Time machine is acting strange

I bought an external hard drive just for backing up with Time machine and when I did my first back up a few days ago it seemed to work fine. Then yesterday I wanted it to back-up again, so I connected the external hard drive and then asked it to make a back-up. It did but the thing is that it backed up files of 8 gb and since the first back up I haven´t changed or created files of more than 150 mb so I am quite puzzled as to where these 8 gb comes from. If it takes up so much space every time I ask it to do a back-up then my external hard drive it will be filled up in no time. Is it normal for it to back up so much data without any apparent reason?
Next thing is that to prevent it from taking up to much space I asked it to exclude my iTunes music and my iPhoto library, and then Time machine added a third thing to exclude, which is "Time machine-back up" it takes up 75 gb and as far as I can see it is pretty much everything that it could back-up that it has now decided to exclude. Since it decided to exclude that part back ups only take a few seconds and I fear that it is actually not backing up anything. Have any if you experienced anything like this?

WhatSize works fairly well to track down large files and is Leopard compatible.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21149
Common culprits are any program that stores it data in a single database like Parallels, VM Fusion, Entourage and Outlook that was previously mentioned.

Similar Messages

Replacement macpro, time machine won't back up bcs file is too large

In June I purchased a replacement macpro as the other one died. (allergic to water) When I set up the new macpro from my TC everything worked great and haven't had any issues since. However I just realized that I never turned Time Machine back on so I don't have any backups since June. I turned time machine on and it wants to back up the entire drive of the new macpro but there isn't enough room on the TC drive.
I would like to keep all the old backups on the TC but I don't know how or if I can do that. If not how can I go about clearing the TC so my macpro can get backed up?
(Full disclosure - I have only been a mac user for a few years so I am not too savy in figuring out what to do and more importantly what NOT to do!)

If you are really not going to use the old TM backups.. but just want to keep them as historical record.. plug in a suitable sized USB hard drive and use the archive utility in the TC to backup everything there. You can then disconnect that drive and store it somewhere safe suitably labelled.
Then proceed to wipe the existing tc drive and start the backups again.
Note there are million variations on this.
With what hard disks cost at the moment due to short supply it is cheaper sometimes to buy a new TC.. and store the old one. Also depends on how old the original TC is and the size of its hard disk, if it wouldn't be better to make the backup as described above.. ebay the old TC and get a new one.
Read the details in Pondini's excellent knowledgebase.
Particularly about moving or storing old backups.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Time Machine has some strange behaviour it what it keeps and what it wipes itself.. so it is well worth being aware of what it does and doesn't do.
Being a Mac user myself for a very short time.. and consider myself less than expert in even the most narrow field.. except that I repair TC's and have done a lot of them. So much so that I find it hard to trust them. Always have another backup.. a clone of the disk as it is right now.. backed up somewhere safe.. using a cloner software which are available even free, using a firewire drive hanging off your mac pro.. or even with all the extra space you have inside it.. shove the disk inside and do an internal backup.. but exclude it from TM so it isn't backing up the backup.

How to retrieve accidentally deleted mailboxes from Time Machine?

I recently did a reinstall and, winding up with two Mail programs, trashed the one I was "sure" was the new, bogus one. Unfortunately, it was my original Mail program, including the mailboxes with letters from Swedish relatives, important addresses, etc. Going back into Time Machine I found strange-looking references to the boxes but couldn't figure out out to make any of it readable. I've come across advertisements for Disk Warrior, Tech Tool, and several other programs, and came close to buying them all at once before cooling down a bit. Any suggestions about avenues worth pursuing would be appreciated. (Or even if it's likely to be a lost cause.)
Cap

There's the Mail program and there are stored 'mailboxes' with the data in them. Deleting a version of the Mail program shouldn't affect the latter. If that's all you've done then your mail data should be where it has always been. My guess (and I'm not an expert in Mail) is that you have ended up with a different version of Mail to the one you've been using and it doesn't store its mailboxes in the same way so isn't finding your data. I would suggest asking the question of the Mail forum and give them the version number of the Mail program you have and any info you have about the version you deleted.

How do I go back to an older version of iTunes using Time Machine?

This latest version of iTunes (v.12) is crashing, not to mention when I connect my iphone or ipod it's not only harder to use them but I can no longer see the break-down of what is on them, e.g. now it's just "12 GB full" rather than "9GB music, 1GB audiobooks, 2GB podcasts". I want to go back to the previous version but Time Machine just says iTunes "can't be modified or deleted." Is there a way around this?

Do a web search for "revert iTunes". There are many web sites with detailed instructions. It is a complicated process and I do not think it can be achieved with Time Machine alone. Time Machine can act as a source for your old library file but the rest involves going into protected files and folders of the system and removing various components. Oh, the version to which you want to revert also has to be one of the few still available for download. I don't, for example, think you can download a copy of iTunes 12.0 It would have to be 11.4 and you would have to have a backup copy of your library file from back when you used that version.

My hard drive crashed. I have my time machine backup. How do i recover all my data?

I have an external hardrive that i backed my Mac up on for just this kind of incident. I have 30 Gigs of music and many documents that i would like to have back. When i go into time machine, it acts as if it has transferred the data but its not in my itunes, or iphoto. HELP!!

Hi.
There are two ways.
1. restore her user account to your Mac, that way she can log on with her account and use it like she did her iMac
2. connect Time Machine, navigate to the latest backup, user folder, pictures and copy the iPhone Library to your desktop. Rename the library to "wife name iPhoto Libary" and copy it into your pictures folder inside your user folder. Now when you start iPhoto and go to the file menu you can switch to her library.
Good luck

Doesn't Time Machine delete old backups when it needs more space?

I've had time machine running for a long time now. It worked flawlessly for quite some time.
Today it gave me the error that there was not enough free space on the disk to complete the backup (the error message says something like there is 360 GB of data on the Time Machine drive already, 140 GB of free space and it would require more than that to complete my backup). I have a 500 GB Time Machine disk and my Mac has a 500 GB hard drive, so I should technically never run out of space.
The Time Machine almost acts like this is the first time I've ever backed up, which is not true. Shouldn't Time Machine delete old backups to make space for the new? What's even weirder is that if I open the "Star Wars" window of Time Machine I only see one backup from March 31, 2011, but I have been running Time Machine for well over a year now. I'm totally confused as to what happened. Any advice on how to get my Time Machine back up and running (without buying a new drive) would help!

You see only one backup in the Time Machine window because Time Machine has deleted the older backups to make space to do the current backup.
Time machine needs some working space to do its backups, and so backing up a 500GB drive onto a 500GB time machine volume is not ideal.
However, I do essentially the same thing, and what I do, when I have this problem, is exclude things from the backup.
First off, figure out what you changed. If you moved things from one partition to another, then that will cause a backup of the size of the thing that was moved. This may be why you have a large backup.
When I have this problem, I exclude large things that have changed recently from the backup. This makes the backup smaller, and means that there is less working space needed. I do this until I get a successful backup. Then I remove things, one by one, from the exclusion list, and back up after each one.
So, for instance if you just put 4 new folders on your drive, each of which s 20GB of data and they are named A, B, C and D, add all four to the exclusion list, do a backup, then remove A from the exclusion list (leaving B, C & D on it) and do a backup, and continue like this, adding 20GB of backup data each time until none of the new data is on the exclusion list and you get a completed backup.
Another possible issue, if you use multiple partitions, is that Time Machine may be keeping an obsolete backup of a partition that you previously reformatted. To see if this is the case, go into time machine (The universe interface) and go back to the most recent backup it shows. Click on your computer and see what partitions show up-- are any of them old ones that have been reformatted and renamed? You may be storing a duplicate backup because Time Machine does not realize that the disk that went away isn't coming back (because it has been reformatted as a different partition)
You can right-click on these items and remove them from your backup by sleecting "Delete all backups of...." This will free up space as well.

Possible solution: Time Machine can not mount disk

Like many of you, my Time Machine started acting up after working fine for months.
I have an external USB (Western Digital 500GB) drive connected to a Airport Extreme (N-speed) as an AirDisk.
I have an iMac (iSight 160GB) connected via ethernet to the AEX and a MacBook (60GB) connected to the AEX. Both have less than half HD usage.
After a few months, the MacBook would fail to backup properly: “Unable to Mount” message after the TM process was going for a few minutes. I could access the WD drive in R/W mode otherwise from the same machine. I read on these boards that I should erase the sparsebundle on the WD drive associated with the MacBook. I did that, and all was then well.
Fast forward a few months, again the same problem on the same machine. I ran DiskWarrior against the WD drive to ensure permissions were fine. Mind you that the iMac TM backup’s have been working fine all along.
Yesterday I solved my problem by reading various tips on these boards:
- Always mount the AirDisk via “==> Go ==> Connect to Server” within the Finder
o As per Apple KnowledgeBase article
- *Proper Computer Name*
o Ensure that your computer has a proper name in the Sharing Preference pane.
o Go into System Preferences --> Sharing.
o Is the box labeled “Computer Name” empty? If it is blank, you need to put in a name for your computer. Otherwise Time Machine won’t be able to perform backups. Additionally, Time Machine needs to differentiate this computer from others on your network (i.e. "Bills MacBook" vs "Office iMac"). As a result, no two Macs should have the same name. If the "Computer Name" field is blank, create a unique name for this Mac.
o Also, Time Machine may experience problems if your computer name includes certain characters. Make sure the computer name only includes ASCII characters from the following set.
o (0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ)
o Once a change in the computer name occurs, you should stop and restart Sharing on the affected computer. Uncheck and then recheck Sharing in the Services list on the left.
The combination of these two steps has my MacBook working smoothly once again with Time Machine, Airport Extreme and an AirDisk.
GOOD LUCK

Most likely, the power interruption corrupted the sparse bundle containing your backups.
Try to repair them per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Time Machine corrupting external USB hard drives

In February I installed two Mac Minis running 10.8 Server. Each machine had an external hard drive connected to it.
Sometime over the Labor Day weekend, both drives stopped working. When I came in Tuesday, each machine had a message on the screen that the Time Machine drive had been improperly ejected. I powered down both drives and then powered them back up. Here's what is going on with each machine:
MACHINE #1:
Has a Western Digital 1TB drive formatted as OS X Extended Journaled.
Disk Utility is able to see the external drive; however, whenever I try to back up, I get the message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup... Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only."
In Disk Utility, if I select the partition and Verify Disk, I get the message "Disk Utility stopped verifying Backup. Couldn't unmount disk."
When I try to reformat the drive, I get the message "Disk Erase failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk."
The Time Machine System Preference pane shows "None" for both oldest and latest backup times; however, I am able to enter Time Machine and see files going back to April.
MACHINE #2
Has a Segate 2TB drive formatted as OX X Extended Journaled.
Initially Disk Utility would recognize this drive about 50% of the time. I would power it down and back up. Sometimes it would appear in Disk Utility, sometimes it wouldn't. Whenever I would try to verify or repair this disk, it would immediately unmount and I would get the message that the disk was not ejected properly. When I try to backup using Time Machine, TM acts like it is preparing to back up and then the disk disappears from Disk Utility and from the Desktop and I get the message that The disk was not ejected properly.
This machine showed it was last backed up on September 1.
After fiddling with it, I was able to format the drive. After formatting the drive, I started a Time Machine backup and the drive unmounted again.
It seems that some event over the weekend caused both drives to corrupt. There was no sign of a power-outtage. Can anyone suggest how I can track down what caused this? Would there have been a maintenance script that would have run on Sept 1 that could have messed both drives up? Some other system event? Losing the data isn't a big deal. I just want to make sure I prevent whatever caused this in the future. Any tips would be much appreciated.

Yeah, I don't know much about the logs. I flipped through some using Console but didn't really know what I was looking for. I was hopeing to see an event that was followed by a notice that the USB drives had been improperly ejected since that was a message I received on both machines.
Since both machines were affected at the same time it seems logical it would be a scheduled event or, as you suggested, some power issue.

Time Machine: i had a problem with removing old files from trash, that is fixed and the whole reason was to make time machine work. It has been backing up for day and one half. What should I do??

trash problem resolved. Now time machine is acting up. it has been backing up since yesterday

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an 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 page that opens.
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.
Copy the words "Starting standard backup" (without the quotes) on this page and paste into the String Matching text field. Note the timestamp of the last message shown. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Finding Items In Time Machine

This should be simple, but apparently I am missing a step when I back up to Time Machine. How do you access items stored in Time Machine? Example. I downloaded a Barbara Streisand album. There is a particular song I wanted to access. I launched Time Machine. I highlight Music. I type in the song title ( Circle), and nothing is recognized. Unless I go the the specific date I backed it up ( in this case Sept. 14, 2009) I can't get retrieve it. Surely Time Machine must act like the hard drive on my MacPro. If the Streisand cut had been in main hard drive, Spotlight would pick it up right away and give me the location sequence. So how do you retrieve data in Time Machine, without having to remember what date it was backed up? My usual practice, particularly for music, is to download, let's say a full album. It is stored into Music on my MacBook Pro. Then I set up Time machine, so that that album is backed up. Then I delete the on the Macpro to save space on my hard drive. Again, unless I remember the specific date I sent it to Time Machine, I can't retrieve the item, by just typing in the title. What am i doing wrong?

Anakonda wrote:
Hi Steve,
I understand the OP is not using iTunes
It is stored into Music on my MacBook Pro. Then I set up Time machine, so that that album is backed >up. Then I delete the on the Macpro to save space on my hard drive
*YIKES ! !*
|
*DO NOT DELETE THINGS FROM YOUR SYSTEM, expecting Time Machine to keep it's backups indefinitely.*
See #20 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

How can I reset Time Machine?

Hey All!
I am a long time Apple user and am running into an issue that has me stumped - looking for some help!
- I have been using Time Machine for over a year but have recently run out of space on my backup drive and Time Machine is not overwriting the files.
- Instead of troubleshooting that issue, I simply wanted to clear my external hard drive of all backups and start fresh with a new backup of the system as it is now.
- I deleted the files off of the old hard drive, turned Time Machine off, and stopped using my external hard drive as the backup disk.
- I turned TM back on and reselected my external drive as the backup disk.
- Time Machine is acting as if it has always been backing up to this particular drive and wants to backup 547GB of material despite my internal drive being 500GB.
It seems like TM is seeing 547GB worth of changes because it recognizes the external drive as being a long time backup drive. I am wondering if there are some plist files that I need to dump in order for Time Machine to act as if it has never been used before.
Any help?
Hope everyone is doing well!
Thanks!
adam

I'm not sure what you did, so here's my suggestion:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your TM backup 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. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Open TM preferences, select the newly erased backup drive as the TM backup drive, turn on TM.

Is Time Machine Acting Strange ? Or ...

Hello,
Every time i plug in my external, and click the time machine icon in the top left bar, it ALWAYS says "Encrypting Back Up Disk" and its always only at 1% .. The thing is that it will give me this message BEFORE it actually starts backing up the data.
What does this mean, and how can i disable it ?
Additionally, i've already put a password lock on the external HD itself, so i don't understand why it needs to "Encrypt" every single time ?

Backup encryption by Time Machine is an option in the Time Machine preferences. Click on Select Disk button and uncheck that option.

TIME MACHINE ACTING BADLY WITH THIRD iMAC

I am on my third iMac now and TM still acting strange. First iMac and using Time Machine when looking through Mail, TM would lock up the computer. A hard reboot was necessary to get things working again.
Second iMac just would shut down, power off all by itself. TM and two mail accounts did not function properly. Going to the second Mail Account I was unable to navigate forward and backwards in Time. Going back to first Mail Account would be fine, but when switching to second Mail Account, TM would stop going forward or back.
Third iMac I get the same results with TM, that is, when navigating two mail accounts TM would get stuck and not move forward or back in time. Is there a chance TM doesn't like having two accounts to look through? Anyone else have an issue like this with their iMac? My external drive is a Lacie and is formatted for Guid.

I am on my third iMac now and TM still acting strange. First iMac and using Time Machine when looking through Mail, TM would lock up the computer. A hard reboot was necessary to get things working again.
Second iMac just would shut down, power off all by itself. TM and two mail accounts did not function properly. Going to the second Mail Account I was unable to navigate forward and backwards in Time. Going back to first Mail Account would be fine, but when switching to second Mail Account, TM would stop going forward or back.
Third iMac I get the same results with TM, that is, when navigating two mail accounts TM would get stuck and not move forward or back in time. Is there a chance TM doesn't like having two accounts to look through? Anyone else have an issue like this with their iMac? My external drive is a Lacie and is formatted for Guid.

Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
Go into Time Machine.
Select the Macintosh HD.
Go back to one of the oldest backups.
Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.

Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

Indesign CS6 acting strange at times

I am not loving Indesign CS6. Not because of it's functionality but because it acts strangely. When I quit it, sometimes it takes forever to quit and you start wondering if it is going to, sometimes it says it's closed but the tabbed windows still remain in view only grayed out with the beachball spinning. Eventually it goes away but it is disturbing. anyone know why?
Another thing is that when I change a font size, it will look like it changed but still have the after image of the previous size. Irritating.
One more, and I've had this problem for all of the last versions since I think cs4. When I try to replace a pdf with a current version, (unless I have restarted my computer since the last time I created it,) it tells me that I don't haver permisson or that file may be in use. I end up going to the pdf and trashing it physically. Not very efficient.
I know there are 3 issues but I've only had it for a couple of months at best.
The first issue is the most disturbing.
Mountain Lion 10.8.2, 8 gb memory, processor 3.06 ghz intel

Again, please remove your auto-signature when replying by email.
Let's try a couple of diagnostic experiments, please.
First, create a new user account onthe mac and log in with that and tell us if there is a change in behavior in ID.
Second, try starting in with extensions disabled by holding down the Shift key while booting the Mac. Does that make a difference?
Do you run any sort of utilities -- anti-virus, Mac Keeper, etc.?

Time machine is acting strange

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for