Time Machine Back up keeps growing

My 3TB TimeCapsule (not the newest one) reported last week that it was full. It's backing up 4 computers. The biggest chunk (well over half) is my computer with all of our music movies and photos. I tried to delete the sparse bundle for my computer and start fresh, but it was taking days and making very slow progress. So I decided to start fresh. I'm running Mavericks on a 27" 2012 iMac. I am also running Yosemite beta via Parallels. The other machines, (two older iMacs and a Retina MacBooPro 2013) backup fine and reformatting.
1. Went into Airport Utility, clicked on disks tab, and clicked erase disk.
2. All machines were backing up via wifi and the others backed up without issue
3. I have all the machines configured to exclude apps and system files. On my iMac, I've also excluded my Parallel Virtual Machines. I do use dropbox, but didn't exclude that.
4 .I was asked to confirm new disk on each machine and did that and the backup proceeded as expected.
5. The backup on my laptop, and our two other iMacs (each about 40 GB) went fine. The backup for my iMac 1.15 TB proceed fine until it got to 1.09 TB and it didn't progress beyond that. I restarted the computer. Time machine identified the remaining backup as 115 MB and it looked like it got to about 40 GB before I turned it off.
Any thoughts?

Do a backup of the iMac with the large disk to a USB drive plugged directly into it.
I strongly recommend using CCC to do this instead of TM so you produce a bootable clone. You can easily partition a 3TB drive and do the bootable clone to half and TM to the other partition.
It is IMHO that TM is getting difficult in 10.9 to run reliably.. especially to network drives..
Are you running the Pondini recommended widget so you know why it stopped at 1.09TB.. and why the backup is growing??
TM shares very little to the outside world unless you access its logs.
See A1 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
You can also try doing a verify of the 2TB drive?? in the iMac.. see A5. Large drives can easily end up with corrupted files.. but you cannot do a proper verify on a working drive.. that is where the clone is so valuable. You can boot from the clone so you can do a test of the onboard drive.

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TS3243 My time machine back up freezes at a partial backup. I keep cancelling and restarting a new back up and it will again freeze up at a slightly different point. Last freeze shows 485bytes of 246.16 GB. My last backup was Sept. 1 !!!!! Help!!!!

Repeat: My time machine back up freezes at a partial backup. I keep cancelling and restarting a new back up and it will again freeze up at a slightly different point. Last freeze shows 485bytes of 246.16 GB. My last backup was Sept. 1 !!!!! Help!!!!
Also: am running OSX 10.6.8 on an iMac8,1
TimeMachine had be working well on a 1TB WD MyBook Ext. H.D. .
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See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

If I downgrade to Snow Leopard can time machine back-up my latest memory from Lion and keep it in Snow leopard?

Will only the latest time machine back-up from SL work or can a back-up with lion be suitable in SL (when downgraded)?

Just did the downgrade, but Migration Assistant don't let you rescue any kind of information from the Time Machine backup. It just tells you to upgrade your system. I'm feelling like trying to downgrade my iPhone 3G from iOS 4 to 3. Impossible. Pretty f***** up...

Will existing Time Machine back ups build after 1 account migration

I have one i-Mac happily backing up with Time Machine to an external hard drive.
I have just bought a second i-mac (the old one's filling up) and propose to use migration assistant to move an admin account from the old to the new i-mac leaving two other accounts (and their files etc) on the old one. I see from some posts that it seems as if Time Machine will start a new back up series for the new i-mac's back ups (cos its a new MAC address). But what about the old i-mac? Will that continue to extend the existing (old) Time Machine back up files, albeit without my transferred account and its files? I'd like to end up with the old i-mac continuing to work with and build its Time Machine back ups (less my account and its new files) and have a new back up series from the new i-mac building to a separate partition on the external drive.
Second minor point: I have read that putting a partition on the external drive is the best way forward as it will stop competition for space and allow changes in one set up in future to have no impact on the other. Is this the best way forward?
Does this all make sense?
Sorry but I can't see an answer in the forum to what must be a reasonably common issue in this expanding mac world.

I then tried to move it (TM back up files) off with Restore, whilst preserving the TM back ups but I couldn't seem to do it to the i-Macs hard drive nor to partition that to allow this to happen (assuming the lack of a discrete partition was the problem).
That's likely correct. This only works if you restore one entire partition to another, and check the +Erase destination+ box.
The problem was that I could not (maybe for the same contiguous reasons) create a new partition on the old i-Mac just to temporarily move the TM back up to. Without it I could not 'empty' the WDC firewire drive and partition it prior to returning the TM back ups to it albeit contiguously in a dedicated partition.
Unfortunately for me to retain the TM back ups for the account I moved to the new i-Mac, I will have to leave that account on the old i-Mac as well. I can't see a way around that? If I delete the account on it then surely I will lose the ability to Log onto it and then to click TM and see back in time on that account?
If I understand you correctly, that will be true eventually, but not immediately, as TM will, eventually, delete it's copies of anything that's no longer on your internal HD. That will depend, of course, on how long TM can keep it's backups. But while they're still there, if you log on with Admin privileges, you should be able to view the old backups.
Not sure I explained myself clearly. Sorry. Having understood from your earlier help that 'migrate' actually means 'make a copy in another place', I have the migrated account in two places: one now dormant, on the old i-Mac and two, where it is migrated to (the new i-Mac). But TM continues to back up all accounts, indeed everything, on the old i-Mac by dint of its MAC address. So to see the migrated account's past history I assume I have to access the version on the old i-Mac. To put it another way, when logged into one account on the old i-Mac I believe it is not possible to see the TM history and files of another account on that i-Mac despite TM backing the entire HD. You have to be logged in to that account to see it. On the new i-Mac, with its different MAC address, TM is busy creating the first TM back up and I assumed that in the migrate it did not bring TM history as I had read that it is MAC address specific.
The only issue (apart from having this account's history spread over two machines (pre-today on the old i-Mac's TM and today onwards on the new i-Mac) is that I have all the files on both machines. I am not worried about security only unnecessary usage of disk space. It isn't critical, there's lots of it, but it just seems wasteful and untidy. Unless you guys know otherwise?
If I understand what you've done, you do have duplicates of the current contents, but only one copy of the old backups (on the old F/W drive).
On the old i-Mac I have the two accounts I wanted to stay there plus the now dormant account I migrated. TM continues to work away at memorising ALL these although there will be no further changes to the dormant migrated account as I will not be running it on the old i-Mac. On the new i-Mac I have the migrated account of which TM is now creating its first (huge) back up but starting today. There is no history here. So I have copies of everything; its just that the old history of the migrated account remains on the old i-Mac and a new history (does that make sense?) is building from the new one. My point was that if I were to delete the dormant account from the old i-Mac, then I could not access it to use TM with it. I believe TM only shows the history of the account and screen you're in at the time?
There is an option in TM that will allow you to selectively +Delete all backups of+ selected items. +Enter Time Machine,+ locate and select the item(s), click the "gear" icon in the Finder window's toolbar, and select the +Delete all backups of ..+ option.
What you can't do is, keep the backups of only previous versions of things that were changed or deleted. It's all or nothing.
Not sure I understand this. What would have been nice but I do not think is possible is to have moved the account to the new i-Mac together with the TM's back ups of that account and continue to build it up (whilst having access to its history) on the new i-Mac. If that were (is?) possible I could have totally deleted the old account and with it its files from the old i-Mac, freed up some HD space and had a full AND growing TM history all on the new i-Mac.
Many thanks for staying the course and for your continuing help.

Restore iPhotoLibrary specifically from EXTERNAL Hard drive Time Machine back up?

My laptop Photo Library is corrupted somehow. I tried to restore from a prior in Time Machine on laptop and made the mistake of not saying to keep BOTH copies, but after trying for 3 hours of telling me it was doing it through various windows, a little one popped open saying something about permissions and it opened an old iPhotoLibrary from 2 years ago! ... I do have that one now and am copying it off my laptop as fast as I can to FLICKR
cuz APPLE has become a PHOTO sinkhole... (We are talking 20,000 pics folks with scanned in family pics from 100 yrs ago!)
I think I have a good copy on my External Hard Drive Time Machine back up from about 3 weeks ago. How do I use that to Restore from
or should I just wait for this PHOTOS thing to come out?
NEXT Question is there a convenient way to split it into MULTIPLE ones..eg KEEP old stable photos in one or more.
and use another for all the new ones not editted or sorted yet? I do see there is a new Option under iPHOTO/File menu to just switch
libraries but, of course, you cant even see that if your Library wont open!

For TM help post in the forum for your OS - and see https://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/ and http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html and http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Depends on undisclosed information
With the current OS and iPhoto you switch library using the switch library command - with any version you can switch libraries by holding the option key down while you launch iPhoto which brings up the select library window
And generally it is not a smart idea to have multiple iPhoto libraries - it generally has no advantages and makes things much more difficult and complicated and often leads to user errors that cause major problems
If you want to anyway the most convent way to split libraries is to use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/ -
LN

Mail 6.2 will no longer open on my macbook pro after migrating my old computer from a time machine back up

Hi,
I recently got a new 13" macbook pro to replace my old macbook.
I did a migration assistant transfer from a time machine back up of my old macbooks data on to my macbook however Mail 6.2 will no lonfer work for me.
It worked fine before the transfer and no it opens ok but if i click 'new viewer window' it unexpectedly quits
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Thanks
Pacman481

Eek, sorry for the multiple posting, I keep trying new things and needing to report back. SO, in those accounts that I thought I'd "fixed," I tried going back in and changing the settings back to the way I like them, i.e. leaving the messages on the server for a week (because sometimes I like to see messags on my iphone too) and as soon as I did that, it started downloading old messages before, i.e. back to the same problem.
Meaning, there's no workaround for the account I share with my business partner, because the only way I've "fixed" it on my personal accounts is to have mail removed from the server immediately, which is not possible on the accounts I share. (And is kind of a bummer for my personal accounts, too, given that I like to see mail on my iphone too).
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How do I factory reset my Macbook Pro and then restore using my time machine back up?

Hey guys,
My Macbook Pro has slowed down & had more and more random crashed recently and a friend suggested doing a factory reset. My Macbook is about 3 1/2 years old now so it's about time I did something and this always used to work for me on PC's.
I've kept a completely up to date time machine back-up since day 1 (I'll do another immediately before the reset.) and would rather use that to restore all my files. Will I have to reinstall all my apps with this? (Thats fine if I do, it would just be nice to know first) How do I do the factory reset & how to I restore from time machine afterwards.
Many Thanks
MegaBeaker

First obtain an external hard drive to back up to. Go to your system preferences and look under Time Machine. Select your external hard drive as your backup drive then start a full backup. Then follow these steps provided by Apple:
In the menu bar, choose Apple menu > Restart. Once your Mac restarts (and the gray screen appears), hold down the Command and R keys.
Select Disk Utility, then click Continue.
Select your startup disk on the left, then click the Erase tab.
Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format menu, enter a name, then click Erase.Important: Erasing the disk removes all the information from the disk. Be sure to back up the information you want to keep to an external device.
After the disk is erased, choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility.
Select Reinstall OS X, click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions.

HT201250 how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up

how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up so that I may view the files independently on apple tv please?

To elaborate on above. I am looking to add about 300gig of photos on an external hard drive to TC.
Once I do this I believe I can then have itunes source its photos from TC without having them stored directly on my iMac?
Then I am assuming once I keep itunes on with home sharing I can stream these photos through Apple TV?
My inital problem is getting the photos onto TC in an individual folder not just a backup folder....is that possible or what would you suggest please?

Huge Time Machine Back Up

I have been running Lion on my mid-2009 15" MacBook Pro for about three weeks. Time Machine was able to find my previous back up volume on an external HD and keep on recording to it.
This morning I saw a 61.3 GB back up in progress! I do not use this machine all that much, just when I travel, but I recently upgraded to 10.7.2. I tend to hook up the external drive to it for back up about once a week or so since this is not my primary work machine and I do not create much content on it. Therefore I am a bit at a loss to understand why this backup is so large. My entire boot volume on this MBP is only 66GB.
Perhaps 10.7.2 reindexed the drive and I am having the entire drive recorded this time. Perhaps it is downloading the internally stored snapshops that Time Machine takes on MacBook Pro machines. My last back up for this MBP was 10 days ago but other than updating software I have not done much with it in that time.
Has anyone else experienced a very large Time Machine back up after upgrading to 10.7.2?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Jay

Jay Kappmeier wrote:
This morning I saw a 61.3 GB back up in progress!
Check Time Machine Troubleshooting for help in identifying what that backup was so big.
I recently upgraded to 10.7.2.
If you installed the "combo" updater that would change a lot of files.
I tend to hook up the external drive to it for back up about once a week or so
I may be mistaken, but I believe a long interval between backups can cause Time Machine to do a full backup.
Perhaps 10.7.2 reindexed the drive
That wouldn't cause Time Machine backups to be larger.

Defrag Time Machine Back Up Drive??

getwellroad
Level 1 (0 points)
Jul 6, 2011 9:50 AM
i previously posted this question, but I mistakenly clicked my own comment as the correct answer. i think this makes the thread appear to be finished; so, because i'm still not completely sure what to do, i have attempted to copy and paste the discussion here:Sorry.
Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??
Grant Bennet-AlderWest of Boston, USALevel 7 (27,805 points)
If your backups take a few seconds longer, so what. I say leave it alone.Beige G3, G4/867, G4/dual 1.25 MDD, MacPro'09 w cheap SSD, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, and 9.2, 10.5 and Server - LW IIg, LW 4/600, ATalk ImageWriter L
The hatterLevel 8 (42,475 points)
Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd. Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set. 1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price. I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there. Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB? Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopardhttps://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.
getwellroad
my boot drive is my internal hardrive which is a 250 GB drive. The drive i am using for TM is 500GB, but you are saying that is really too small. TM, as i understand it, creates a copy of everything, and then subsequent backups record any changes that were made since the last backup. and what do you mean "bootable clones" and do you mean for my internal hard drive AND each of the 3 external hard drives that i have? i'm using one of the three for backup using TM, and i am storing movie files on the other 2. i work at a church, and we use many short films that we purchase online. i then import that file into iMovie to give my volunteers a consistent second and a half of black before the clip and 4 seconds of black at the end of the clip. This provides smoother transitions, i've found, than trying to use most of the clips in their original form. i then have been filing these away in folders on the other 2 hard drives. Regarding the TM drive. Drive Genius is telling me that "the used space on the volume 02 [that's the name of the drive] is 25% fragmented (59.14% of total space).
btw, Time Machine keeps:hourly backups for the past 24 hoursdaily backups for the past monthweekly backups for all previous monthsand the oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external driv

1st) A fragmented drive is not evil. It will not hurt anything. At worse it might slow down reading a file. However, as has been pointed out by others in this thread, who cares as this is a backup device, not a device you are going to be reading a lot.
2nd) The time you spend defragmenting the drive will far exceed the time you will save when writing new data to the drive.
3rd) Defragmentation will just increase your energy consumption, as all the reading/writing needed to move the files around in order to defragment it, will cause the drive to consume more energy than if it was just sitting idle waiting for the next hourly Time Machine backup.
4th) Defragmentation (if done frequently) may shorten the life of your drive. Not mentioned in "3rd" above is that the extra energy used translates into heat, plus you are moving the read/write heads back and forth all of which affect the drives mechanical and electrical components.
NOTE: There are situations where having a defragmented drive is useful, but mostly it has to do with needing to stream media at a high rate of speed, and fragmented files can affect that. However, a backup drive being used for incremental Time Machine backups is not in that category, and most home Mac usage does not need a defragmented file system either.

How to stop Time Machine backing up on a specific external hard drive?

I work on a iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use two external hard drives that are the exact same model, 2 TB WD My Book 1110 Media: one is intended for back-up, the other for storing video editing files. They're both connected through USB 2.0.
I set the "back-up" hard drive as back-up disk for Time Machine, through the Time Machine preferences. Now, everytime I connect the "video" hard drive, Time Machine recognizes it as a back-up disk, and starts backing up on it. I could delete the "Backups.backupdb" file that Time Machine had created by connecting the "video" hard drive to another Mac and moving it to the Trash, but as soon as I reconnect the "video" hard drive to my iMac, Time Machine backs up on it again.
Is there a way to "de-select" a hard drive from Time Machine's list of back-up disks?
Note: I should mention another thing that might indicate a conflict. When both hard drives "back-up" and "video" are connected to my iMac, if I open Final Cut Pro X, I can only see my "back-up" hard drive. To access the files I am working on, I need to eject the "back-up" hard drive, and suddenly the "video" drive appears.
If you have any idea of how to solve this conflict... I am a bit lost.
Thank you!

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Give them unique volume names using Disk Utility.
Then set Time Machine back up to that unique volume name.
For example, I regularly use 4 external drives (though they're not all the same model).
The descriptions quickly tell me which drives I have connected to my MacBook when open Finder:
My Time Machine backup volume is named 'Time Machine 1TB'.
My iPhoto backup volume is named 'iPhoto Backup 320GB'
My iTunes backup volume is named 'iTunes Backup 120GB'
and the last is 'Windows 7 Backup 250Gb' but since it's a Windows volume, it is formatted NTFS.
This likely means that you will have to erase and repartition one of your drives to name it.
You MIGHT be able to rename it using Finder, right-clicking on the volume, and selecting Rename (current volume name).
WARNING: I can't be certain of what just renaming it that way could screw up in the way of permissions and file links.
Within Disk Utility, it seems it is absolutely not possible to change a volume name without clicking the Partition tab, and that involves erasing.
Given the choice, I'd probably choose to rename (erase and repartition) the Time Machine drive. A current backup or two on Time Machine, and I'm good. I don't really need to go 'way back' to recover files, because I really don't ever erase anything. I just keep buying bigger drives!
And I still burn the 'absolutely critical, priceless, can't ever be without this stuff' files to DVD or CD at least monthly or quarterly, in case one of my TM or backup drives fails at the same time as my primary hard drive. Call me paranoid, but I worked in Information Technology for many years: Murphy was an optimist!
Message was edited by: kostby

How to restore Time Machine back-up if not even Recovery Tools work?

After a hard and unexpected crash on 2012 macMini I tried everything from this list: OS X Yosemite: Ways to start up your Mac Only 2 things worked: hardware test (via Ethernet: option+D; everything passed) and detailed status mode (command+V) which listed a bunch of errors concerning booting (missing or corrupted files and/or folders). Which is probably the reason I couldn't launch Recovery Tools - neither locally nor directly via Internet (Ethernet plugged in, option+command+R). I would get the message that the Tools are launching, but after the Apple logo showed up followed by the spinning circle, the screen would go light grey 4-5 seconds into the process and the thin black progress bar would appear. It would grow to 1/3 of its length, stop for several seconds, then the computer would restart, the bar would show up again, grow to 1/3 etc., etc.
Assuming that nothing else could be done I started the mini in the target mode (T), plugged it into my old 2007 mini and re-formatted the internal drive, thinking that I could either try Recovery Tools again (no luck) or just clean install Yosemite on the 2012 mini first and then use my Time Machine back-up to restore my files. Unfortunately 2007 mini can only install Lion - even on the external drive - but nothing higher (so I can't upgrade to Mountain Lion, Mavericks and finally to Yosemite). And 2012 would not start with Lion on it. Still no luck with Internet Recovery Tools btw (same symptoms).
The only other thing I can think of is finding a newer Mac and use it to install Mavericks or Yosemite on my 2012 mini. If this fails, it's a trip to the Apple store.
If anyone has any other ideas, please share.
(2012 has no CD/DVD drive)

Your description of Internet Recovery sounded much like Safe Mode, not Internet Recovery. I don't think you will see an Apple at all. It should be a spinning Globe. Or, when you say "spinning circle" was that the globe spinning?
From the App Store on the 2007 mini, can you download the Yosemite installer?
That's about all I can think of besides taking it to an Apple Store.

Will Time Machine back up iTunes media on a different internal drive

I have my iTunes media on a different internal drive.
Will Time machine back up that data as well?
I have two other internal drives, each 750gb.
Does Time Machine back those drives up as well? Or does it contain itself to the OS disk?

Stephen,
Amazingly, Time Machine will do this by default!! In fact, Time Machine will back up every volume that is present at the time of the initial backup, unless told to do otherwise. I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on a secondary partition of my MBP's hard drive, and Time Machine backed that up automatically.
Your backup will be contained in a "Backups.backupdb" folder on whatever external volume you choose to use for Time Machine. Within this folder, you will find other folders named for the various volumes that are being backed up. As far as I know, there is no limit to how many can be kept.
Scott

Time Machine Back up keeps growing

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