Time Machine acting up.

I have a 500GB hardrive on my Macbook pro and a 500GB dedicated time machine backup hardrive. I have been getting on a regular basis the error that my backup drive was full. I decided to format the backup hardrive to start fresh. Now after formatting and having a fresh 500 GB back up hardrive TM is telling me that 450GB are necessary for backup, which would be fine. When I run time machine I get the error message that my back up hardrive is not big enough from my back up. That 580GB are needed (when my hardrive is only 500 and initially it was telling me that I needed 450GB) and that I only have 499GB available. Why is this happening? My hardrive is only 500GB, were did he extra 80GB come from?

How much data is on the disk that you want to back up with Time Machine? One rule of thumb is that you should have a backup drive with 2.5X as much capacity as what you want to back up.

Similar Messages

TIME MACHINE ACTING BADLY WITH THIRD iMAC

I am on my third iMac now and TM still acting strange. First iMac and using Time Machine when looking through Mail, TM would lock up the computer. A hard reboot was necessary to get things working again.
Second iMac just would shut down, power off all by itself. TM and two mail accounts did not function properly. Going to the second Mail Account I was unable to navigate forward and backwards in Time. Going back to first Mail Account would be fine, but when switching to second Mail Account, TM would stop going forward or back.
Third iMac I get the same results with TM, that is, when navigating two mail accounts TM would get stuck and not move forward or back in time. Is there a chance TM doesn't like having two accounts to look through? Anyone else have an issue like this with their iMac? My external drive is a Lacie and is formatted for Guid.

I am on my third iMac now and TM still acting strange. First iMac and using Time Machine when looking through Mail, TM would lock up the computer. A hard reboot was necessary to get things working again.
Second iMac just would shut down, power off all by itself. TM and two mail accounts did not function properly. Going to the second Mail Account I was unable to navigate forward and backwards in Time. Going back to first Mail Account would be fine, but when switching to second Mail Account, TM would stop going forward or back.
Third iMac I get the same results with TM, that is, when navigating two mail accounts TM would get stuck and not move forward or back in time. Is there a chance TM doesn't like having two accounts to look through? Anyone else have an issue like this with their iMac? My external drive is a Lacie and is formatted for Guid.

Time Machine acting randomly... (Ignoring exclusions)

Hello everyone,
I've been an happy TM user since August, when I bought my 1TB Time Capsule. Everything used to work fine, until this morning when, for some reason unknown, TM decided it was time to make a 177GB backup. According to the TM prefpane, the full size of a backup for my drive is 102GB, but I let it do it anyways because I thought that it probabily knew what it was doing. I was wrong, as it successfully wasted almost 200GB on my Time Capsule.
Noticing this, I used Backup Loupe to inspect what was being backed up and to my surprise, it backed up everything on my disk, including all those folders that I had excluded. I proceeded to delete the sparsebundle on the Time Capsule (that was now over 450 and there was no way to reduce it even by deleting the backups of the excluded items) and to remove all Time Machine settings, and start anew. The thing is that TM is still refusing to consider my exclusions: it begins by saying that it is excluding 200 thousand and more items, then goes on backing up the 102GB that should be backed up, and the CONTINUES to back up, incrementing both the data transfered and the total data to be transfered (I'm now at 136GB of 136GB). I'm suspecting that it's simply ignoring my exclusions, but I don't want it to! Do anyone has any advice? I don't want to switch to a third party backup solution, it has always worked before and I see no reason why it should sto working properly now.
Thanks everyone,
Take Care
Juan
Message was edited by: juandemarco

Hello, and thank you for your reply. I managed, i think, to solve the issue. One thing at a time.
I had already read your comprehensive guide, and it was following those tips that I tried the full reset (in fact, as stated, I deleted both the preferences and the sparsebundle). Things didn't change, though. Also, I had verified my internal drive and everything was fine.
The problem was that during the first backup, I renamed the backup volume from Time Machine's Backups to Backup, since this is a feature that TM is supposed to support: it stopped, renamed and got back to work from where it left off. Only, it began to ignore the exclusions and that backup was forever tainted. I tried not renaming the volume and everything works fine. That, and also i DID NOT exclude the folder /Users/Shared. This are the only two differences from previous failed attemps.
What's not clear, though, is why, before I had to go through all this work, TM began to ignore my exclusions in the first place. I had a backup volume since august, and it always worked fine until the other day, when, without me doing anything (the computer was left untouched since the previous backup, in fact) it begun to backup the whole disk, ignoring exclusions. That is something that will probabily happen again - even if after some time - and it's very likely due to a bug in TM's code.
Thank you for your help, if you can make out something helpful from my experience please, let me know
Take care
Juan

Is Time Machine Acting Strange ? Or ...

Hello,
Every time i plug in my external, and click the time machine icon in the top left bar, it ALWAYS says "Encrypting Back Up Disk" and its always only at 1% .. The thing is that it will give me this message BEFORE it actually starts backing up the data.
What does this mean, and how can i disable it ?
Additionally, i've already put a password lock on the external HD itself, so i don't understand why it needs to "Encrypt" every single time ?

Backup encryption by Time Machine is an option in the Time Machine preferences. Click on Select Disk button and uncheck that option.

Time Machine acting odd on new 27

I did a successful migration from my old Mac to new 27 using Time Machine. Now Time Machine spins in Finder left side panel but not in top of screen icon like it used to. Is that correct? It spins all the time. Am I supposed to do anything to "initialize the old time machine to the new 27?

Depending how you have Time Machine setup this may be just the initial backup. If your backing up your new Mac to a Time Capsule or aother Networked Time Machine volume it may take quite some time for the initial backup.
In 10.9 the menubar icon doesnt spin anymore.
Instead its stays still but has a 2nd arrow it like this.

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch?

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch? I have a MacBook Air that was my wife's - now given to my daughter for school. My wife never used Time Machine to back up (she simply copied files to an external drive), so before clearing her files off the Mac HD, I tried using Time Machine for the first time with an external HD. However, the Time Machine back up repeatedly failed after about 2GB of 28GB of files. I manually copied my wife's 28GB of files to another external HD and deleted all the files off the Mac HD. I then reformatted the external Time Machine drive. But when I try to use Time Machine to back up the MacBook Air as it is now with my daughter's files on the Mac HD to the external TM drive, Time Machine acts as if the 28GB of my wife's deleted files are still on the Mac HD and fails back-up after counting to about 2GB, even though there aren't even 2GB of files on the Mac HD now and nothing on the external TM drive. I don't need to save any back-ups of how the MacBook used to be - I just need to start from scratch with how the computer is now. Can anyone please tell me how to get Time Machine to think the MacBook is a brand new computer and act as if it's a first time ever back up? I tried updating to Yosemite, and tried renaming the computer in System Preferences>Sharing, plus (as noted above) deleting all the old files off the Mac HD and reformatting the external Time Machine drive - none of that worked. All I can do at the moment is manually copy my daughter's files to an external HD - very frustrating.

Hmmm.. Office is not hard to restore.
You have something major wrong (Yosemite being the primary one).
Do a verify of the source drive.. to do that you will need to boot to the recovery.. and run the disk utility from there.. it sounds like your main disk is corrupted.
Once that is complete, delete the current setup of TM and try again.. use the widget to find out why it is failing..
See Troubleshooting.
A1, A4 and A5 for further info.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Good luck with it..
I would also download carbon copy cloner.. it is $40, but you can use it free for a time.. forget if a week or a month??.. to try out.. and make a proper backup before you start.. CCC is far more reliable than TM.. and in fact you might decide to simply forget about TM if it works and pays the $40.. because you can produce a bootable clone on the external drive which is a heck of a lot easier to use than TM.

Can I daisy chain macs to act as time machines?

Say I have a lab of macs numbered between 1 - 16. All of these macs are connected via a switch so they can all see each other.
What I am thinking is to partition the HDD on every mac so that there are 2 partitions each. One of the partitions will be for the OS and the local files and the other will be for the back up of another mac. Doing it this way I was hoping to daisy chain them
Mac ID#
Partition 1
Partition 2
1
Local 1
16's Local
2
Local 2
1's Local
3
Local 3
2's Local
4
Local 4
3's Local
5
Local 5
4's Local
6
Local 6
5's Local
16
Local 16
15's Local
I was thinking of making the 2nd partition of each mac as a time machine target and having it sync the files nightly.
The reason for this is due to the amount of data generated on each mac that getting a dedicated backup server would be too expensive (I would need ~7 TB) for my budget ($0).
Is this possible? Is there a better way?

I don't know, I presume you would share the 2nd partition so the other Mac could see it. Unless someone knows a definite answer then you can only try it and see what happens.
One problem I see is not the Macs but the switch, inexpensive switches generally don't have an ASIC per port, this would reduce the bandwidth the switch could handle at any one time. The more expensive switches I used to work with had one ASIC per 2 ports or one on each port but they were expensive, probably the same price as a backup system you cannot afford.
Hope someone as a definitive answer for you.

Time machine is acting strange

I bought an external hard drive just for backing up with Time machine and when I did my first back up a few days ago it seemed to work fine. Then yesterday I wanted it to back-up again, so I connected the external hard drive and then asked it to make a back-up. It did but the thing is that it backed up files of 8 gb and since the first back up I haven´t changed or created files of more than 150 mb so I am quite puzzled as to where these 8 gb comes from. If it takes up so much space every time I ask it to do a back-up then my external hard drive it will be filled up in no time. Is it normal for it to back up so much data without any apparent reason?
Next thing is that to prevent it from taking up to much space I asked it to exclude my iTunes music and my iPhoto library, and then Time machine added a third thing to exclude, which is "Time machine-back up" it takes up 75 gb and as far as I can see it is pretty much everything that it could back-up that it has now decided to exclude. Since it decided to exclude that part back ups only take a few seconds and I fear that it is actually not backing up anything. Have any if you experienced anything like this?

WhatSize works fairly well to track down large files and is Leopard compatible.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21149
Common culprits are any program that stores it data in a single database like Parallels, VM Fusion, Entourage and Outlook that was previously mentioned.

Time Machine - can it act as a HD Clone?

Will doing a full recovery from Time Machine recover all of my applications and any associated authorisations and passwords?
If not, am I better using something like SuperDuper to clone my System HD.
I only ask as my System HD is starting to show signs of flakiness, and while I am fully "Time Machined", I have a horrible feeling I may have issues restoring and authorising some of my many music apps., should my HD turn it's toes up!
Thanks in advance everyone

Yes. Time Machine can do be used to do a full restore. You will have to boot from the install DVD and then start the TM Restore from there.
I have found doing the TM Restore to be slower then a restore from a bootable clone. I use SuperDuper to create the bootable clone. Then I replace the disk and boot from the clone. Once it is up and running from the clone I use SD to Restore the clone back to the new disk. I have found that method to be significant quicker then a full restore from TM.
Allan

Time Machine can no longer write to drive

I have been using Time Machine to back up my iMac G5 for over a year. About two weeks ago the computer started acting really strange so I actually restored the entire system from my Time Machine backup. Everything was working great until today. The external hard drive that I've been using all this time is suddenly "read only". How do I change it back to "read/write" so Time Machine can access the hard drive properly?

BobMeister wrote:
I have been using Time Machine to back up my iMac G5 for over a year. About two weeks ago the computer started acting really strange so I actually restored the entire system from my Time Machine backup. Everything was working great until today. The external hard drive that I've been using all this time is suddenly "read only".
It's very important to know exactly what you or the computer was doing just before this happened. Usually, things do not happen on their own.
How do I change it back to "read/write" so Time Machine can access the hard drive properly?
Changing it back when it's not clear why it changed in the first place is not always a good thing to do for several obvious reasons.
Right-click on the TM drive icon and select "Get Info"
Under Sharing & Permissions, you should see:
Your name (Me) Read & Write
(unknown) Read & Write
everyone Read only
Post back what you see and we can attempt to proceed.

Time Machine no longer backs up after archive & install

I have just had something mysterious happen to my Macbook - it spontaneously shut down, then wouldn't restart past a gray screen with Apple logo. After trying every troubleshooting page I could find, I ended up doing an archive and (re)install of Leopard on my hard drive. (btw, I ran the Disk Utility hard drive diagnostic, and it said the HD is fine, though I'm skeptical because it's making new noises I've never heard before.)
I finished that install, restarted, everything seemed fine, and I re-connected the external hard drive that had been used for my Time Machine backups before. Now, every time it attempts to back up, it's stuck on "preparing" for 30 minutes, then starts copying SLOWLY and the progress bar says "6 KB of 10 GB." Well, I have a lot more than 10 GB to back up. Then the process halts and I get an error message: "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." And I can't get any more specific information about the error - can't find a log file or anything.
I know that there's a troubleshooting article about Time Machine issues with only backing up 10 GB, but mine doesn't even get that far, and besides, this is not my first Time Machine backup - I have no other external drive big enough to transfer my older data to while I reformat this drive as the support article suggests.
I was thinking that perhaps a system setting got messed up somehow and that maybe I should just forget this archive & install thing I did and instead do a fresh erase & install on my Macbook hard drive and then restore from Time Machine's old backup (a day or so before my Macbook started acting weird). But 1. would that make a difference? And 2. if Leopard gives me an error while backing up in Time Machine, what if I do the erase & install and I get an error trying to restore from Time Machine? That would be a nightmare.
My Macbook has always been so reliable - I'm very confused about what's going on! Any help would be appreciated.

Hmm; the external drive had no errors, according to Disk Utility.
Here are the time machine logs from Console:
1/13/08 12:14:47 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[301]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 1:10:28 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[430]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 2:21:23 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[519]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 4:12:57 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[612]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 5:22:59 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[818]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 6:24:00 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[915]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
1/13/08 7:24:52 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[1012]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
Also, I tried to repair permissions on my internal drive and I got the following error messages:
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Reso urces/Locum" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner " has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconf ig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writecon fig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/authopen" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent" has been modified and will not be repaired.

Time Machine and File Permissions

'Twere I to rate this question's technicality on a scale of 1 through 10, it would rate 8. Just warning you. Unix people will be especially useful for this.
Okay, so, before the problems started, my hard drive had three partitions. One for OS X, one for file storage for Ubuntu Linux, and one called the "Swap" partition, which somehow relates to Ubuntu (the Ubuntu installer put it there, I've no idea what it's for). Here's a makeshift diagram of what my partition map used to be:
I ran out of space in my OS X partition. You see, I've recently had the fortune to obtain some rather fantastic software. The downside is that the software (and it's files) take up roughly 53GB. I won't trouble with you what it actually is (though it should have dawned on some people by now). Between OS X and Ubuntu Linux, OS X prevailed. As far as I'm concerned, Linux will have to wait 'till I have a larger hard drive.
So, I fired up Disk Utility, and tried to remove the two Linux partitions. It told me it was "Preparing to erase [insert Linux partition name]". It told me that for an hour. After one hour, I said screw it, I'll do this the "hard" way.
My initial plan was to back up my data, and completely reformat my drive, reinstall Leopard, and have it restore from my Time Machine backup. Now, my external drive is not big enough to hold a complete system-wide backup. I had to leave some stuff out. Here's the list of exclusions, taken directly from the back up logs:
Excluding System files: 16.3 GB (242143 items)
Excluding /Developer: 0 bytes (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Downloads: 7.9 GB (18 items)
Excluding /Applications/Creative Suite 3: 3.2 GB (13214 items)
Excluding /Applications/Disk Images/Macromedia: 240.5 MB (4 items)
Excluding /Applications/Utilities: 484.2 MB (111 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/.Trash: 97.3 MB (2142 items)
Excluding /System: 108.2 MB (5874 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache: 144 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db: 52 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Mail/Envelope Index: 680 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Icons/WebpageIcons.db: 20 KB (1 items)
I am uncertain as to why it excluded those last four entries. I didn't ask them to be excluded, so I assumed that was something Time Machine does automatically.
The backup worked normally, or so it seemed. After about a half hour, it told me it was done. I hastily (read; stupidly) unplugged the drive and prepared to reformat my drive. So excited was I to reach my new software, that I made the utter and completely foolish move of not double checking that everything I needed was backed up. If I had, I might never have this problem, and even if this problem were destined to happen, I could have at least saved my Pictures folder (fortunately, most of it's contents are safely residing on my iPod).
So, I wiped my drive. Specifically, I booted into my Leopard Install DVD, and went for the Erase and Install option. The install commenced and finished without a hitch. I brought my "new" computer up, enjoyed the theatrics of the intro movie and started running through the setup. I came to the step where it asks if I want to transfer files from another Mac, from another volume on my Mac, from a Time Machine backup, or not at all. I of course clicked for a Time Machine back up. The first sign of trouble was that my backup didn't show up (despite having my external plugged in). I felt a pang of fear, but it didn't worry me too much, and I thought to myself that I'd just use Migration Assistant later on (the Leopard setup sequence specifically stated I could do this if I so wished).
So I went straight to my desktop and fired up Migration Assistant, and went through the steps till it asked me to select a Time Machine backup. But there were none to select from. I waited a full minute, my fear growing steadily to terror. Finally, I realized that my data was gone, and flipped out. My inner geek, which was screaming at me to calm down and look inside my external, was shackled and thrown into a tiny corner of my now completely panicked mind. This lasted for roughly two minutes. After regaining myself, and opened my external. It contained one folder named Backups.backupdb. I opened it, and inside I found Neomiranda (Neomiranda is the name I gave my computer). So far so good. Inside the folder of Neomiranda, I found 2008-02-20-060526.inProgress. Another 30 seconds of flipping out over the idea of .inProgress. After awhile, I had the sense to right click on it, and hit the "Show Package Contents" option.
Inside were three folders, with three corresponding log files. I quickly realized that each one was a backup. The first two were empty, which I anticipated. Those were my two attempts while figuring out what to exclude, so I could get a backup to fit on my external. The third contained another Neomiranda folder, which contained all my data. Everything except my Pictures folder was there.
So, I went back and forth, manually restoring my data. When I'd finished, I started up a few apps to check that everything worked. Not everything worked. Mail wouldn't even get a bounce from the dock, Firefox told me there was a copy of itself already running, and iTunes complained that I had either a locked disk or insufficient permissions. Acting on iTunes' advice, I set out comparing the permissions of various folders I'd copied to the permissions of their equivalents on another, fully functional, system. Everything checked out. Nothing was locked, and everything had the correct permissions. I fired up Disk Utility and had it a run a permissions repair. It spat out a great deal of stuff that it apparently found wrong, and apparently fixed, but ultimately, it had no effect.
I cannot find anything wrong with any permissions, but I've got a feeling that's where the problem is. Why? Because any time I want to do anything to a folder I've copied, or anything inside a folder I've copied, it wants my admin password. Despite no apparent differences in permissions between folders I don't need a password for and between folders I do need a password for, I need a password for folders I have copied from my backup.
I've not looked into file ownership, as I couldn't find a way to even find out who a file belongs to, much less actually change ownership to anything. If I end having to use chown at a bash, fine with me, but I'm not a Unix man. I'll still need help with it (though I do know how to use the man command).

Same problem and for months now. I haven't been able to find a solution, but I suspect that's because I don't know exactly what's wrong.

Gray screen, spinning cog and midway to first back up of time machine

Hi,
I got a new external hard drive and wanted to back up my system, which I tried using time machine. At some point during the back up, it appeared to me that time machine is stuck. I tried stopping the back up but my machine was not responding, even any other application. I power it down by down the power key. So, I had backed up some data and not all of it.
Now, when I restarted it is showing gray screen with apple logo and spinning cog and not moving beyond that (even after 4 hours). I am kind of worried if my hard disk has crashed and I have lost the remaining data.
Any help regarding trouble shooting this will be highly appreciated.
Thanks,
v8r.

Basically, you need to boot from a drive other than the one that is failing. If your external already has an operating system on it, you can boot from that one. Since you're asking, though, I'm going to assume it does not.
First things first: cables. You need a firewire cable to connect your MacBook Pro to your Mac mini. I don't know what FireWire ports are available on your two machines. The two types of FireWire (400/800) are compatible, so if the two machines don't have the same ports, you can get an adapter. See this page for info about types of FireWire ports: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8259.html
- Next, boot the machine with the failing drive into "Target Disk Mode." When you hear the chime, hold down the "T" key. You should not see the Apple logo. Instead, you should see the FireWire logo slowly moving around the screen. This tells the computer to act as if it were simply an external hard drive.
- Connect the MacBook Pro to your Mac mini via FireWire. If you're lucky, the drive will show up on the desktop of your Mac mini. Copy the files to a safe location.
- If it does not, you'll need to use software to recover the data. If you already have DiskWarrior, you can run DiskWarrior from your Mac mini on the MBP's drive. If you don't or if DW failed to produce a read-only "preview," I would recommend ProSoft's Data Rescue: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php DiskWarrior has more long-term use, but Data Rescue is better for this situation.
I know I still skimmed over a few things (e.g. using third-party software that I no longer have), but I hope that gets you started.

Can I use both newly cloned MBPR retina and old-MBP with same Time Machine

When my new-MBPR retina cloned from the old-MBP back up in Time Machine via migration assistance, will this newly-cloned MBPR continue thereon backing up with the same old-MBP back up in Time Machine? I.e. continuing same timeline?
And what happen to my old-MBP back up, if I continuing to use my old-MBP with the same Time Machine on? Will TM recognised 2 different MBP and thus creating 2 back ups? I seem to have problem to keep 2 MBP running with same TM. Programs not responding even force quitting them!
And what should I do to use both? Appreciate your help. Thank you.

OK, but in general I can use this one device as both file storage and Time Machine.
I thought that (for some reason) once I set up the Time Capsule to act just as Time Machine storage I would be unable to access it as a plain file storage.
I have just tested it now, and it seems it can work as both - file storage and Time Machine. I can see the Time Machine backup file on it and folders where I can dump regular files.
The only thing I would need to occasionally do is delete some old backups to keep Time Machine segment below 1 TB just so I have plenty of space for regular files.
This thing is awesome. :)

Time Machine: Backup folder changing size when connected to different computers

Can someone please help me wrap my head around why the size of my Time Machine backup folder changes when connected to different computers? I tried to be as thorough as possible. Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this.
I made a backup of my one laptop (MacBook Pro running 10.6.8) before installing Mavericks. The backup folder size is 258.56 GB and it is on a 1TB WD external. There are no other computers backed up in this folder.
Last night, I tried to copy the backup folder to another 1TB WD external and ran into the “you can’t do that” message. After some researching, I came across articles explaining how Time Machine handles HDs and, in order for me to copy my backup folder, the drive I want to copy the folder to needs to have the “Ignore ownership on this volume” deselected.
Okay, so here is my situation: I have the “Ignore ownership on this volume” deselected and journaling is correct on the drive I want to copy the backup folder to. So I can continue working on my laptop, I want to use a different computer to copy the backup folder from one HD to the other. The problem I’m having is each computer I own is showing me a different backup folder size O.o.
(1) The computer I want to use – a Power Mac G5 Quad running 10.4.11 (non intel) – is showing a backup folder size of 592.7 MB, but the HD shows there is 258 GB being used. When I drag copy, I only get a 592.7 MB backup folder. For some reason, the backup folder is the only folder acting this way. I compared other folders from the same and different externals and all the sizes match up perfectly no matter the computer they were connected to. How is this possible?
(2) My second option - Mac Pro (early 2009) running 10.9.4 – is showing a 256.15 GB backup folder size. Very close, but not 258.56 GB.
(3) My last option is to use the computer I’m trying to stay away from, the MacBook Pro running 10.6.8. This is the computer I backed up and is showing me the correct folder size = 258.56GB. As I mentioned, I'd like to work on my laptop while copying the backup folder using one of my other computers.
I am able to drag and drop from each computer, but the folder size depends on the computer I’m using. I don’t understand why I can't do a simple drag and drop of a 258 GB folder.
Many thanks!!

The directory files that you are seeing are not real. They are links to the actual backup files that are stored in a hidden directory on the drive. If you were to look at the same drive on a pc, you would see the folders and you would a list files that are in the folders but the files would all be 0 byte files and Windows will tell you the file is empty because there is nothing there but a link which Windows does not understand.
So the point is you can't just copy the backupd files. The best solution that I know of (and maybe someone else will chime in) for copying them is to mirror the drive with something like Carbon Copy or some other program.
See this site for more information about time machine and how it works: http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Time Machine acting up.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for