Time machine back up- not enough space so can't back up?

hi my computer entire hard drive is 2TB and only 1Tb used. and my external hard drive(time machine back-up) is 2TB. and right now Time machine back up failed. and keep saying that hard drive don;t have enough space....
i erase all from external hard drive ,, back up NEW. and still saying that not enough space on back up drive, weird thing is and i have 2.8 TB to back up.. but my entire hard drive is only 2TB .. what is that? and i only used 1.1 TB ish..
somebody help me? how can i use time machine back up with this issue?

What's shown for +Estimated size of full backup+ under the exclusions box in TM Preferences > Options?
If that's over the 1.1 TB used, there are a couple of possibilities:
Another internal or external drive, formatted for a Mac, is connected but not excluded, so Time Machine is trying to back it up, too. Exclude it, per #10 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Something on your internal HD is corrupted, making Time Machine think it's much larger than it really is. Verify your internal HD, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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Time Machine Backup failed, not enough space...

Have iMac, Yosimite OS 10.10, processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5, memory 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, internal HD - 1TB, Time machine id 1 TB external La Cie. I see that I have 260 GB left on Time Machine disk, on Time Machine window. Additional message, "Needs 266.46 GB for back up, thus "backup failed". What is my next step? Thank you very much indeed!

Try C4 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine Back Up Not Enough Space

I just tried to back up my Mac Book Air and I use OS X 10.7.3.
I got a message which said that there was not enough space on my external hard drive. The message said that I needed 50 GB and the external drive only has 43 of space... Note, when I check out the hard drive, it says: ""Available 43.63 of 249.93".
The sole purpose of my hard drive is for back up purposes. So, there isn't anything other data or information on the drive...
So, what do I do?

To be clear--is this a drive you have been using with the MacBook Air previously with Time Machine? Or is this the first time you've tried to use Time Machine with this drive on this computer?
If it's not the first time, I suspect you're just getting Time Machine's warning which everyone eventually will get (unless you've turned it off or really don't change many files) that it is going to need to delete something from the drive outside of its normal scheduled elimination of backups (normally it lengthens out the period between saved backups as the backup ages, figuring you don't need every hour's snapshot for the last three years). By its nature Time Machine's needs tend to grow over time and it will eventually consume all available space on a drive that it is given access to.

Time Machine unable to free enough space

Just returned from a longer trip, taking a lot of pictures, and now my Time Machine backup is failing. Here's what I can read from the logs:
1) For about 45 minutes, it determines what needs backing up
2) Then, it determines it doesn't have enough space
3) It gets rid of a few backups (between 1 and 10), but still doesn't have the space
4) It gives up
This pattern has been repeating for days, once an hour, and no backup has happened.
How can I recover from this?
Here is the log of a run:
Jan 14 02:47:06 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Starting standard backup
Jan 14 02:47:06 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Backup destination alias resolved to path: /Volumes/Weird Ed's Time Capsule
Jan 14 02:47:08 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Disk image /Volumes/Weird Ed's Time Capsule/WeirdEdMBP_001f5be6fa3e.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP
Jan 14 02:47:09 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb
Jan 14 02:47:21 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Jan 14 02:47:21 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
Jan 14 03:31:54 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Backup destination alias resolved to path: /Volumes/Weird Ed's Time Capsule
Jan 14 03:31:55 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Disk image /Volumes/Weird Ed's Time Capsule/WeirdEdMBP_001f5be6fa3e.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP
Jan 14 03:35:50 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Starting pre-backup thinning: 52.66 GB requested (including padding), 16.57 GB available
Jan 14 03:38:15 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb/WeirdEdMBP/2008-12-10-003030: 16.57 GB now available
Jan 14 03:39:01 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb/WeirdEdMBP/2008-12-18-235052: 16.57 GB now available
Jan 14 03:39:33 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb/WeirdEdMBP/2008-12-18-225055: 16.57 GB now available
Jan 14 03:40:04 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb/WeirdEdMBP/2008-12-18-215132: 16.57 GB now available
Jan 14 03:40:48 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of WeirdEdMBP/Backups.backupdb/WeirdEdMBP/2008-12-18-204435: 16.57 GB now available
Jan 14 03:40:48 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Stopping backup.
Jan 14 03:40:54 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Backup canceled.
Jan 14 03:41:01 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Jan 14 03:41:01 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Compacting backup disk image to recover free space
Jan 14 03:42:12 weirdedmbp /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1931]: Completed backup disk image compaction

Right, I understand that there isn't enough space, but I also was under the impression that Time Machine is supposed to manage the space. The backups are the only thing on the time capsule. I'm backing up a single MacBook Pro with a 200GB drive to the 500GB time capsule, so Time Machine should be able to make space by simply deleting old backups. An so far, that has worked.
I get the impression that there's a limit to how many old backups are being removed, and it feels like a time limit. Meaning: If TM deletes backups for more than 10 minutes or so, and there's still not enough space, it gives up.
Trouble is that each turn of deleting some old backups is preceeded by that ~45 minute period of "determining what to back up".
That's what I'm doing now: Deleting old backups, and once that completes I'll compact the sparse bundle. Hopefully, that'll do the trick. So if I let this go on for days/weeks/months, it probably will eventually free up enough space again.
Still, this would seem like a rather common case, this should really work. So far, not very impressed with Time Machine.

Timeline won't back up (not enough space)

Timeline won't back up because it says there is not enough space on my external drive. This never happened before.
I have 10.6.8. I just restored my new hard drive from Timeline. It was an easy restoration. The first time I
backed up on Timeline, it said there was not enough space. I do have my external drive partitioned. I thought old backups
were deleted when the space was needed. What happened? Thank You

I thought timeline deleted old backups on it's own so you would not run out of space. Did I misunderstand this? Is it just a coincidence that this occcured the very first time I tried to back up after I restored my hard drive from the external drive, through Timeline?

Time Machine Error Message Not enough Memory, How to fix?

I've been using Time Machine, backing up onto a hard drive, since last November. All of a sudden it's giving me an error message saying that it does not have enough space. So the backups fail.
The error message offers 2 alternatives: Destroy files or use a different back up location. The preferences offer no assistance, though the error message implies that I can make the backup smaller there.
How can that be? I have saves for the last 30 days, but I can't back up the current files? That seems like flawed software to me.
Does anyone know a work around?
Thanks,
Jemel

Jeanie Marshall wrote:
Yes, I have read through this. Seems very unMac like. There really seem to be no preferences while Time machine is active.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If there isn't room, there isn't room. As dbsneddon says, we can't help figure out what's happened without some details.
There are several possibilities:
Nothing is wrong. You have the +Warn when old backups are deleted+ option checked in TM Preferences, and that's what it did. That's why I referred you to #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. See the tan box there for a detailed explanation and simple solution.
Your Time Machine drive isn't well over twice the size of the data it's backing-up, and Time Machine has to do a new, full backup. #D3 in Troubleshooting lists some common reasons for that.
For some reason, Time Machine may have started a new set of backups. A common reason is having the Logic board in your Mac replaced. See #C8 in Troubleshooting.
There are others, of course, but start by checking those out.

Time Machine takes up much more space than actually data backed up...

Every time I backup with time machine, it uses up gigs of space on my backup drive, regardless of increment or decrement of data on Mac. I could put 200 megs since last backup and TM eats 4 gigs. I don't change the file exclusion selections at all. Just curious if anyone knows why that is?

I find it hard to believe I added 4gb since last backup.
You'd be surprised. Sometimes you add more than you think. Any downloads, recently edited documents, etc all will add to the total. Plus system files such as browser history are updated and backed up as well. If it has been a few days since your last backup, I wouldn't worry. If this is happening ALL the time and you know that you have been barely using your computer, you may have a problem that needs to be further looked into.

Time machine backup fails--not enough room.

I have a 2 TB drive in a Mac Pro running Yosemite (10.2) that I have been using for Time Machine backups. I have a 1 TB drive as my main hard drive that is about 2/3 full and another drive with less than 200 GB used. Unit recently, Time Machine has been working as it should. However, in the last week, I have been getting an error message saying there is not enough room (321 GB available). As I understand the process, older backups should be deleted when there is no longer enough room. Additionally, it should only be updating the backup and there should be enough room for that. Why can I not get a backup?

Try C4 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time machine : Doesn't have enough space on the restore drive.

I've a very weird situation. My time machine backup has two partitions: one is of 95 GB (where I have only one back up of my Mac Lion) and the other of 65 GB is unformatted (total space on the drive is 160 GB). Now when I get to the point of Disk Utility's Restore from time machine backups (through Ctrl + R) and select my new internal HDD (of 128 G), I get the yellow warning at the bottom that 'there isn't sufficient space on this drive'. I'm really baffled as to what could be the root cause of this. Is Time machine accounting for the entire hard drive (of 160 GB) for restore? Or is it doing some tricks behind the scene by which it needs more space (greater than 128 - 95 GB) than the backup? If so, how much is this space?
Really confused here.
Thanks in advance!

@Linc: The internal drive has a GUID partition table and the required partition in the correct format, yes. It actually already has a brand new installation of Lion (could that be interfering?).
Also, this may be useful: My original hard drive was 320 GB and this new one is 128 GB. I'm suspecting this thread has what I need: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15920201#15920201. What do you think?
Thanks!

Time capsule sparse bundle reading "temporarily unavailable" and Time Machine files are not in order; what can I do to check on my backup systems?

I have my time machine set-up with my time capsule/airport. I cannot open my backups in the time capsule as it reads "spars bundle temporarily unavailable." Also, my time machine backup files are missing some files and not in oder by name as designed. It seems something is is not working. I have don a disk repair on the time capsule. I have closed and reopened my computer. Still unable to open time capsule. Does anyone know where else I need to check for errors?

There are two key but related bugs in Yosemite..
The big one IMHO at least is the network one.. and the secondary one is TM which is itself unreliable.
To fix the Network ones we have a long list of things to do.. but you do apparently have access to the TC so for now that is not the major one.
However some of your statements mean I am a bit lost on what you have done.
I cannot open my backups in the time capsule as it reads "spars bundle temporarily unavailable."
If you cannot open your backups how can you find that the backup files are missing. The files are missing from the sparsebundle which you cannot open??
my time machine backup files are missing some files
You cannot repair the disk of the Time Capsule.. only the Sparsebundle can be checked.. that means that you have accessed it and mounted it for disk utility to check it.
I have don a disk repair on the time capsule.
So I am confused about the comments.
What I would recommend is the standard set of fixes to Yosemite.
Factory reset universal
Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord or power off at the wall.. wait 10sec.. hold in the reset button.. be gentle.. power on again still holding in reset.. and keep holding it in for another 10sec. You may need some help as it is hard to both hold in reset and apply power. It will show success by rapidly blinking the front led. Release the reset.. and wait a couple of min for the TC to reset and come back with factory settings. If the front LED doesn’t blink rapidly you missed it and simply try again. The reset is fairly fragile in these.. press it so you feel it just click and no more.. I have seen people bend the lever or even break it. I use a toothpick as tool.
N.B. None of your files on the hard disk of the TC are deleted.. this simply clears out the router settings of the TC.
Setup the TC again.
ie Start from a factory reset. No files are lost on the hard disk doing this.
Then redo the setup from the computer with Yosemite.
1. Use very short names.. NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED names. No spaces and pure alphanumerics.
eg TCgen5 and TCwifi for basestation and wireless respectively.
Even better if the issue is more wireless use TC24ghz and TC5ghz with fixed channels as this also seems to help stop the nonsense. But this can be tried in the second round.
2. Use all passwords that also comply but can be a bit longer. ie 8-20 characters mixed case and numbers.. no non-alphanumerics.
3. Ensure the TC always takes the same IP address.. you will need to do this on the main router using dhcp reservation.. or a bit more complex setup using static IP in the TC. But this is important.. having IP drift all over the place when Yosemite cannot remember its own name for 5 min after a reboot makes for poor networking. If the TC is main router it will not be an issue.
4. Check your share name on the computer is not changing.. make sure it also complies with the above.. short no spaces and pure alphanumeric.. but this change will mess up your TM backup.. so be prepared to do a new full backup. Sorry.. keep this one for second round if you want to avoid a new backup.
5. Mount the TC disk in the computer manually.
In Finder, Go, Connect to server from the top menu,
Type in SMB://192.168.0.254 (or whatever the TC ip is which you have now made static. As a router by default it is 10.0.1.1 and I encourage people to stick with that unless you know what you are doing).
You can use name.. SMB://TCgen5.local where you replace TCgen5 with your TC name.. local is the default domain of the TC and doesn't change.
However names are not so easy as IP address.. nor as reliable. At least not in Yosemite they aren't. The domain can also be an issue if you are not plugged or wireless directly to the TC.
6. Make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only in the computer. For example wireless open the network preferences, wireless and advanced / TCP/IP.. and fix the IPv6. to link-local only.
There is a lot more jiggery pokery you can try but the above is a good start.. if you find it still unreliable.. don't be surprised.
You might need to do some more work on the laptop itself. eg Reset the PRAM.. has helped some people. Clean install of the OS is also helpful if you upgrade installed.
Tell us how you go.
Someone posted a solution.. See this thread.
Macbook can't find Time Capsule anymore
Start from the bottom and work up.. I have a list of good network practice changes but I have avoided Yosemites bug heaven.
This user has had success and a few others as well.
RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ
Yosemite has serious DNS bug in the networking application.. here is the lets say more arcane method of fixing it by doing a network transplant from mavericks.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-yo u-can-do-to-fix-it/
That is all to cover the network side of things.
Time Machine issue is a harder one because there is no simple work around I can give you.
My recommendations are to stop using a TC and test TM to an external hard disk plugged into the computer.. Do a whole new backup and see if that is fully working and accessible.
Or change over to third party program for backup.. I do recommend Carbon Copy Cloner as I use it personally but SuperDuper has a good reputation and there are others. It is far easier and quicker to test a bootable clone made with CCC as you simply boot from the backup.

Time Machine does not recognize my iMac backup. Reports: not enough space; can't back up. How do I get it to recognize the backup?

Time Machine does not recognize my 430 GB iMac backup on 1 terabyte Time Capsule. Reports: not enough space; can’t back up. How do I get it to recognize the old backup and continue backups?

Thanks for the Time Machine Troubleshooting link. Apparently things have changed since 10.7.0. Backups.backupdb doesn’t exist. Path now is: Time Capsule/Data/Daru’s iMac.sparsebundle. So I did Terminal (I usually avoid Terminal) using the instruction in B6. It does not appear to be working. It went through looking for backup, preparing backup, and is now stopping backup, and the TMBackup has disappeared from the sidebar.
Well, just now Time Machine progressed to preparing backup again; the Tiime Machine Backups appeared in sidebar, and with it Backups.backupdb/Daru’s iMac/2012-04-21-112939.inProgress. So it does exist... I’ll let it run, see what happens... But that is a strange date. Today is 28.
I’ll let you know the outcome.
Oops. Just ended! Real time report: “Backup too large for disk...“ So it is not recognizing the old backup. I’ll look at those instructions again, see if I can do the Terminal thing with the backup running. I doubt I can damage anything except the existing baackup which I'll lose anywy if I can’t achieve recognition.
Daru

TIME MACHINE UNABLE TO BACK UP AS NOT ENOUGH SPACE

I keep trying to back up my Macbook Pro (I have a Buffalo hard drive) but on time machine is says that there is not enough space to complete the back up

What is your question?

Migration assistant to copy from mac mini internal drive to second internal drive fails, 'not enough space'

I have a 2011 mac mini and I just installed a second internal HDD using an OWC data doubler kit. So now I have two internal HDD.
The original HDD is 750 GB and the new one is 1 TB. After the installation I manually formatted the 1 TB drive with one Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition.
I then installed a fresh copy of Mavericks on the new 1 TB and during the installation tried to use Migration Assistant to move my user account over (mainly to get all the iTunes and iPhoto stuff).
The original HDD 610 GB used, so 140 GB free.
Migration Assistant correctly detects the original HDD but when I try to copy things over it says there is not enough space.
Can anyone help me figure out what I need to do to get Migration Assistant to move my stuff from the original HDD over to the new one?

I feel like such an idiot. I had manually tried to copy files over using the command line before I found out about the Migration Assistant tool. My manual copy had used up 500 GB.
I deleted all of that and now I have no issues with the Migration Assistant.
Sorry for taking your time!

My Lacie external hard drive will not back up on Time Machine. Says there's not enough space. This has happened with every single external I've purchased. Thought TM was supposed to delete old backups??

My Lacie External backed up on Time Machine after the first back up but now says there's not enough room. I thought TM deleted old back ups to save new versions. What am I doing wrong. This happens to me constantly. Every single external hard drive I've purchased for the MacBook Pro (5 of them) has not worked either initially or at the second back up. It either isn't formatted properly so I have to go to Genius bar to help me set up for the first back up, or after the first back up, it says there's not enough space and I have to go back to Genius Bar. Is there a way I can fix this on my own?

I just purchased 2 external hardrives. a LaCie Minimus and a G Drive. Each 1 TB. The guy at Apple told me that would provide 2 good TM backups for me. My internal HD has 750 GB capacity, of which I'm using 700 GB. Perhaps the ratio is not great enough. I do wish they would have told me this before I purchased the two Bummmmer! I even had them format and get the first back-ups going because of issues I've had in the past. I also just bought a 750 GB for photos.
So, I won't be able to buy another bigger external since I've just purchased 3. Ugh. Well, I'll just exclude some files and divide things up. Eventually, I just want my 20,000 iphotos on one of the 1TB externals, and a TM back-up on another so that iphoto will function once more. It really hates how many photos I have and is brutally punishing me for it.I seriously need to do some housecleaning!
Thanks for the advice. Just moved from US to Australia last week and was hoping to upload a few photos and the domino effect has lead me to this. Just went to Genius Bar in Perth today and they told me how to reformat drive to transfer iphoto library over, but I got stuck at trying to back-up my TM.

Time Machine - "not enough space to back up" despite large drive

Hi,
I have a 2.7GHz Quad-Core 27" iMac from July 2011. It has a 2TB HD which I back up to an external single partition 2TB HD (WD MyBook) over Time Machine (TM). The iMac HD has about 1.4TB on it.
It was "just working" until about 2 weeks ago, when I got a message that says in essence "not enough space to back up: only 600GB available when 1.4GB is needed". There is one succesful 1.4TB backup. I get the error message hourly as it attempts to back up then fails. Previously there were multiple time stamped (houry, daily etc) backups but when I first got the error message, there was only one left, implying that TM deleted the earlier ones in its quest for more space.
As there is a 2TB drive to back up 1.4TB, there should be loads of space as each backup should just log the changes, not the whole drive.
However, TM is acting as if it needs the full 1.4GB free for each delta backup, rather than just space for the changes. This is new behaviour as it did not need this before.
I have googled the issue extensively, checked FAQs etc and found two potential causes.
The first is that I changed the name of my computer around the time that the problem appeared. This can apparently cause TM to not recognise old backups. I therefore deleted the old one and rebuilt my backup from scratch, hoping that the new name would be used. I was able to do one backup before the same issue appeared again.
The second is that the sparsebundle needs to be resized manually due to a bug, but I can't find the sparse bundle on the external HD, even using Disk Utility (this maty be because I am being very stupid - I am a recent Mac user and do not have much experience of digging into OS X's innards)
I am now at a loss as to what to do.
I would be very grateful indeed if anyone had any thoughts that they could share.
SE.

Semper Eadem wrote:
I got a message that says in essence "not enough space to back up: only 600GB available when 1.4GB is needed". There is one succesful 1.4TB backup.
It's trying to do a near-full backup for some reason, and it's already deleted all but the last remaining backup trying to make room. It was probably trying to back up about 1.2 TB, since it adds 20% to the estimated size. That's likely your entire home folder.
The first is that I changed the name of my computer around the time that the problem appeared.
No, that shouldn't cause it. Apparently on some of the very first versions of Leoaprd, it did, but not since.
The second is that the sparsebundle needs to be resized manually due to a bug,
No, there isn't a sparsebundle on backups made to an internal or directly-connected HD. Those are used only for network backups.
What else did you do around the same time you changed your computer name? See #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for common causes.
I'd recommend turning TM off, erasing the drive and doing a "full reset" per #A4 in that same link. Then exclude most of the large folders in your home folder, per #10 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. Then run a backup, and immediately run another.
If the second backup is more than a GB, use one of the apps in #A2 of Troubleshooting to see exactly what got backed-up the second time. That may tell us what's going on.
If it wasn't large, start removing the exclusions, one at a time. Run a backup (that should back up the excluded item(s), then run another and see how large it is. That should pinpoint the problem.

Time machine back up- not enough space so can't back up?

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