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.

Similar Messages

Limiting Time Machine backup Size with WD MyBookLive and 10.8

I cannot take credit for the any part of this solution; merely for merging and clarifying how the solutions discovered by 2 Apple Support Communities contributors much smarter than I (namely “Pondini” – Florida and “himynameismarek”) - worked perfectly for my situation. All cudo’s to these two!
I have about average or better PC skills, but am an absolute newbie with Apple. This week I got a new iMac. Having a number of home PC’s all sharing files and back up space on a Western Digital MyBookLive (“WD MBL”) 3TB network drive (NAS), naturally I wanted to use it to backup the new Mac rather than rushing out to buy an Apple Time Capsule.
There are hundreds of threads on limiting size of a Time Machine (“TM”) backup, many of which required entries in “Terminal” or were devised on older versions of OSX. I’m running OSX Mountain Lion 10.8, so was concerned they may not work.
The issues I wanted to resolve were:
Time Machine will use up all of the space on my WD MBL if left to it’s own devices.
The WD MBL is compatible with Mac and PC’s… which is good… but unlike a back up in Windows 7 Pro which will allow you to make backups in a mapped “share” you create yourself, Apple TM Backups will not; they end up in a hidden folder on the NAS (much like PC backups done with WD Smartware)
At first I thought maybe I could limit the size of a share created in the MBL, but not possible, at least not that I've seen and I have searched for days.
The solutions:
First make sure you have the latest firmware for the WD MBL as of today it is MyBookLive 02.11.09-053. From what I’ve read Western Digital fixed the compatibility issues with 10.8 Mountain Lion just recently.
Next you need to start TM so that it starts to create a back up. You can stop the back up once you see files being copied. Do this before you walk thru the video tutorial by my Marek below. WD MBL will create the hidden folder you need to find for TM Backups. This folder is called “TimeMachine” but it is not visible even in the “MBL_NAME-backup” folder in Finder.
Open safari and type “ afp://xxx.xxx.x.xxx ” but use your own ip address of your MBL. Mine was 192.168.1.120, yours will be different.
It will ask how you want to connect. CHOOSE AS A GUEST even if your MBL is protected… I’m not sure why it works but it does. Then a window will come up asking which share you’d like to mount. You will see all of your own shares plus one called software and now one called “TimeMachine”. Choose that one.
Now in “Finder” you will see a mounted shared item called “YOUR_MBL_NAME-“ (the same as the one that is probably already there but with a dash(-) at the end). You’ll also see a new “device” in the device list called “Time Machine Backups” (If you already have watched the video tutorial by Marek, you’d know you are looking for a file called “YOUR_MACHINE_NAME.sparsebundle”. Well if you browse the folder “Backups.backupdb” in the Time Machine Backups device you won’t find it… again I don’t know why but you won’t. It resides in the hidden folder called “TimeMachine” that is now visible in the thing you just mounted in step 4)
NOW watch this video tutorial http://youtu.be/Nq7mSizqUSI and follow it step by step.
Voila... issues resolved. Thank you Pondini and Marek!

Try Use Terminal to limit Time Machine sparcebundle size on timecapsule,
should work to limit Time Machine backup size on any NAS or external disk (or not...)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 500000
to return to ilimited
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize
if you want to reclame deleted files space shrink it use
hdiutil resize -size 500g -shrinkonly /Volumes/TimeMachineYOURNAME/YOURNAME.sparsebundle/
Regards

Limiting Time Machine backup size onto external drive

I have a 6TB RAID LaCie external drive that I would like to use with Time Machine. My mac has a 1TB HD which is not full. I do not want Time Machine to fill up my external drive with multiple backups. Is there some way to limit how much space Time Machine will use on an external drive? My understanding is that Time Machine will fill up the drive completely, then start overwriting the oldest files.
I do not think that I could partition the drive. But I am not sure how to do that, if it works with mac, and if I can do it now without reformating the drives. I am looking to see if there is a solution on the Time Machine software side.

Try Use Terminal to limit Time Machine sparcebundle size on timecapsule,
should work to limit Time Machine backup size on any NAS or external disk (or not...)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize500000
to return to ilimited
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize
if you want to reclame deleted files space shrink it use
hdiutil resize -size 500g -shrinkonly /Volumes/TimeMachineYOURNAME/YOURNAME.sparsebundle/
Regards

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.

Time Machine backup size discrepancy

Apologies if this has already been answered, but I just did my first Time Machine backup to a new external HD and when I compared the amount of data on the Time Machine drive to the internal HD I backed up, it's about 7 GB smaller (149 GB vs. 156 GB). Is it normal to have a discrepancy in the initial backup file like this? I didn't exclude anything on the internal drive from the backup. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Frank O'Connell wrote:
Oops! You're right, I meant Spotlight (you use a Mac for 25 years and you get confused sometimes!). Anyway, I checked the entire log folder and it's less than 100 MB. Could the other things you mentioned (temporary files, swap files etc.)
yes, they could although it's somewhat uncommon. swap files are in /var/vm. DO NOT delete those by hand. restarting the computer will reset them to the default size. sleepimage is in the same directory too. you can delete that one but if you have safe sleep enabled then it will be recreated next time you sleep the computer. also check your Trash size.
account for that big a difference, and if not, should I be worried that my TM backup is incomplete?
no, I wouldn't worry about that. check your TM exclusion list in TM system preferences->options. if nothing is on it and nothing is obviously missing you should be fine. but i would be worried about having a lot of stuff that's abnormally large and takes away space. for example, if it's the swap files that take so much space it means that you need more RAM.

Slow Time Machine backup with seemingly unnecessary files being processed

Here are logs from three consecutive hourly backups during which my machine was not being used. Note that it takes 8 minutes to complete the backup, even though very few files have been added to the disk (I do webcam captures every 15 minutes via a cron job, that's it). What I find bizarre is that the backups appear to be performed twice, and the first time, it says it's copying a large number of files, though the total file size is very small.
I've looked on the board here and tried various solutions, e.g., I've reindexed Spotlight, checked my disk (no problems), removed the apostrophe from my computer's share name, and applied the 10.5.6 Combo Update.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks!
Feb 19 08:03:08 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Starting standard backup
Feb 19 08:03:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Backing up to: /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb
Feb 19 08:03:45 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 08:07:11 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Copied 58667 files (46 KB) from volume gb.
Feb 19 08:07:35 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Copied 59139 files (448 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 08:07:36 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 08:07:42 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Copied 27 files (20 bytes) from volume gb.
Feb 19 08:07:51 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Copied 364 files (229 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 08:07:54 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 19 08:11:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Deleted backup /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/My iMac/2009-02-18-070723: 214.67 GB now available
Feb 19 08:11:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 19 08:11:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86068]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 19 09:03:08 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Starting standard backup
Feb 19 09:03:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Backing up to: /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb
Feb 19 09:03:45 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 09:06:55 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Copied 58675 files (47 KB) from volume gb.
Feb 19 09:07:18 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Copied 59142 files (449 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 09:07:19 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 09:07:26 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Copied 27 files (20 bytes) from volume gb.
Feb 19 09:07:34 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Copied 364 files (229 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 09:07:38 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 19 09:11:01 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Deleted backup /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/My iMac/2009-02-18-080738: 214.67 GB now available
Feb 19 09:11:01 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 19 09:11:02 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86218]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 19 10:03:08 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Starting standard backup
Feb 19 10:03:17 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Backing up to: /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb
Feb 19 10:03:48 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 10:07:14 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Copied 58683 files (36 KB) from volume gb.
Feb 19 10:07:52 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Copied 66813 files (522 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 10:07:53 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.45 GB requested (including padding), 214.67 GB available
Feb 19 10:08:00 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Copied 27 files (20 bytes) from volume gb.
Feb 19 10:08:08 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Copied 369 files (229 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 19 10:08:11 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 19 10:11:52 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Deleted backup /Volumes/TimeMachine/Backups.backupdb/My iMac/2009-02-18-090731: 214.67 GB now available
Feb 19 10:11:52 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 19 10:11:53 My-iMac /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[86374]: Backup completed successfully.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
First, it's easier to monitor backups via the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window.
It's not unusual for TM to do what seem to be double backups. When it first starts, TM looks at the +File System Event Store,+ a log kept by OSX of all changes to the file system on your disk. It then estimates the size needed, and begins the process. When it finishes it's pre-backup "thinning," if any, and copying of changed items, it then checks again for any changes made during the backup, and does a quick copy of those items.
TM does occasionally get something wildly wrong about counts and file sizes, as it clearly has for you. Sometimes this seems to be a problem in the File System itself, so I'd suggest you use Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) to do a +Verify Disk+ on your internal HD. If it shows any errors, post back if you don't know how to use your Leopard install disk to fix them.
While you're at it, a +Repair Permissions+ wouldn't be a bad idea (takes quite a while -- at least 20 minutes).
You might also want to download the TimeTracker app, from www.charlessoft.com.
It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.). This may give you some clues as to what's actually being backed-up on each run.
Give those things a shot and let us know the results.

Time Machine backup size almost 1T for two months worth of archives. How to minimise space consumed by Time Machine short of starting over?

I have an MBA mid-2012 wtih only 250GB of internal SSD space. I have run my back up since last year, but have subsequently removed my older back ups through Time Machine. I now have only two entries one day each for December of 2012 and January this year. The backup space consumed seems to have grown to 900GB. My external drive is 2TB large, but it seems that the Time Machine back up space has grown over large.
How can I trim it to size short of starting from scratch? I actually don't have problems starting my backup over, but if a more elegant solution is available then I am all ears (or eyes in case of the internet and my screen).

Thank you for the link. It helped immensely. Attached is a screenie of my disk usage. So I didn't realise earlier that my virtual machines (save for Boot Camp) could be eating up a sizeable chunk of the back up space. I think I'll do a complete redo of my Time Machine back up, I keep a copy of each VM I use as a pseudo snapshot anyway. I've added a number of exclusions too, since I only really use several folders in my home directory as temp (e.g. watching a movie I copy it to my Videos folder so I so I can disconnect my external HDD).

Time Machine Backup Size Calculation Error

This is what I have:
Internal:
Mac OS partition: 266GB (257GB Used)
BootCamp partition: 32GB ( 12GB Used)
External:
External USB 2.0 HD: 153GB (142GB Used)
TM Backup Drive: 466GB ( 0GB Used)
*What I have excluded:*
- TM Backup Drive
- BootCamp partition
*Therefore what I'm trying to backup are only:*
- MacOS partition
- External USB 2.0 HD
Time Machine Preferences Options Pane reports "Total Included: 398.4GB", and that's totally correct for what I'm intending to backup (i.e. MacOS partition + External USB 2.0 HD = 257GB + 142GB = 399GB). So far so good.
But when TM kicks off after the countdown, an error dialog pops up saying:
*Time Machine Error*
This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 478.0 GB but only 465.5GB are available.
To select a large volume, or make the backup smaller by excluding files, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine.
[Preferences] [OK]
Now how does TM figure out that 478.0GB number?
If I add up all used spaces for all drives (excl. TM drive), I only get 411GB.
If I add up all capacity of all drives (excl. TM drive), I only get 451GB.
How in the world did TM calculate that 478.0GB number? Why is there a discrepancy between what's reported in the options pane and the error dialog?
BTW, I have verified all my disks and they are all fine.
All my drives and partitions (except the bootcamp partition) are formatted properly to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Someone please advice.
Much appreciated.

Disregarding the Mac/Win partitions, my internal HD as a whole is 298GB. My external USB drive is 153GB.
nestea247,
Your computer info says : iMac Aluminum 24" ....... 320GB HD.
So, I assumed your internal HD is 320GB and you are currently using 298GB of it. Therefore my simple calculation was not "298GB + 153GB" but "320GB + 153GB(ca.)". Did I misunderstand?
My point was: For the first-time backup, in order to copy the entire image (including the *free space*) of the volume to backup, TM might think it needs about the same size of backup volume as your internal HD ( + external USB drive, in your case). Not simply adding up the size of the *used space*.
Leter, however, it will get more realistic and adjust to the actual data size; so, after completing all the hard link setup, the size of its backup seems to "shrink." Your TM could be still calculating.... perhaps struggling to adjust? (I too hope it is not a critical bug.)
I'm afraid my reply doesn't help solve the mystery of 478.0GB. Hope someone else can.
Best of luck!

Time machine backup size fail error

Hi there, Aaargh, Time machine says I need 1.04 Tb for my backup when in fact all i've used up on the hard drive is about 250-300gb. I've excluded assorted folders to no avail. Restarting & relaunching finder seemed to work previously I vaguely recall. I wonder if it 'resets' itself if the external hard drive is unplugged & replugged??
using osx 10.6.8 - everything up to date
my external hd is a new portable WD 1TB, ext. journaled drive, with about 455gb space. Other manul backups on it already, no issues etc etc
thanks in advance!
ps I'm currently reading this which will hopefully work...
http://pondini.org/TM/6.html

Disregarding the Mac/Win partitions, my internal HD as a whole is 298GB. My external USB drive is 153GB.
nestea247,
Your computer info says : iMac Aluminum 24" ....... 320GB HD.
So, I assumed your internal HD is 320GB and you are currently using 298GB of it. Therefore my simple calculation was not "298GB + 153GB" but "320GB + 153GB(ca.)". Did I misunderstand?
My point was: For the first-time backup, in order to copy the entire image (including the *free space*) of the volume to backup, TM might think it needs about the same size of backup volume as your internal HD ( + external USB drive, in your case). Not simply adding up the size of the *used space*.
Leter, however, it will get more realistic and adjust to the actual data size; so, after completing all the hard link setup, the size of its backup seems to "shrink." Your TM could be still calculating.... perhaps struggling to adjust? (I too hope it is not a critical bug.)
I'm afraid my reply doesn't help solve the mystery of 478.0GB. Hope someone else can.
Best of luck!

Time machine - backup size

TM is telling me that it cannot back up because it needs 1.2TB of space when all the files selected total to only 880GB. It worked fine for a while, then stopped working. I tried deleting preferences, reformatted the 1tb time machine drive (931GB available) and re set TM from scratch but to no avail. i have the same problem. I also verified and repaired the drive.
any ideas?
thanks!

A TB is really only 976 GB. (1000 vs. 1024)
Also TM needs some "headroom" while backing up.
Your problem is that 1 TB is not large enough for your drive.
You need to offload some of your files to permanent storage elsewhere, or do without backing them up by excluding them.
A TM drive should be at least 3 times the size of your internal drive to work properly.
A TM backup is not a clone. TM stores not only your present OS, but everything you have deleted from it, to the TM drive must be large enough to hold everything you have ever had on your drive since you started using TM, including any large files that you deleted in the past. That's why it's called Time Machine, rather than a cloner.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Time machine backup size differences

I have backed up some VMWare fusion Virtual Machines but restoration loses a file that is in the package. I cannot see the package content when exploring in time machine but I can restore the whole package. It's consistenly missing one file in the package in all backups. Notably it's a 2 gig file. The backups show a size of 44 gig but when restoring it's only copying 42 gig. So is the other 2 gig file in the package and can it be restored? Are there advanced time machine options that might help me?
thanks

Files that are open for writing are not backed up by Time Machine. Virtual disk files should be excluded from backup and the contents backed up from within the guest OS, using a native backup method.

Time machine backups: Size of Mac HD Backup vs Mac HD on local machine

Hello,
Today I used Time Machine to backup the computer. It completed the backup and now I want to *make sure* that the backup files and the local machine files are the same size; don't want to leave anything up to some program when so much is at stake.
The problem: On the External HD, the size of the account I *MUST* have backed up is 20Gb. When I look at the /Volumes/Mac HD/Users/##### I see the user account as being 45GB.
I'm pretty sure that Time Machine doesn't compress any of the files. I am also aware of the changing nature of ~/Library and other similar files.
What is going on here? Can I be sure that my backups are truly complete backups?
Other than looking at the folder size, how can I really know what the actual size is?
Any info would be great.
Thanks,
Allan

There is a wealth of Time Machine information here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
AC

Time Machine backup size mystery

Today I used Time Machine to back up my Mac, as usual, to my external hard drive (1 TB). The backup was 160 GB. Yet my hard drive only has, er, 69 GB of data on it.
So what was the other 91 GB that was backed up? Magic? Kittehs? Hopes and dreams? Ghosts of Christmases past?
Proof:
And looksie at this:

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included—anonymize before posting.

Time Machine Backup Stuck in a Loop?

Since upgrading to ML I've noticed that my Time Machine backup icon seems to be in constant motion. I've also noticed that it never seems to be backing up as it's been stuck at "427kb of 479mb" for the past hour. I'm backing up to a Time Capsule and can access the time capsule just fine.

Sly Park Mark wrote:
After installing the new hard drive in my macbook, I once again booted up from the install disc and told it to restore my hard drive using my last time machine backup (which was created one day before the initial crash). Once again, the computer got stuck on the grey startup screen mentioned above.
Two possible causes:
You used a Leopard install disk, instead of a +Snow Leopard+ one. All you needed to do was install Snow Leopard over it; but since you've now done other things, your best bet is to just do it over, using a Snow Leopard disc.
Whatever was going wrong with your internal HD damaged some things on your system, and that damage was backed-up, so is restored along with everything else. In that case, do it over, but select an earlier backup.

How to restore a time machine backup from a corrupted disk

Hi.
I have quite a problem. I recently downgraded to os x 10.5.4 due to the requirements of Digidesign's Pro Tools. I did so with a clean install in order to have the most optimized computer possible without loads of unused data. I had backed up my data using Time Machine on an external hard-drive (LaCie, 1 TB) so I wasn't worried about losing important data.
However, when I inserted my external hard-drive after the clean installation it turns out to be corrupted in some way. It is only recognized in Disk Utility, it doesn't mount on my desktop.
Disk Utility is unable to repair the disk. The errors are:
+Verify and Repair volume “Kristoffer's back-up disk”+
+Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.+
+Invalid node structure+
+Volume check failed.+
+Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.+
I went out and bought "Data Rescue II" at once to try to recover my data. It works fine with the stuff I've manually dragged to the disc but the Time Machine backup folders seem compressed in some way (It's only about 86 MB). And when I click a file restored from one of the Time Machine folders it seems like it's just a shortcut to an "original file". I get this error when double-clicking such a file:
+The alias "filename" could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found.+
Is there some way for me to get Time Machine to understand the back up disk even though it's corrupted? Or some other way to retrieve my data?
I have TONS of extremely important data on the disk so it would cost me a huge amount of work to format the disk and start from scratch.
ANY help is greatly appreciated

ohnoono wrote:
Hi.
I have quite a problem. I recently downgraded to os x 10.5.4 due to the requirements of Digidesign's Pro Tools. I did so with a clean install in order to have the most optimized computer possible without loads of unused data. I had backed up my data using Time Machine on an external hard-drive (LaCie, 1 TB) so I wasn't worried about losing important data.
However, when I inserted my external hard-drive after the clean installation it turns out to be corrupted in some way. It is only recognized in Disk Utility, it doesn't mount on my desktop.
Disk Utility is unable to repair the disk. The errors are:
+Verify and Repair volume “Kristoffer's back-up disk”+
+Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.+
+Invalid node structure+
+Volume check failed.+
+Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.+
I went out and bought "Data Rescue II" at once to try to recover my data. It works fine with the stuff I've manually dragged to the disc but the Time Machine backup folders seem compressed in some way (It's only about 86 MB). And when I click a file restored from one of the Time Machine folders it seems like it's just a shortcut to an "original file". I get this error when double-clicking such a file:
+The alias "filename" could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found.+
Is there some way for me to get Time Machine to understand the back up disk even though it's corrupted?
no, that's quite impossible. you may try using Disk warrior on that drive. it's known to be able to fix the kind of error that DU is reporting. if that doesn't work your only hope is data recovery. If Data Rescue II doesn't work you can try other data recovery software like Filesalvage or try professional data recovery services (those can can a fortune).
Or some other way to retrieve my data?
I have TONS of extremely important data on the disk so it would cost me a huge amount of work to format the disk and start from scratch.
ANY help is greatly appreciated

Time Machine - backup size seems wrong

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for