Time Machine not completely deleting all backups.

When I restore Time Machine it doesn't seem to erase everything. It states that there is 1.43 TB left when there should be 2 TB left. Any way to resolve this?

See Pondini's TM FAQs, for starters.

Similar Messages

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

You are both right.
Time Machine can backup FROM:
It cannot back up a USB thumb drive.
Time Machine can backup TO:
•A USB thumb drive (but most aren't large enough, and are very, very slow)

HT3275 Why I'm losing space on my internal HD, after i started to use the Time Machine, and after deleting all my files i still dont have any space on my internal HD!

Why I'm losing space on my internal HD, after i started to use the Time Machine, and after deleting all my files i still dont have any space on my internal HD?

Why I'm losing space on my internal HD, after i started to use the Time Machine, and after deleting all my files i still dont have any space on my internal HD?

Errors with Time Machine (not completing backup, and needing to erase the ".inProgress" package)

I have in a previous discussion been talking about errors with my Time Machine backup. The errors were with a problem with Indexing a file, it fails and stops the whole backup. Each time it attemps another backup, it fills my ".inProgress" package with a (nearly) whole backup, filling my Time Machine hard drive, and thus errasing my previous good backups. The error occurs after about 95% completion.
In my last post of a similar disscussion, the problem was indexing the Preference Pane files and this caused the whole backup to fail. This was my last post there: (below in some additional info of my situation)
I did exclude the MobileMe.prefPane. And I got:
12/16/11 9:24:50.468 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
12/16/11 9:24:50.556 PM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/3 TB GoFlex Drive/Backups.backupdb
12/16/11 9:25:14.418 PM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
12/16/11 9:27:02.366 PM com.apple.backupd: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|
12/16/11 9:27:02.366 PM com.apple.backupd: Finished scan
12/16/11 9:33:37.119 PM com.apple.backupd: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Mac OS Lion GM reason:must scan subdirs|
12/16/11 9:33:37.119 PM com.apple.backupd: Finished scan
12/16/11 9:36:15.650 PM com.apple.backupd: 758.92 GB required (including padding), 830.32 GB available
12/16/11 10:25:14.873 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 22.8 GB of 630.5 GB, 782749 of 2357620 items
12/16/11 11:25:15.335 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 86.6 GB of 630.5 GB, 1167675 of 2357620 items
12/17/11 12:25:16.227 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 152.2 GB of 630.5 GB, 1393795 of 2357620 items
Dec 17 01:25:16 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copied 305.2 GB of 630.5 GB, 1413946 of 2357620 items
Dec 17 02:25:16 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copied 457.1 GB of 630.5 GB, 1419190 of 2357620 items
Dec 17 03:19:07 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copied 1736865 files (568.3 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Dec 17 03:25:16 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copied 572.1 GB of 630.5 GB, 1848939 of 2357620 items
Dec 17 03:40:33 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /Volumes/Mac OS Lion GM/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mouse.prefPane, /Volumes/3 TB GoFlex Drive/Backups.backupdb/Tom iMac/2011-12-14-171406.inProgress/7DB524DD-EFB9-42A6-8A21-0A2A312EDA6D/Mac OS Lion GM/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Mouse.prefPane
Dec 17 03:40:33 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Aborting backup because indexing a file failed.
Dec 17 03:40:33 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Stopping backup.
Dec 17 03:40:33 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copied 2164998 files (581.1 GB) from volume Mac OS Lion GM.
Dec 17 03:40:33 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Dec 17 03:40:50 Thomas-P-Kellys-iMac com.apple.backupd[99858]: Backup failed with error: 11
This time it was the Mouse.prefPane that caused the error. I'd like to exclude the entire PreferencePanes directory.
This was my error message this time:
I just realized this was on my small Developers partition. Perhaps there is an error with the build, OR an error with the initial restore. I'd like to perhaps exclude the entire /Volumes/Mac OS Lion GM. I expect that Time Machine is working fine with my main partition and the error happens when it's almost done with the Mac OS Lion GM partition.
The problem now is that I only have 265 GB of 3 TB available on my Time Machine HDD. If attempt another backup, it'll surely erase about 410 GB of my past saved backups. I've already lost 6 months, and I only have two months left of backups. I need to erase the ".inProgress" package again. That'll take time, and it's impossible to do from this main partition, even at root access. This ".inProgress" has a total of two (nearly) full backups; it didn't cleanup the first full backup attempt while starting the second,perhaps it would have had it finished. But I fear even if I exclude the whole "Mac OS Lion GM" partition, It'll create a third full backup before cleanup and erase ~400 GB of previous good backups. Then, I'll have a total of 4 (nearly) full backups! 3 TB is just enough without any past backups.
Maybe I'll just copy my documentations of my 'errasing the ".inProgress" package' last time (from the Mac OS Lion GM partition) and do a full restore of just that partition. Thus erasing the errors all together. If it doesn't fix the errors then this could be a bug in the build that doesn't allow Time Machine to work. I've always included this partition in Time Machine before, even with other Lion builds, so I suspect that it was an error in the initial restore. (I may be answering my own questions, and that the inital restore (of the small partition) is the problem, and I just need to re-restore the small partition)
Again, I'm going to have to erase the ".inProgress" file to regain 1.53 TB of space before proceeding.
Also, I gave myself permission to read the ".Backup.345781513.887697.log", the log that was created last night when I first started Time Machine this last time. It was interesting, but didn't show the error I could see from the console.
Right now, mds and mdworker appear to be going crazy even after I just now turned off Time Machine. I think I'll let it go for the rest of the night. Then I'll work on erasing the ".inProgress" package from the other partition boot up.
That was my entire last post. To add some information, I have two OS X partitons, both Mac OS X Lion. One is my large main partition, the other is one I don't mind testing with. I recently replaced my internal hard drive in my iMac and restored from Time Machine both partitions. This appeared to go smoothly. But I have yet to create a single successful Time Machine backup since. At first it was doing a Full Backup, which I didn't like, but now it just aborts around 95% completion. Each, time, it tries it fills the Time Machine hard drive with duplicate (nearly) full backups errasing my older good backups. I would like to erase the ".inProgress" file to save space.
My main question in this new discussion is does anyone know of a good way of erasing the ".inProgress" file? This is so I can preseerve my previous backups. ACLs and other permissions seem to make it impossible to erase from this startup partition, the one I'm running Time Machine from. Even at root level, if I give myself permission to change permissions or delete a file, it'll say Operation not Permitted instead of Permission Denied. I have been able to delete this ".inProgress" package before when booting from the other partition, but with great difficulty. I have had much help from another Member in this Support Community when it comes to solving my Time Machine problems. I think I have found the problem (indexing files in my small OS X partition), as stated in my copy& pasted post above, but I really need to delete this inProgress package first to save space before continuing!

Pondini wrote:
Gator TPK wrote:
Now I'll have to fix the small partition? How's the best way to do this? There could be thousands of files that won't index fine.
See if there's anything you haven't done, that applies, in the pink box of #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting
Otherwise, since most (or all?) of the indexing errors are in OSX, you might want to just reinstall it. Something may have gone wrong sometime, that damaged those files.
I reviewed #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting and I have already done most of those things. I have just learned something new though:
When I included my Main OS X partition again, I got an indexing error for the first time for that partition. I might be interesting to note that the _spotlight process was running, and it's running again (the magnifying glass has a dot and it generically says "Indexing Tom's iMac"). mdworker, mds and backupd processes really are working hard, one moment they used over 500% of my CPU. It's nice to know for once quad core is good for something other than video encoding. (Now if they could just get the Finder to do more than 100.1%, only 1 thread is doing 100%, I'd like to see file size calculations 8 times quicker!)
I never got an indexing error once in the past 2 weeks for that large Mac OS X v10.7.2 main volume, and it had appeared to finish that partition backup before running into problems with my smaller test partition. Also, I had just updated the smaller test partition with a later build of Mac OS X. But It appears that the beta builds are clearly not the problem. I thought I could just restore again (from the December 4th backup) the small partition and both would be fine.
I'll finish reviewing all the suggestions on Time Machine - Troubleshooting and go from there. Hopefully, the _spotlight indexing simutaniously was the only problem. It's strange that the indexing hasn't happened since the original restore last week untill I finally got a good clean complete partial Time Machine backup. Why would the first Time Machine backup trigger indexing again?
For now, I'm going to exclude the Main Partition again, and let another good backup run. And try your suggestions. (And wait till mds, mdworker, etc. to finish!)
I have the logs of the first two sucsessful backups and the last two failed backups from the last 3 hours, if that would help.?

Time Machine not completing backup to Time Capsule

MY OS: 10.8.2
My backups to the Time Capsule are interrupted with this message:
Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to xxxxx's Time Capsule.
The backup disk image "/Volumes/xxxx's Data/My MacBook Pro (2).sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1).
Can someone tell me what I can do to fix this?
Thanks

http://pondini.org/TM/C17.html

Time Machine asked to delete all my backups

Periodically, time machine tells me it's going to delete all my backups and create a new one. There is no way out of it. All I can say is "OK". But I'm wondering "Why?". Why is it doing that? Months of backup are gone with a single click.
When my backup drive gets full, it warns me that it is going to delete my oldest backups. That's okay. That's expected. But twice now it has told me that it is going to delete my entire backup set and start over. Why? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening.
Time machine has worked well for me for years. But suddenly, it's kind of useless.

Start with C13 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time machine not adding to existing backups.

I have a Late 2013 MBP. i7,16GB RAM and 500GB HD.My Time Machine is a WD My Passport 2GB partitioned into to two 1GB partitions. Time Machine had 472GB used of 1GB in backups.
I was having issues with apps (Ableton Live 9, Serato, MS Word, and several others) NOT opening and freezing. And I had to force close them. And at times I would have to reboot. I finally decided to wipe the SDD, reinstall the OS. These are the steps I did.
Backed up on Time Machine
CMD+R on reboot to launch OS X Utilities
Used Disk Utilities to erase SDD
Reinstall OSX
Once fresh OS was installed. I selected to use Time Machine when prompted by Migration Assistant to recover ALL files (Applications, 2 Users, and computer/network settings)
Everything was loaded and transferred from Time Machine as I had expected. Launchpad apps had to be reorganized (grouped back together), but everything seemed to be ok. Then I waited until the next day to back up to Time Machine again, in case something didn't work right.
So here is the crux of my problem and question. Since everything is exactly the same (computer name, user names, locations of files, apps, SDD name, etc),
Why did Time Machine start making a new 472GB image, thus now using 954GB out of 1GB available? Instead of just continuing to make an additional snapshot and adding to the original "set / group" of backups already there? To further my point, I had 14 separate backups (Jan 4th - Feb 22nd) all totaling 472GB. Then on Feb 23rd Time Machine backed the same EXACT files as the previous backup I had restored from in the SAME Time Machine folder (right underneath the Feb 22nd), yet the newest backup is ANOTHER 472GB.
Does Time Machine know that it is a restored "version" of the same MBP? And Time Machine is making a completely new backup of the same files to be "safe" since there is room on the HD? Im assuming that as time goes on and more backups are made the older ones will be deleted. Thus the original 472GB of backups will be freed up?
My apologies if I am not using the correct terminology and verbiage. Any thoughts or answers would be appreciated.

Hello there, Kip057.
The following Knowledge Base article provides some great information on how to troubleshoot your issue:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Sudden Time Machine & External HDD Problems -*All Backups gone

I really hope someone can help...
Today, I went to backup my MacBook Pro files using Time Machine and my external HDD, as usual.
Until today, Time Machine and the HDD have been running fine, and today I saw all backups in the HDD going back to September 2011.
However, today when I tried to backup an error message came up saying there was not enough disk space on the HDD. Here's the error message:
>>>
Time Machine could not complete the backup.
This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 299.79 GB but only 50.95 GB are available.
Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files.
<<<
Nothing would work. So I deleted 1 backup to free some space, but the same error kept coming. I deleted another backup...no go.
Then all of a sudden all HDD in Finder is showing NO backups/files/folders...nothing!!!
Time Machine still thinks all the old backups are on the HDD. So does finder, which shows the following for the HDD:
Capacity: 159.7 GB
Available: 50.95
Used: 108,747,599,872 bytes (108.75 GB on disk)
Yet NO backups/files/folders are showing on the HDD under Finder and Time Machine won't recognise the old back-ups — ie, it says "Oldest Backup - None, Latest Backup - None"
I've tried all sorts of things... including restarting, shutting down, repairing the HDD via Disk Utility etc and the tips here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...t=time+machine
But nothing is helping.
I really don't know what to do next.
(BTW, by chance, i did keep two of the old backups that I copied over today from the external HDD to my internal HDD)
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you.

1. Although I wouldn't recommend what you are asking to do nor do I know if you can do it with the device you are buying (if it has its own RAID card you may not be able to do anything with it.) However, for a software RAID using Disk Utility you would need to partition each drive before creating any RAIDs. Let's assume you partition each drive into two volumes. Call them A1 and B1 and A2 and B2. Then you can create one RAID using A1 and A2, and a second RAID using B1 and B2. Keep in mind that you cannot access two partitions on a single drive simultaneously, so when trying to access one RAID you will find that you lose any RAID speed benefits when trying to access the other RAID to, say, copy data from one RAID to the other or when trying to copy data to both RAIDs from another source.
2. If a RAID is connected to a FireWire port or to the USB port on the AEBS, then it can be used as a TM backup drive. TM can only have one backup volume on any one computer, but multiple computers can backup to the same TM backup drive or to other backup drives, but it would be more efficient for all the computers to backup to the same TM volume. TM will backup each computer separately into discrete folders on the backup drive.
In my opinion I would recommend having a single 2 TB RAID volume that is connected either to a FireWire port on one of the networked computers (and set up as a shared drive) or connected to the USB port on the AEBS. Each computer can then backup wirelessly to the drive except for the computer to which the drive is connected via FireWire, if that's how you choose to set it up.

Time machine not completely backing up certain folders

Has anyone run into a problem with their Time Machine continually neglecting to backup one or two of their folders? I know some people have problems with TM not backing up items on their desktop, but my desktop data is fine. There are just two folders (as far as I know) that TM refuses to back up (unless there are new items, then it will backup only those items). One is my 'documents' folder. And another folder I created called 'OS media'.
About my setup:
I recently set up Time Machine with my Macbook Pro (running Mavericks). TM is backing up the internal SSD along with an external hard drive that is always attached via USB. The drive they are being backed up onto is a Western Digital My Book Live via wifi--which I know is not advised as it is not officially approved by Apple, but I'm hoping that's not the cause of this particular problem. Because otherwise the MBL has been working pretty well.
More details:
Both of the problem folders happen to be from the external hard drive (not internal SSD), and in the first tier of folders. But the other folders on that tier (about five other folders) are fully entact in TM, so I don't think it's an issue with the external HD. And the missing files are not a certain file type, they are all the sub-folders and files under the problem folders.
I went into the Western Digital (Time Machine) drive itself via Finder and verified that the files are indeed missing, so it wasn't a lag issue. And I have nothing excluded from backups in TM preferences.
I noticed that within those two problem folders, if any file was modified or created within that folder since my initial TM full backup (about two weeks ago), even if it was just a modified .ds_store file, TM would begin to include that file in the backup. This make me guess the problem was something that happened during the initial TM backup. The folders were somehow missed, and subsequent TM incremental backups aren't able to detect that it's missing. So unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm just going to try to redo a full backup. I'm reluctant though, because it's going to take about two days to complete, and I really have no idea if it's even going to help.
And I don't know if this is related, but when I'm in Time Machine and I do a search for any of my files, I always get zero results.
Important sidenote:
While browsing my folders in Time Machine (Star Wars view), I found that clicking on an alias to a folder would open up that folder, but it didn't show the contents of the folder as they were in that particular backup version; instead, it showed the contents of that folder as they appeared in my computer currently. In other words, it appeared that I was looking at an old backup version of the folder, but it was actually the present time folder. This could easily mislead someone into thinking that their current data is backed up, when it is not.

oregonjoe wrote:
Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?
No, but you must understand that Time Machine does not support the configuration you are using.
The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected either to the source Mac, or a Mac on your local network.
That is all.
Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using third party NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless in the dire circumstances in which they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

Time machine doesn't delete old backups when disk is full

TM disk is 750GB. It tells me there is not enough room for backup…then I look into TM and find there ARE NO BACKUPS anymore. (There were a few days ago.) All backups are gone, except for one two days ago, which was when I began getting the "no room" error.
I assume I've lost everything, as the TM disk shows only the backup from 2 days ago. True?
Do I just format and start again?
Is there a fix for this "no room" message? (It says oldest backups are deleted when disk becomes full. But it doesn't do it.)
Do people rely on this?

How much data is TM backing-up? (What's shown for +Estimated size of full backup+ under the exclusions box in TM Preferences > Options?)
Note that your Time Machine disk should, in most cases, be at least twice the size of the data it's backing-up. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
It appears that Time Machine needed to do a large backup, perhaps a full one, for some reason, and deleted as many old backups as it could (but it won't ever delete the last remaining one, as that would leave you with no backup at all), trying to make room.
If in doubt, Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages for that run here, along with the amount of data that TM is backing-up.

Time Machine NOT backing up all new files

I have 3 internal disks in my Mac Pro: SYSTEM (System and Apps), DATA (all my user data), and TM (Time Machine)
i use TM in manual mode to backup my DATA disk, typically every time i copy new images from my camera to my DATA disk.
i notice that sometime the latest files i copied to my machine are NOT backed bup by TM.
Every time i run TM, it finishes really quick, i.e. seeing nothing new to back up.
I then created a simple text file, and invoked TM again - and this very latest file was backed up - but my images from the past few days are STILL not backed up (and likely never to be, it seems).
Other things i;ve tried (w/ no success):
- ran Disk Utility verify on all disks
- rebuilt Directories w/ Disk Warrior
- tried (in vain) to force a TM Deep Traversal by:
   a- restarting,
   b- starting up using my install CD
   c- restarting in Safe Mode
ps: here is an archived thread i found about this, but no solution mentioned
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11359191#11359191
help!
thanks!

G'day
Xcode is an IDE, too. It automatically excludes its "build" folders.
It's still worthwhile to take a few moments to check, via the yellow box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #11, just to rule that out.
Sorry, lack of clarity on my part. I did make the check first time around. The files are not excluded.
Yes, that's a possibility. Try making/copying a different folder.
Because this morming TM decided to copy the folders it was ignoring yesterday it is now up to date. I need to re-establish the errant behaviour i.e. wait until TM ignores a new version or two. Then I'll make a new folder and copy the contents of the IDE development folder into it. If folder damage is the issue then from then on new versions made will be copied by TM. I predict in fact this won't make a difference because I don't reckon folder damage is the issue. (But of course now that it is being watched TM will behave faultlessly and won't re-estabish the errant behaviour.)
True, but the folders should appear on subsequent backups (unless the originals were moved or deleted in the meantime). In other words, anything backed-up on Monday will still appear on the first Tuesday backup, even after all the Monday backups are deleted. You just can't tell which backup first backed them up.
Indeed. I can do a bit more analysis there. I will schedule that for tonight too.
How are you determining what's backed-up? Are you using TimeTracker or BackupLoupe,per #A2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting?
No. I simply open the Product Versions folder (that contains the copies of the developmet folder) on the desktop and then go into TM. There I step backwards through the backups. TM shows me what folders it has in in the Product Versions folder of each backup.
Without knowing the dates & timing, I agree it doesn't seem consistent. If you're getting different results at nearly the same time on the two drives, that may not be the problem. But it may be worth making some new ones to determine what's actually happening.
Not that I know I have to keep an eye on this I will be watching much more closely as I make versions during the day. To push the process along I will make versions, and associated TM backups, more frequently than normal and check each TM backup.
You might want to repair both TM drives, just to be sure, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. While you're at it, you might as well verify your internal HD, just to be sure there's not some sort of odd directory problem there.
Understood. I'll start by re-establishing the errant behaviour which I'll do via the accelerated process of development and versioning described above. You must be coming up to quitting time for the week. By the time you come in Monday morning I should have more to report. (I'm in Australia and I presume you are in the US.)

Time machine cannot complete follow-up backups

I reformated my USB 3 external drive and after 16 or so hours, my Time Machine backup completed without giving off an error message. However, I leave 'Auto Backups' turned on and subsequent backups fail with a useless, uninformative error message (Backup Failed). This has happened several times with at least two separate disks.
AppleCare tells me the backup was corrupted. But having to endure another 16 hour backup is not ideal, everytime I change data on my computer. I store one external disk offsite in my safety deposit box at all times.
Should I just put time Machine 'in my rear view mirror' and use Carbon Copy Cloner, which I own?
Gary

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the 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 icon grid.
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. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time Machine Not Completing First Back Up

I know there are many posts on unsuccessful Time Machine backups but I can't find one that matches this: I have a 250GB external hard drive which has been formatted correctly and the size of my mac needing backup is around 125GB. I have tried to back up a couple of times using Time Machine but every time I come back to my machine (after a few hours) it says that it needs 125GB to back up and only 100 or so are available. In between trying these backups, I have reformatted the external hard drive; there is nothing else on it and it's not partitioned. And there are no previous Time Machine backups on there; it just cannot complete the first. It's behaving as if there is already one backup on the drive and it's trying to do another (at least that's my logic). Any advice greatly appreciated.

Another one.
I had also problems with time machine. Than I recognized that spotlight tried to index the backup and if both worked together (spotlight indexing and time machine backup) the process was interrupted and my system crashed or was hanging. Therefore I added my backup hd to the volumes for spotlight not to index, and the problem was gone. I recommend to add the backup volume to the ones not to be indexed by spotlight.
arjello

Time Machine not backing up all data

Hello All,
I just bought a Time Capsule 2TB and have Macbook pro early 2011 (running Lion OSX). I wanted to do to a time machine backup. Everything went well. I got it connected good and the backup started very weel. My HDD is about 400 GB and when the time machine started back up it started with data and the progress bar showed the total data to be back up (400GB), but then it backed up only 30 GB out of 400 GB.
I have most of my files in iphoto and ivideo. Is this normal? Why didnt TIme machine did not back up all 400GB?
Any idea?

Then there are two possibilities:
The backup failed, but you didn't see the message. See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages.
Or, some things didn't get backed-up. A partial explanation could be iPhoto -- if the iPhoto app is open when a backup runs, Time Machine may not be able to back up your iPhoto library. It will attempt to "catch up" the next time, but in the meantime you may not have any backups of it.
That's unlikely to be the whole difference, though. Does the figure of 400 GB seem reasonable to you -- can you account for most of it?

Time machine not backing up all files

Running 10.7.5 on a mid 2010 27" iMac. I have Time Machine set up, and have a separate dedicated 1 TB hard drive just for back ups. I can see all the back ups in TM, but some files are just not there. I did several Photoshop files (large, multiple layers, etc) and the files and new folders they are in are simply not in my back up. And I checked my prefs, I have nothing excluded from the back ups. Is there a way for me to "reset" TM and start over, or is there something I'm overlooking here?

Pretty straight forward: 27iMac>Artwork>Collage>
Yesterday I created another folder there in which I have work files (Photoshop)
I have various other folders there with my work.
Wow, I just looked at the files for a church website I maintain, and one folder, which has recorded sermons, only has one file in it, from January, when I've put one file each week so there are 10 additional files. So my Mac has 11 files in this folder, the back up has one.
Here I am thinking this is all set up and I don't have to think about it anymore. But now I'm back to backing up MANUALLLY on another drive. I'm ready to give up on this and buy reliable backup software.

Time Machine not completely deleting all backups.

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