Time machine munching boot drive space

I am running a server with a boot drive, a data drive and an external backup drive. I am using TM to backup the data drive ( which includes the service data). The boot drive is excluded from the backup as is the folder containing the Service data. While TM is calculating the changes the available space on the boot drive drops alarming from about 22 GB to 1 GB.
The backup then copies the data and the available space goes back to normal.
Any thoughts on what I can do to stop this?
thanks
PS on our other server which basically just hosts Filemaker server this doesnt happen.

johnl927 is suggesting you wipe your external hard drive to remove any ghost files or errors in the file system. That would be the fastest and least time consuming way to go.
Your alternative is to run Disk Utility, verify disk and the partitions of the external hard drive, and if still in doubt verify permissions. The disk may sometimes claim to have less free space than really available because at some point in the past your computer or else where you plugged it in forgot to do some general housekeeping on the external hard drive.

Similar Messages

Time machine and hard drive space problems

It's a long story, but in a nutshell...I've had some problems with my time machine backups on my external hard drive and my MacBook Pro has been taking a long time time boot up. So, I decided to wipeout the backups on my external by deleting them (I know that's a bad idea) and then I started to transfer all the stuff from my MacBook Pro that I wanted to backup, and now I have ran out of room on the external (1TB) drive. However, the space that is being used doesn't seem to match what should be available. There is around 200gb (I think) that isn't accounted for.....is there some hidden stuff I might have missed?

johnl927 is suggesting you wipe your external hard drive to remove any ghost files or errors in the file system. That would be the fastest and least time consuming way to go.
Your alternative is to run Disk Utility, verify disk and the partitions of the external hard drive, and if still in doubt verify permissions. The disk may sometimes claim to have less free space than really available because at some point in the past your computer or else where you plugged it in forgot to do some general housekeeping on the external hard drive.

Does backing up my hard drive to time machine gain me more space/speed on my iMac?

I have an iMac. here are the specs:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:    iMac
Model Identifier:    iMac8,1
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors:    1
Total Number Of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    6 MB
Memory:    4 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:    IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system):    1.30f1
Serial Number (system):    QP921090ZE4
Hardware UUID:    20AE2D9A-DB71-54DF-95F7-DAEFEE167723
I have a TON of art/photos on this computer. I'm wondering if backing my hard drive up with time machine gains me more space and processing speed-or if it only slows my computer down? is it better to house my files on a seperate drive from the drive i am using for backing up with time machine?

Just to add a little, Time Machine is not a storage drive. Backups on there are not in a form you can use as you would from your normal internal. If you delete your pics etc. after backup, they won't be backed up on subsequent runs, and will eventually be lost when the TM drive gets near full and starts deleting the oldest backups. Have a read of Pondini's TM articles; http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
To do what you want, you need another drive to which you can simply copy your pics etc and open from there while booted to your internal. (this is a basic storage drive)
The storage drive can then also be backed up to TM (provided the TM disc is big enough).

Had hard drive renewed due to product recall (iMac) backed up complete system on time machine . Had the drive done got mac back tried to reinstall from time machine .The new drive tells me that the space has been taken up but can't find where the file hav

Had hard drive renewed due to product recall (iMac) backed up complete system on time machine . Had the drive done got mac back tried to reinstall from time machine .The new drive tells me that the space has been taken up but can't find where the file have gone. Need to free up the space that the ghost file take up so I can drag drop from ex drive onto harddrive

Here's the scoop, new friend.....
When you boot into Time Machine you'll get the same OS X Utilities screen as you would if you booted into the Recovery HD. So, from there go into Disk Utilities to erase/format your internal drive. After that's done, back out to the OS X Utilities screen and select the restore option. Just follow the prompts to select the TM back up date you want to restore from and where to restore it to. Pretty straight forward.

I replaced my hard drive and used time machine to boot from but it installedthe unrepaired disk permissions of the faulty previous drive would this cause problems on my new drive?

I replaced my hard drive on macbook pro and used time machine to boot from but it also installed the unrepaired disk permmissions of the other drive, would this cause problems to my new drive?

Can you remember what the permissions problem was that you had before? You may need to reinstall OS X from scratch and not reinstall anything from your Time Machine backups. To be on the safe side you should reinstall all third-party applications from scratch, as well. Then only restore from your backup your document/data files.

Defrag Time Machine Back Up Drive??

getwellroad
Level 1 (0 points)
Jul 6, 2011 9:50 AM
i previously posted this question, but I mistakenly clicked my own comment as the correct answer. i think this makes the thread appear to be finished; so, because i'm still not completely sure what to do, i have attempted to copy and paste the discussion here:Sorry.
Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??
Grant Bennet-AlderWest of Boston, USALevel 7 (27,805 points)
If your backups take a few seconds longer, so what. I say leave it alone.Beige G3, G4/867, G4/dual 1.25 MDD, MacPro'09 w cheap SSD, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, and 9.2, 10.5 and Server - LW IIg, LW 4/600, ATalk ImageWriter L
The hatterLevel 8 (42,475 points)
Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd. Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set. 1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price. I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there. Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB? Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopardhttps://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.
getwellroad
my boot drive is my internal hardrive which is a 250 GB drive. The drive i am using for TM is 500GB, but you are saying that is really too small. TM, as i understand it, creates a copy of everything, and then subsequent backups record any changes that were made since the last backup. and what do you mean "bootable clones" and do you mean for my internal hard drive AND each of the 3 external hard drives that i have? i'm using one of the three for backup using TM, and i am storing movie files on the other 2. i work at a church, and we use many short films that we purchase online. i then import that file into iMovie to give my volunteers a consistent second and a half of black before the clip and 4 seconds of black at the end of the clip. This provides smoother transitions, i've found, than trying to use most of the clips in their original form. i then have been filing these away in folders on the other 2 hard drives. Regarding the TM drive. Drive Genius is telling me that "the used space on the volume 02 [that's the name of the drive] is 25% fragmented (59.14% of total space).
btw, Time Machine keeps:hourly backups for the past 24 hoursdaily backups for the past monthweekly backups for all previous monthsand the oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external driv

1st) A fragmented drive is not evil. It will not hurt anything. At worse it might slow down reading a file. However, as has been pointed out by others in this thread, who cares as this is a backup device, not a device you are going to be reading a lot.
2nd) The time you spend defragmenting the drive will far exceed the time you will save when writing new data to the drive.
3rd) Defragmentation will just increase your energy consumption, as all the reading/writing needed to move the files around in order to defragment it, will cause the drive to consume more energy than if it was just sitting idle waiting for the next hourly Time Machine backup.
4th) Defragmentation (if done frequently) may shorten the life of your drive. Not mentioned in "3rd" above is that the extra energy used translates into heat, plus you are moving the read/write heads back and forth all of which affect the drives mechanical and electrical components.
NOTE: There are situations where having a defragmented drive is useful, but mostly it has to do with needing to stream media at a high rate of speed, and fragmented files can affect that. However, a backup drive being used for incremental Time Machine backups is not in that category, and most home Mac usage does not need a defragmented file system either.

HT1338 Time Machine wont boot!

Time Machine wont boot although it still is backing up and works in the preferences. How can I fix this? Any ideas?

Please try each of the steps below that you haven't already taken.
Step 1
From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Time Machine
and make sure that at least one backup destination is selected and available.
Step 2
If you're entering Time Machine from the Finder, make sure no Finder windows are open in other Desktop spaces in Mission Control. You must enter from a window open in the current space.
Step 3
If you're backing up to an external hard drive attached to your Mac, open the backup volume in the Finder. You should see a folder with the name "Backups.backupdb". If you instead see a file with a name ending in "sparsebundle," the backup was created over a network. You have to mount the backup volume manually when you want to restore from it by double-clicking the sparsebundle file.
Step 4
Select the "Backups.backupdb" folder and open the Info dialog. Either "staff" or "everyone" should have Read onlyaccess. If not, click the lock icon to unlock the access settings and make the necessary change. If you're not sure how to do that, consult the built-in help or ask.
Step 5
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the text to the Clipboard (command-C):
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V) and press return.
A folder will open with a file selected. Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the folder open for now.
Relaunch the Finder by selecting  ▹ Force Quit from the menu bar, then selecting Finder and pressing return. Your Finder settings will be lost.
Try again to enter Time Machine. If you still can't, put back the file you moved to the Desktop, replacing the newer one that will have been created in its place.
Otherwise, close the folder you opened and delete the file you moved to the Desktop. Recreate your Finder preferences.
Step 6
Do as in Step 5, but with this line:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
This time you may be prompted for your administrator password. Reboot, recreate your settings in the Time Machine preference pane, and run a backup to test.
Step 7
Launch Disk Utility and select the icon of the backup drive in the pane on the left (not any of the volume icons below it.) At the bottom of the window, you should see this:
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table
If the partition scheme is anything else, the drive has to be repartitioned (with the loss of all data.)
Step 8
Skip this step if you're backing up to a network device, such as a Time Capsule.
Boot in safe mode. Try again to enter Time Machine.
Note: If FileVault is enabled on some models, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t boot in safe mode.
Step 9
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 icon grid.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Try again to enter Time Machine. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd.
Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set.
1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price.
I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there.
Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB?
Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopard
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009
where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.

Vault & Time Machine on same drive?

Hello,
I was wondering if there is a way that an Aperture vault can be created on an external hard drive that is already used for Time Machine.
The drive is of size that I would not use it all and would like to back up my Aperture pictures which are excluded from the Time Machine backups.

Yes, you can store a vault (and anything else) on a drive used for Time Machine. Mine's set up this way and I've had no problems.
However, once Time Machine fills up all the free space (as it will eventually do) then you'll be unable to update your vault without manually deleting older Time Machine backups.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
BTW, I did try a "restore from Time Machine" option the first thing I had my "new computer" (old hardware, 2009 iMac) up and running, using Migration Assistant, and it ran for many hours and then failed in the wee hours - what that has to do with anything I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

Time machine says my drive is full, but it's not

time machine says my drive is full, but it's not. it is a 298 gig external drive with 51 gigs available. my internal drive on my lap top (the one I am backing up) is a 148 gigs with 44 gigs available. the backup folder on the external drive is
152 gigs.
how can i fix time machine so it can figure out that the external drive isn't full?

Lisa W wrote:
Thank you both for your replies. Something is seriously wrong with a backup program that needs that much extra space! So much for incremental back ups.
It doesn't, necessarily. We still have no information on what's going on with your situation.
It's a back up for a laptop and I would like to connect it to the backup hard drive once a week or so, but from what I read time machine only works one way... for a computer to have it active all the time.
No. It works BEST that way, but isn't required.
That just won't work for me for many reasons. Most importantly, time machine slows up my computer and I have to leave it off to run my applications.
Then something else is wrong. Again, without any details, we can't help you determine what.
There is no setting to have it turn on in the middle of the night or once per week.
Not in TM itself. But there is a free 3rd-party app that will do this, Time Machine Editor: http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/
It would sure be nice if I could back up when I want. Seems like time machine is just one of those ideas that apple didn't think all the way through.
You can. And TM works just fine for most people. There is something unusual in your setup, or the way you're doing things, that's causing your difficulties.
Let's be clear: if you'd like some help with this, please answer my previous questions and download and post the messages from the wIdget.

I used time machine, now my drive has failed and all my files are lost.

i used time machine, now my drive has failed and all my files are lost. any one know how to get the max osx to see the drive again so i can retrive my files

kabb30 wrote:
i used time machine,
Ok, check
now my drive has failed
Which one, the TM drive or the internal boot drive?
all my files are lost.
Where? on both drives or just TM or the internal drive?
any one know how to get the max osx
yea, if we knew more details of your machine and what you had before and later
to see the drive again so i can retrive my files
I don't know what drive failed.
I'm thinking here your internal drive failed? Was it replaced?
You have a blank internal drive and a TimeMachine drive and your asking how to reinstall OS X so you can restore from the TimeMachine drive?
How are you getting here? Another machine or device and what is it?
We need more details of your situation please.

What items do you delete from backup on time machine to make more space available

What items do you delete from back up on time machine to make more space?

There's no need to do that unless Time Machine has reported a Disk Full alert. In this case you can:
1. Delete older entries using the Time Machine application to free up sufficient space.
2. Get a new and larger Time Machine backup drive to replace the old one.
3. Erase the backup drive and start over.

How do i use airport as both time machine and hard drive? currently on Yosemite 10.10.1

how do i use my 3TB airport time capsule as both time machine and hard drive? currently on Yosemite 10.10.1.....Many Thanks.

Choose Computer from the Finder's Go menu and double-click it. If needed, use the Connect to Server command to log into it.
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How do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved from old computer and system

how do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved off old computer and system. It's not letting me open the folder???

Once again here's how to restore an iPhoto Library from Time Machine:

Time machine munching boot drive space

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