upgraded to Mavericks it probably needs to do a whole new backup and simply doesn't have the space .. nor can it delete the old backup.
Please read Pondini FAQ for details of these issues.. deleting backups for example Q12
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
There is also info on how much space is required for backups.
eg Q9

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HT5988 I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version? How do I make that unit compatible? olefromca

I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version? How do I make that unit compatible? olefromca

I agree entirely, been messing with this since the upgrade to Mavericks but I didn't find it quite as easy as uninstalling the WD smartware as it still operates when you plug the drive back in - I think it gets loaded onto the drive and runs from within (?). The advice from WD was that time machine was faulty and I should contact Apple...thanks guys!
Anyway, for the OP's benefit, this is what I found:
1. My problem was that time machine couldn't see any further back than before the Mavericks install, but if I opened up and interrogated the WD drive, the old backups were still there.
2. When TM started doing new backups, it overwrote the ones that it could see, not the oldest ones on the drive. This indicated to
me that the WD software had somehow partitioned off the old backups and excluded that part of the drive from being overwritten. Of course, as the drive was practically full, it meant that any new backups wouldn't fit in the available space.....
3. The only way I could find to resolve this was to use the disc utility to erase and repartition the external drive. This will obviously remove all of the old files and backups, but I was more concerned about keeping a current profile as backup rather than a load of stuff from months ago.
4. Anyway, what happens after the eraseure has completed is that you get the WD icon on the desktop, and you're invited to install the software - this means the software has now been deleted. Juts don't reinstall it, just let TM do it's backup and all is well.
Usual disclaimers and warnings about keeping another copy of your system etc. obviously apply, and I know this is a radical move to delete all your old data but it worked for me. I guess I didn't appreciate that you could use the external drive without the software that came with it and just followed the screen guide.
I'm also aware that if you don't want to use TM to do a complete restore and only want to find one old version of a document, this is difficult. However, you can then install the WD software and find the file but you'll then have to do this all again.....

Time Machine says it needs to make a new backup.....

I have a Time Capsule. I did the initial backup via ethernet cable as instructed, then moved my iMac downstairs where it needs to be. The Time Capsule is upstairs functioning as my wireless network router and backup disk. I then connect the iMac via wireless to the Time Capsule backup disk upstairs and begin to do my subsequent backups wirelessly. All goes well for several weeks, then one day I get a message on my iMac that basically says that Time Machine has verified that it must do a new backup. Another full backup. OK, so I bring the iMac upstairs to do another backup via ethernet cable, then back downstairs to connect wirelessly. All goes well for another several weeks, then again it tells me I need to do another full backup.
What gives? What is the point of having a Time Capsule as a router and wireless backup disk if I have to keep connecting every few months to do an ethernet backup? It kind of defeats the whole purpose. I have another backup disk connected to the Time Capsule doing daily backups via SuperDuper and that goes on and on with never a problem. Why does the Time Capsule have so much trouble with wireless backups via Time Machine?
Am I doing something wrong?
Is this happening to anyone else? If this is the case, it was a real waste of money buying the Time Capsule. I should have bought an Airport Extreme and connected a hard drive.
Thanks for any ideas or comments you might have.
Len

See Pondini info about the issue.
C13 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
And yes, we find that wireless is much less robust than ethernet.
There is too much automatic stuff in the wireless of the TC.
Lock it down.. I recommend a full reset.
Give it all new names.. short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric. That includes TC name, wireless name for 2.4ghz and different name for 5ghz.
Lock the wireless (called radio) channels. Especially for 2.4ghz .. try 11, 6, 1
Otherwise the TC can swap channels at any time.
Make sure you use WPA2 Personal security. Make sure you get good signal in your location.
Airport Extreme with disk is
1. Not authorised by Apple for use with TM.
2. Suffers the same problem.
See http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html
TM is very exacting.. and very difficult.
SuperDuper will create a simple file structure that isn't dependent even on AFP.
As alternative to wireless you might find EOP adapters will work better for you.
Another alternative which I highly recommend for iMac, as a desktop is to simply plug in an external drive and use that.
It is cheaper, faster and more reliable than TC.. you can then do a backup from this drive to the TC occasionally by superduper as a further protection.

Time Machine says it need 21 TB space when I only have a 500 GB drive in the computer.

Hi, I have a MacBook and was trying to run a Time Machine backup when I got an error saying: "The backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 21.09 TB but only 369.26 GB are available."
I have a 500 GB drive in the MacBook and it only has about 150 GB taken up. I also have a 500 GB drive for the Time Machine and it is not even half way full. Any ideas as to how I can make it work?
I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.7 and I have the lat 2009 white MacBook. Wasn't having any issues with the Time Machine until just now.
Thanks.

It seems you're not alone with this problem. This is the suggested fix, but I've never tried it myself:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330105-263.html
Good luck
Bob

I need to restore iTunes. Time Machine says OSx needs iTunes

I am trying to restore iTunes from backup drive but I get the message that OS X needs iTunes and then it does nothing.
I have a backup drive for TimeMachine with a partition for iTunes.

Why do you need to restore it?

It all was say please contact iTunes support to complete this transaction how can I make this I did not anderstand any thing

Hi please help me I can't buy any thing please help me !!!!!!!,,!!!!!!! Please

You can contact iTunes support here : http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/

HT3275 Time Machine says there isn't enough room on my external hard drive to perform a backup.

But there was until very recently. The difference is about 100 times what Time Machine says is needed, and I know I didn't add that much stuff in the course of a few days.

Derby Dave wrote:
But there was until very recently. The difference is about 100 times what Time Machine says is needed, and I know I didn't add that much stuff in the course of a few days.
Sorry I am unclear.. how much space does TM say it needs and how much is free on the TC?
Sometimes it reports wrongly.. have you reboot the whole network.. restart modem, router / TC..clients.. and test again.

When Time Machine tries to back up to my Seagate HD before the HD is fully on, it fails. Then Time machine thinks it needs to back up the entire drive and there's not enough room. It won't just do the backup of new info now. Any thoughts?

When I try to do a Time Machine backup with my Seagate HD, and if I accidentally have Time Machine automatically on, it will fail if the HD is not fully on and recognized by the computer yet. But the problem is that when this has happened (twice now), it seems it loses all knowledge that it has backed up using Time Machine before and it will only try to back up the entire Mac HD to the Seagate. The Seagate already has 147 GB of data from prior Time Machine backups and I only need to backup the latest stuff since my last backup, but it won't let me do that. It tries to do the whole drive and it says it can't because there is only 135 GB of space left and it needs to backup 147 GB. Anyone know how to fix this and get it to start backing up again without erasing the drive and starting over? That's what I did last time. I erased the Seagate and then reset it as my Time Machine drive and it started working fine again until it failed and reverted to the problem. Thanks

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
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.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included—anonymize before posting.

Time Machine says not enough room on disk

Time Machine says that I do not have enough room on my backup disk. It is a 1 TB Drive, with 992 GB available.
I only want to back up my programs and data, which, if a full backup, is 662 GB, but for some reason, I am being told that I have 2.6 TB of data to back up. I have no idea where all of this other data is coming from, is there any way I can select what I want backed up? Effectively I want to back up my boot drive, and my data drive, that's it. I do have two other drives in my tower, and they are full of data, but I do not need to back them up, and they may be what is causing the problem, but I don't know how to remove them from my backup list.
Any help or direction would be appreciated.
Thank you.

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.
So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.
Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
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.

Time machine says back up is too large but there is room in my HD

ok searched the forums but could not find the answer....time machine was working perfectly...then..suddenly stated that the back up was too big. TM says the back up is 255.5mb but when I do a get info on my HD here is what it says...capacity 232.76gb available 11.77gb....i thought TM overwrites older stuff...can anybody help. my external HD is 250 gb. the other odd thing is tm only shows two back ups now.
Message was edited by: Chris Harmount

Chris Harmount wrote:
my back up drive is supposed to be 250G total. It says it has 185G available.
My computer drive is also 250G total. It says that I have about 20G available.
Time machine says my current back up is 260G??? I thought that 1. time machine overwrites old backups as the hard drive fills up. 2. I no longer see the history of when I first started theTM back ups. I only see one back up now and I can no longer use TM due to the error message?
It sounds like you internal drive has about 230 GB of data and the entire TM drive is 250GB? that will never work. TM needs some head room to operate. I don't know how much exactly but I know that it does.
also, i suspect that 250Gb is the advertised decimal GB capacity. the actual binary capacity is smaller and is probably around 230GB or less.
You definitely need a bigger TM drive.

HT3275 Time Machine says the backup is full, how to create more space on my time machine?

When i attempt to backup, time machine says that it does nto have enough free space to backup, how can i create enough space so that it will continue to backup?

Time Machine automatically deletes old snapshots when necessary to make room for a new one. If you're getting that message, it means that all your old snapshots have been deleted, and there is still not enough room to back up all your data. Either you must make some drastic exclusions from your backups, or you must back up to a larger destination volume.

Time Machine hard drive need to be reformatted?

I upgraded from Leopard about 6 hours ago and so far I haven't had any issues with Snow Leopard and it is noticeably faster and more stable. However, when I just plugged in my Time Machine backup drive I got a message saying the "disk was unreadable by this computer". That never happened until I installed Snow Leopard. Does my time machine backup HDD need to be reformatted to work with Snow Leopard??? Is there a chance that version 10.6.1 will fix this little issue soon?

If you're sure you've got all your data on your Mac now, and it's solid, you could erase your external drive and do a backup right off.
I also would search as I thought I saw someone with a simple fix for a similar issue here.
Scott

Time Machine says Time Capsule Disk unavailable

     I have the exclamation point in the menubar icon and Time Machine says Time Capsule Disk unavailable even though I have backed up to it many times before. I tried unpluging/plugging in the TC, but this did not solve the problem. Any ideas?

      However, I did have a problem periodically with computers not recognizing the TC disk before I had unclicked the "Enable file sharing" box, so I might still end up using your advice if this happens in the future.
There is a bug or several of them.. losing the disk is one thing the new 7.6.4 firmware is supposed to fix.. my deeply held suspicion is that Apple are using all of us as beta testers.. as lots of people are having trouble. But who knows it may finally fix this bug.. we are awaiting confirmation. ie people saying it is now fixed.. rather than since loading 7.6.4 my TC is now dead.. or disappeared .. or broken.. or no longer has wireless output.
Lets say maybe they fixed a bug.. and added some more.
     The reason I had unchecked the "Enable file sharing" box is because I have Mountain Lion Server and wanted to use port mapping on the TC to point to my computer as a File Server. To do this I went into Airport Utility and in Network pane tried to add File Sharing to the Port Settings. However, this conflicted with the "Enable file sharing" box from the Disks pane. Do you know of a way to have time machine backups to TC but also run a File Server from a computer networked with the TC using port mapping? Thank you for any guidance.
You only need the ports forwarded to the server to get outside access.. ie remote wan access.. Did you have wan access to the TC checked.. that will cause a conflict with AFP .. since it cannot be forwarded to multiple destinations at once.
If you do not have WAN access checked then you should be able to check "enable file sharing" since that is local lan..
Try it and tell me what happens.. I have never tried the combo you are using.
I would try simply using a different method to access if that doesn't work.. eg BTMM should work fine to the Server without needing ports forwarded in the TC.. as long as the TC is the main router.. and this whole issue is only because the TC is the main router.
You can also do it with vpn.. which is more robust and more business/pro method to access a server remotely than AFP.

HT3275 Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough

Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups. I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer. How can I erase old backups and complete this one?

Walter Goodman wrote:
Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't clear it up, how much data is on your Mac? If TM is only trying to back-up 34 GB, it should be able to delete old backups to do that (assuming you're running Lion).
It sounds like your backups may be corrupted. Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer.
If that's all you did, no.
How can I erase old backups and complete this one?
Just erase the drive per #1 or #2 of Using Disk Utility.

Time machine says my drive is full, but it's not

time machine says my drive is full, but it's not. it is a 298 gig external drive with 51 gigs available. my internal drive on my lap top (the one I am backing up) is a 148 gigs with 44 gigs available. the backup folder on the external drive is
152 gigs.
how can i fix time machine so it can figure out that the external drive isn't full?

Lisa W wrote:
Thank you both for your replies. Something is seriously wrong with a backup program that needs that much extra space! So much for incremental back ups.
It doesn't, necessarily. We still have no information on what's going on with your situation.
It's a back up for a laptop and I would like to connect it to the backup hard drive once a week or so, but from what I read time machine only works one way... for a computer to have it active all the time.
No. It works BEST that way, but isn't required.
That just won't work for me for many reasons. Most importantly, time machine slows up my computer and I have to leave it off to run my applications.
Then something else is wrong. Again, without any details, we can't help you determine what.
There is no setting to have it turn on in the middle of the night or once per week.
Not in TM itself. But there is a free 3rd-party app that will do this, Time Machine Editor: http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/
It would sure be nice if I could back up when I want. Seems like time machine is just one of those ideas that apple didn't think all the way through.
You can. And TM works just fine for most people. There is something unusual in your setup, or the way you're doing things, that's causing your difficulties.
Let's be clear: if you'd like some help with this, please answer my previous questions and download and post the messages from the wIdget.

My time machine says it need more room to complete back up, how do i make more room? up

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