Time machine backing up quite a lot of data

Dear everyones,
My Time Machine backs up about 750MB of data everytime it runs it's back up the first time after i've logged in. Does anyone know where this might be coming from? It also happens if i back up, shut down, start up again and then backup. I really don't understand what's causing TM to do this, all i know is it'll quickly fill up my backup HD with unnecessary data.
I hope anyone can help...
Regards,
Gerben

If you want to see what Time Machine is backing up, you can try this:
http://www.charlessoft.com/TimeTracker.zip
I only use it rarely and I think Time Machine won't back up if it the app is open.
Good luck!

Similar Messages

Time Machine backing up the same amount of data EVERY time

Just upgraded to a MBP 17" and started new backups on a clean drive a couple of days ago. First backup took about 14-15 hours and now everytime it does a subsequent backup it is backing up 5.0G every time.
Any idea why? I have never seen it do this before and I have NOT been downloading/adding anything to my machine. Find it hard to believe I am getting 5.0G of cache data from browsing web sites every few hours.

John Potts wrote:
Mine does the same, except it's "only" 1.4GB each time. It does this even though zero new data has been added to the hard drive (by me).
I have tried TimeTracker as recommended above but it seems to be very pre-beta indeed: according to the log, each Time Machine backup adds 0KB. And the original backup was also 0KB.
The backups will show zero until you click them, or set the Preference option to +*Automatically load backups.+* And the first one always shows zero (you really don't want to wait while it calculates the size of everything that was on your system). If they still show zero, you may be using an account that doesn't have permission to see them. Try signing-on as an Admin.
Moreover, when I invoke TimeTracker it remains on the desktop and can't be quit.
Did you try Quit? Either from the menubar or Cmd-Q?
I have my VM folder marked as excluded from back up, along with three external hard drives. Obviously, something must be going on that I don't know about. Are there are other tools that track the TM backups (in addition to TimeTracker)?
Try the BackupLoupe application, at: http://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
But you'll likely have the same problems with it as you did with Time Tracker, as they don't sound like problems with the app itself, but your permissions.

Can't access previous Time Machine back ups to restore my personal data

I restored my very slow iMac using original discs and then rolled forward to get the software up to the lastest version of OS. I restored some personal files from Time Machine and then did a back up. Since doing the back up I can no longer access my old files. Any solution? Oh, and the performance is OK now!

Assuming by "old files" you mean TM backups made before you "rolled forward," you need to use the 'browse other disks' option described in the green box here to access them.
BTW, it isn't clear what version of OS X you are running on your iMac. It can't be any version of iOS like is shown in your product data -- that is just for 'i devices' like iPhones or iPads. If you "restored" from original disks you must have started with some version of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.8.x) & if you had previously upgraded to 10.7 or 10.8, you would have had to erase the HD to reinstall the older OS (which is probably why TM thinks the older backups are from another Mac).

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
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated
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).
Sorry for info overload, just trying to be helpful and cover all the bases. :-)

Retriving data from an incomplete time machine back up

Hi,
I have an incomplete time machine back up. Can I retrieve data from it?
Thanks,
v8r.

v8r wrote:
It was my first time machine back up. Mid way I felt that it is stuck so I powered down my mac book pro. Now its not booting. I gave the details in a simultaneous thread "Gray screen, spinning cog and midway to first back up of time machine". I am assuming that if I have lost all the data on my harddrive, can I at least get some from the incomplete time machine back up.
well, it might be possible but it won't be in any form that you can retrieve automatically. so your first priority should be to get your computer to boot and after what you can start worrying about getting your data from an incomplete TM backup. I've done that it the past and it works sometimes but it really depends on the situation. I had to do it from terminal too as it didn't work from finder.
but it need not be that you lost all data on the main drive. boot from the SL install dvd and see if disk utility sees the drive. if so, repair the drive and try booting from it. if you have disk warrior it might help too if disk utility can not fix some errors.
Thanks,
v8r.

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.

How do I recover my Bookmarks from a Time Machine Back Up

I just upgraded from a 2 year old MacBook running Snow Leopard to a new MacBook Pro running Lion. Because of the problems Apple has between these 2 operating systems, I can not use the automated Migration Assistant to migrate over any of my old files, user info, or settings to the new machine. I'm having to manually pull over document files and applications from my Time Machine back up disk.
I can't seem to find my Bookmarks from the old computer in my back up files. On the Time Machine drive, I've looked in User, Application Support, Library, amongst many others. Not seeing it anywhere. They don't seem to be in Time Machine at all, or rather they're only there if I do the automated migration for all of my programs and settings. Which of course is not possible, because it leads to massive disk permission errors and a corrupted hard drive on the new machine. One thing I'm realizing i should have done was make a manual back up of my bookmarks in Firefox before I wiped my old machine. If I didn't do this, am I screwed?
If anyone has ideas I would love some help, I really really don't want to lose years of bookmarks.
Oh, and whatever you do, don't buy a Mac with OSX Lion unless you want to waste LOTS of time fixing Apple's mistakes. This whole process has been a disaster so far. There are all kinds of issues with the transition to Lion, I'm 40+ hrs in now. Apple now has their very own version of Vista.

The following has instructions: OS X Mavericks: Restore items backed up with Time Machine
The following is old but specific to iPhoto and may help: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)
Also, see http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup

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.

SSD/HDD Time Machine Back Up Issue

I am having an issue with my 2010 13" MacBook Pro.
A few months ago I removed the optical drive, replaced it with the existing HDD, and then replaced the HDD with an SSD.
The SSD runs my OS (Mountain Lion 10.8.4) and Applications, while the HDD is where I store my Home Folder.
I did a Time Machine Back Up in March using a SeaGate external hard drive, with no issues.
Last week I updated the Time Machine Back Up using the same external hard drive, but this time something has gone wrong.
I am unable to move files within my system without Finder prompting me for a password.
I am unable to write to any external USB as I do not have 'permission to perform some actions'.
I am unable to connect to external servers via VPNs.
Finder does not open a new window when slected, I am forced to press 'Comman+N' every time.
Numerous other issues.
I have read that it's an issue to do with ACL's, but since my Home Folder is not on my Startup Disk, there is no way for me to do this.
I am the only account on the computer, and both drives have 'Read & Write' permissions.
Does anyone know how to fix this issue?
Please feel free to ask for more details.
Thanks.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac.
These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing.
Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects.
Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then copy it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands.
Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign.
Step 1
Triple-click the line of text below on this page to select it:
kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}' | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Then click anywhere in the Terminal window and paste (command-V). A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. You can then close the TextEdit window. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that. No typing is involved in this step.
Step 2
Repeat with this line:
{ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{print $3}'; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook 2> /dev/null; } | open -f -a TextEdit
This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which you do have to type. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. Type it carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Heed that warning, but don't post it. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step.
Step 3
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}' | open -f -a TextEdit
Step 4
ls -1A /e*/{la,mach}* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts .la* 2> /dev/null | open -f -a TextEdit
Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting.
Step 5
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' | open -f -a TextEdit
Remember, steps 1-5 are all copy-and-paste — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output.
You can then quit Terminal.

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 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.

Getting Time Machine back up to a Sparsebundle on external HDD (Drobo)

Hey,
I've been chasing this issue around for a while but can't seem to find the answer.
There are a lot of resources out there describing how to get your Mac to backup to a Sparsebundle on a NAS, and more resources telling you how to write protect the Info.plist file so that Mac OS doesn't resize the image to take up all of your NAS.
However I've got a Drobo connected directly to my Mac Mini. The Drobo pretends to have a 16TB drive so that you can add storage as and when you need it.
I am already using it to back up my MBP over the network to a Sparsebundle and until recently I was using the same scheme (a size limited sparsebundle) to back up the Mac Mini that the Drobo is connected to.
I achieved this by following the excellent directions on http://anitechtalk.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/time-machine-dns323/ (one of the only sites that mentions the new way that Apple handles Time Machine Sparsebundles)
However this has recently stopped working and no matter what I do I still cannot get my Mac to see the Sparsebundle as a TimeMachine aware 'drive'- instead it just backs up to the root of the '16TB' Drobo- and at some point it's going to get rather full.
Argh.
(And yes, I know that the other solution is to re-partition my Drobo to have a small partition at the start of the disk for Time Machine to use- but it's too late for that as I've already got 1.85TB of data on there and I doubt that I can re-partition that without losing all of the data.)
Can anyone help me get Time Machine to accept my Sparsebundle as a 'disk' that it can backup to?
Thanks in advance.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

Having trouble restoring old files from an external Time Machine back-up to a new internal hard drive...HELP!

O.k. So my main hard drive died on my iMac and I had to replace it. I have my old system backed up on my external with Time Machine. How do I access it to get my old files back on my new hard drive? I have read multiple forums and I have yet to find a solution. I was told that when I first turn the computer on and get to the third screen, it would ask me if I wanted to restore from a previous back-up. It did but it didn't show my external until I went through the set-up and got to my home screen. The drive showed then. It also asked to install updates...and I did. So everything is up to date. I have not turned time machine on yet because I'm affraid that if I do, it will erase my old back-up on my external. I tried using the Migration Assistant in Utilities and all I get is the spinning wheel when I tried to get that to work. So now I am here asking for help. I'm not very hopeful that I'm going to be able to get all of my old files back... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

"Your Time Machine back up disk cannot be found." What does this mean?

I have an external hard drive that has never been disconnected from my iMac.
About 3 weeks ago, I started noticing that some of my iTunes library songs had "!" in front of them, and I wasn't able to find them to play. Over time, more and more iTunes songs had this problem. Someone recommended that I look in the hard drive library, for individual titles, and sure enough, there they were! I've been dragging them back to iTunes but this is going to take forever, because I'm a music teacher and I have a lot of songs in my library.
In this process, I decided to see if the songs were still on the external hard drive, the Time Machine. However, I get the message "your time machine back up disk cannot be found." I have no idea what this must mean, because the Time Machine has been plugged in for a couple of years now. But somehow, the computer doesn't recognize it any more.
Are the two problems related? And what should I do?

There is no relation.
Time Machine backups : my opinion is that this is a real waste of disk space, usefull for a few number of files but that's all ! In case of a reinstallation, everyone is performing a fresh installation ... In addition, after a certain time, TM erases the oldest files.
I personnaly backup only on mediums (CDs, DVDs, DVDs) etc ... then i'm always sure to find again what i'm searching for.
iTunes : a "!" means that you have moved from one place to another an audio file (or erasing it by error) and iTunes has just stored a link to the file and not the file inside its own folders. Probably you have never consolidated you library. The question is : where are you storing your files ? inside your mac plus inside external drives ? Please make sure, if you are managing often files in iTunes, to consolidate them in order for iTunes to copy them inside its own folders, else it becomes quickly a nightmare.
iTunes manages files on 3 different ways now :
- real files inside it
- links to files out of its folders
- files from iTunesMatch

Time machine backing up quite a lot of data

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for