Time machine initial backup is taking over 3 days

I have an external network drive which I am trying to back up my MacBook Pro OS X 10.6.8 to using Time Machine. Why after 2 days is the backup only 40% done? I know it can take time to set it up but... really?
I had to start over since it is a laptop computer and I do need to take it with me... but I really can't afford more than 24 hours of keeping it on the network.
What's the deal? Thanks!

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055

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My time machine back up is taking 98 days through a thunderbolt connection is there something wrong

My time machine back up is taking 98 days through a thunderbolt connection is there something wrong

sijam11 wrote:
When selecting my home folder on the iMac and using "Get Info" to see how much space has been used it shows around the 256g mark, but the space used up on my external hard drive is right up to 327g.
Is this normal after the first back up?
Hi sijam11,
That appears about right...
It is recommended that the Time Machine Drive be at least Twice the size of the Drive it is Backing Up...
You may find these Links of Interest...
TM 101 > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
How Time Machine Works its Magic
Frequently Asked Questions
Cheers,

FYI: No Sleep during Time Machine initial backup

Just an FYI - I noticed that during the first Time Machine full backup, the computer does not go to sleep.
I would also assume that if you computer is asleep, it will not wake for each hourly backup.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You need to know that backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Kernel panics are usually caused by hardware problems, but can be software.
Disconnect all peripherals, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, run the Apple Hardware Test: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
And perhaps a heavy-duty memory test, such as the free Rember: http://www.kelleycomputing.com/
More kernel panic info:
Apple Support - About kernel panic messages
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ
The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics
Apple Developer - Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics
|
If you still want to back up via the Airport, the first backup will be much faster if you connect via Ethernet.

HT201250 The initial backup is taking 2 days. Can I stop and restart without any issues?

Just got an iomega external hard disk backup and the initial backup is said to take two days. Can I stop and restart without any issues?

On a big backup, the initial estimate is often wrong and gets better after a little while. But, yeah, there is a "Stop backing up" command in the Time Machine menu, right? That is safe as far as I know.
charlie

Very slow Time Machine Initial Backup to Leopard Server on Xserve with RAID

I'm having trouble backing up my iMac to my Xserve running leopard with dual drobos as my time machine drives
So here is the setup:
Server: Xserve (dual quad 2.8 xeons) backing up to Drobo array with 4x1tb drives running (dual drobos on server) fully patched 10.5 server with 16gb/RAM (showing 8gb free)
Network: 1gbs via catalyst switches on essentially unloaded segment (a couple of folks reading emails)
Source Machine: iMac 24" 3.06 Core2Duo with 8gb RAM
Most important fact: nothing has changed on the server (other than usual updates)
Doing an initial backup of the iMac over the network, and getting peak of about 100Kb/sec, and much of the time it seems to have stalled. Given that the machine has like 230GB to backup, this is going to take a real long while. When I query activity monitor on both the client and Xserve, they are both virtually idle with all resources free (lots of free RAM/Disk/CPU). Neither machine is running any apps right now during the test (other than filesharing, but nobody is using as the office is empty today)
Now one thing to note is the staggering number of files (iPhoto library is ~120gb and holds over 500,000 files [faces?]) giving a total of 1.2M files.
As a point of testing, copied a 500mb quicktime movie to same partition, took <5 seconds.

Should I be concerned that the TimeMachineBuddy widget is producing tons of error messages in the system console (and doesn't seem to work)
8/4/09 3:34:01 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:01.438 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:01 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:01.439 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.359 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.360 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.620 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.621 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.885 DashboardClient[381:10b] com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine: ERROR: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma
8/4/09 3:34:02 PM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[233] 2009-08-04 15:34:02.885 DashboardClient[381:10b] (com.bluedog.tmwidget.TimeMachine) file:///Users/henryhbk/Library/Widgets/Time%20Machine%20Buddy.wdgt/Utilities.js: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma: Unrecognized message format: Aug 4 14:31:01 Henry-Feldma (line: 33)

Time Machine initial backup fails OS 10.5 with no reason but 'bus error'

I ran into an error on the last system update and had to go back to Leopard 10.5 just to see my stuff. I managed to move my home directory into the newly installed system and all my files are intact. Now I'm trying to get a Time Machine backup before I proceed (my initial mistake was not keeping up with them in the first place).
I had some trouble early on and at one point decided to reformat the external drive (a Fantom Drives GreenDrive, usb, 500Gb). I formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as recommended, no partitions, and then tried my first initial Time Machine backup.
It predictably spent a long time 'preparing...' and I followed along in the system log. Eventually, the copying began but early on (within the first 45 min) the backup failed with almost no indications in the log as to why. I've pasted the system log below.
One thought I had was that it was weird that there was an automatic request for backup at 12:36:54. I also included the CrashReport, but I can't make any sense out of it.
any ideas?
System log:
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backup requested by user
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Starting standard backup
6/23/10 11:57:30 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backing up to: /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb
6/24/10 12:15:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] No pre-backup thinning needed: 173.94 GB requested (including padding), 453.71 GB available
6/24/10 12:15:13 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] MDBackupBegin() returned result (910) > 0, waiting
6/24/10 12:36:54 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1190] Backup requested by automatic scheduler
6/24/10 12:42:17 AM ReportCrash[1431] Formulating crash report for process backupd[1190]
6/24/10 12:42:18 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[1190]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
6/24/10 12:42:24 AM ReportCrash[1431] Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/backupd2010-06-24-004204dylan-boyds-macbook.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
CrashReport:
Process: backupd [1190]
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd
Identifier: backupd
4 backupd 0x00007525 0x1000 + 25893
5 backupd 0x00002332 0x1000 + 4914
8 backupd 0x00015028 0x1000 + 81960
9 backupd 0x0000ea64 0x1000 + 55908
10 backupd 0x00008bfe 0x1000 + 31742
11 backupd 0x00004c10 0x1000 + 15376
12 backupd 0x000057b8 0x1000 + 18360
0x1000 - 0x3dffb backupd ??? (???) <f50411bdb241b61699aa81b2f3dfb7d1> /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd

I should have added that I've been through about half a dozen sites (including sanctioned apple sites) and their recommendations for getting Time Machine to work properly. I did format the drive once (with extended journaled format and GUID partition scheme, but I didn't zero it out. I'm trying that now and I'll try TM again in about 4 hours.
This morning I tried turning Time Machine's automatic backups off (moved the slider to off in the preferences pane) and manually started a backup (right-clicking the TM icon in the dock and selecting "Backup Now"). It ran further along than before, but stopped again. This time, it gave an error, and I've pasted the log below. I looked but didn't find much helpful on "error 11."
system log:
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backup requested by user
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Starting standard backup
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Jun 24 09:14:08 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|
Jun 24 09:47:13 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 175.31 GB requested (including padding), 453.11 GB available
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to (null)
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb/Dylan Boyd’s MacBook/2010-06-23-231048.inProgress/E3294B86-62B0-4ABF-9B2B-F5D46B82736D/Macin tosh HD/Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Stopping backup.
Jun 24 10:13:46 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Po intOfInterest.db to /Volumes/Deep Green/Backups.backupdb/Dylan Boyd’s MacBook/2010-06-23-231048.inProgress/E3294B86-62B0-4ABF-9B2B-F5D46B82736D/Macin tosh HD/Previous Systems.localized/2010-06-22_2236/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources
Jun 24 10:13:57 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Copied 13360 files (1.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Jun 24 10:13:57 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Jun 24 10:14:03 dylan-boyds-macbook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[444]: Backup failed with error: 11

Time machine initial backup duration

How long should it take for Time Machine to make it's first full back up of data? I'm 92GB into a save of 496GB, and it's predicting 11 more DAYS of copying before it's done. I did have to stop it once, but seems to have restarted. Is this typical, or should I have just reformatted and started over? Or is this the first sign of HD failure somewhere? My HDs is WD connected via USB2, I think.
Jack

How long should it take for Time Machine to make it's first full back up of data? I'm 92GB into a save of 496GB, and it's predicting 11 more DAYS of copying before it's done. I did have to stop it once, but seems to have restarted. Is this typical, or should I have just reformatted and started over? Or is this the first sign of HD failure somewhere? My HDs is WD connected via USB2, I think.
Jack

Time Machine Initial Backup - Partial Only

I have a WD external drive that was erased by Time Machine. But the initial backup stops at about 1 gig of data (out of the 38 gig that is there). Then schedules another backup in an hour. Why doesn't

Hi!
Time Machine has worked for several months now but since yesterday i have the same issue. After reformatting the backup disk (file system was corrupt) time machine works but stops backing up after about 100MB.
Cheers
Silvan

Time Machine initial backup

I just used Time Machine for the first time. I expected it to backup about 35GB (and it estimated a full backup at 35.54GB) but it actually backed up 30.06GB. I looked at the Options screen and the only thing listed as "do not backup" is my backup drive which it lists as 2.52GB. Any thoughts on why the initial full backup does not seem to be the size expected?

The comment from Steve Holton i think has your answer on https://discussions.apple.com/message/7884490?messageID=7884490
In short there are some things skipped by Time Machine have a look at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist in the ExcludeByPath

Kernel panic during Time Machine initial backup

Hi all!
I've got the Airport Extreme 2009 and external WD My Passport 320GB attached to it via USB and shared to the LAN. While initial backup with Time Machine via WiFi my MacBook Pro gets kernel panic.
My Passport has been formatted as Extended Journaled Case-sensitive file system.
Did anybody stumble upon such problem?

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You need to know that backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Kernel panics are usually caused by hardware problems, but can be software.
Disconnect all peripherals, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, run the Apple Hardware Test: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
And perhaps a heavy-duty memory test, such as the free Rember: http://www.kelleycomputing.com/
More kernel panic info:
Apple Support - About kernel panic messages
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ
The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics
Apple Developer - Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics
|
If you still want to back up via the Airport, the first backup will be much faster if you connect via Ethernet.

HT3275 Time Machine Indexing Backup has been taking an extremely long time following a Single User launch. How can I fix this?

My MacBook Pro has not been launching properly and in addition has suddenly gone to a blue or white screen countless times. I am preparing to take it to the apple store but first I need to back it up as I have not done so since two weeks ago. In order to make it start properly, I launched the computer in Single User Mode, then ran time machine. It has been about 15 hours and time machine still says that it is indexing the backup. How can this be fixed? Surely it shouldn't take this long. Thanks in advance.

Hi jonathanfromjericho,
If you are having an extended index period during a Time Machine backup, you may find the following article helpful:
AirPort Time Capsule: Initial backup is interrupted
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1176
Regards,
- Brenden

Time Machine thinks backup disk is full but its not

I just purchased a new 1 Terabyte hard drive for backup. In the past I backed up both my internal Mac harddrive (250 Gb with 8gb free) and an external iOmega archive drive (DRIVE H 320Gb with 41Gb free) to a 500Gb Lacie drive. I purchased an iOmega 1 Terabyte drive (DRIVE G) because the Lacie drive was full. I went into Time Machine and changed the backup drive to the G one terabyte drive and did a full backup of my internal hard drive. When I did this I did not have the external H archive drive attached so Time Machine didn't back that up. I did it that way because I wanted to first backup the internal drive then do some work and then go backup the external archive drive over night. I plugged the H archive drive in, so it show up in the finder and then told Time Machine to Backup Now. It started the back up but right after doing the initial computations when it actually started backing up I got the standard error message that "the backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly..." I've double checked that the backup disk is set correctly in Time Machine to the 1Tb G drive and when I do a Get Info on the G drive it shows Capacity: 1TB, Available: 713.54 GB.
Is it possible something is wrong with the new drive? Can I test that?

Its funny how sometimes asking a question can prompt your thinking. As soon as I finished posting this I thought "of course Disk Utility". I ran a check disk and got the following error message:
Unused node is not erased (node = 107)
I did a restore which corrected the error. Turned Time Machine back on and its backing up the rest of my data now.

Does Time Machine bundle backup sets when it deletes a month's daily sets?

I'm asking this question to find out if I can delete the all but the last week in a month, each month, in order to extend the useful capacity of my backup drive.
In some backup systems, a periodic "bundle" is made when previous sets are deleted, so for instance, the last backup of the month has the cumulative hourly changes of that month. In this way, transient files which appear and disappear within the month are retained in the monthly backup.
Is this true of Time Machine? Exactly what does Time Machine do? Does it simply wipe out the daily sets and chose the last one to be the "weekly backup?" Or something more sophisticated and useful?
Thanks for any insight!

I've devised a little experiment to discover Time Machine's behavior in this regard:
On my Time Machine's backup schedule, August 27 corresponds with the end of a week. So, on August 26 at 9:15AM, I created the following [folder]/file structure:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10AM of that day I removed
[Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10 the next day, August 27, I removed
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
On August 28 at 10:30AM, acheck today of the earliest backup of this structure reveals only the following:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
I draw the conclusion that transient files within a time period are not subject to a "roll-up" mechanism that displays all changes after out-of-date files are deleted by Time Machine. Thus, for instance, any file that appeared and disappears during an hour will be lost in Time Machine's daily history. Similarly, files that only persist for a day will be lost in the weekly history. And, presumably, if one wanted to choose a week which represented an accumulation of transient changes during the month it would be impossible to do so.
Even so, if one wants to manage only one backup volume, rather than accumulating a stack of them over the years, one might well think about selectively deleting all but one week per month in the earliest backups available, as the projected remaining time approaches less than a few weeks. BackupLoupe's Statistics gives an estimate of remaining time left for backups on a volume, and I would suggest using that as a forecast, unless others have experience to the contrary.
Hope this is useful. It certainly is to me.

Time Machine - Preparing backup - It's endless

My C2D Mac Mini is hanging on Time Machine - Preparing Backup for the second time since "Upgrading" to 10.5.2
I had to re-format my backup disk last time and start all the backups again.
Here is an extract from the console log:
29/04/2008 23:50:13 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Starting standard backup
29/04/2008 23:50:13 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie Disk/Backups.backupdb
29/04/2008 23:50:15 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
29/04/2008 23:50:15 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1094] Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
Does anyone recognise this? I'm a Mac novice so I don't understand what it all means. I hope I don't have to reformat and start again as I was converted to Mac from PC on the advice that "A Mac Works!"
My backup drive is a 500GB Lacie Mini if that is of any relevance. Spotlight is told not to index the drive and also the Lacie drive is told not to back itself up.
Can anyone help as it's driving me nuts!

Are Lacie really that bad? I thought that the main reason they are mentioned in these forums is that Lacie are one of the only brands of external storage that apple actively promote through their own web stores so there a good chance that quite a few Mac users will buy one. Anyway I can't afford to buy another Hard Drive at the moment and the lacie works perfectly apart from Time Machine.
The problem seems to be with Mac OS the more I delve into these forums and more importantly the 10.5.2. update which is where Time Machine appears to be providing users with a lot of troubles.
The Apple support self service on the website is far from comprehensive as I guess they want you to purchase Apple Care for ongoing support after the 90 days initial period but come on apple give us a break and sort it out or provide a support email address for specific problems!

Time Machine same backup size every time

Anyone have any idea why Time Machine would backup the same amount every time? Every hour mine backs up 1.8 GB, unless I've added more than that to my hd.
I only back up the internal drive on my macbook to a 500 GB Time Capsule via wifi (802.11n only, 5GHz). Not that I figured it would make a difference, but it still does it if backed up via ethernet.
I've also noticed that as soon as it completes the backup, it will backup all over again - and not because an hour has passed. I'm not sure if it does this every time (but I think i does), or if it does it more than twice when it happens.
Thanks in advance!

See if the following might give you some ideas as to why...
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file-for-file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it relies on a process called FSEvents. This is a system log that records changes that occur with all the directories on your Mac. Moving / copying / deleting / & saving files and folders creates events that are recorded in this log. At the beginning of each backup, Time Machine simply looks at this log to determine what has changed since the last backup. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or a subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups. Time Machine will attempt to backup any hard disk attached to your Mac, including secondary internal drives, that have not been added to Time Machines Exclusion list.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude its’ own backup disk by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule/AirDisk users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Preferences “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if this resolved your issue.
Cheers!

Time machine initial backup is taking over 3 days

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