Time Machine Duplicates

Hello,
First of all: Sorry if this has previously been discussed! I couldn't find an answer so far.
I recently had to have my MacBook Pro repaired by a local Apple Shop, the logic board had to be changed, and when it came back, I wanted to run Time Machine as usual. Time Machine suddenly stopped preparing the backup and told me that there was not enough free disk space.
So I had a look at the external disk I use as backup disk and noticed that Time Machine had created a new folder instead of writing the backup to my old backup folder.
I now have a total of 3 folders inside "Backups.backupdb", called "xys MacBook Pro", "xys MacBook Pro 1" and "xys MacBook Pro 2" - you get the idea.
I guess that Time Machine wanted to do a full backup, since it seems to think that I am using a new computer now.
How can I tell Time Machine to resume writing to my old backups folder instead of making a completely new backup?
If there is no way to do this - any other recommendations?
Thank you in advance!
Message was edited by: einahpets

einahpets wrote:
I recently had to have my MacBook Pro repaired by a local Apple Shop, the logic board had to be changed, and when it came back, I wanted to run Time Machine as usual. Time Machine suddenly stopped preparing the backup and told me that there was not enough free disk space.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Yes, Time Machine thinks you have a new Mac. It uses the +Ethernet Address,+ which is embedded in the hardware on the logic board, to identify each Mac.
How can I tell Time Machine to resume writing to my old backups folder instead of making a completely new backup?
If there is no way to do this - any other recommendations?
There is an elaborate work-around, but it's probably too late now. See #C8 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Duplicates and How to Delete a Single Copy of Backed Up File ?

Here is the puzzle pieces , then the questions I'm asking
Example - my iPhoto Library file (its 36 gigs and yes I do create separate libraries)
If you add a single photo - Time Machine rightly sees a changed file and backs it up
Now I have Multiple Back ups of this large file
I want to delete only single back-up of this iPhoto file, NOT all instances of it
Here is the dilemma that I am having
according to a previous post
How to delete a Time Machine-backed up file on an external HD
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8799363&#8799363
you have to
1 - Have a finder window open
2 - launch Time Machine
3 - find the file you want to delete in the finder window
4 - go to the Gear Icon in the finder window
5 - Pull down menu for
6 - drum roll please! 'delete all backups of <filename>
Well I DO NOT WANT TO DELETE ALL BACKUPS!!!!!!
I want to keep some of the back ups of that iPhoto file - not all of them
I want to manage my files individually, and delete those and only those necessary
I can only hope there is a simple and easy solution,
If someone could just point me in that direction I would greatly appreciate it
Cheers , Don

donaldo777 wrote:
I want to manage files individually because:
I am running out of HD space
I want to have some measure of control of my backed up files
You'll find that rather difficult -- TM was specifically designed to manage space and backups automatically, as most users won't, or don't have the patience.
If it's only your photos you want to do this way, you might consider excluding them from TM and using a different app that will do traditional archive backups. CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper, for example, are mostly used to make bootable "clones" of your whole system (I use CCC for that in addition to TM). But both of them (and others) can also be used to back up only specific files/folders, and, optionally, retain archive copies of changed items. Just how that works, I can't tell you, but for details see their documentation (Google or VersionTracker).
CCC is donationware, SD has a free version, but I think you'd need the paid one, about $30.
Thanks for your response, and I have a question, when you say be careful of deleting thru the finder
because TM will get cranky - Do you mean TM gets 'confused' where is the location of its back-ups
when TM scans backward in TIme?
No, it's apparently got to do with the way it manages it's actual files vs. hard links (sort of like aliases), and picking one hourly backup to be the daily, then one daily to be a weekly. It seems to require some shuffling around. I don't know the details (not publicly available, I think).
Eventually, I don't care of TM gets cranky as long as I can access my data and still reach my original goal
You will care when it gets so cranky it stops backing-up, or you can't find what you want to restore.
I want to have control of my files, they are huge in size and number and eventually
Even Terabit drives are filling up on me.
Then as mentioned, you may need different strategies, and perhaps different apps, for different types of data. Such complex strategies are actually quite common in medium to large data centers, but again, TM was designed mostly for not-so-savvy home users.

Time machine duplicate backups

I have just bought a NAS which I am going to use for Time Machine backups. I also want to keep a copy (off-site) in case anything happens to the NAS or burglary.
I currently have a 2TB external hard drive which I use for Time Machine, can I switch between the two (once a week switch to the old disk and have Time Machine bring it up to date, then take that off-line and carry on with the NAS) or would the internal programming not support that?
Thanks
Paul

Hi Clinton, thanks for the quick response but I think I obviously didn't make myself clear.
I want to run TM for my I-Mac to my new NAS from now on but once a week, if I can, I want to update my original TM backup for my I-Mac held on an external drive to store elsewhere. Basically 2 copies of the same thing.
Will TM recognise where the external drive copy got to and add the incrementals up to present time or will it know that it has already written them to the NAS?
Regards
Paul

How can I easily delete duplicate files in old Time Machine archives?

I have multiple older Time Machine archives from different Macs that I have been going through manually and picking files out and copying them to another drive file by file. I'm running into massive quantities of duplicate files and the biggest problem is muliple iphoto pictures including the same picture in different sizes.
I wanted to give up and just throw the whole Time Machine archive onto another disk so I could format the one it was on and use it for something else. But I got a message reading, "The backup can’t be copied because the backup volume doesn’t have ownership enabled." So I went to manually copy each "Macintosh HD" folder for each date into it's their own respective folders. It worked but required my password for each folder and each of the 19 folders were all ~75GB. Which is impossible because all of that data was on a 500GB drive.
What should I do? This has become a two month long nightmare.

I really don't know exactly, but since no one else has a answer I'll give it a shot.
I don't know much about TimeMachine at all, however I did assist someone that their TM was corrupted and they needed to salvage what they could off the drive, so I'll start with that.
There is software called Data Rescue and it's designed to read the 1's and 0's of any data on the drive, deleted or not, regardless of the file structure, and output the results to another drive.
TimeMachine tries to save space, so it uses what appears to be duplicate files, but contain no data as they are placemarks for files in later states that went unchanged from the previous states.
If Data Rescue has the option of recovering files independently of the file/folder structure this would result in all your files from the recoved TM drive being on all one level on the second drive.
From that second drive one could run software called DeCloner, which would flag the actual duplicate files of content, not just by name.
The next stage perhaps would be to eliminate files with no data, the placeholders, using the Finder "size" as a sorting option.
Saving all this remaining content to another drive to work on further, perhaps all the remaining image files can be seperated, sorted according to largest size, the largest ones (usually the ones you want to keep as they contain more quality) and opened into iPhoto or Aperture for further refinement as you add a small batches of smaller image sizes in to compare with the larger versions for duplicates/unwanted sizes.

Time Machine creates duplicate bu of external hard drive

First, some disclosure:
1. I utilize Logic Studio (Pro 9) and use it daily. It crashes 2-3 times a week with little justification.
2. I have begun getting a prompt that says I’ve removed a drive without ejecting it first....but in reality, I haven’t ejected anything.
3. I get a prompt stating that a backup has failed.... but it appears my backups have all been completed.
With these problems I’m wondering if I’d be better off making the move to Lion, or would this just complicate my problems? Well, that's why I'm telling you folks my tales of woe....
I was using Time Machine for about 6 months when the following problem occurred:
Last July I went to check a backup and saw that an external drive, called...VIDEO was backed up, BUT Time Machine also created another backup of the same drive called VIDEO 1. The same exact number of files and same number of bytes appeared to be in this "newly created" 1 backup. I did not check exactly when Time Machine starting creating this duplicate.
I contacted Apple for service and eventually a tech walked me through the steps to eliminate the problem. I’m sorry but I don’t remember the steps that were taken. I later found the external BU drive had a problem and figured that's what may have created the duplication. I replaced it with a new BU drive and life was good. This happened last October.
Tonight I checked one of my Time Machine backup files. I found that TM had again created a duplicate backup of an external drive. It was neither the same VIDEO drive nor the same data that had been involved in the earlier occurrence. TM again used the number 1 to differentiate it from the actual drive that it was supposed to back up.
I went back and found this recent duplication had first occurred on a backup created Dec 21st. The backup from Dec 20th did not have this duplication, nor did any other previous backups on this new hard drive. I do not remember the significance of that date but I “think” I installed Snow Leopard sometime in December.
Tonight, using Disk Utility, I’ve verified the permissions on the drive which TM duplicated and it says they’re OK. I’ve verified the permissions of the internal drive and they’re OK. I’ve verified the permissions on the external BU drive and they’re OK.
If I need to send screenshots of logs or whatever, I apologize but I might need a bit of an explanation as to how to get to that information.
Thanks much in advance for all replies.

SO, I downloaded and installed Lion. Lion seems a bit faster than SL but Time Machine is still creating the duplicate drives with the number 1 after the name of the legitimate drive.
That's all I got.

Deleting duplicates in iPhoto - Effects on Time Machine Backup

I am new to Time Machine Backup. I have a query, (perhaps a silly one?)
Out of 4500 photos in my iPhoto, I have trashed 300 duplicates.
On my next backup in Time Machine on an Ext HD, will the deleted photos be also gone?
What about the duplicates that I originally stored in my Hard Drive under My Pictures? Are they also stand deleted?

Hi blissalvacion,
Time Machine takes exact copies of your HD at the time the backup occurs. Here's an example:
05/05/10 @ 10:00am - 3500 photos
05/05/10 @ 11:00am - 3300 photos
So at some point in that hour block, you deleted 200 photos. All of sudden at 11:15am National Geographic calls and wants to pay you $1,000,000 for those 200 photos. If you click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar at the top and select "Enter Time Machine" you can then view your HD as it looked at 10:00am and restore those deleted 200 photos.
The catch, unfortunately, is that with iPhoto the iPhoto Library is a container file (it's really a folder just doesn't look like one). So if the photos were deleted from within iPhoto you'd need to restore the entire iPhoto Library to how it looked at 10:00am. Based on the size of your iPhoto Library, the restore might take a little while.

Many events and photos are missing from my iphoto. I have time machine and would like to restore without creating duplicates. The issue is although my photos are presently blank time machine/iphoto does see the file so importing them will create duplicat

For some unknown reason, events and photos in my Iphoto are appearing blank. The photos have a title / placeholder but no picture. I use time machine and have back ups, my goal is to restore the photos without creating duplicates. Unfortunately iphoto sees the blank photos as if the picture exists? Help

If you want to use your back up you need to restore then entire Library from Time Machine, and then replace the damaged Library with it.
Regards
TD

Time Machine/Capsule and Duplicate emails

I recently got a Time Capsule. Even more recently, I've started getting tons of duplicate emails -- emails that I've already read show up as unread (usually one or two, this morning 4 new copies). It makes me feel very popular to see that I have 315 new emails, but it's a pain to have to go back and re-delete them. Help?

eroomekim wrote:
This is happening every Thursday when TimeCapsule runs.
Do you mean you only do Time Machine backups once a week?
I would say that it's when TImeCapsule does it's weekly compressed file, though that is a shot in the wind.
There is no such thing as a "weekly compressed file" in Time Machine. All TM backups are the same. The only difference is, when "thinning" expired backups, TM keeps one per week for as long as there's room; the first of each day for a month; and all others are deleted after 24 hours.
Would love it if Apple would respond to this issue as it's a serious time waster and annoyance.
Apple does not respond to posts here. This is a user-to-user forum. If you want to contact Apple, try Canada technical support at (800) 263-3394.

Too many duplicate files in time machine

How do I remove duplicate movie files from time machine

How do I remove duplicate movie files from time machine
What do you mean by duplicate?
Time Machine will keep 1 copy of a unique file and then us hardlinks in all the incremental backups to the single original. A new file will not be put into Time Machine unless it is moved to a new location or the file in a given location has changed.
Please explain what you mean by duplicate.

Time Machine / Time Capsule duplicate drive names

Not sure if this belongs in Time Machine or Time Capsule thread, but here goes.
I have a 500GB Time Capsule providing wireless to a couple of MacBook Pros and an Apple TV.
Have been backing up 1 of the MBPs to the Time Machine internal disk (named TC internal) since January. All has been well.
With no changes to system or setup of any kind, 2 or 3 days ago I noticed the backup taking an endless amount of time "preparing". I stopped the backup and checked my settings. Time Machine Preference showed no oldest or latest backup dates. I clicked on 'change disk' to make sure my TC internal drive was still selected, and there were 2 listings for the same drive, both named TC internal.
I connected my MBP via ethernet to the Time Capsule, and let it run its course. The backup finished in about 45 minutes. Only when it was done, the backup drive was listed as TC internal-1.
Backups have progressed normally since then, but sometimes the drive name in the TM preference panel is listed as TC internal, and sometimes TC internal-1.
How do I get back to having the internal drive listed just once ?

FWIW, after poking around for some time, I found a way to do away with the duplicate drive in the list of available drives for time machine backup.
I turned OFF the ability to access my time capsule via the internet, in Airport Utility.
Lo and behold, the duplicate drive name went away.

Duplicate Tracks - Time Machine?

I keep getting duplicate track listings and even though I delete them they seem to be continuing to appear. It's not consistent though - some tracks have MANY dupes (7 or more sometimes!), some none, and others just a few.
Is it possible that Time Machine is making them or is it something else? I have a new Nano, the last model Nano, an old model Shuffle, and a Gen 2 iPod Classic 20GB model. Is it the many iPods, Time Machine, or something else? It seems like I can never quite rid myself of iTunes dupes!

Why not just use TM to back up to 2 external drives. TM will alternate between the two when it backs up.
Alternately, you could have a 2 back up strategy like others have using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are excellent 3rd party apps to clone your internal drive(s) and both have schedulers.

Duplicate Admin accounts on restoring from Time Machine backup

I need help to remove duplicate accounts, created after restore from Time Machine Backup.
Here is the situation:
1. I was running SL on a Mac Pro with Time Machine backup. I had 5 User Accounts on the Login Window: Shared (Admin account), Dear Wife (DW, also Admin), Kid1 (managed), Kid2 (managed) and Guest (standard), and two 750 GB hard drives, HD1 and HD2.
2. Mac Pro would not boot past the Apple logo with spinning icon.
3. After talking to with Apple Support, it turned out that HD1 had crashed. I took it in to the Genius Bar, where they checked and confirmed HD1 crash and took it in for repair.
4. Apple replaced HD1 and reinstalled SL.
5. I picked up the Mac Pro. At home I reconnected TM and restarted.
6. Upon restart, I clicked on restore from TM backup and there was only 1 TM backup visible to select. After several hours of Transferring Information, about 700 GB was restored
7. Upon finishing restore, I saw the same Login Window as before crash, with the same 5 accounts - Shared, DW, Kid1, Kid2, Guest.
8. Issue: From the Login Window, logging into Shared and clicking on HD1>Users, I now see: Home Icon with Shared1, and four additional folders: Shared, DW, Kid1, Kid2
It seems I now have duplicate Shared accounts in the User folder - Shared1 with the Home icon, and a separate folder with name Shared.
I cannot "Move to Trash" Shared, since I get the message: “Shared” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by Mac OS X.
When I go into System Prefs>Accounts: I see My Account: Shared, and Other Accounts: DW, Kid1, Kid2, Guest. After unlocking the accounts, and right clicking on Shared for Advanced Options, I see:
User: "Shared"
-- Account Name: shared
-- Home Directory:/Users/shared1
Question: How do I consolidate or get rid of the duplicate Shared/Shared1 account? I have 350 GB of video/pictures/music in each of these accounts, which is unnecessarily eating up the new HD1.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

I solved the duplicate account problem.
I had used Setup Assistant to restore from TM Backup and that gave me the duplicate accounts, i.e., method used was:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/19.html
After carefully reading Pondini's FAQs, I instead used the Restore and install Method, i.e.,
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/14.html
No duplicate accounts anymore, problem solved.

How do i restore photo albums from time machine backups without duplicates?

how do i restore photo albums without duplicates from time machine backups? thx

Worth updating? Totally a personal decision. For some it would be. For others it would not?
Upgrading, if there are no problems, does not affect your data. And since bad things do happen you always have a good backup. Especially when doing any upgrade.
Your password question has nothing to do with iPhoto. Try it in the OS forum
LN

Restore from Time Machine causes many duplicates in iPhoto '11

My MacBook Pro died (corrosion from salt air!). I got a new one (same model) and used Migration Assistant to restore files from Time Machine to the new MacBook Pro.
Now many of my photos are duplicates or triplicates! Each duplicate or triplicate has a different file name/extension. Many appear to be the original photos (not rotated, not color-corrected) and many just duplicates of the file with the extension "_1" added.
How did this happen, and what can I do short of looking at each photo and deleting the unneeded copies?

Try this:
1 - go to your Pictures folder and select the library package.
2 - enter Time Machine.
3 - go to a date and select the iPhoto library package.
4 - click on the Restore button.
5 - when given the option select "Replace".
6 - launch iPhoto and check to see if it's a good library.
Click to view full size
OT

I can't clone (Duplicate) my Time Machine backup properly via Disk Utility

I have an ext. HDD Time Machine backup sitting beside my 10.8 MBP.
I want to create an identical ext. HDD Time Machine backup, because it's safe to have 2 identical HDDs backing up my system.
But when I follow this apple guideline, a problem occurs:
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
URL: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5096
The problem is I get a strange path even if I drop "Backups.backupdb" of 3TB1 (The source HDD) onto the root level of 3TB2, the destination HDD (I mean there's nothing in there so I just drag & drop onto the HDD). And the result is my new ext. HDD eating up about 60GB more space.
I have attached pictures of the paths for both Source HDD and Destination HDD, please look.
Why does it alter my file hiearchy like this?
Please help some high-level Mac guy thanks!

Why not just use TM to back up to 2 external drives. TM will alternate between the two when it backs up.
Alternately, you could have a 2 back up strategy like others have using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are excellent 3rd party apps to clone your internal drive(s) and both have schedulers.

Time Machine Duplicates

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for