Time Machine backup growing as it's backing up

Right now, my Time Machine is backing up. A little while ago, it was at 4 GB of 5 GB. But as it's backing up it keeps growing. Currently it's at 8.57 of 9.42 GB. I have less than 1 GB left on my Time Capsule.
I think I saw this happen shortly after I upgraded to Mountain Lion. My Time Capsule is a 500 GB model purchased new in 2009.
Anyone know what's going on?

Full reset of Time Machine solved my ever increasing backup.
http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html
This link show you how ot delete the plist entries for time machine. You may have to inherit backups after but I'd already messed with that. So far 24 hours on things are sweet.
Good luck
AJC

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I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my info back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos.I see the photos in my HD. What should I do

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my files back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumbnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos. I see the original photo files in my HD. Is there a way to link the Iphoto thumbnails back to the original files?

Use the Firewire cable and t boot the old Mac's hard drive to the new Mac's desktop and transfer your entire iPhoto folder.
Use Disk Utiliy to erase'format HFS+ Journaled your TimeMachine drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new boot drive to the external, it's hold option bootable.

I am running 10.8.2 and my Safari bookmarks keep changing to some very old bookmarks i had. I replace the bookamrks plist from my time machine backup but they automatically revert back. Please help!

I am running 10.8.2 and my Safari bookmarks keep changing to some very old bookmarks i had over a year ago somehow. I replace the bookamrks plist from my time machine backup but they automatically revert back. I dont have a time capsule or anything so these bookmarks are obviously being downloaded over the cloud from somewhere. Please help!

Uninstall Genieo:
http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/
See if that makes a difference.
Ciao.
DawnHerbie wrote:
Also is Safeboot ok to use?
Yes, it will do no harm, but it is meant for trouble shooting and you should not have to use it all the time.
Message was edited by: OGELTHORPE

TIme Machine backup grows too large during backup process

I have been using Time Machine without a problem for several months, backing up my imac - 500GB drive with 350g used. Recently TM failed because the backups had finally filled the external drive - 500GB USB. Since I did not need the older backups, I reformatted the external drive to start from scratch. Now TM tries to do an initial full backup but the size keeps growing as it is backing up, eventually becoming too large for the external drive and TM fails. It will report, say, 200G to back up, then it reaches that point and the "Backing up XXXGB of XXXGB" just keeps getting larger. I have tried excluding more than 100GB of files to get the backup set very small, but it still grows during the backup process. I have deleted plist and cache files as some discussions have suggested, but the same issue occurs each time. What is going on???

Michael Birtel wrote:
Here is the log for the last failure. As you see it indicates there is enough room 345g needed, 464G available, but then it fails. I can watch the backup progress, it reaches 345G and then keeps growing till it give out of disk space error. I don't know what "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD" implies, maybe this is a clue?
No. It's sort of a warning, indicating that TM isn't sure what's changed on your internal HD since the previous backup, usually as a result of an abnormal shutdown. But since you just erased your TM disk, it's perfectly normal.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
2009-07-08 19:37:53.659 FindSystemFiles[254:713] Querying receipt database for system packages
2009-07-08 19:37:55.582 FindSystemFiles[254:713] Using system path cache.
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Backup content size: 309.5 GB excluded items size: 22.3 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 345.01 GB requested (including padding), 464.53 GB available
This is a completely normal start to a backup. Just after that last message is when the actual copying begins. Apparently whatever's happening, no messages are being sent to the log, so this may not be an easy one to figure out.
First, let's use Disk Utility to confirm that the disk really is set up properly.
First, select the second line for your internal HD (usually named "Macintosh HD"). Towards the bottom, the Format should be +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ although it might be +Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).+
Next, select the line for your TM partition (indented, with the name). Towards the bottom, the Format must be the same as your internal HD (above). If it isn't, you must erase the partition (not necessarily the whole drive) and reformat it with Disk Utility.
Sometimes when TM formats a drive for you automatically, it sets it to +Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled).+ Do not use this unless your internal HD is also case-sensitive. All drives being backed-up, and your TM volume, should be the same. TM may do backups this way, but you could be in for major problems trying to restore to a mis-matched drive.
Last, select the top line of the TM drive (with the make and size). Towards the bottom, the *Partition Map Scheme* should be GUID (preferred) or +Apple Partition Map+ for an Intel Mac. It must be +Apple Partition Map+ for a PPC Mac.
If any of this is incorrect, that's likely the source of the problem. See item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum for instructions, then try again.
If it's all correct, perhaps there's something else in your logs.
Use the Console app (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
When it starts, click +Show Log List+ in the toolbar, then navigate in the sidebar that opens up to your system.log and select it. Navigate to the +Starting standard backup+ message that you noted above, then see what follows that might indicate some sort of error, failure, termination, exit, etc. (many of the messages there are info for developers, etc.). If in doubt post (a reasonable amount of) the log here.

Time machine keeps growing in size or backing up a size far greater than it

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere but after hours of searching I still haven't been able to find a resolution which is actually fixing my problem.
When my time machine tries to back up the size of the back up just keeps growing and growing - a problem which has been reported several times but none of the solutions are fixing the problem for me. I've completely reset time machine (disconnect external hard drive, deleting the preferences from ~library/preference, then reset up with my exclusions) and the problem just reappeared.
I've gone through this routine several times and in most cases had no joy. On one occasion I thought the problem had been resolved as it did the initial backup and then a couple of hourly backs and then suddenly it returned a message saying it had insufficient space (trying to back up 470GB but disk only has 300GB available) which was just ridiculous as the full back up size was under 50GB.
I've verified the disk on several occasions and it always comes up clean. In a fit of desperation I've even tried reformatting the external drive with no improvements
I'm at the point of deleting time machine from my laptop and going back to the old Backup program. Can anyone offer any thing else I could try.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Have you Verified your internal HD (and Repaired any externals that are also being backed-up)?
If so, it's probably something damaged or corrupted in your installation of OSX. I'd suggest downloading and installing the 10.6.4 "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Snow Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
If that doesn't help, reinstall OSX from your Snow Leopard Install disc (that won't affect anything else), then apply the "combo" again.

Each Time Machine backup grows and grows. How do I stop this?

Hi everyone. In basic terms, let's say that my external LaCie 3TB hard drive has 2TB of data. This 2TB includes my Time Machine backup. That means that I have 1TB of free space. My last backup was one week ago (I don't keep my external HD hooked up because of travel and I don't care for so many frequent backups). Right now I am backing up, and the backup is 30GB larger than last week. THERE IS NO WAY I MADE 30GB OF CHANGES IN THIS PAST WEEK! At the most, I probably made 1GB of changes. This situation has happened before, so it seems that with each backup (every time I reconnect my external HD for the sole purpose of backing up... Again, I don't leave my HD connected so I back up manually whenever I feel like it, instead of automatic), my data seems to have grown by dozens of GB. Dozens! I'm gonna run outta space soon if this keeps up.
I've read a number of threads on this topic and checked out Pondini.org but my one question does not seem to be answered:
How do I stop my backups from growing so big when I know for a fact I did not make big changes?
This does not equate. If I made 1GB of changes (I'm guessing), then why does Time Machine back up an additional 29GB?
I'm considering ditching Time Machine and backing up totally manually, like, dragging/copying/pasting files and folders from my laptop into my external HD. At least that way I can control and understand that 2TB of data means 2TB, not: "Surprise! 2.03TB... 2.5TB... 2.75TB and mysteriously growing!"
Any help would be appreciated, please. Also, I don't know code and I can't do open-source stuff and I don't know jargon. I also don't do advanced stuff like Parallel (I don't know what that is). If you could please help a dummy like me with plain-speak, that would be beyond awesome. Thanks!
***MacBook Pro from late 2011, OSX 10.7.5, LaCie Porsche external HD 3TB***

Some good options are:
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Each provides a trial version before paying.

Time Machine Backup growing while I watch

Hi,
I've been running time machine on my 13" unibody macbook for the past 6 months no problems. Things started playing up after the SL upgrade (trying to run a 90gb incremental backup for a dataset no more than 30gb) so I wiped the time capsule 500gb (from the airport utility) and started fresh.
Backups now run for their estimated amount and when they reach the maximum the backed up and the total start increasing together. i.e. the first run was meant to copy 27 gb, it go to 27 gb of 27 and continued to increase in size. I'm currently on 36 gb of 36 gb
Backup widget log
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://David%[email protected]/David%20Watson's%20Time%20Capsule
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://David%[email protected]/David%20Watson's%20Time%20Capsule
Creating disk image /Volumes/David Watson's Time Capsule/David Watson’s MacBook.sparsebundle
Disk image /Volumes/David Watson's Time Capsule/David Watson’s MacBook.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Backup content size: 99.8 GB excluded items size: 74.3 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 30.60 GB requested (including padding), 463.19 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 11.1 GB of 25.5 GB, 57139 of 765844 items
Copied 27.8 GB of 27.8 GB, 153102 of 765844 items
Should I just leave it?

So it looks like it backed up the entire hard drive, regardless of exclusions (see below).
Anyone know if this is right for an initial backup?
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://David%[email protected]/David%20Watson's%20Time%20Capsule
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://David%[email protected]/David%20Watson's%20Time%20Capsule
Creating disk image /Volumes/David Watson's Time Capsule/David Watson’s MacBook.sparsebundle
Disk image /Volumes/David Watson's Time Capsule/David Watson’s MacBook.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Backup content size: 99.8 GB excluded items size: 74.3 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 30.60 GB requested (including padding), 463.19 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 11.1 GB of 25.5 GB, 57139 of 765844 items
Copied 27.8 GB of 27.8 GB, 153102 of 765844 items
Copied 49.4 GB of 49.4 GB, 168506 of 765844 items
Copied 67.5 GB of 67.5 GB, 214203 of 765844 items
Copied 215178 files (86.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 288.6 MB requested (including padding), 375.63 GB available
Copied 166 files (103 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.

Time Machine Backups Only Show One, Current Back-Up, Cant go back in time!

So, Ive been doing backups for a while now and recently opened time machine to look for something, and only one backup was visible, Today's. I can't go back in time no others are listed. How can I fix this, I dont mind if I have to create a new one I just want to be able to go back in time in the near future.. Thanks

Try mounting the SparseBundle as an image and search through your Backups for a quick fix.
Or try leaving it when you enter the application for a few minutes to load all the latest backups, this will allow you to "go back in time" or try connecting via RG45 cable to allow this to happen quicker.
Try checking to see if you have deleted old backups, or your settings indicate to delete old backups
Hope this helps
Thanks
Hutchy
www.thickskinnedband.com

How do i import an iPhoto library from a time machine backup?

how do i import an iPhoto library from a time machine backup? I did a back up and i formatted my machine. How do i get iphoto to be the same?

This screenshot shows how to restore a library from Time Machine.
There is NO importing necessary. One should never import one library into another. Just restore it to your Pictures folder and launch iPhoto.
OT

I've mistakenly deleted Time Machine backups from my external HDD. How do I fix this?!

I manually deleted several Time Machine backups from my external HDD. Whenever I attempt to empty trash, it states (error code -22) has occurred. How do I fix my predicament?
I understand (now) that I should never do this and ONLY delete from the Time Machine app itself but I did not assume this would be so complex by taking a blind stab at it. How do I either a) place the Time Machine backups where the originated (Put Back is not an option when right-clicked) or b) successfully delete these so I can clear my bin.
I am running Mac OS 10.10 on a 13" MacBook Air (mid-2013) w/ 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. My external drive is a 5400 RPM WD USB 2.0 External Hard Drive.

Try Trash won't empty deleted time machine backups

Time Machine Backups after recent upgrade to Mountain Lion

Basically to keep a long story short - i need to take my computer in for repair tomorrow. I recently did an upgrade to Mountain Lion a day or two ago. I haven't done a Time Machine backup until today (a couple days after i upgraded to Mountain Lion) because i wanted to make sure that my previous TM backup (Snow Leopard 10.6.8) was the most up to date and best update that i could revert back to if i had any issues with Mountain Lion, or any application compatibility, etc etc.
I don't have any broken applications and it seems like Mountain Lion is running better than Snow Leopard. However, as i said - i'm taking my computer in for repair tomorrow, i would like to know that i have the most up to date Time Machine backup with the new Mountain Lion so that when i restore it back from my Time Machine backup after i get it back from repair, i won't have any issues with the migration, which could potentially lead me into more technicalities.
I have a 500GB Harddrive, with about 70GB left of free space....I did the initial backup prior to upgrading to Mountain Lion, and it upgraded 400+GB of info, now, since Mountain Lion - the first backup with Mountain Lion initially said 46GB - then it went down to 14GB by the time it was all said and done....so what exactly did it back up?
Did it back up all the necessary files to keep Mountain Lion running smoothly when i restore it back to the way it was after i get it back? Did it not back everything up that it needs to? Is it safe to erase my internal drive and do a clean installation so i can take it in, and not worry about not being able to migrate things back over or applications not working correctly?
When i get it back, i presume it will come with Mountain Lion back on it and i can just boot up into the Recovery Disk and restore it from a Time Machine backup that way, correct?
Thanks for the help.
- Jason

I received the same error and experienced the same issue that you have described but after performing a Time Capsule soft reset and then toggling the TM Off and then back On I was able issue a backup now and see my previous backups.
Here is the link to where I posted my fix; https://discussions.apple.com/message/19069543#19069543. Someone else had success using a different method. The only comment / complaint that I have since the ML OS X upgrade is that TM now takes at least 20 to 30 seconds before I can click/select a backup.
I hope this helps.

Time machine backup

I reformatted my 80GB external drive to use as a Time Machine backup drive. I tried backing up but I got a message, that says, "The backup requires 179.6 GB but only 74.1 GB are available". But my internal hard drive is only 80GB and not full at all, so how can I have more information to back up than my hard drive can hold? I get this message even after I exclude almost everything except my documents folder.

I don't know what you mean by not full at all, but Time Machine requires a minimum of 120% of the data to be backed up to work at all and much more than that to be very effective. When Time Machine doesn't have room to work the numbers it gives seem sometimes to be rather fanciful. Before worrying too much about that I would check that you are giving it enough space.

Time Machine backup size has doubled since updating to iMovie 10.0

So since installing Mavericks and running iMovie 10.0, the size of my Time Machine backup has increased enormously.
It seems clear that Time Machine is backing up my iMovie content twice, that is seeing the old iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folders (which are still present in my Movies folder), and the new iMovie Library package, as separate things even though they cannot be separate as they are not taking up any more space on the disk.
The backup is also taking much longer than usual, though I'm not so worried about that.
Any ideas about the cause or how to fix this?
I'm running Mavericks on a late 2008 MacBook 2.4 GHz Unibody with 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD, backing up to Time Capsule with 2TB hard drive

What I have found so far is that when upgrading to iMovie 10 there is a conversion/duplication process that takes place in order to make your iMovie 9 events compatible with iMovie 10.
They should be nearly identical in size. You can confirm this by right clicking the "iMovie Events" folder (iMovie 9) and the "iMovie Library" package (iMovie 10) and selecting "Get Info" and their respective sizes should be nearly identical. The reason for this is unclear other than you retain the ability to run iMovie 9 which will continue to access the "iMovie Events" folder. iMovie 10 will access the newly created/duplicated "iMovie Library" package. Any new video you add using iMovie 10 will also be stored in the new "iMovie Library".
If you want to see the contents of the "iMovie Library" then right click and select "Show Package Contents". You should see all the folders (events) you created originally in iMovie 9.
At some point I presume you have the option to delete the "iMovie Events" folder if iMovie 9 will no longer be utilized or, better yet, back it up on a separate drive if like me you don't like deleting files until you're absolutely sure you don't need them. Otherwise, from what I have found, you are in fact backing up two sets of files.
For now I had to exclude the "iMovie Events" folder from my Time Machine backup because, like you, my back up nearly doubled in size (videos take up a lot of space) otherwise I got an error message from Time Machine indicating that my external drive did not have enough space for the backup file.

Problems with Airport Extreme Firmware 7.6.1. and Time Machine Backups to USB Disks

I found that when I upgraded to Firmware 7.6.1 my Airport Extreme was no longer able to maintain afp server connections to USB disks mounted to the APE. If I power cycled the APE it would work for a while and then fail again. This even applied for connectins on gigabit ethernet, not just wifi. Consequently my Time Machine backups became unusable. Rolling back to 7.6 fixed it, but I permanently fixed this by changing the IPv6 mode from "Automatic" to "Host". No problems since then.

I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Time Machine - backup size seems wrong

I just started my first Time Machine backup. I am doing to to an external USB drive. My MAC drive shows 27 GB used. I have a 60gb boot camp partition but I don't think that comes in to play here.
The backup status shows xxx-of 37gb backed up. What's the deal, I only have 27gb on the source drive.
Thanks,
Kevin

What I have found so far is that when upgrading to iMovie 10 there is a conversion/duplication process that takes place in order to make your iMovie 9 events compatible with iMovie 10.
They should be nearly identical in size. You can confirm this by right clicking the "iMovie Events" folder (iMovie 9) and the "iMovie Library" package (iMovie 10) and selecting "Get Info" and their respective sizes should be nearly identical. The reason for this is unclear other than you retain the ability to run iMovie 9 which will continue to access the "iMovie Events" folder. iMovie 10 will access the newly created/duplicated "iMovie Library" package. Any new video you add using iMovie 10 will also be stored in the new "iMovie Library".
If you want to see the contents of the "iMovie Library" then right click and select "Show Package Contents". You should see all the folders (events) you created originally in iMovie 9.
At some point I presume you have the option to delete the "iMovie Events" folder if iMovie 9 will no longer be utilized or, better yet, back it up on a separate drive if like me you don't like deleting files until you're absolutely sure you don't need them. Otherwise, from what I have found, you are in fact backing up two sets of files.
For now I had to exclude the "iMovie Events" folder from my Time Machine backup because, like you, my back up nearly doubled in size (videos take up a lot of space) otherwise I got an error message from Time Machine indicating that my external drive did not have enough space for the backup file.

Time Machine backup growing as it's backing up

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