Time machine running unrealistically large backups

Ever since I upgraded to Mavericks, backing up using Time Machine has been acting a little wonky. It can be summarized by this evening's back up, which took ten minutes to get past the "Preparing to Back Up" sequence and then backed up a huge, whopping 50gb of information. After only a week, this is an unrealisitcally large back up - I've not edited nor created that much data on my computer. Back ups after a week's time while on Mountain Lion were around 8gb at most for me. This is also not the first back up I've done since upgrading to Mavericks (the others were also unusually large). Why does Time Machine insist on backing up so much additional information?

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
tmutil compare| open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination 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 by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
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.

Similar Messages

I just moved iPhoto (9.6) library to EHD from my MBP. I had been running time machine backups. With the library now on an EHD, will time machine run a seamless backup next time i connect (if i allow TM to see other drives)?

I have MBP 2012 running Yosemite and iPhoto 9.6. I run Time machine backups daily.
I just moved iPhoto library to EHD and removed the iPhoto library on MBP. I have enabled external drives to be accessed on TM. The next time i run a TM backup with the EHD connected, will TM run a seamless backup or will it not like the fact that a backup is now spread across two devices where it used to be on only one?

By default EHDs are excluded for TM backups - you have to go to the TM preferences ==> options and remove them from the excluded list
And you need two disks connected -one for your iPhoto library and one for the TM backup - TM will backup all hard drives that ar not excluded - you do not need multiple TM backup disks
LN

Time Machine: Unnecessarily (?) Large Backups

My hourly backups are not very large, but still seem excessively large -- usually 400-500 Mb every time. That seems too much since I don't manipulate videofiles or large databases or such. Here is a typical backup log (I removed the time stamp and "com.apple.backupd' to make it more readable"):
Starting automatic backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://{…}/Data
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://{…}/Data
Disk image /Volumes/Data/MacBook5,1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Using file event preflight for Volume1
Will copy (13.1 MB) from Volume1
Using file event preflight for Volume2
Will copy (Zero KB) from Volume2
Using file event preflight for Volume3
Will copy (Zero KB) from Volume3
Found 173 files (13.1 MB) needing backup
4.26 GB required (including padding), 1.49 TB available
Copied 10365 files (317.5 MB) from volume Volume1.
Copied 10380 files (317.5 MB) from volume Volume2.
Copied 10400 files (317.5 MB) from volume Volume3.
Using file event preflight for Volume1
Will copy (8.1 MB) from Volume1
Found 29 files (8.1 MB) needing backup
4.26 GB required (including padding), 1.49 TB available
Copied 1655 files (142.5 MB) from volume Volume1.
Copied 1670 files (142.5 MB) from volume Volume2.
Copied 1690 files (142.5 MB) from volume Volume3.
Created new backup: 2012-10-18-140340
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MacBook5,1/2012-10-17-132928 (264 MB)
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/Data/MacBook5,1.sparsebundle
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
You can see that initally it says that will copy 13.1 MB (173 files), then it says that 4.26GB required, then copies 10400(!!!) files instead of just 173, which apparently comprise 317.5 MB instead of just 13.7 MB. After that it founds 29 files (8.1 MB) more, but copies 1690 files (142.5 MB) instead.
What's going on, and what could be the problem?

Ok, looks like I solved the problem. Followed Pondinig's procedure #A2 http://pondini.org/TM/A2.html (excellent site, btw), and found the culprits:
- Chronories
- Google Chrome
and, to a lesser extent,
- com.nyt.timesreader preferences folder -- of a Safari plugin that was uninstalled 3 years ago, but for some reason kept updating date stamps of its contents
Now my backups are about ten times smaller, although for some reason backup times are the same (8-10 minutes).

Time Machine running on Linksys WRT600n with external drive.

Hey Folks,
After searching the internet for the answer on how to setup OS X Time Machine on my Linksys WRT600n with storage link, and finding nothing or only parts of what I needed, I finally got it to work. Hopefully this will help you in your setup.(this should work for any linksys routers with storage link.)
1) First you will need to attach your external USB drive to the Linksys Router, and format it using the linksys utility. This will format the drive as fat32 so it can be access by the mac and the router.
2) You now need to create a share on the drive using the Linksys utility (I called mine "TimeMachine") and grant R&W permission to it. I found and article that said you have to create a group called "root" and a user called "root" within that group, then grant the group R&W access to you share. I did this but I am not sure if its required. you may be able to edit the default "admin" account.
3) Once you have the share created you should be able to access the share from your mac by logging into it using your (Linksys) "root" account and password. Make sure you can save a file here. You maybe able to create a folder but make sure you can save a file (.doc for example).
4) Apple has blocked the use of unsupported drives in Time machine so you will have to make a change for this to work. open a terminal window and type the following in one line:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Hit enter, and close terminal.
5) For some reason Time Machine will have issues creating the .sparse bundle Disk required for the backup over the network. So you will have to create it yourself. Safely unplug the USB drive from the router and plug it into your mac. Open disk utility (applications > utilities > disk utility) and create one the same size as your external drive.
parameters:
- Volume name: "Time Machine" (has to be this to work)
- Mac OS Extended (Journaled);
- No partition map
- sparse bundle disk image
Make sure the sparse bundle is in the share folder. If Time Machine had created this sparse bundle it would named it after your machine. You will have to rename it accordingly. This is the required format 'computername'_'mac address without colons'.sparsebundle
(eg. "joe's MacBook Pro_000000000000.sparsebundle")
6) Once all the above is complete you can reattach the drive to the router, and attach to the share again from your mac. Open Time Machine and you should see your share. Setup Time Machine to use this drive. You may want to be connected using Ethernet for the first backup as it may take a while.
I have found the wireless backup to take a bit of time to prepare and run but it seams to work nonetheless. The slowness could be caused by the difference in mac addresses from wired to wireless. So you may want to change the sparse bundle file name depending on how you are accessing time machine.
Hopefully this will work for you as it did for me.

I am afraid I have to pour some cold water on your enthusiasm.
Yes, what you say can get TimeMachine working, but there is a nasty snag:
WRT600N uses FAT32 for its external harddrives and (regretably) understands nothing else. FAT32 has two restrictions:
1) Maximum file size is 4GB
2) (a lesser-known one) Maximum number of files in a directory of 65,535.
The first restriction isn't really a problem because Time Machine organizes its data in 8MB "bands", which are files within your sparsebundle directory.
The second restriction, however, will cause Time Machine to eventually hit a brick wall: The sparsebundle bands are given a sequence number in hexadecimal and there isn't really a limit to how many you can have. If you run Time Machine on a large harddrive attached to the WRT600N, you will eventually run into a situation where you are hitting the 65,535-files-in-a-directory limit. Time Machine will, therefore, run for a while and then suddenly fail for no apparent reason.
Given the parameters of Time Machine, you can't run Time Machine reliably on a WRT600N with an external harddrive larger than 8MB * 65535 = 512GB. If that's good enough for you, then great. If not, you can do one of two things:
1) Get something that doesn't format its harddrive in FAT32.
2) Install DD-WRT on your router (thus voiding its warranty), fight with it for a while in order to get SAMBA running on it, and gain the ability to format your harddrive in Ext2.
I hope this helps somebody.

Time Machine Deleted ALL the backups!

Today, TM was cleaning up the old backups as it does every so often, however it inadvertently deleted ALL of the backups.
1) Can I recover my backups?
2) If so, how can I recover said backups?
3) How can I prevent this from happening again?
Thanks.
What a bummer....

TheChemist wrote:
May 30 15:12:50 francoisimac com.apple.backupd[500]: Starting pre-backup thinning: 423.93 GB requested (including padding), 123.83 GB available
The "padding" is workspace, etc., that TM needs on the backup drive. It's about 20%, so Time Machine estimates it needs to back up about 350 GB. That's the symptom: there isn't enough room for that.
The one question I would love answered is what would trigger a pre-backup thinning?
Not enough room for the new backup. In that case, Time Machine first deletes "expired" backups, then your oldest ones.
Unfortunately, there's no way to tell what that 350 GB was. After a backup finishes successfully, you can see what was backed-up, but not before.
So, you need to start with #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Something you're running is apparently causing a very large, but not full, backup (a full one would need about the 500 GB that's on your internal HD, plus another 100 GB temporarily).
If you still can't figure it out, erase the drive and do a full backup. Then immediately do another. If it's quite large, see #A2 in Troubleshooting to download +Time Tracker+ or BackupLoupe to see what's causing the huge backups.
If it's small, turn Time Machine off. Periodically, run a backup manually. (Select +Back Up Now+ from the TM icon in your menubar, or by right-clicking the TM icon in your Dock). Sooner or later, you should see a very large one, and hopefully it will complete so you can see what caused it, via +Time Tracker+ or BackupLoupe.

Time Machine has stopped making backups

Time Machine has worked fine for me fore many months, the backup disk being a 1 TB external firewire drive.
But now Time Machine will not make a backup. I keep getting the same error message: "Time Machine Error. This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 88.7 GB but only 58.5 are available."
I thought Time Machine just deleted the oldest files on the drive to make the room it needs for continued backups. So why isn't it doing that now? How do I get it to go back to doing that?
Thanks for any help!
Tom

Tom Baker1 wrote:
My Time Machine backup disk is an external 1 TB firewire drive with only one partition, dedicated entirely to TM, and it backs up the two internal drives in my G5. One of these two internal drives has about 600 GB of data on it and the other about 400, so together they would be enough to fill the external Time Machine backup drive.
Yes, that's too small. Our "rule of thumb" is, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing up. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Now I have discovered that there is something wrong with the Time Machine backups as well. I decided to go into TM to see just how far back in time the backups go, but it will only allow me to go back as far as yesterday. It acts as though there are no backups older than yesterday afternoon.
That's probably correct; your TM disk is too small, and there's just not room for more. Here's the situation: A full backup has nearly filled the disk; something fairly large has been added or changed, and there just isn't room for it, in addition to the full backup.
The 88.7 GB it's requesting means it's trying to back up about 74 GB (it adds 20% for workspace, etc., on the TM disk).
This is getting stranger all the time. At this point should I just give up trying to fix the situation, erase the backup drive, and start all over again?
That probably won't help much, if at all. To confirm what's going on, 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 last backup attempt, then copy and post all the messages for that run here.
You need to do one of the following:
Get a larger drive, at least 2 TB.
Get an additional drive; use one for TM backups of one of your internal HDs, the other for a different app to back-up the other internal HD.
Exclude a lot of stuff from Time Machine (at least 300 GB).
Use a different app, such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, to back up your internals to separate partitions on the 1 TB drive. These will be exact copies only; no previous copies of things you've changed or deleted.

Time Machine Runs All Night...Every Night.

Ove the past month or so I've noticed Time Machine seems to be running (especially at night) any time I'm not actively using my MacBook. (When I'm using the MB it seemed to operate normally backing up every hour or so.)
I initally thought that after a year's worth of accumulated back ups, the Time Machine file was getting too large to efficiently manage. So, not needing all those backups I wiped the hard disk that contained the back ups and started from scratch. (I back up to a hard drive, via wifi, through an Airport Extreme.)
I also Verified/Repaired the disk through Disk Utility.
This seemed to help for a coupe of days, but eventually it was back to the same, Time Machine chugging along seemingly all night. And now, the MB was getting warm when it really should be mostly idle.
So, I did some more research and found this webpage below that suggested if all else fails do a "Full Reset of Time Machine". The proceedure involves deleting the Time Machine ".plist" file and resetting your preferences. Your back up files will stay intact.
http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html
Wow! This really did the trick! Time Machine no longer runs all night long, and even the hourly backups during the day seem to process much quicker. So, if your Time Machine seems to just constantly chug along when you think it should be idle - give this a try.
Thanks to Pondin for putting the info out there that really helped me......
As an aside.....
I'm fairly new to the world of "Mac". I've had this MacBook a little over a year. In that time I've had 3 issues with: IPhoto, Mail, and Time Machine. (The programs just started acting "wonky".)
All these issues were fixed by deleting a ".plist" file (or a group of ".plist" files).
What are these ".plist" files and why are they always getting corrupted? Is this common? Am I doing something wrong? Is there anything I can do to make the files a little more roubust and keep them from getting corrupted?
Seems like one goes bad every 4-months and takes the app down with it.
Q.

Noelle Buscher wrote:
I dont recall this problem a month ago when I first got the Time Capsule. I do remember seeing the Time Machine running quite a bit, but it didnt affect my performance (at least not to the degree that I was going up and turning it off all the time)
Opening a webpage...takes about 10-15 seconds. Of course, I look up at the Time Machine and it is running. Opening a file takes forever...ESPECIALLY a Photoshop or other large file. Time Machine is running.
I will STOP the back-up so I can get something accomplishes...but ultimately have to go up and just turn it off completely, as it starts running again shortly.
Is there a setting for only running a backup once a day? I cant find it.
No, as Time Machine is designed to run hourly, and ordinarily works best that way.
You've clearly got something else going on here. I'd recommend starting by doing a +*Repair Disk+* on the sparse bundle. See #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum.
If that doesn't help, try all the things in #D2 there.
Once you get it doing regular backups, see if the size makes sense considering the amount of changes you think you've made. If the backups seem too large, see #D4 in the Troubleshooting Tip. You may have an app that's causing extra-large (and therefore lengthy) backups.

Mavericks Time Machine Server - multiple client backups disappear and merge

Hi there,
In our environment, which is shop environment where many computers are worked on, we use a Mac Pro with roughly 5TB disk space running Mavericks server. Essentially, we rename the computers to be worked on (in the Sharing pane of System preferences), then use Time Machine to connect and backup using a Sharing Only account that exists on the server. The TM backups are verified using Migration Assistant by opening MA and making sure the option to restore is present, without the 'No Backup Volumes found' message, common with TM backups on the network. All OS's are backing up to our server, the oldest being 10.6 and the newest likely being 10.10 now.
Recently, we have noticed some backups seemingly disappear from the server. Just this morning, I looked at a VERY large sparesbundle and got curious.
Upon launching Migration Assistant and opening that very large sparsebundle, I was able to find all the backups that 'dissappeared'. This is very concerning, as all of these backups were verified using MA immediately after having been created. Migration Assistant is quit, the system shut down, and the computer's work proceeds.
A few bits of information:
-Computers sometimes come in to our shop (Apple Authorized) not being able to boot, so their storage volume is booted either via target mode or plugged in to another known good mac via a RocketStor Thunderbolt Dock, or simply directly in to another Mac
-if a computer boots it is backed up natively using it's own OS
-All of this takes place using AFP connections, and over an enterprise network, but devices are all plugged in to the same switch (at this point).
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the disappearance of the backups, and they are very frustrating to attempt to locate when they 'go missing', especially since these backups are only looked for when a HDD is wiped and data is needed....
Any help is appreciated! As stated earlier, we are an Apple warranty authorized shop in a collegiate environment. Thanks all!
Best,
Chris
Message was edited by: cmburkhalter
Updated to make it slightly more clear

Linc Davis wrote:
I have indexing turned off for all my drives
I suggest you turn it back on, at least on the ones you want to back up.
Is this necessary? It seems to do half the backup without it. If I remember correctly I have indexing turned off not only because I don't use it but also because it was hanging up/using a lot of CPU... If I absolutely must I will turn the indexing back on and wait for it to do its dirty business, but I'm a bit reticent in trading my problem for one that I don't really have an interest in solving.

I have 2 auxillary disk drives for my MacBokk Pro. Time Machine uses one for backup and I use the other for storage, but I am unable to create a new folder or drag and drop files or folders to the aux drive.

I am unable to create a new folder on either of my auxillary disk drives. I can access the files and folders that were there when I transferred one of the drives from a PC. Time machine uses one for backup and I want to use the other to store photos which are large files. An help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. If I reformat the drive will I be able to access the files on it from the MAC. I do not share the drive with a PC. The files were originally created on a PC which I no longer use. I do want to continue to access the files put there by the PC. I would like to not have to copy them over to the MAC hard drive just to use them. The second aux drive is new and works fine because it was formatted by the MAC. I can drag and drop files there and work with just as if they were on the internal drive.

HOW DO I Move time machine to a larger hard disk

My time machine disk has two partions for the twp OS I am running --Snow leopard on internal and Lion on external disk
Error message saying that there is not enough room toback up Lion. How to I move the contents of time machine to a larger disk?

See this Excellent Link by Pondini
http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
From FAQs Here
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Time Machine no longer recognizes backup file

Hi:
My Time Capsule was malfunctioning, and I lost my internet connection. I rebooted the Time Capsule, and had to reset the internet connection via the Time Capsule software that's part of System Preferences. When I got my internet connection back up and running, Time Machine can no longer connect to Time Capsule. When it tries to back up, I get this error message...
"The backup disk image “/Volumes/Aquaria-2/JHitch’s Computer_0017f2ce01da.sparsebundle” is already in use.
It's like Time Machine thinks that my backup file on my Time Capsule belongs to somebody else. How can I get Time Machine to go back to using my old backup file on my Time Machine?

I have had this exact problem occur when I logged off while Mail was in TM restore state. I guess the backup is locked somehow because it was cut off while in use. I wish I could help, but I am in the same boat and I will watch this post for help.

Problem with Time Machine, running Snow Leopard

Hi all,
Last week I had a new hard drive fitted into my iMac 8,1, after which Snow Leopard was reloaded (10.6.3 from the disc, updated to 10.6.8), followed by the restoration of data via Time Machine from my external hard drive. Whilst my Mac is now running beautifully, I am having problems backing up with Time Machine.
When I run a backup, it prepares about 100,000 items, then starts to backup, usually about 650mb. It crawls along in kb until it gets to about 1mb, then jumps quickly to the end, but then it adds extra mb on the end. Then it suddenly starts again "preparing x items....." and off it goes again.
I have tried repairing the backup disc, and it appears to be ok. I even erased it and started again. Time Machine did a full backup (139gb) in about 2 hours, then immediately added another 640mb at the end - strange, but I do at least have a full backup from yesterday. But now, everytime I run backup, it looks for the same sort of figure (650-700mb) and then goes round in circles.
Any help would be very much appreciated!
Thanks, David

Hi Eric
Thank you for your reply. Here are the screenshots for each change:
Having prepared about 95,000 items, the backup of 612mb begins
14 minutes later a message appears
Another 3 minutes and another message. You will see from this screenshot that the backup figure has changed to 613.1mb
Another 30 seconds and it all begins again....
And finally, 7 more minutes pass, another 96,000 items are prepared, and another 604.8mb backup begins.
I might add, that between posting this morning, and your reply, I also went into disk utility, chose the top leve of the external drive, clicked on the partition tab, charged current to 1 partition, renamed the drive, erased it, and did a full back up of 139GB. After 137GB it started again, looked for 602mb, backed them up and finished the backup, which is why TM states that the last back up was at 18:16 today.
Thanks again
David

How do I copy my time machine back up from a smaller Hard disk to a larger hard disk; so that I can then continue to back up, through Time machine, on the larger hard disk?

I am using time machine for backing up on an external hard disk. This has now become full and every back up results in the deletion of the first back up on the hard drive.
I have bought a larger hard drive now and am trying to copy the back up from the smaller hard drive to the new larger hard drive, using Finder. This is not happening and the message I am getting is
"The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a back up"

Hello UmeshNB,
Thanks for the question. Based on what you stated, it seems like you are not able to move a backup to another drive. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you isolate or resolve the issue.
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support
If it is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition. If you do not know how, see the steps in this article.
If the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended but without journaling, OS X may state that "the volume has the wrong case sensitivity" to be used as a back up disk.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Mario

How to stop Time Machine from deleting historical backups

So for the first time I encountered what happens when Time Machine runs out of room - IT DELETES THE OLDEST BACKUPS UNTIL IT HAS ENOUGH ROOM!!!
That's terrible if you rely on those backups. We've been using it like an archive and it's been spectacular. Work on a project and delete it when I'm done because I know Time Machine has a copy.
Well, I no longer have copies of my work from Arpil until July because Time Machine deleted those AUTOMATICALLY to make room. I had always thought that it would warn me it was going to delete older backups and I could just decline. Then I'd go out and get a new drive. This make Time Machine unusable for my purposes.
Is there a was to make Time Machine just stop backing up or warn you before it erases old backups? Some way where it cannot erase them on it's own? Perhaps some Terminal command or anything?
Thanks!

Landon White wrote:
So for the first time I encountered what happens when Time Machine runs out of room - IT DELETES THE OLDEST BACKUPS UNTIL IT HAS ENOUGH ROOM!!!
That's terrible if you rely on those backups. We've been using it like an archive and it's been spectacular. Work on a project and delete it when I'm done because I know Time Machine has a copy.
Well, I no longer have copies of my work from Arpil until July because Time Machine deleted those AUTOMATICALLY to make room. I had always thought that it would warn me it was going to delete older backups and I could just decline.
in system preferences->Time machine->options there is a check box "warn when old backups are deleted". if this box is checked TM is supposed to warn you when it first starts deleting old backups. However, that particular feature is quite buggy and TM is well known not to do that on occasion. there are also other situations when it might decide to delete old backups without warning. Therefore you should NOT use TM as an archiving utility. apart from the above issues it also thins old backups and THAT is always done without warning. TM is a backup tool not an archiving one and you shouldn't use it as such.
Message was edited by: V.K.

Time machine Deleted old computer backups

Hey,
I have been using a mac pro for about a year and a half now and as all computers get it has become slow and full of garbage. So i used my time machine back up and successfully backed up all my files. I put in the OS disk and wiped the computer clean and reinstalled the OS. I plugged the time machine back up in and began to copy over only the files that i wanted. A few days later I had not yet copied over all of the files that I needed, i was prompted me to set up this computer with a time machine back up. I began the process thinking that it would create the backups in a new file on the drive or append it to the current list of back up images. It stopped half way though saying there was not enough free disk space. on the 1 TB HD there was only 5 GB remaining. So I just canceled it and was going to finish copying over all of the files i wanted and they delete the old backups. However when I went to get my old backup files, they had all been deleted.
I was using this hard drive to store other media files as well as time machine backups. taking the HD into the local computer shop i was informed that that is a terrible thing to do and perhaps the reason that my backups have been lost. the tech said there was nothing to be done but reformat the drive and start again. I am hoping this is not the case. the drive still says there is only 5GB of free space however I can only fine 300GB of files on the drive. so i believe that the files are still there. Does anyone know a solution to this issue. There are many valuable things on this hard drive that i would hate to loose.
I have tried holding the option key and clicking on the icon to view other backups, but my original backups are not there.
Thanks in advance.

Before I make any reply, note that you are responding to a topic that has been inactive for more than two years, on a system two versions out of date. In the future, you would do better to start your own topic in an appropriate forum, specifying what system you're running and what hardware you're running it on, among other things.
this exact thing happened to me as well and I must say that I find it totally unacceptable...
Well, without more information, it's impossible to say what might have happened or how you can recover. You may find some answers on Pondini's excellent site:
http://pondini.org
However, it's important to understand that this may or may not have anything to do with Time Machine. Perhaps your backup drive is dying, perhaps its directory structure became badly corrupt, perhaps one of any number of other things could have happened. Because there is no such thing as storage that is completely stable, it's important to keep more than one backup, as noted previously on this topic.
Carbon Copy Cloner seems like a much better solution at this time.
Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent solution. Is it better? No. It is simply different, and that makes it better in some aspects and worse in others than Time Machine. The best backup strategy will involve two different backup programs. I frequently recommend using both Time Machine and CCC. I use TM with a Time Capsule for one backup, which has certain advantages over CCC. I use CCC for a couple other backups, one of which is in a safe deposit box at all times, and that has some advantages over TM. Using both, with multiple backups, means that I'm extremely unlikely to lose much data, if any at all... unless a meteor hits and destroys both my home and my bank, in which case I've got bigger problems!
Anyway, with regard to recovery, take a look at Pondini's site. If that doesn't help, or you need assistance with something, start your own topic in the appropriate forum for your system and provide additional details that may help us better assist you.

Time machine running unrealistically large backups

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