Time Machine backing up 19.9GB and the source disk has barely changed

Time Machine currently backing up 19.9 GB when my source disk has barely changed since this it last backed up earlier this afternoon.
What would be causing this and how can I find out why it thinks it needs to back up so much stuff. It there a way to find out what it is backing up?
Help!

If you mean by +archiving the TM disk+ that you intend to stop using that hard drive and use another, or you intend to copy the contents of this drive to another (see caveat below) then yes. If you mean compress the contents...I don't know. TM is doing some rather interesting things behind the scenes and I don't know if you could compress and then decompress it later and have it work.
caveat: apparently not every backup program can copy the contents of a TM disk to another so it can be used to restore the files. One that I know of is SuperDuper!

Similar Messages

I have 2 macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only loged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk

I have 2 Macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only logged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk. Is it possible to update her account on my macbook using her external disk without overwriting my stuff on the same Macbook and vice versa?

Time Machine does not do individual accounts. It records the complete drive. So if you were to use her TM backup on your Mac it would make your Mac just like hers. Both yours and her account on your MAC.
Just copy the missing files over from her Mac to yours. If there are differennt programs on each then they would need to be installed on both.

MacPro backed up to Time Machine, added Mac Mini now get "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Jerry Booher's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" is already in use." error when Mac Pro tries to back up

MacPro backed up to Time Machine, added Mac Mini now get "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Jerry Booher’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle” is already in use." error when Mac Pro tries to back up

It is standard Mountain Lion error due to the networking ability which is comparable to wet string. (actually that was lion.. it dried out some with Mountain Lion.. higher in the hills perhaps!!)
See C12 and C17
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
But many people are suffering the same issue..
And the above is even a little out of date.. you might need to do a reset to the TC.
Welcome to Apple's beta program for everyone.

Since upgrading to Lion, my time machine backups are failing - error message: The backup disk image "/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska's MacBook.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1). Any ideas?

Since upgrading my Macbook to Lion, the time machine backups are failing - error message: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska’s MacBook.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)." I have rebooted the TIme Capsule and it worked OK, but don't want to do that every time. Any suggestions? Thanks

Any new info on this?
I had the exact same problem and went crazy and spent a hecka lot of time trying to deal with my brand new 2TB Time Capsule and almost brand new MacBook Pro. Then I thought I fixed it...and I tried SO MANY things, I don't really know what did it...except taking out any apostrophe's in names of stuff that Apple puts in there...BUT...now it's back.
Grrr...

HT3275 time machine back up not completed due to backup disk image "/volumes/data/.....imac.sparsebundle" is already in use. How do I fix?

time machine back up not completed due to backup disk image "/volumes/data/.....imac.sparsebundle" is already in use. How do I fix?

Pull the power cable from the back of the Time Capsule
Wait a few minutes
Insert the power cable back in the back of the Time Capsule
This will fix the problem 90% of the time. If no luck, see #C12 in this great support document by Pondini:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Can time machine back up an imac and an external hard drive?

I currently back up my imac via time machine but to reduce space on my hard drive I want to move my itunes library onto an external hard drive. If i do this can time machine still back up my imac and the external hard drive with the itunes library on automatically?
Regards
Toekoms

toekoms wrote:
I currently back up my imac via time machine but to reduce space on my hard drive I want to move my itunes library onto an external hard drive. If i do this can time machine still back up my imac and the external hard drive with the itunes library on automatically?
yes, given enough space on the destination drive (your library may grow over time). also, the drive needs to be connected directly to your Mac.
you might want to make sure the drive is not excluded from TM backups by checking in system preferences > time machine > options.
also, as for moving your iTunes library, see this read for tips/instructions.
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

Sharing Time Machine Back Up with Desktop and MacBook

Hello,
In preparation for my work on the road I back up my desktop using Time Machine on my Time Capsule, wipe my MacBook clean and Migrate my files to the MacBook so I can take everything. In recent years I notice when syncing my devices, that process has improved and the iPhone,iPad recognises the MacBook as basically the same as my desktop and I don't have to wipe and sync the device. Thank you Apple engineers for that improvement.
This year is a bit different. I have done the migration, but am delayed departing. I would like to share my Time Machine back up across the two computers. Sort of a poor mans macbook sync. I would treat the Macbook as disposable and the Desktop as primary. Make changes to the iMac then update the MacBook before I leave.
Can I use my desktop , back it up to Time Machine, then update the macbook as required? I would do this until I leave.
Also I noticed for the first time the MacBook is running a different OS to the iMac. Will this matter to me?
Thanks,
Ken
Desktop is an iMac 24 running MacOS10.6.8, 2.4 GHz C2D
MacBook is an early 2008 running MacOS 10.6.3, 2.4 GHz C2D
Time Capsule 802.11n, 1st Generation, version 7.6.4
iPhone 3GS iOS 6.1.6
iPad 2 , iOS 7.1.2

So, the macbook today, I did get this message from the OS re TimeMachine
"Would you like to reuse the backup "/Volume/....sparsebundle"
The backup was created on a different computer. If you reuse this backup it can no longer be used by the original computer.
I selected Reuse Backup. This is very convenient. I am wondering now.
How do I select back and forth on the computer to reuse the various back ups?
Ken

FW800 GTech drive as Time Machine Back up - Leave on all the time?

My GTech Q FW800 external drive is my time machine back up - Can I leave this on all the time and boot up and power down my iMac or do I need to "Unmount" it all the time?
Thanks,

You do not need to unmount the backup drive at all unless you wish to disconnect it

Time machine backing up iCal events and Contacts with icloud

Is Time Machine backing up my iCal events and contacts? The reason I ask is because I have it set so they are stored ONLY on iCloud, NOT locally. Is this getting backed up too by Time Machine? I hope so! Because, if something were to fail, or if I were ever to accidentally delete a contact, I might like to be able to travel to the past and recuperate that contact.
Thanks for your insight,
Greg

Hope you will see this... I had the exact same question and need to be sure what I understand. It is easiest for me to have all contacts, calender contacts only as iCloud rather than machine based. But I want to be sure if there is a massive error on icloud (I have had them on mobile me, me.com) that I can restore from my external hard drive where I do regular time machine backups. How does that work? Does the time machine recognise what is on the calendar regardless of its origin (cloud, gmail, exchange) and then restore it to the machine. At which point I would need to manually edit them all to put them in the right cloud based storage??

HT201250 How can I make sure time machine backed up my photos and music?

I recently got a new MacBook Pro, and I sucsessfully transferred all of my information onto my new computer from my old MacBook. I also bought a new external hard drive. I used Time Machine to back it all up. It says that it transferred everything, but all I can see are the Applications. I want to be sure that I have it backed up in two places before I erase my old hard drive and sell my old computer.
Thanks for the help.

When you enter Time Machine and navigate to a snapshot, you see only applications? Nothing in your home folder, for example?

HT3728 since Oct 25 my time capsule is not working properly. I enter the time machine to check my backups and the only thing I see is balck screen on every single day since I put it to work on my house. Any ideas on what's going on?

I am having problems with my time capsule.
It's not backing up... if I enter the time machine, all I see is a black page, any day I look, since the day I bought it.
Was not like this before Oct 25...
Any ideas on what's going on and what should I do to make it work again?

Check the USB cable first to make sure that it is operating correctly on another connection.
You may need to use a powered USB hub with the drive since the USB port on the Time Capsule is not a high powered port like you have on your Mac.
You may need to use the powered hub even if the hard drive has its own external power supply.

Time Machine Back up fails 10% of the way thru.

Cannot get Time Machine to do an initial Backup. Using a WD Elements external USB drive that I have used successfully on other macs. Gets about 15 G thru a 132 G backup. I have verified and repaired both the Mac HD and WD external
Message is The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the back up disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later. If problem persists use disk utility to repair back up disk.
I sent an IOMEGA drive back sometime ago because I was getting the same message and assumed the drive was bad.
Thanks

Stephen Whoolery wrote:
I will try the widget. And yes , it was a simple drag from the finder for the iphoto. It only imports a single photo of what it claims to be of 12,000 !. Therefore I assume my iphoto (08) is corrupted because no way do I have 12000 photos. I was having trouble with iphoto several months ago and a rebuild restored what were many lost photos. Iphoto does crash now and then .
What did you find with the widget?
Error 36 is an I/O error. It usually means there's a problem with a file, and the first one encountered will usually abort the process (whether a Time Machine backup or Finder copy).
Sometimes that can be fixed by Repairing the disk it's on, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). But sometimes the file is damaged internally, and must be dealt with individually.
Until we know what messages you're getting, we're just speculating.

TS1550 can time machine back up discs other than the start up disc

My question is, can Time Machine backup your entire system. By entire system I mean my startup disk and all my internal hard drives and the 3 or 4 external hard drives I have hooked up to my computer. I'm working a lot with videos, pictures and music which is very space intensive, so I need to back up all my information not just start up disk. Can Time Machine take care of that?

To answer you question directly, I don't think so.
To offer my $.02, don't rely on TM. It puts all your data into one big file. When it works, it's great, when it fails, even just a little, it's useless.
You may want to look at SuperDuper or CarbnCopyCloner. They cost a little bit, but you can make bootable backups, schedule backups, easily backup more than one HD, and the backups will be readable on any Mac. Your backups will be individual files, not just one large file that can only be read by TM.

Time Machine says backup is larger then the actual disk

I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
I ran disk warrior on my main HD, ran disk utility to fix the disk and permissions. I formatted the TM drive and now I'm zeroing out the TM drive (hopefully that will work)
Anyone have any ideas why it would be reading the back up size wrong?
Thanks!
Message was edited by: zymosan

zymosan wrote:
I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
That's correct, as odd as it may seem.
Time Machine adds 20% to the estimated size of the backup, for workspace on the backup disk. That's usually not a problem, because a Time Machine disk should be much larger than the data it's backing-up; otherwise, there isn't enough room to keep old backups.
It varies greatly, of course, depending on how you use your Mac, but as a general rule, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
Short-term, you can "squeeze" a backup onto the disk by excluding something large (so the estimate is under about 410 GB) and run a backup. Then remove the exclusion and run another. Since the second backup will be much smaller, 20% of it will be much smaller, too, so it should fit.
Longer-term, you need a much larger HD; at least 1 TB.

Time machine doesn't work because reads the wrong disk size

Time machine started insisting I had not enough space on the disk. Normally it would delete old backups and get on to it. But this time I kept getting the "disk full"or "not enough space message" (do not remember witch one). So I formatted the disk, many times. The message stuck.
No I checked what Time Machine itself was seeing, and it is pretty weird. Time Machine thinks it is a 700mb disk, while it is a 1Tb one as you can see below.
It was working well enough, thank that started.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
PS: I use Yosemite 10.10.1, Imac 20, mid 2011

The first screenshot shows the amount of data on the volume, not its capacity. Apparently it's not large enough to hold all the data you're trying to back up, including about 20% of padding that Time Machine requires.

Time Machine backing up 19.9GB and the source disk has barely changed

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for