Time Machine Running out of Space

Previously Time Machine keept my backups for months. 2 Days ago I got the message that the disk was full. I erased it and started anew. Today I get the message again and have only a few backups.
My main disk, the one I'm backing up is 561 gigs and the Time Machine disk is 1 TB. What has caused the change in behavior?

That Pondini resource is incredibly cool, but I am apparently not tech saavy enough to follow it all.   I continue to get a many warnings that Time Machine could not complete the back-up (because the back-up is too large for the back-up disk, and the Time Capsule appears full.) This after several years of working flawlessly and thinking it automatically made room for more recent back-ups by just deleting older ones.
Do either of you have a recommendation for a novice?  I have already unselected the "warn me" in preferences, but it hasn't helped.    I did download the "buddy widget" that Pontini recommended and some of the pertinent things seem to say : "No expired back-ups exist---deleting oldest back-ups to make room.   Back-up failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume."
I don't know that I have done anything different other than a larger external HD was plugged in for awhile (and I never did exclude that manually.)
Should I just erase Time Machine and try to start over?  TIA.

Similar Messages

  • Time Machine running out of space but doesn't delete old backups

    First some context:
    I am running Parallels Desktop on a 2011 iMac. The VM is on a partition that is excluded from Time Machine.
    I have a second partition where I copy the VM every night using CCC. (This avoids TM backing up a large VM every hour).
    TM says initial backup is 220 GB. I have a 1TB USB drive attached. So normally, this works fine.
    This morning 100GB were copied to my Parallels Desktop partition. So TM should copy something in excess of 100GB during backup.
    Currently, only 15GB are free on my backup volume. But TM doesn't try to delete old backups. It doesn't seem to recognize the size of the backup. Instead when it starts, it predicts about 1GB to backup. Then during backup the amount grows (note that no new data is changed during backup!) and it finally hits the wall at 15GB because the disk is full.
    Any idea why TM doesn't figure out the real backup size?
    Here's the log from TM Buddy:
    10.12.12 13:25:13,472 com.apple.backupd[27667]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb
    10.12.12 13:38:34,588 KernelEventAgent[48]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups', from '/dev/disk1s2', low disk
    10.12.12 13:38:34,000 kernel[0]: HFS: Low Disk: Vol: Time Machine-Backups freeblks: 38389, warninglimit: 38400
    10.12.12 13:38:45,000 kernel[0]: HFS: Vol: Time Machine-Backups Very Low Disk: freeblks: 25589, dangerlimit: 25600
    10.12.12 13:38:45,066 KernelEventAgent[48]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups', from '/dev/disk1s2', low disk, very low disk
    10.12.12 13:38:45,088 mds[42]: (Warning) Volume: Indexing reset and suspended on backup volume "/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups" because it is low on disk space.
    10.12.12 13:39:47,794 KernelEventAgent[48]: tid 00000000 type 'hfs', mounted on '/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups', from '/dev/disk1s2', low disk
    10.12.12 13:39:53,885 com.apple.backupd[27667]: Error: (-34) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/WBackup/Parallels/Smart iMac Windows 7.pvm/Smart iMac Windows 7-0.hdd/Smart iMac Windows 7-0.hdd.0.{a09d01ec-5596-4f65-b4cd-86aeff90082f}.hds to /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb/Smart iMac/2012-12-10-072536.inProgress/3380F092-9336-408F-90EB-387FDE60A79D/WBackup/ Parallels/Smart iMac Windows 7.pvm/Smart iMac Windows 7-0.hdd

    I would highly recommend the following resource to help you with this problem:
             http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    Hope this helps

  • Time machine running out of space quickly-Why?

    I set up a client with a new iMac in Dec2012. This was a migration from an older iMac and the initial load was 650GB via TM Restore. He has a lot of pictures and documents but also chose to have me "back everything up." This was a 10.8 start
    Went to the SW for 3 months. His prime activity was taking pictures, adding to iphoto library.
    Now 4 months later his 1TB external drive (LaCie/TB) is nearing capacity and things will start being deleted soon. Now at 10.8.3
    I cannot believe how 300GB of data were added in this time period. I am wondering if there was some temporary file that is burried in one of these backups.
    How do I explore other than review each backup and do a get info to see which backup "spiked" the drive.
    Thanks for any suggestions

    Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
    tmutil compare | open -f -a TextEdit
    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
    Launch the Terminal 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 Terminal in the icon grid.
    Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
    The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
    A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
    Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
    Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
    Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
    At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
    Added:
    Removed:
    Changed:
    These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

  • Time Machine Disk out of space

    Every time Time machine does a backup I get a message saying that the disk is full and it will delete the oldest backup.  In fact, the disk has tons of free space.  When I do Get Info on the disk it says that 214 gigabytes are available.  My internal hard drive which it is backing up only has 22 gigabytes on it.
    As things stand now I can only store about 6 days of backups and things will certainly get worse.
    I am running Mac OS X 10.7.2.  I have VMWare Fusion installed and Windows 7 as a virtual machine under Fusion.

    here it is:
    Filesystem                          Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
    /dev/disk0s2                       698Gi   46Gi  651Gi     7%    /
    localhost:/x4-2qwsQFDj-Rw5mjpzuUI  698Gi  698Gi    0Bi   100%    /Volumes/MobileBackups
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    unknownb88d12299a84:~ sganarelle$
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  • Time machine ran out of space

    I keep getting this error and I know it ran out of space. I have two 1 tb drives that are being used by time machine. But it seems like time machine is not making room for the next backup. I understand this is supposed to be automatic. But it's not working right. I am getting very annoyed by this error. I do not want to manually delete backups.

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  • TWO Itunes accounts Running out of space on each laptop. Moving one accont fully to NEW machine wit 3tb drive NAS. Can i move second mdeia libary to nas drive ?? Ie tow itunes libraries on NAS drive working independantly

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  • Time Machine failure: Disk run out of space unexpectedly

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  • Time Machine keeps running out of space

    This is really annoying. Starting about 2-3 months ago, my Time Machine suddenly keeps running out of space. I have a MacBook Pro bought in 2009 summer with 500 GB Hard Drive. My Time Machine drive is als 500 GB. I currently have 117 GB left in my MacBook's hard drive, and 65 GB left in my Time Machine's drive.
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    If your internal disk is 500GB with 117GB free then you are using 383GB
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  • How do I expand the storage of a time capsule that has run out of space?

    In supporting the three Macs in our family, our little 1Tb Time Capsule has run out of space and now does not backup any of our Macs.  No surprise since the total storage of our Macs is 2.25 Tb.  So ... can I just add a large external hard drive to my Time Capsule and point, say, 2 of my Macs to it with Time Machine and everything will be good again?
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    Several options.......
    Simplest and least expensive.....erase the Time Capsule disk and start over with new backups from all the Macs. Few of us ever go back more than a few days to a week or so to pick up a file that was accidentally deleted or somthing similar....but I understand that some users find it difficult to part with the old backups, even if they will never use them.
    Yes, there is the very tiny chance that if you erase the Time Capsule and a Mac fails before you can back it up later today.
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  • I keep on getting this error when i try to copy files to my 2T Time Capsule, Please help im running out of space on my MacBook Pro.... The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)

    I keep on getting this error when i try to copy files to my 2T Time Capsule, Please help im running out of space on my MacBook Pro....
    The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)

    I would get an external drive today and copy all your stuff off the TC.. forget trying to load more onto it. There is a good chance after 3years (A 2TB should be only about 2years tops), the disk or the TC itself is on the way out. Do it immediately. If TM is also failing to backup you need to recognise symtoms of impending doom.
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  • When TM external HDD runs out of space

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  • Time Machine can't create space for new backups

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    It will delete the oldest backups, but when you have already deleted all of those, there will come a time when you will just run out of space.
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  • HT1198 I shared disk space and my iPhoto library as described in this article. When creating the disk image, I thought I had set aside enough space to allow for growth (50G). I'm running out of space. What's the best way to increase the disk image size?

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    Done. Thank you, Allan.
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    +Is there any risk of Time Machine writing over the media files by default?+
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    JeremyDade wrote:
    Hi,
    Hi, and welcome to the forums.
    My HD died and thankfully managed to restore it from a previous back-up with a new HD.
    Now I am trying to back it up again, I seem to have run out of space on my external HD. I assumed that a 320 gb external HD had sufficient volume for a harddrive space of 218.9gb. I have since read that you need at least twice the size.
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