Time Machine initial space required

So in addition to my regular Carbon Copy Cloner backups, I wanted to add some Time Machine backups for an added layer of protection for my MacBook Pro. It has a 200 GB HDD partitioned into 170 GB for OS X and the rest for a WinXP Boot Camp partition. At present the Mac OS partition has ~145 GB in use. Until our XRAID gets upgraded to Leopard Server, I'm using a 160 GB firewire-attached external HDD as the Time Machine backup device. It is newly reformatted and reports 149 GB available. When I attempt to launch Time Machine for the initial backup, it fails reporting that 175+ GB are needed on the backup drive. The Mac OS drive is only 170 GB large if it were full.
Using the TM options, I tried to list the Boot Camp partition on the TM "excluded" list but I can't select that drive in the options window - it is grey'd out. TM options reports that I'm only attempting to back up ~142 GB (I excluded the Developer folder and a few other things) yet the backup always fails reporting that over 170 GB are needed on the TM disk. I'm at a loss on this one. Anyone have an idea why this is happening and, more importantly, what to exclude to get TM working with this drive?
Many thanks,
Cary T.
Vicksburg, MS

20% certainly seems to be the current consensus.
In addition, Time Machine by design is intended to hold a number of backups. Each additional one only has incremental data but the space fills up over time. When there is no longer enough room, Time Machine tries to delete enough space to create room. Anecdotally there have been indications that, if that process fails, ie there are not enough incremental backups to allow Time Machine to proceed, the whole Time Machine process can become flaky and unpredictable. Until we fully know the processes and limitations of Time Machine I would be very inclined to only use it in the sort of situation for which it is designed, namely that the partition/drive used by Time Machine is significantly larger than the size of the system being backed up.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Disk Space Problem

I have approximately 1TB of data (as confirmed by Time Machine) and I purchased a 1.5TB external backup disk to dedicate exclusively to Time Machine backups. However, Time Machine will not backup because according to Time Machine there is not enough space (not even for an initial backup). I have read discussions that suggest Time Machine uses 20% more space than the backup data (https://discussions.apple.com/message/17944550#17944550). If that is true, I should have more than enough space. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? Why is 50% of extra space not enough? Thanks for your help.

Did you partition and format the drive before using it?
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Time Machine estimated space is wrong resulting in unexpected out of space error.

Hello,
I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 on a Mac Pro with a 300 GB boot partition and a 485 GB data partition in a RAID-5 configuration. I have two 2 TB G-Drives attached via firewire for Time Machine backups.
As I understand it, Time Machine (TM) estimates the amount of space it requires to perform an incremental backup. If there is not sufficent room on the backup drive, TM selects a number of previous backups to remove to make space. The problem I've encountered is the amount of space TM estimates is much less then is required.
While TM is performing the backup, in TM preferences the progress message shows the estimated size slowly increasing until it exceeds the amount of space available on the backup drive and eventually leads to the error "The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly."
I have reviewed the often cited link http://pondini.org/TM/C18.html. I have performed repairs on the two TM backup drives/partitions and on the internal data drive/partition and have done a verify on the internal boot drive/partition. There was one error on one of the backup drives which was repaired and all others passed without errors.
Are there any other steps that can be taken to determine the reason TM cannot accurately estimate the required space for a backup?
Thanks.
Nathan

After further testing the case ended up being not to do with any of the video codecs at all - somehow the audio was the problem. I tried a few different audio codecs which started working, but then suddenly the original started working as well. I'm not sure what exactly caused the change, but I figured I'd post as much as I knew in case someone else runs into similar problems. Look at the audio is my best guess, I suppose.

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

Freeing up Time Machine Disk Space

I've used Time Machine for 2 yrs now and my 1TB drive is about full. How do I go about cleaning up some of Time machine. I really only want a year's worth of storage.
Dan

dkardell wrote:
Thanks I figured that was the case. I wish there was a setting to say just store back to a year and not fill up the drive. Yes I do use the drive for other things, however it was interesting that yesterday it told me there was not enough space on the drive anymore as it dropped to just 5mb free. Not sure what happened there.
Yeah, that can happen unexpectedly. There are times when extra-large backups are required, such as after an OSX update, or converting to iPhoto 09. And of course you'll get a full backup after certain hardware repairs, a full restore, etc.
Anyway I went in and deleted and excluded the Applications folder as I have CD's for all of my software. I also am running Fusion for my Windows session that I need to get into every now and then. Deleting the Applications and Virtual folders gave me back 290G.
I hope you have a record of any purchase codes for 3rd-party apps and/or plugins. (I'd not recommend omitting Apps, as you might guess.)

Time Machine disk space

I use Time Machine to back up my Macbook to a Time Capsule. This works fine but I have recently started trying to back up a second Mac to the same Time Capsule. I get a message saying that there is insufficient space for a full back up, 60GB required, 9GB available. Both figures are about right, I think. I unerstand tht time Machine should delete old back ups when insufficient space is available, but will it do that if the back ups are for a different computer? If that is the case, how can I create enough space to back up the second computer? There is nothing on the time Capsule apart from the back ups.

will it do that if the back ups are for a different computer?
No.
how can I create enough space to back up the second computer?
You could manually delete some of the oldest snapshots of the first computer, but I wouldn't recommend that. A better solution would be to back up the second computer to a different drive, which could be a USB hard drive connected to the Time Capsule.

Time Machine Disk Space error

I've been using Time Machine for a will now without a problem but on my latest backup I get An Error message saying that there is not enough disk space even though I still have 69Gb left in Ex hard Drive.
I haven't added more than a few hundred Mb since my last backup. I have a 160Gb internal Drive with 67Gb left on it and a 160Gb External for Time Machine with 69Gb left.
Any ideas

PapaFunk wrote:
Hi Mate,
Thanks for the response, I was under the impression that Time Machine did the one initial backup and then only what is new. So Does it keep several full copies of what is on the hard drive?
No, as Roger says, in most cases there's only one copy of each version of each file on your internal HD, but if you change something often, the copies of all the versions can add up.
Starting pre-backup thinning: 93.80 GB requested (including padding), 69.64 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
It was trying to back up about 78 GB (it adds 20% for workspace, so needs 93.8). Apparently a full backup of your internal HD is about 93 GB, so this is quite large indeed.
Are there any other disks connected to your Mac, that aren't excluded? See what the estimated size of a full backup (slightly different wording) is under the exclusion box in TM Preferences > Options.
Are you running any of the things (or similar to those) mentioned in #D4 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

How can i properly regain Time Machine HD Space

i goofed somewhere
My time machine exeternal drive is full
So i spent ONE HOUR deletely backups,Only keeping Oct 31,Nov 30 and Today
so i could regain space for new backups
The Time Machine read 111.79GB,45.39GB FREE before i started
and reads the same NOW after i have deleted those backups
i emptied the trash..........679,484 items deleted
Why didnt i regain HD Space on this external drive?
Where can i look?
Its a Toshiba Portable External HD
should i install Toshibas cd rom and re-do everything?
thanks

If lots of disk space disappeared rapidly, a likely scenario would be that you're running something like VMware or Parallels, editing iMovie or iDVD files, have a very large Entourage mail DB, or generally are doing something where large (many-MB or GB+) files are being updated throughout the day, and thus big updates are occurring every hour. The documentation describes how to exclude system files, which at least in theory can be easily restored from the installation media, how to exclude certain directories or files which are large and/or frequently updated, etc.
Doug

Limit Time Machine Disc Space

I am using an external NAS for backup. I backup up a few computers to the array. The array only has one volume right now. After a lot of reading it doesn't seem like you can limit disc space with time machine. Is there a way to limit the disc space TM uses vs. consume the full drive then delete old files? I would prefer not to drop the volume and partion the discs if possible. Any other options?
Thanks for any assistance.

Not a good choice because the Time Machine backup drive needs to have much more space than the size of the hard drive you backup. If you need storage space, then buy another drive to use.

Time machine disk space use

My time machine backups are working great.
I have just noticed that my Mac HD has used 105GB of space but my external drive, using time machine, has used 168GB. Why the difference? Is this normal? Thanks.

runningman5 wrote:
My time machine backups are working great.
I have just noticed that my Mac HD has used 105GB of space but my external drive, using time machine, has used 168GB. Why the difference? Is this normal? Thanks.
That is perfectly normal. TM does not just have your current HD data, but also everything you have erased and/or changed over the time you have been running it. You can recover a file that you deleted months ago because it's still on the TM drive; hence the larger file volume.

Time Machine / Disk Space / iPhoto(?)

Ok, I'm not techy so please bare with me!!
I have Time Machine & backup to an external hard drive. I've always had 30+ days worth of backups on there.
Today Time Machine says there is not enough space on my hard drive to do a backup. I thought I'd just delete a couple of really old backups, only to find that Time Machine has already done this & there is actually only one backup on there, which is from Friday!!
I'm not sure if it's connected, but on Friday I installed the newest version of iPhoto & it copied all my photos over from my previous version.
I don't see how I was previously fitting 30 days worth of stuff on the disk, and now I can't even fit 2..??
Time Machine says it needs 125GB of space for the backup - I don't know if this sounds "normal" - I'm a graphic designer with Adobe Creative suite, lots of InDesign files & millions of photos of my kids!
I can't even check back & see what size my backups were prior to Friday, as they've been deleted :-(
So, could the two be connected? Any advice about the situation at all would be appreciated as it's making me dizzy thinking about what on earth has gone on..!!

Time Machine automatically deletes old snapshots to make room for new ones, but it won't delete the last previous snapshot of any disk.
Are you storing any other data on the backup volume, or have you ever backed up another disk or computer to it that you no longer have? If the answer to both these questions in "no," then there isn't enough space on the volume for all the data you want to back up.
If you are storing other data, or if you have backups of a volume you no longer need, you should move or delete that data to make room for more. Alternatively, put the device aside and start a new backup on another storage device. When you're sure you'll no longer need the data on the first device, erase it and start over.

Best way to repartition external hard drive to give Time Machine more space

I have my external 2 TB hard drive segmented into 2 equal 1 TB partitions. The first partition is my time machine back-ups. The second is media files.
I also have approx 500GB of storage left on my 1 TB internal Mac HD. I keep receiving an error message that Time Machine cannot complete because it needs more file size. I have 185 GB available and it needs 225 GB.
I realize TM needs additional space to process back-ups; but what is my best option for re-partitioning my external HD since my first partition is used for TM? Or can I make TM work without repartitioning? Any suggestions?

Debonya1 wrote:
I have my external 2 TB hard drive segmented into 2 equal 1 TB partitions. The first partition is my time machine back-ups. The second is media files.
I also have approx 500GB of storage left on my 1 TB internal Mac HD. I keep receiving an error message that Time Machine cannot complete because it needs more file size. I have 185 GB available and it needs 225 GB.
See the pink box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
It sounds like there ought to be room on the TM partition, though. Are you sure there's nothing else there, besides the backups for that Mac? See #A1 in Troubleshooting for a handy widget that will display the backup messages from your logs. Navigate to the first time it failed, copy and post them here.
Repartitioning will be tricky. How much stuff is on the second partition? It's possible you can split it, copy the data from it to the new partition, then delete the second one and expand the TM partition into the empty space. See #4 in [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Using Snow Leopard+ forum).

Time Machine disk space management?

My 2009 MacBook Pro (500 MB which has 160 GB of space used) hard drive has a Time Capsule (2 TB, USB which has 323 GB of space used) and seems to work fine.
I'm getting suspicious because whenever I check backupd with Console, Console reports back Time Capsule always has 1.52 TB of free space. It says this after I've added movies, music, and photos. It seems like it should be using more of the Time Capsule as I add more files.
Time Machine indicates it has daily backups for a month and then switches to weekly backups until Time began. I can retreive deleted files through Time Machine with no problem.
Do I worry too much or have a problem?

You're probably ok, but it wouldn't hurt to "spot check" via the "Star Wars" display to be sure your recent movies, etc., are really there.
And/or, use one of the apps in #A2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to see exactly what's getting backed-up each time.
If everything is there, what you may be seeing is the rather odd behavior of the sparse bundle disk image that Time Machine puts your backups in when they're made over a network. It will grow as you add things, but doesn't shrink automatically when you remove them.
So what may have happened is, some large things that weren't on your system for a long time were deleted, and after 24 hours or a month, Time Machine deleted the backup copies of those items. But that didn't recover any space. Instead, all your new backups are using that vacated space. Once it's filled-up, the sparse bundle will start to grow again.

Time machine reporting space error

My TM backups are coming back with an error saying that my backup is XX.X and I only have XX.X space on my external drive. The confounding thing is that the external HDD has more than double the space that the backup needs. I have attached a couple of screen shots with the error. I have done a surface scan with Drive Genius 3 to make sure that a bad block wasn't the cause.
Any ideas?

Time Machine works on a recursive algorithm to try and maximize the archival capability of its backups. If it can't maximize it, it will report an error. Generally speaking your backup drive needs to be at least twice the size of the original. Because the algorithm itself gives you no control over when it considers an archive too old to preserve, I recommend making manual Time Machine backups instead of automatic by controlling it with Time Machine switch in Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Time Machine. When off, go ahead and backup the archives that are most important to you, somewhere other than the Time Machine drive. Otherwise if the original drive does not retain the data, it will eventually vanish.

Time Machine Error - Backup Requires 2,211,365.5 GB!

Hello - I have searched the posts and nothing seems to touch on this specifically - I have been using Time Machine successfully for months and this has only started to happen in the last few days.
I have a white Macbook, 10.5.6 with an upgraded 150GB hard drive. I do backups sporadically (once or twice a week), as I don't want to keep my Macbook connected to a hard drive and I find using the airdisk feature on my AEBS takes too long and slows down the network. This has been working fine for me for months, but now I get the following message:
Time Machine Error
This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 2211365.5 GB but only 125.5 GB are available.
I tried reformatting my disk (250GB hard drive) and the problem still arises. There are no external drives or anything connected to the Macbook at the time.
Can anyone help? I don't want to go out and buy a Hard Drive with a 3million GB capacity!
Thanks
Ian

ChunTzu wrote:
If TM is seeing a ridiculous amount of info to backup like that (2 million gigs is probably not a real number I am guessing) it probably means you have file structure problems that are causing TM to count a folder infinitely in some kind of loop... like maybe a file link to itself that kind of thing.
A disk check usually repairs these sorts of problems and should alleviate your issue.
I believe you are correct and I would add that this case might require stronger medicine such as DiskWarrior to repair the directory structure, if that it the issue.

Time Machine initial space required

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