Time machine Mail backup size

Hi everybody,
I don't understand why my Time Machine backups are around 1Go every time. Not every hour, but every 2 or 3 backups.
So my TM HD gets quickly full all the time.
I've used BackupLoupe, and I've realized that the problem comes from Mail.
It backs up around 750 Mo all the time.
Mail is set with an imap gmail account.
I've read the same issue here, but the post is archived :
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2205780?threadID=2205780
I've not read the size issue has been solved, so If someone can tell me how.
Thanks a lot,

From the Mail menu bar, select
Mail ▹ Preferences ▹ Accounts
Select the problem IMAP account, then the Advanced tab in its settings. From the menu labeled
Keep copies of messages for offline viewing
select
Don't keep copies of any messages
If you're not sure which account is involved, take this step in each one.
Another option is to exclude the hidden folder that contains the messages from your backups. You can do that in the Time Machine preference pane.

Similar Messages

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 underestimating backup size?

Lately it seems that Time Machine has been underestimating the size of each backup. What it originally says to be a 10 MB backup turns out to be several GB. As it's backing up, Time Machine will say "X out of 10MB backed up" or something along those lines, but when X reaches 10MB, X continues to grow and so does the original estimate of 10MB. It might then say "13MB of 13MB backed up" and it will continue on this way until it has backed up so much underestimated data that Time Machine tells me it can't finish the backup because it doesn't have enough space on the backup drive. (Time Machine should've deleted some backups beforehand to make space for the new backup, but it didn't know to because it had underestimated the amount of space necessary for the backup.)
I have already wiped the backup drive and deleted all the Time Machine preference files, only to still face the same problem. I'm backing up my internal 1TB drive (only 300 GB used) and my 500GB external drive (400GB used) to another 1TB external drive, so having enough space on the backup drive shouldn't be the problem, right? BTW, I'm running Snow Leopard. Any help is appreciated!

OK, I've solved it on my machine, but I'm not sure if It will work for you as it sounds like you may have already tried what I did. Plus you're in a different OS. Anyway, this is exactly what I did, I'm not sure if all the steps are necessary, but its worth a shot.
1.Turn off time machine.
2. Unplug all of your external drives (except the one you are backing up onto).
3. Reformat the drive you intend to back up onto.
4. Go into your time machine preferences and click options.
5. Add all but one of your folders to the list of things to exclude from the backups - make sure the folder dosent contain very much, I picked one with about 1.5 gig of stuff. Its ok if its a subfolder.
6. Turn on time machine and tell it to make a backup. It could take as long as an hour for it to do this but it'll get there, dont be discoured if it sits there calculating for ages. When it finally starts to backup it will do the thing where it continues adding to the amount but it won't go on forever. Mine stopped about about 4 gig.
7. Reopen the time machine preferences and deselect some of the folders in the exceptions list. Try and do this in small blocks.
8. Tell time machine to perform another backup. It shouldn't take nearly as long as it did the first time.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you have backed up the whole drive.
By the time I finsihed the 384 gig of data I was backing up was only taking up about 400 gig of space.
Also I'd really appreciate it if someone would explain to me why the **** what I did worked. Just in case I get a simliar problem again in the future.

SL Server and Time Machine Mail backups

Hello all
We've recently taken on a client who previously used a SL Server for their mail. Unfortunately their previous IT guys have taken away the server and wiped it now. All we have is a hard drive with the Time Machine backups on it.
Our client is now using a Windows Exchange server for email and I was wondering if there's anyway we can extract the individual emails for the users from the time machine backup so we can convert/migrate them into the exchange accounts.
Failing that, does anyone know where the location for the specific emails are on the Time Machine backups?

I'm having the same problem. I can't use Time Machine at all on Snow Leopard Server on an Xserve. There are 2 1TB drives configured as a mirrored RAID set, and a 3rd internal 1TB drive set up to run as a Time Machine backup drive. I have not had any luck after almost a year of trying to get this to work, and I am finding no help on the Internet. I've seen the question asked, but it is never answered. Does ANYBODY out there have an clues as to why this keeps happening? Is it about permissions, since these files are being served from the sharepoint? If I exclude everything but one or two files, the process works, so it's not a hardware error, as far as I can tell. Can't I get TM to bypass any problem files and log them to a report? There are thousands of files. I can't exclude them one by one. I'm already very old.

TIME MACHINE - MAIL BACKUP - MAC 10.6.8

Hi guys
I am new to using Time Machine and still learning about my Mac.
I have many important work emails that have contact information of people i am dealing with in other countries if i Lose my emails i am screwed. Does time machine backup your emails safely say something were to happen to my Mac???
I have been reading mixed reviews so I am unclear...... Help appreciated.
Thanks guys

It will unless you have excluded them in System Preferences/Time Machine. If they are important to you, I suggest you make a 2nd backup on another external drive using a cloning program.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc.

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

Time Machine Picture Library size is 2GB smaller in backup than computer disc using Cmd I (Eye, not EL—don't we all love sans serif fonts as default) for both info.
Ah, this is readable at faster reading speeds.
Now ( oops the return key killed the font setting).
Now, we'll use run-on paragraphs. OK? ¶ On topic: I need more space to install a newer iOS on my iPhone. ¶ Someone at Apple Store Genius Bar advised deleting the album of pictures originally copied from my computer when I had vast memory space since it is already on the computer. Got 1GB About to say Available was still too low for the new iOS install. ¶ Another Apple Store Genius Bar advised making a good backup using TimeMachine on my computer and deleting all the pictures from my iPhone by the painful method of selecting each collection. ¶ So I thought I'd check how successful the backup was. Cmd I (doesn't look like El, yea!) on the Picture Library was 38 GB on my back up disc and 40 GB on my computer disc. ¶ Desktop folder is 87.1 MB (87,091,206 bytes) in both. How do I get the other 2 GB on the backup?

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

Using Time Machine to backup a iMac G5 and restore to an intel iMac

Is it possible to use Time Machine to backup my iMac G5 and restore my backup to a new intel iMac?
The reason being is that I my mother-in-law's company bought her a new intel Mac and she wants to trade with me since she only uses her Mac for e-mail, photos and accounting software.
I was thinking of making sure her data is preserved by using the migration assistant to transfer her data to my iMac G5 and then using my time machine backup to restore to her intel iMac. I have concerns about this method after reading about the intel/powerpc issues with time machine. I also have concerns that perhaps the version of MacOS 10.5 installed to my iMac G5 will not be optimized for intel.

Well, not entirely. You cannot install or restore a PPC version of OS X to an Intel Mac because the PPC system will not work on an Intel Mac. You can copy your personal files, most preference files, and third-party applications (although it would be preferable to update all PPC-only apps to universal binaries which perform better on Intel machines.
Another possible concern is if your mother's company is transferring the ownership to her or simply purchasing the unit for her to use. In the latter case the computer belongs to the company, not your mother. She cannot then give it to you because it isn't hers. This problem should be resolved beforehand because the company may one day want the computer back.
Folders You Can Move to Your new Mac
From the Home folder copy the contents of Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
For FireFox:
/Home/Library/Applications Support/FireFox
/Home/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Credit goes to another forum user for this information.

Time Machine:The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. .....

Hi,
I upgraded to Mountain Lion when it was released and yesterday I began getting this notice from Time Machine:
"The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. Time Machine will try to make more space available by removing expired backups during the next scheduled backup."
I have a one terra external hard drive with exclusively Time Machine. It says it has 3.4 gigabytes available, but isn't deleting old backups and making room for new, like before. I tried the "encrypting" solution, but it still keeps on giving me this message. Should I erase and format? If so, what option should I chose to format?
My Hard Drive has 240 gigabytes, so 1Tb should be more than enough.
Thank you!
Gloria

SuperDuper and Time Machine are two completely different backup utilities. If you want something like what SuperDuper does then don't use Time Machine. You have many other options that won't use up all the space on your backup drive:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Do the following to erase your drive:
Erase a Drive
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 Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

Time Machine hourly backup seems a tad large

Hi all
Occasionally, my hourly Time Machine incremental backups to my Time Capsule seem a tad large. One hour the backup is a sensible size, then an hour later, when I've been doing very little on my machine, the backup is massive (as in, several gigabytes).
Not only that, but the backup seems to grow in size as its happening. the pictures below should help illustrate.
The backup is listed as being 719MB, only an hour after a more modest backup. Time Machine seems to be claiming that is has transferred all of the required backup:
!http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4988/picture2gih.png!
But then, only two minutes later, see how the situation has changed:
!http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3739/picture3m.png!
And the situation continues:
!http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9339/picture5.png!
Any ideas? This issue happens intermittently (although it is happening now... that last image was taken a few minutes ago and the backup was still going - up to 3.1GB - before I told it to stop).
I'm not certain if Time Machine is actually transferring this amount of data to the Time Capsule or not.
Cheers.

Hi,
I had the same problem today as well. The last backup was done this morning at 2 a.m. When I turned my PowerBook G4 on again this afternoon, the backup size continually grew, just like on your machine, Rob. I aborted the backup a couple of times, deleted the inProgress file, but it always got bigger and bigger. After downloading Time Machine Buddy and Time Tracker, I just let Time Machnine "do it's thing". Luckily, I had enough free space on my WD MyBook 500 GB I use for the backups, because it stopped only at 24.8 GBs, after initially displaying 61,3 MB in the menu bar, and requesting 1.05 GB according to Time Machine Buddy.
Time Machine Buddy protocol:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.05 GB requested (including padding), 32.74 GB available
Copied 139261 files (24.8 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.16 GB requested (including padding), 7.36 GB available
Copied 7042 files (2.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-202501: 7.36 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-192342: 7.37 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-123736: 7.37 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/My Book/Backups.backupdb/Claas Olthoffs PowerBook/2009-03-05-113526: 7.38 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 4 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
So I took a look at Time Tracker to see what was backed up. I was suprised to see, that the biggest chunk was my Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support folder. This folder is 23,9 GB in size, mainly because it contains Final Cut Studio media and templates. Time Machine backed it up completey. This seems weired, because none of the files I looked at in this folder were changed during the last couple of months, if not the last year, since I installed them. I don't know why Time Machine would backup all of those unchanged files.
For the sake of completeness, the external drives contains other, non-backup, files as well.
I hope this gives you some more information to work with Pondini.
Greetings,
Claas

Time Machine wont backup

I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
Thanks

jmhoskin wrote:
I bought an external hard drive and put files from my old computer on it before I bought my iMac. Now I want to use it for backing up my iMac but Time Machine wont backup to it without erasing the contents. Is there a way around this? Or will I have to buy a new EHD? Or is there a way to backup to cyberspace?
The drive is probably set up with the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition map, that Windoze uses. To use it for TM you must completely reformat it, which will erase it. If you have enough space (or can borrow another external temporarily), you can copy the data off, reformat it, then copy the data back.
TM works best with it's own, exclusive space, so you should partition the drive anyway. If you're going to use the other data with a PC, make the other partition MS-DOS (FAT).
For formatting instructions, see item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Also see #1 of the FAQ Tip for size considerations.

Time Machine vs Backup

I plan on reformatting my computer and would love to know if I should use Time Machine or Backup. I want to keep some of the programs and data from the computer, but not all of it. Which one will allow me to select data to "bring back"?
Thanks for your help!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You do not want to use Backup for large amounts of data. It's fine for it's original purpose: to get relatively-small amounts of data off-site to iDisk, automatically, but don't use it for anything more.
Time Machine will back-up your entire system by default. The first backup is, of course, lengthy, but thereafter it will back-up only new and changed items hourly. This gives you an excellent chance to recover things that were deleted or changed in error, or somehow corrupted. But whether you use Time Machine or some other app, use something or you can lose some or all of your data in an instant.
But the question here is, are you doing this only to get rid of some apps and files? If so, that's not the best approach. Unlike Windoze, a periodic reload is usually not needed on Macs.
Unless your internal HD is over 85% full, your best bet may be to get an external drive thats at least twice the size of the data on your Mac and let TM do a full backup. Then start identifying and deleting the things you don't want. If you delete something you shouldn't, you can easily get it back from Time Machine (for a while).
Most applications on Macs can just be deleted. Some need uninstallers. Apps will be where you put them, hopefully in your Applications folder. Most data will be in +<your home folder>/Library/Application Support,+ usually in a file or folder containing the name of the app or maker.
Unless you're very tight on space, you could make a folder named +Apps to be Deleted+ or something similar, at the top level of your home folder, and move them and their data files there, rather than delete them immediately. You could even create a sub-folder for those apps that have data files, and put both the apps and files inside them. Once you're sure they're not needed, delete them.
Doing it the other way is much riskier; if you omit things you actually need, all sorts of things may go wrong, unpredictably.
For info on Time Machine, you might want to review this Time Machine Tutorial
and this: Time Machine Features
and perhaps the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of the Time Machine forum.

Time machine email backup showing incorrect emails

I have been using time machine to backup my emails. The great thing about time machine is that I could always go back in time and restore yesterdays emails after I had just deleted them by accident. Since I upgraded to Yosemite I notice that in time machine my yesterdays inbox not only contains yesterdays emails, but many more emails that I have moved or deleted already. My mailboxes are imap mailboxes, but all emails are also stored on my macbook air. Does anyone know how to get the old behaviour back, as before Yosemite? Or is this a confirmed bug? Any info will be much appreciated.

Inside the V2 folder are subfolders representing your Mail accounts. The names refer to the email addresses you use.
From the Mail menu bar, select
File ▹ Import Mailboxes...
Import from the mailboxes in the restored folder. The imported messages will appear in a new mailbox. Move the ones you want to keep wherever you like and delete the rest.

Time Machine everytime backups everyting!

My main system disk "Macintosh HD", 500 GB
Media disk is exernal disk named "Media", 1000 GB.
My Time Machine disk is named "DeLorean" and its external 1,500 GB.
I have about 340 GB more free space in the Time Machine disk than my data currently uses up.
My problem is that the Time Machine VERY often starts its backup FROM THE SCRATCH!
Doing FULL BACKUP! Deleting over 800 GB of data. If you see my logs, you will see it doesnt like something about the external "Media" disk.
It does this thing called "Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Media reason:must scan subdirs|"... * see logs later.
Funny thing is, if i delete/erase the backup, or let it do the FULL backup when it wants, it usually after that does the normal smaller backup just fine.
BUT if I unmount the Media disk even once and do one incremental backup(which it does fine), then after i mount the Media back, next time it does this FULL backup and says in the logs about the Deep even scan.
All my disks are encrypted via FileVault2. Shouldnt time machine still work or is this setup fine?
Here are the logs. Yesterday i even shuffled all my disks and erased the Media and the time machine disk and encrypted them again.
You can see the first full backup starting at 2 am, then ONE succesfull incremental backup while both disk were still mounted. When i woke up at (13:20 pm) I did one incremental backup without the Media (ummounted it) and then again new one with media mounted (13:29 pm) and BAM ! It started FULL backup (deleting 800+ GB of data). Nothing has been changed on the media disk during that time. Weird !
Logs showing fresh first new backup stuff:
Dec 18 01:03:48 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 81.9 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1469 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 02:03:49 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 172.8 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1516 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 03:03:50 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 264.8 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1563 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 04:03:50 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 357.1 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1615 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 05:03:51 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 449.1 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1666 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 06:03:51 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 541.5 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1696 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 07:03:52 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 633.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1741 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 08:03:52 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 725.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1786 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 08:10:55 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1796 files (736.3 GB) from volume Media.
Dec 18 09:03:53 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 773.9 GB of 1047.6 GB, 621723 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 10:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 803.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 936589 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 11:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 878.4 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1019840 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 12:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 951.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1107382 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 13:03:54 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1034.6 GB of 1047.6 GB, 1110125 of 1156879 items
Dec 18 13:13:49 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 1140722 files (1041.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:13:58 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: 1.72 GB required (including padding), 341.53 GB available
Dec 18 13:13:58 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
Dec 18 13:14:15 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copied 6665 files (1.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:14:17 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Copying Lion Recovery set
Dec 18 13:14:42 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Backed up Lion Recovery to /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Dec 18 13:14:45 imac com.apple.backupd[95130]: Backup completed successfully.
Ends.
This backup i Initiated after i woke up, with both system disk and external "media" mounted:
Dec 18 13:22:02 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Starting standard backup
Dec 18 13:22:02 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
Dec 18 13:22:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: 1.70 GB required (including padding), 340.96 GB available
Dec 18 13:22:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
Dec 18 13:23:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
Dec 18 13:23:48 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
Dec 18 13:23:55 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 1780 files (8.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:23:56 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
Dec 18 13:23:56 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 6 files (0 bytes) from volume Media.
Dec 18 13:23:59 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Copied 1596 files (268 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Dec 18 13:24:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5781]: Backup completed successfully.
Ends.. This seems to work like it should.
Now, see the time stamps, i just toke some coffee and came back....
This next backup is done while "Media" drive has been umounted:
Dec 18 13:28:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Starting standard backup
Dec 18 13:28:00 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
Dec 18 13:28:01 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
Dec 18 13:28:04 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Copied 1455 files (78 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:28:04 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: 1.37 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Copied 115 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Dec 18 13:28:05 imac com.apple.backupd[5962]: Backup completed successfully.
Incremental backup seems to finnish ok, without the "Media" drive.
This backup is the third one done just after couple minutes after i mounted the "Media" drive back on:
Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Starting standard backup
Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backing up to: /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb
Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Media reason:must scan subdirs|
Dec 18 13:31:49 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Finished scan
Dec 18 13:31:51 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: 884.92 GB required (including padding), 341.39 GB available
Dec 18 13:31:51 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Dec 18 13:31:52 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted backup /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb/imac/2011-12-18-131415 containing 8.7 MB; 341.40 GB now available, 884.92 GB required
Dec 18 13:31:52 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Removed 1 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted backup /Volumes/DeLorean/Backups.backupdb/imac/2011-12-18-132359 containing 736.30 GB; 1.05 TB now available, 884.92 GB required
Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Deleted 2 backups containing 736.31 GB total; 1.05 TB now available, 884.92 GB required
Dec 18 13:32:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18 13:35:02 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Copied 526 files (4.3 GB) from volume Media.
Dec 18 13:35:03 imac com.apple.backupd[6025]: Backup canceled.
I canceled that scan(it would take about 12 hours again
OK. Couple questions:
- Why time machine does this deep scan? What does it actually mean?
- Why time machine thinks that it needs to do a 800GB worth of new backup. Those data have not changed a bit (they are movies).
- How its related to the unmount/mounting the Media drive?
I would really hope some answers from somebody. I have strugled with this issue almost a month now.
Thanks!

ECONOMAN wrote:
Time Machine Incremental Backups S...L...O...W and seem to bog down things so as to make the machine unusable. Why doesn't it simply backup changes, not the entire drive (less exclusions)?
Normally, that's exactly what it does. So start by calming down.
And, it gobbles processing power so I can't even check mail.
Can you schedule the frigging thing or do I just stop it all the time in order to get anything done?
It's cute, but kind of worthless.
First, are these backups larger than you think they ought to be? If so, that's likely at least part of your problem. See #D4 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum, for some possible causes and a way to find out just what's going on.
If that's no help, or they're still slow, try all the things in #D2 of the Troubleshooting Tip.
If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.

Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created

Iet up my new time capsule day and it's working great. Now that I've got everything sorted out, I'm ready to do the initial time machine back up on it. I went into preferences, changed the backup location to my TC and clicked 'back up now'. Very quickly I get a message that the backup failed: "Time Machine Error - The backup disk image could not be created".
I've searched the apple support area but haven't been able to figure this one out. Can anyone help, please? This is an initial backup. (FYI, it worked great on my old external drive.)
Many thanks

I had the same problem. I installed my Time Capsule, fired up Time Machine and got an error that said "The backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 436.8 GB but only 182.2GB are available."
Coincidently, these are the same sizes as the space used and the space available on my iMac's drive.
I looked in /Volumes and saw that the sparsebundle was being created on the local disk and not on the main disk. Trying to backup again gave me the "Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created." message.
I poked around the forums, and found a post about the machine name setting in sharing. I decided to give it a look, and lo and behold, I did not have a machine name. So I gave my box a name, kicked off Time Machine again, and it worked.

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