Time machine - backing up too much stuff

I'm capturing DV video these days and it's painful, at least from a Time Machine perstpective.
I've got a camera connected to my Mac through Firewire. Video is captured by iMovie09. The files are very big (eg 15-20Gb). Once captured, I connect my external drive and I transfer the file to it.
Then if I start a backup via Time Machine, I end-up with 100Gb+ files to be saved!!!
I tried the timetracker application, but it does not seem to work (or I dont know how to use it).
How can I find out which files TM is copying and why do you thing this is happening?
Thanks
Yvon
Message was edited by: yvonarchambault

timetracker is the right tool for it. its use is quite simple. you just start it and it will show you a list of available backups. you can pick one and see what was backed up.
With big files as you describe I'm not sure why you think the numbers TM is giving you are incorrect. also keep in mind that your external will also be backed up by TM unless it's on the exclusion list in TM system preferences->options.
Lastly, you might want to exclude from backups the folder on your main drive where those videos are being captured.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Backing up too much data (fixed, I think)

About a month ago, I upgraded my Mac Pro from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and in so doing hooked up new external drive for TM backups.
First backup was large, bit slow, and expected.
All backups after that were fairly slow, which I took initially to be partially related to doing recent OS upgrade.
Within last week or so, I started to notice that my backups seemed to be much larger than expected. I went down about 350 GB on the backup drive in a matter 2 to 3 weeks, while adding at most 10 GB of data in that time.
Well today, I discovered the issue via the (freel) app Time Tracker, which showed 10+ GB of data for each backup was coming from TechTool Protection (in Application Support). I went into TM and did a 'delete all' for this backup, and it restored a good 350 GB back to my TM drive.
As I typed this, I initiated a TM backup, that is now 10 MB, which seems normal and expected.
I still feel like a relative novice when it comes to the fine details of using TM, but glad I found this solution.
Definitely have to give shout out to Pondini for pointing me to Time Tracker and for the umpteen other tips I've received from reading the Pondini.org site.
As I marked this as a question, I would say there are 2 items for me that are still outstanding:
1 - the backup of 10 MB is slow - still showing under 100 KB. As I'm used to this from last few weeks, not a big deal, but I'm up for any pointers from anyone who thinks this can be fixed or ought to be fixed.
2 - I'm still curious about exclusions, especially within a 10.6 OS environment. I've excluded items that make sense, either cause I have them backed up elsewhere (i.e. iTunes Library) or because I didn't see the need (i.e. Apple Loops in Library/Audio folder). The ones that perhaps make less sense to exclude, but I'm currently not backing up are:
- Applications folder (did initial TM backup and then excluded)
- DropBox folder
- Library/Caches
- Library/Mail Downloads
- Public folder and Users/Shared folder
If you feel these ought to be included, let me know. And if you feel there is anything else to exclude, I'm up for hearing that.
Thanks.

incidently it seems that time machine backs up everything the first time and only uses the exclusion list on subsequent times

Time machine backs up too much data repeatedly

Since May 2010, my 500GB WD external HD (connected to an AEBS via USB) performed spectacularly; often backing up data several times per day.
Then, all of a sudden a few months ago the TM icon in the finder bar showed that it was backing up 20+GB when I had not made any changes to THAT much data. Seeing how this continued for a while, I reformatted the external HD and everything was back to normal.
A few days later the same thing happened and I reformatted it again. After happening for the third time, I just let TM back up these very large amounts of data as many times as it wanted until the disk got full (about 5 hours). Eventually the TM backups got so large, that they could not be stored on the external HD despite erasing the older back ups. This all happened a few weeks ago.
Now I have already tried to directly connect the drive via USB to my MB to no avail. Additionally, I reformatted a Lacie 500GB to connect via USB thinking that the problem might be with the drive. Unfortunately it wasnt. Repeated diagnoistics with TechTool Pro confirmed this.
Both the WD and Lacie I formatted in the same way, Journled with 2 partitions, 1 for the TM backup and another for media.
Please, any help anybody can give me will be greatly appreciated.
Also, Time Tracker doesn't seem to want to work on my machine...

I downloaded the Time Machine Buddy widget and this is what is showed for the last few backups:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Ajay's Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 15.37 GB requested (including padding), 106.88 GB available
Copied 9501 files (11.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 694.4 MB requested (including padding), 95.37 GB available
Copied 9 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Ajay's Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Ajay's MacBook/2011-04-16-183942: 102.34 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/Ajay's Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Ajay's MacBook/2011-04-16-173802: 102.34 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Then this an hour later:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Ajay's Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 694.4 MB requested (including padding), 102.34 GB available
Copied 150 files (53 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Then this:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Ajay's Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 694.4 MB requested (including padding), 102.34 GB available
Copied 150 files (53 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 694.3 MB requested (including padding), 102.34 GB available
Copied 9 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.

Time Machine backs up too much data

I use Time Machine with a hard drive connected to an Airport Extreme and so far everything works fine except for the amount of data being backed up everytime. Example: once a TM backup is finished successfully I manually trigger another one. It starts and has 180 MB of supposedly new data to store. Where does this data come from? I already manually excluded the chaches folder in my home directory and moved the EyeTV folders to an external firewire drive--no changes.
Any ideas?
Have a nice weekend.

Here's another update: I performed a manual TM backup without the mentioned disk image mounted. After finishing the backup I ran it another time. This time there was only 1 kb to back up. So it seems the 180 MB or so are one "slice" of the sparsebundle-type disk-image I use. So even if you change only one bit inside the image, TM has to back up at least one slice.
Those of you with GBs and GBs to backup evey single time: you are not using file vault by any chance? As far as I know it is basically the same thing as an encrypted disk image.

Time Machine backs up too much every time?

I have just setup Time Machine to backup my 3 internal drives into a Raid 0 array (1.14 TB). After the initial backup was completed, I have noticed that it eats up about 80 GB every time the incremental runs. I have allowed it to run without running any applications in between backups and with nothing running other than the default processes. When looking at the Console output something very strange shows up. It seems like two backups happen (I assume this from the duplicated "Copied XXX Files" entries". One with the right (or at least reasonable for a system that has basically not changed) amount of data backed up and one with this strange 80GB volume. You can also see that it is spread out on all the drives. This is the console output:
12/20/07 6:28:19 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Backup requested by automatic scheduler
12/20/07 6:28:19 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Starting standard backup
12/20/07 6:28:27 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup Drive/Backups.backupdb
12/20/07 6:28:28 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] No pre-backup thinning needed: 105.3 MB requested (including padding), 418.81 GB available
12/20/07 6:38:58 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 11 files (27.2 GB) from volume Music Movies Pics.
12/20/07 6:39:02 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 140 files (27.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
12/20/07 6:40:24 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 174 files (30.7 GB) from volume Documents.
12/20/07 6:40:24 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] No pre-backup thinning needed: 105.2 MB requested (including padding), 388.06 GB available
12/20/07 6:40:26 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 11 files (0 bytes) from volume Music Movies Pics.
12/20/07 6:40:30 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 152 files (179 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
12/20/07 6:40:32 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Copied 186 files (179 bytes) from volume Documents.
12/20/07 6:40:33 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Starting post-backup thinning
12/20/07 6:40:33 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
12/20/07 6:40:33 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[823] Backup completed successfully.
Also when I look at the logs in the Time Machine drive (the ones called .Backup.log) only the entries with the small volume show up. Any ideas would be appreciated. I was very hopeful about Time Machine but at this rate, no amount of storage would be enough.

I will try to update this post as I find out more information on what is going on with TM. Latest news it that apparently TM is "forgetting" that it backed up some files and is simply doing it over and over. Previously I had this:
12/20/07 10:56:36 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1591] Copied 11 files (27.2 GB) from volume Music Movies Pics.
12/20/07 10:56:39 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1591] Copied 16 files (27.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
12/20/07 11:20:03 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1591] Copied 99 files (42.7 GB) from volume Documents.
By looking into the "inProgress" package I could see that it was copying a bunch of files I had not touched in a long time. One of them was a 27 GB Super duper image. So I removed the file and next backup I got this:
12/21/07 8:29:20 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[2121] Copied 10 files (15 KB) from volume Music Movies Pics.
12/21/07 8:29:34 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[2121] Copied 293 files (4.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
12/21/07 8:35:11 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[2121] Copied 327 files (3.6 GB) from volume Documents.
So removing that file not only seems to have cleaned up most of the backup coming from "Documents" (where the file resided) but also cleaned up "Macintosh HD". Other than cleaning up file by file I have not really found other ways to fix this.

Time machine backing up too much too often

This has started happening again. I thought the problem went away after my upgrade a few months ago to Mountain Lion.
Time Machine seems to be backing up all the time. And the backups seem to be like 800 MB to 1 GB. It's in the middle of an 849 MB backup right now, but I just started using the computer this morning for the first time, so I didn't change anything overnight.
This does have impact on performance because the disk is constantly being accessed.
In Time Machine preferences I have the obvious culprits excluded: Parallels virtual machines, iTunes podcasts, rental movies and TV shows.
Is there a way to check to see what Time Machine is backing up? I would love for it to get back to it's usual quiet self, doing a 1 or 2 MB backup every hour and quickly getting done with it!
Thanks,
doug

I have 244 images in my photo stream, but only 5 new ones in the last 24 hours.
That's exactly it. The one flaw with iCloud and Time Machine, is that Time Machine checks file metadata, not the photo metadata. Begininng with OSX 10.7.4 there was a hidden system attribute which recorded the last time the file was synced with iCloud. If you are connected to the Internet that tag is updated at an interval (I'm not sure what it is), as well as every time you reconnect, but the OS does this all in the background, so any pictures in photo stream will appear as "modified" to Time Machine, and Time Machine will back up new copies of the files. I'll do a little more poking around the Library and see if I can find something you can exclude, but I'm not sure it can be stopped.

Time Machine Craziness: Way too much data getting backed up

Hello.
I'm on a retina MBP running Mountain Lion. Each time that Time Machine does a backup, it's backing up way more data than corresponds to any changes I have made. I'm aware of issues with virtualization software (I'm not using any) and I'm also aware that it will back up entire large files even if I make a small change to it (that doesn't apply here; I have not altered any files that even approach the size of backups being done).
According to Console, Time Machine is backing up much more than backupd is detecting in its initial scan. Here are a couple excerpts from the Console representing today's backups:
8/3/12 3:28:37.450 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Finished scan
8/3/12 3:29:12.480 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Found 2659 files (290.2 MB) needing backup
8/3/12 3:29:12.486 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: 999.3 MB required (including padding), 141.67 GB available
8/3/12 4:28:43.148 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Copied 20.37 GB of 20.37 GB, 7322 of 7322 items
8/3/12 5:28:43.700 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Copied 40.06 GB of 40.06 GB, 9058 of 9058 items
8/3/12 5:53:34.220 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Found 564 files (18.4 MB) needing backup
8/3/12 5:53:34.228 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: 673.7 MB required (including padding), 95.99 GB available
8/3/12 5:59:10.509 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Copied 274 files (1.65 GB) from volume RUBYEXS.
8/3/12 6:00:46.867 PM com.apple.backupd[4027]: Copied 7185 files (1.66 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
I'm pretty sure this has something to do with files on my external hard drive. There may be some corruption in the Time Machine indexing that is forcing backups of the same files to be made over and over again even when no modifications have been made. In the Time Machine menu bar extra, I can see the backup size snowballing. It will say, for example, "backing up 2.4 GB out of 3.0 GB," and one minute later say "backing up 3.5 GB out of 5.4 GB" and just keep going up to as much as 60 GB.
Any ideas what might be causing this? I can provide more detailed Console logs if anyone is interested. Do you think I should wipe my Time Capsule clean and start backups from scratch? That's what I did when I got my rMBP a few weeks ago, but doesn't the Time Machine utility also need to be cleared out somehow so it doesn't look for the old backups? And what about deleting local snapshots? I don't mind starting from scratch again if necessary, but I want to make sure I'm really getting a clean slate.
Thank you to anyone who has ideas about this!

ClayG wrote:
According to Console, Time Machine is backing up much more than backupd is detecting in its initial scan. Here are a couple excerpts from the Console representing today's backups:
Use one of the apps in #A2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to see what's really getting backed-up.
Also verify your internal HD and repair the external and the TM drive, to be sure there isn't directory damage.
If that doesn't help, try repairing your backups, per #A5 in the above link.
Do you think I should wipe my Time Capsule clean and start backups from scratch?
Only as a last resort.
doesn't the Time Machine utility also need to be cleared out somehow so it doesn't look for the old backups?
No. It looks at the last backup on the drive, then figures out what's been changed since then. If the drive is empty, it just starts from scratch.
And what about deleting local snapshots?
No, they're completely separate and independent.

Time Machine Backing up too often, do I have a choice?

I'm running a PB G4 1.33ghz and I recently added a Time Capsule to my network. The backup has been working just fine. The problem is that it's been working too much. I can't spare the processor speed. Can I have Time Machine only back up once ever 24 hours instead of every hour?
Maybe I just need to shut off Time Machine in the morning and turn it on at night before I go to bed.
Thoughts?

Another alternative if you don't want to muck around with system files is to switch Time Machine off (the big switch in the preference pane) and just order a backup at your leisure once a day off the dock or menubar menu.

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine
and if it yes i want to know if i have 1TB hard disk to use the 500gb for time machine and the other 500gb for normal use

thank you very much because i am considering to buy the porsche design hard disk 1TB and i want to have it for normal use and for time machine is a pitty to give 1TB for back up only again thanks and i know seperate the back and the working jobs are better but the i have to have 2 hardisks and i want only 1

Time Machine back-up disk too small

Recently I had to restore my system from a Time Machine back-up, all seemed to work fine. Now I have a situation where time machine gives me an error when I attempt a back up, saying there's not enough free space on the back-up drive. The drive I'm backing up is max 500megs, the external BU drive is a TB. I fixed all the prefs but it seems as though Time machine is not deleting old files from my BU drive to make room for new ones. Any ideas?

OrangePanda wrote:
Hi, I have the same problem.
My backup drive (G-Tech Q 500Gb) has 465Gb of space and my Pro has only 434Gb,
Your backup drive is much too small. To work well (and keep a reasonable number of backups for you), TM usually needs roughly 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up. See item #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
yet when I tried to update it says I still need 63Gb of space??? I downloaded the Time Machine buddy recommended here, the message said that some old copies were deleted but still need 64Gb, only had 40Gb.
Did I miss something? should I just wipe my G-Tech and try again?
Short-term, probably. Without the actual messages, we can only speculate, but most likely you've made a lot of changes or for some other reason TM is trying to back-up about 54 gb (the 64 includes about 20% extra for workspace). Copy and post the TM Buddy messages here and we can be sure.
Long-term, you need a bigger drive.

HT201250 my time capsule is taking too much time indexing backup and then taking longer time to back up ( 207 days ) or longer !!! what shall i do ?

my time capsule is taking too much time indexing backup and then taking longer time to back up ( 207 days ) or longer !!! what shall i do ?

Try 10.7.5 supplemental update.
This update seems to have solved this problem for many.
Best.

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? Also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard 10.6.8?

No and Yes
Don't use TM for this purpose, clone your drive to an external, plug the external into another MBP and reboot from it. Please note that booting a machine that came with Lion may not be possible from a drive with Snow Leopard.

Time Machine Back up is too slow

I just bought a WD 1 TB hard drive for my Macbook Pro. I put files on but for some reason the Time Machine's first back up is taking forever for only 54 gbs. Is this normal? It took me just a few minutes to put in the 25 gb of itunes data on it but the Time Machine back up is so slow. Plus the encryption is very slow too.

Hi there Balhabib,
I would recommend taking a look at the troubleshooting steps found in the article below.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275
-Griff W.

Time Machine backups: Get too many Backups all the time (constantly Backing

My Time Machine back ups are always backing up, everyday, on the hour, everyday. I want to slow it down or schedule it to where I want to have it, to do its back ups, such as in the middle of the week at 3pm every wednesday or twice a week at 3pm to do the Back ups instead of every sec or min or hour evryday.
Right now I have an external 2nd HD and I have the back connected to that 2nd HD and whenever the Time machine does its back up to that 2nd HD it makes a loud irritating crackling noise, and I think its because I need a new 2nd HD but haven't enough money yet to get a new one but plan to hopefully soon but for now I would like to control this Time machine back up schedule, How do I do this? am I able to do this? Does anybody have a solution?
Thank you,
Mrs.Trisha Foster

Trisha Foster wrote:
Right now I have an external 2nd HD and I have the back connected to that 2nd HD and whenever the Time machine does its back up to that 2nd HD it makes a loud irritating crackling noise, and I think its because I need a new 2nd HD but haven't enough money yet to get a new one but plan to hopefully soon but for now I would like to control this Time machine back up schedule, How do I do this? am I able to do this?
You can't via Time Machine. And yes, that sort of noise from your external is a very bad sign. You can get even big externals for under $100 these days, so do it ASAP.
It also sounds like the problems with the drive are making your backups run very slowly; normally they run hourly, and are very quick and unobtrusive.
Under normal circumstances we usually advise against it, but there is a 3rd-party app, Time Machine Editor, that some folks use for this. Some say it works for them, others have had troubles with it, especially getting TM to work properly after they remove it.
Since this is temporary, a better bet might be to turn TM off, and just do manual backups as rarely as you dare (via the TM icon in your menubar, or by right-clicking the TM icon in your Dock.)
But please get a new drive soon. It's impossible to predict when it's going to fail completely.

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

Time machine - backing up too much stuff

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