Time Machine partition size?

I have a 250GB external hard drive, partitioned in 1/2 to 116GB each - one for storage one for backup. When I hooked up the hard drive for the first time, TM backed up 75GB worth of data, leaving around 40GB left. Is that enough space for backups, or should I partition it for more? I would like to be able to go back at least 2-3 weeks, or ideally a month in time if I need to. What do you recommend?

I've been doing backups since April using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and thought your numbers might give folks some general idea.
My internal drive currently has 105 Gbytes used and my Time Machine backup currently takes 156 Gbytes. That's about 50% more space than I'm using on my drive which is quite close to what you have. I think you're cutting it a little too close for comfort, though in practice it would mostly mean you'd have fewer versions of your files.
It also depends on
1. how much more space you're using 3-4 months down the road
2. whether you're using file vaults
3. whether you're making changes in any other large files
Hope this helps!
- Liz
http://www.liz4cps.com

Similar Messages

Limiting Time Machine backup size onto external drive

I have a 6TB RAID LaCie external drive that I would like to use with Time Machine. My mac has a 1TB HD which is not full. I do not want Time Machine to fill up my external drive with multiple backups. Is there some way to limit how much space Time Machine will use on an external drive? My understanding is that Time Machine will fill up the drive completely, then start overwriting the oldest files.
I do not think that I could partition the drive. But I am not sure how to do that, if it works with mac, and if I can do it now without reformating the drives. I am looking to see if there is a solution on the Time Machine software side.

Try Use Terminal to limit Time Machine sparcebundle size on timecapsule,
should work to limit Time Machine backup size on any NAS or external disk (or not...)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize500000
to return to ilimited
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize
if you want to reclame deleted files space shrink it use
hdiutil resize -size 500g -shrinkonly /Volumes/TimeMachineYOURNAME/YOURNAME.sparsebundle/
Regards

Time Machine partition doesn't mount

Hi,
I partitioned from windows (BOOTCAMP) a hard drive that have a Time Machine partition along with a NTFS partition, so I could have three partitions on the disk. The surprise was that when I tried to back up the data from TIme Machine to my Mac, it doesn't appear anymore. I've installed Mavericks on another drive to see if OS X recognized the TIme Machine back up, but it doesn't, it only shows the NTFS partition. The other one (I supose is the time machine one, because the third partition is empty) appears unmounted on Disk Utilities. In windows I can see the Time Machine partition, so I think that partitioning on windows have caused some kind of damage to the partition table or something
I've googled a lot and this problem is quite similar to mine: http://superuser.com/questions/342876/adding-ntfs-partition-to-disk-in-windows-m akes-hfs-partition-on-same-disk-invis
When I run gdisk it says:
and disk util list:
I think the partition scheme shoudn't be fdisk.
Well, I don't know what to do from here, the drive where I have my personal data broke and this Time Machine backup could save me from losing my photos from the last two years.
Thank you, ask if you want more information, I think my explanation has not been very accurate but I'm not a native English speaker, sorry.
PS: Mac Mini mid 2011

And this is what I see on Windows:
It says HFS, although in OSX says ExFAT, and as you can see the size is different.
This is what I have...
Explaining a little more, the hard drive at the beggining (when everything works) had three partitions, I did four. Then I wanted to make another one and did a logic one accidentally (didn't know the maximum was four primary partitions). After realising that, I erased the logic one and the other two and kept "TimeMachine" and "2TB".

Resizing a Time Machine partition

Hi,
I have 3 partitions on my external HD and one of them is a Time Machine partition. I would like to erase the other two and use the entire HD as the Time Machine partition. I cannot do this using the Disk Utility because "You can't resize the partitions on this disk because it uses the Master Boot Record partition scheme".
Any suggestions?

Where is this partition? Are you removing it in order to enlarge an adjacent partition?
The tool for all of this is Disk Utility.
1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.
2. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. Select the partition you wish to remove by clicking in its space. Click on the Delete [-] button to remove the partition. Click on the Apply button. When the process is completed the partiton will be removed and a gray area will replace it.
4. Select the sizing gadget in the lower right corner of the remaining partition and drag it down to the bottom as far as it will go. Click on the Apply button. When completed the space will be added to the existing partition returning the drive to a single volume.

Limiting Time Machine backup Size with WD MyBookLive and 10.8

I cannot take credit for the any part of this solution; merely for merging and clarifying how the solutions discovered by 2 Apple Support Communities contributors much smarter than I (namely “Pondini” – Florida and “himynameismarek”) - worked perfectly for my situation. All cudo’s to these two!
I have about average or better PC skills, but am an absolute newbie with Apple. This week I got a new iMac. Having a number of home PC’s all sharing files and back up space on a Western Digital MyBookLive (“WD MBL”) 3TB network drive (NAS), naturally I wanted to use it to backup the new Mac rather than rushing out to buy an Apple Time Capsule.
There are hundreds of threads on limiting size of a Time Machine (“TM”) backup, many of which required entries in “Terminal” or were devised on older versions of OSX. I’m running OSX Mountain Lion 10.8, so was concerned they may not work.
The issues I wanted to resolve were:
Time Machine will use up all of the space on my WD MBL if left to it’s own devices.
The WD MBL is compatible with Mac and PC’s… which is good… but unlike a back up in Windows 7 Pro which will allow you to make backups in a mapped “share” you create yourself, Apple TM Backups will not; they end up in a hidden folder on the NAS (much like PC backups done with WD Smartware)
At first I thought maybe I could limit the size of a share created in the MBL, but not possible, at least not that I've seen and I have searched for days.
The solutions:
First make sure you have the latest firmware for the WD MBL as of today it is MyBookLive 02.11.09-053. From what I’ve read Western Digital fixed the compatibility issues with 10.8 Mountain Lion just recently.
Next you need to start TM so that it starts to create a back up. You can stop the back up once you see files being copied. Do this before you walk thru the video tutorial by my Marek below. WD MBL will create the hidden folder you need to find for TM Backups. This folder is called “TimeMachine” but it is not visible even in the “MBL_NAME-backup” folder in Finder.
Open safari and type “ afp://xxx.xxx.x.xxx ” but use your own ip address of your MBL. Mine was 192.168.1.120, yours will be different.
It will ask how you want to connect. CHOOSE AS A GUEST even if your MBL is protected… I’m not sure why it works but it does. Then a window will come up asking which share you’d like to mount. You will see all of your own shares plus one called software and now one called “TimeMachine”. Choose that one.
Now in “Finder” you will see a mounted shared item called “YOUR_MBL_NAME-“ (the same as the one that is probably already there but with a dash(-) at the end). You’ll also see a new “device” in the device list called “Time Machine Backups” (If you already have watched the video tutorial by Marek, you’d know you are looking for a file called “YOUR_MACHINE_NAME.sparsebundle”. Well if you browse the folder “Backups.backupdb” in the Time Machine Backups device you won’t find it… again I don’t know why but you won’t. It resides in the hidden folder called “TimeMachine” that is now visible in the thing you just mounted in step 4)
NOW watch this video tutorial http://youtu.be/Nq7mSizqUSI and follow it step by step.
Voila... issues resolved. Thank you Pondini and Marek!

Try Use Terminal to limit Time Machine sparcebundle size on timecapsule,
should work to limit Time Machine backup size on any NAS or external disk (or not...)
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 500000
to return to ilimited
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize
if you want to reclame deleted files space shrink it use
hdiutil resize -size 500g -shrinkonly /Volumes/TimeMachineYOURNAME/YOURNAME.sparsebundle/
Regards

Time Machine Partition Corrupted on External Hard drive

I have a external hard drive partitioned into 2 sections, one for storage and the other for time machine back up of my macbook original hard drive. One day the time machine partition stopped being recognized so I tried verifying and it told me it needed to be repaired. Now it says the disk cannot be repaired and to reformat my disk. I do not want to do this because I don't want to lose whats on the other partition and I have no where else to put the data. It won't allow me to just remove the time machine partition, when I try it comes back with "disk cannot be opened". I'm lost here, is there anything that I can do without reformating the whole external hard drive?
Oh and I'm fine with losing whatevers on my time machine back up

Erasing one partition should not affect another one; however, the drive has had at least one major malfunction already, and should be expected to have more. You should immediately back up all data to another drive, including the data on the non-backup partition of the problem drive. Then, and only then, you can try fixing the unmountable partition. If the drive ever malfunctions again, replace it.

Using the same external hard drive to host a Time Machine partition + a test recovery partition: no longer possible?

In 10.7, I used to have one external hard drive with two partitions:
1) a Time Machine partition that I used to back up my internal hard drive;
2) another partition that I used once a month as a target partition to test the restoration of my Time Machine backup (because having a backup is a good first step, but regularly making sure it could be usable for a full recovery in case of a failure of my internal hard drive is important as well).
After upgrading to 10.9, my first backup restoration test failed with the error message "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk." I found the following discussion:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4370294
which suggests that I need to make sure my external hard drive is formated using GUID and/or that I need to install 10.7 on the target drive. I checked in the Disk Utility, and indeed my external hard drive is formatted using Apple Partition Map rather than GUID.
I also found the following KB article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5911
which suggests that, to be able to install 10.9 on the external hard drive, I need to configure it to have only one partition.
Can anyone confirm that it is no longer possible to perform a backup recovery test on the same external hard drive as the one hosting the Time Machine partition? Do I now need a second external hard drive if I want to perform such a restoration test?
Thanks in advance for your insights.

Answering my own question: I managed to perform the restoration test on a second external hard drive. The trick was to make sure it was partitioned using GUID. I didn't even have to first install OS 10.9 on the second partition (I had an old restoration of 10.7 on there).

How to remove a encrypted Time Machine partition from external hard drive?

I encrypted my Time Machine partition and i want to delete it and make a whole new Time Machine partition that isn't encrypted, please help.

Launch disk utility
Click on the name of the disk (not the partition) in the left hand pane
Click on the partition tab (top center)
Click on the partition to delete
Click the - sign under the partition layout pane

Cannot resize Time Machine partition

Hello all,
I currently have a hard drive split into 2 partitions (both Mac OS Extended (Journaled)). One of the Time Machine partitions is far too big (for the backups it contains) and I want to reclaim some space as a regular data partition (for my windows PC). Unfortunately I can find no way to resize the existing partitions. There is no "corner to drag" in my disk utility. 617GB are free in the 697GB partition.

Time Machine likes to be the first partition, otherwise it will continually ask you where?
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-resize-a-live-pa rtition-in-snow-leopard-and-lion/#.
http://osxdaily.com/2009/11/20/resize-partitions-in-mac-os-x-with-disk-utility/

Mavericks refuses to mount Time Machine partition

Hi there,
Two days ago, my MBP crashed, kernel panicked. Since then, it has not been able to mount my external Time Machine partition. Notice that the external drive has two partitions in it, MBP is happy to mount the other partition, but not the TM one.
I ran Verify Disk and Repair Disk with Disk Utilities First Aid, and everything came back fine "The volume Work Time Machine appears to be OK." But then if I try to mount, I get "The disk "Work Time Machine" could not be mounted.
What can/should I do to mount/recover this?
Thanks!

Launch/Utilities/Terminal and copy & paste this command at the prompt:
diskutil list
Press return.
If it sees the disk, note the number of the disk (far left column) you want to mount.
Then, enter copy & paste this command:
mount /dev/(number of disk)
Put in the number no parenthesis.
Press Return.
Also might try
mount force /dev/(number of disk)
And see...
http://pondini.org/TM/C14.html

Time Machine Partition Randomly Disconnected

I have an external HDD partitioned in to two disks: Time Machine and My Book.
After upgrading to Snow Leopard, my Time Machine partition suddenly became screwy and I received a message that I would be unable to write to the drive, but I could still read from it. I went through the normal steps of trying to repair in Disk Utility, as well as repair off the 10.6 DVD, but nothing would repair the drive.
I did a clean sweep of the drive, re-partitioned and everything seemed to be working fine. After a day though, the Time Machine drive will randomly become unavailable (the dialog says that it was disconnected) but the icon will remain on the desktop. I can unplug the drive and replug it back in and it will work again for a while, but I will eventually get the same error again.
I have tried multiple USB ports and experienced the same problems on each. My Hard Drive is still within warranty, so I'm wondering if this is a hardware issue, or if other people have had similar experiences since upgrading.
If it helps, the drive is a 500GB Western Digital My Book Office Edition.

I tried trashing the Time Machine preference file and restarting and it didn't help. Since my last post, I reformatted again and this time wrote zeros to the whole drive. Once again the initial backup worked fine, and I can directly access the contents of both partitions, but Time Machine will no longer backup files.
I've run the drive through Disk Utility and when checking for errors it finds an invalid sibling link and is unable to repair the drive, even when booted from the SL install disk. I ran the drive through Disk Utility right after zeroing the drive and it checked out just fine.
At this point I'm at a loss, but I don't want to send the drive in on a warranty claim and find out that there is nothing physically wrong with the drive.

Disk Utility and Time machine partition

Ran a Disk Utility check on my Time Machine volume (internal drive - and yes I stopped Time Machine first).
It Came back with error messages something like this:
Verifying volume “Leopard_2”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Incorrect number of file hard links
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998962)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998964)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998966)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998970)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998972)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998974)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998976)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998978)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998980)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998982)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998986)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
Incorrect owner flags for directory hard link (id = 998988)
(It should be 0x2 instead of 0x0)
{ Edited for Brevity }
Stopped by user
Well, the first time I Used repair mode and it wrecked my backup. I had to reformat the partition. Even disk warrior couldn't undo the directory damage Leopard's disk utility reeked on my partition. The irony of it is, I doubt very seriously that anything was wrong with the backup partition before Disk Utility assaulted it.
I ran time machine again and checked (verified this time) the partition after it completed and Leopard's DU reported the same errors as before.
Then I checked the backup partition with Tiger's DU:
Verifying volume “Leopard_2”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Leopard_2 appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk
1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification
Tiger found no problems.
I also checked the partition with Disk Warrior and got a good report.
If I'm not the only one that has this problem then it looks like Leopards DU is an accident waiting to happen when someone uses it to "repair" their Time Machine partition.
Has anyone else experienced this?

FYI, I have a TM partition sharing an internal HD with a FAT32 formatted partition. Here's my Verify output. I did not stop TM while running Verify
Verifying volume “MacTimeMachine”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume MacTimeMachine appears to be OK.

Time machine partition, need help here!! please help!!!!!!!

I have a 250gb western digital hard drive, and somehow when I start with time machine...the external hard drive will not be detected in windows computer. Although I have files and backups.backupb in my external hard drive, I am just wondering how can i be able to let the external hard drive to have 2 partition? and while adding another partition do i have to backup all my files first? will it erase the whole drive? I just want to have one partition that works in mac and windows, and one partition is with time machine!

See # 6 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
It details how to add a partition for +Time Machine+ to a disk that already has other data on it, but you can use the same procedure to add a Windoze partition to one that's already set up for Time Machine. Select +MS-DOS (FAT)+ for the Format of the partition you want to use with Windoze.
You should then copy the "other" files from the Time Machine partition to the new one (or even a third), since Time Machine will work best if it has it's own, exclusive partition. See #3 in the FAQ Tip. Also be sure you allow enough room in the +Time Machine+ partition (see #1 in the FAQ Tip.)

External HD Time Machine partition shows in Desktop but not in Finder

I have a External HardDisk with two partitions, one for Time Machine and other for Data.
Until now when I power on the disk two icons appear on my MacBook, one Orange with a USB logo for the Data partition and other Green with Time MAchine logo for the Time MAchine partition.
Suddenly when I power on in FInder I can see only the Data Partition. while in Desktop I can see both, but now the Time Machine Partition is orange with the USB logo (just like the Data partition).
On the other hand everytinhg seems to be workning, I can acces both partitions and Time Machine apparently works Ok, but don't know if something is happening in the background, and I have all my data in that Disk!!!!!

David Casillas wrote:
I can see and use both partitions, but in Finder under DEVICES only DATA partiton shows.
If a navigate in Finder to MacBook for example I can now see both partitions.
Excuse me if my explanation of the subject is not clear. Here is a screenshoot of what happens. In the left you can see the Finder window with just Data Partition, on the right Desktop with both.
If you haven't yet, from a Finder window's menubar, select +Finder > Preferences > Sidebar.+ Un-check the +External Disks+ checkbox, wait a moment, then check it again.
Try going to TM Preferences, de-selecting the drive (select "none"), waiting a moment, then re-selecting it.
Try deleting the file <your home folder>/Library/com.apple.Finder.plist and either relaunch the Finder (from the +Force Quit+ menu) or Restart.

Clone the Time Machine partition - is it worth it

I'm getting ready to start on a large Final Cut Studio project, so I'm reviewing my current backup situation. I have a question regarding my Time Machine partition, and if I should include it in my daily cloning styrategy.
My development iMac has a 1TB internal drive. Hooked to it via Firewire are 2 - 2TB drives. On one of those drives I have my TM partition. On the other drive I have a SuperDuper! partition, where I clone my iMac's internal drive daily at 4:30 am. This SuperDuper! partition is bootable for emergencies.
While in the process of setting up a new partition to contain my Final Cut Studio projects and assets, I've decided to allow Time Machine to backup these assets. However, I'm also going to use SuperDuper! to clone that FCS partition every day at my normal 4:30 am clone time. While I was setting this procedure up, I realized that I don't have a copy of the TM partition anywhere. This bothered me.
Do you TM experts feel that I should clone my TM partition every day, like I do with my internal iMac HD and my new FCS partition? What I'm unclear about is if my SuperDuper! cloned TM partition is viable in a recovery situation - i.e. I go to use TM, but I have a HD error in TM's partition. Can I re-point TM to the cloned TM partition and use it there for recovery?
I can easily add another 2TB Firewire drive to the mix if needed.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Pondini
I'm quite paranoid about backups (that's prudent, IMO ), but I wouldn't. Backing-up a backup usually isn't a great idea: the backed-up backup is now +twice removed+ from the originals: any problem on the first backup will be copied to (and perhaps magnified on) the copy.
That sounds extremely possible. However, I would never try to use the SD! TM backup for a wholesale restore, I would just use it to recover a critical file (like a DVD Studio project file) that I messed up, and for some reason, the normal TM backup is corrupt.
And your Time Machine backups (assuming they back up your whole OSX volume, at least), contain several hundred thousand files at a minimum; likely a million or more in your case. Depending on how smart SD is about hard links (at both the file and directory level), it might either take an extraordinarily long time to determine what's changed, or have rather nasty results.
Yes, close to 1.5M files. I know that since I've seen the SD! stats from my daily run. With the hard links, who knows?
I don't know about SuperDuper, but CarbonCopyCloner will not back up Time Machine backups in "file copy" mode, only block copy mode (ie, doing a complete replacement, not an update).
That's good to know about CCC. I did investigate it way back when I first got into Macs (way way back in 2007 ), but I went with SD! I should look at the spec sheet of CCC to see how it compares to SD!
You might want to check with SD; I understand they're quite responsive.
Yes they are. I'll post my question over there.
But if you do it, yes, you should be able to view and restore from the copy. You'll need the +*Browse Other Time Machine Disks,+* option, per #17 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Thanks for that pointer, and your excellent FAQ.

Time Machine partition size?

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