Time Machine says backup disk is full

My Time Machine backup disk (FreeAgent GoFlex Drive: 1TB) says it's full. I thought Time Machine was supposed to delete old backups to make room for new backups on an on-going basis. I don't see a setting for it. I'm fairly new to Mac, so forgive me if this is supposed to be obvious. I did see some "expert" in this discussion tell someone to "buy a bigger drive." That's just arrogant and not helpful. Someone else bought a 4TB drive and it solved their problem -- duh! What happens when that's full? Don't need the arrogance, just would like to understand how it works. Thanks.

TM does thining, until you are left with only weekly backups. Then it deletes those backups from oldeset to newest.
However, it WON'T always delete a backup to make room, as this depends on a few particular details, and also it won't delete the only remaining backup.
Your 1TB isn't really that large anymore, so I can somewhat see why even an 'expert' would suggest a bigger drive. Most internal drives around 1 TB these days alone.

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Why is Time machine saying backup disk disconnected? Using MBP 17" Lion 10.7

Why is Time machine saying backup disk disconnected? Using MBP 17" Lion 10.7

Do you have an external drive connected?
If you do has it gone into sleep mode? There is a setting in the OS to put drives to sleep if they aren't being used. Energy Saver "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible".
Also most external drives have a built in sleep function that if they aren't being accessed for a period of time they go to sleep by themselves.

Time Machine thinks backup disk is full but its not

I just purchased a new 1 Terabyte hard drive for backup. In the past I backed up both my internal Mac harddrive (250 Gb with 8gb free) and an external iOmega archive drive (DRIVE H 320Gb with 41Gb free) to a 500Gb Lacie drive. I purchased an iOmega 1 Terabyte drive (DRIVE G) because the Lacie drive was full. I went into Time Machine and changed the backup drive to the G one terabyte drive and did a full backup of my internal hard drive. When I did this I did not have the external H archive drive attached so Time Machine didn't back that up. I did it that way because I wanted to first backup the internal drive then do some work and then go backup the external archive drive over night. I plugged the H archive drive in, so it show up in the finder and then told Time Machine to Backup Now. It started the back up but right after doing the initial computations when it actually started backing up I got the standard error message that "the backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly..." I've double checked that the backup disk is set correctly in Time Machine to the 1Tb G drive and when I do a Get Info on the G drive it shows Capacity: 1TB, Available: 713.54 GB.
Is it possible something is wrong with the new drive? Can I test that?

Its funny how sometimes asking a question can prompt your thinking. As soon as I finished posting this I thought "of course Disk Utility". I ran a check disk and got the following error message:
Unused node is not erased (node = 107)
I did a restore which corrected the error. Turned Time Machine back on and its backing up the rest of my data now.

Time Machine:The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. .....

Hi,
I upgraded to Mountain Lion when it was released and yesterday I began getting this notice from Time Machine:
"The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. Time Machine will try to make more space available by removing expired backups during the next scheduled backup."
I have a one terra external hard drive with exclusively Time Machine. It says it has 3.4 gigabytes available, but isn't deleting old backups and making room for new, like before. I tried the "encrypting" solution, but it still keeps on giving me this message. Should I erase and format? If so, what option should I chose to format?
My Hard Drive has 240 gigabytes, so 1Tb should be more than enough.
Thank you!
Gloria

SuperDuper and Time Machine are two completely different backup utilities. If you want something like what SuperDuper does then don't use Time Machine. You have many other options that won't use up all the space on your backup drive:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Do the following to erase your drive:
Erase a Drive
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

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

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

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

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion

Time Machine says Backup Delayed After Upgrading to Lion on both my Macs. It backs up fine when ever I connect to the USB drive but now seems to want to back up hourly when before weekly was OK. When it does not compleye an hourly backup it reports a delayed backup - failure on both machines. How do it revert back to it reminding me to do weekly backups?

I'm having the same issue with Time Machine on OS X Lion!
According to this webpage: http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/LionChanges.html
Backups (i.e., Time Machine, SD, CCC, etc.) will only save the current "Version" of files.
The above statement sounds like the issue @iJRB and myself are having after upgrading to Lion where Time Machine shows the following error message below within "System Preferences > Time Machine"
@iJRB: Is this the error message you are seeing?

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

Has the backup been working ok??
If that is the case simply reboot the TC.. or if that fails, reboot the whole network, restarting in correct order..
modem.. wait 2min
TC.. wait 2min

Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created

Iet up my new time capsule day and it's working great. Now that I've got everything sorted out, I'm ready to do the initial time machine back up on it. I went into preferences, changed the backup location to my TC and clicked 'back up now'. Very quickly I get a message that the backup failed: "Time Machine Error - The backup disk image could not be created".
I've searched the apple support area but haven't been able to figure this one out. Can anyone help, please? This is an initial backup. (FYI, it worked great on my old external drive.)
Many thanks

I had the same problem. I installed my Time Capsule, fired up Time Machine and got an error that said "The backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 436.8 GB but only 182.2GB are available."
Coincidently, these are the same sizes as the space used and the space available on my iMac's drive.
I looked in /Volumes and saw that the sparsebundle was being created on the local disk and not on the main disk. Trying to backup again gave me the "Time Machine error: backup disk image could not be created." message.
I poked around the forums, and found a post about the machine name setting in sharing. I decided to give it a look, and lo and behold, I did not have a machine name. So I gave my box a name, kicked off Time Machine again, and it worked.

HT3275 Time machine error, backup disk image "/volumes/data-1/.sparesbundle " already in use. I don;t know what this means, can someone help?

My Mac mini time capsule is showing an error Time machine error, backup disk image "/volumes/data-1/.sparesbundle " already in use. I don;t know what this means, can someone help?

I had a similar problem and I solved it as follows -
In Time Machine - > I deselected time capsule Data Disk as a destination.
Then I pulled the power plug on the Time Capsule, twiddled my thumbs for 15 secs, plugged the power back in.
Went back t Time Machine -> Re-Added the Time Capsule Data Disk as destination. And then tested by selecting Backup Now.
All went well and the backup picked up from before the problem.
BTW - I also have a USB drive connected to Time Capsule that is an alternate disk for Time Machine to backup.
In Mountain Lion the GUI lets you add more than one Time Machine backup destinations very easily so I think it a good idea to have redundancy.
Hope this helps.

My Time Machine says backup drive is too small

After upgrading to Lion I created a new backup. My Time Capsule had 400Gb free, and the full backup is 270gb. However after a day or so time machine cant perform a backup because there isnt enough space on the drive. It says it needs another 270gb. The size of the backup hasnt changed since snow leopard so im not sure why this has happened. I feel it could be to do with File vault 2 which I enabled after upgrading to Lion. Also after I did the full backup it said on the TC that it was only 22mb in size, but this has now changed.
Many thanks

gooober wrote:
What is strange is that I had the exact same problem with Time machine after I moved my Time machine drive from being directly connected to my Macbook Pro to connecting it to our Airport Extreme.
After I moved the drive, I got an error message stating the same - yet there was plenty space left on the drive!
That's a different problem. Time Machine stores backups differently when done over a network. See the blue box in #E2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
And I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Time machine The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Freedom Book.sparsebundle" is already in use.

I am getting the following error message from Time Machine (backing up to my 3 TB Time Capsule):
The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Freedom Book.sparsebundle” is already in use.
I have no idea why this would be in use, because only one MBP has the name "Freedom Book". Any advice on how to resolve? Running Mountaiin Lion 10.8.1.

I had the same error. I unplugged my TimeCapsule for 5 min from power. Plugged it back in to power then waited 10 min for everything to comunicate again. Clicked on backup now and it worked. Must have froze up or something.

Time Machine Error: Backup Disk Image Could Not Be Mounted

Time Machine was working just fine with Time Capsule for the first two days, then today I got the above error message.
The drive and the backup image both show up in Finder. I can even copy files from the Time Capsule to my hard drive.
I just can't get Time Machine to backup to the Time Capsule, even if I manually hit "Back up now".
Any ideas what I can do to fix this?

I may have fixed this ... I renamed my TC to a shorter name with no space and no apostrophe - just a few letters. That seems to have cleared it up - at least for now. Time will tell ...

Time Machine says backup is larger then the actual disk

I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
I ran disk warrior on my main HD, ran disk utility to fix the disk and permissions. I formatted the TM drive and now I'm zeroing out the TM drive (hopefully that will work)
Anyone have any ideas why it would be reading the back up size wrong?
Thanks!
Message was edited by: zymosan

zymosan wrote:
I recently had a HD die, I replaced it and restored from my TM back up. I then formatted the TM drive and am now trying to do a full back up however when I do I get an error saying that the back up size is 525GB but my HD is only a 500GB drive of which only 450GB are used.
That's correct, as odd as it may seem.
Time Machine adds 20% to the estimated size of the backup, for workspace on the backup disk. That's usually not a problem, because a Time Machine disk should be much larger than the data it's backing-up; otherwise, there isn't enough room to keep old backups.
It varies greatly, of course, depending on how you use your Mac, but as a general rule, TM needs 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you.
Short-term, you can "squeeze" a backup onto the disk by excluding something large (so the estimate is under about 410 GB) and run a backup. Then remove the exclusion and run another. Since the second backup will be much smaller, 20% of it will be much smaller, too, so it should fit.
Longer-term, you need a much larger HD; at least 1 TB.

Time Machine says backup is too large for backup disk -- but it isn't...

I have a MacBook Pro with a 120GB drive and a 120GB external drive I use for Time Machine. Everything went fine for months until my laptop's drive got close to full (about 3GB of free space). Then Time Machine started saying it didn't have enough room to complete a backup: "needs 10GB but only 8.6GB is available"
So I told it to stop backing up my iTunes movies (about 7GB). Still didn't work -- same error message (the actual values may have changed some, I don't remember).
Next, I added another 10GB do the "do not back up" list. Still didn't work. Finally, I deleted (actually deleted, not just said "don't back up") about 5GB of files and emptied the Trash.
Now it says it needs 15.9GB of space to do a backup and only 8.6 is available... ??? I've restarted the machine several times, still doesn't work.
My solutions seem to be making it worse. Makes no sense to me.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Peter,
Unfortunately, Apple hasn't documented this very well. However, those of us who know how Time Machine works behind the scenes know this to be true. Of course, Time Machine can back up a given machine at least once with only slightly more space on the backup drive than needed, but subsequent backups will fail.
I have to disagree, though, that most people would fill a 250 GB hard drive. I have what I would consider a "just barely manageable" amount of data in my HOME folder, and my installation clocks in at about 100 GBs. Those "big ticket" items that would tend to bloat my HOME folder- iTunes videos, folders of huge images, etc.- I regularly place on some form of external storage when I no longer need them, removing them from my HOME folder. In fact, I have a partition on an external drive just for the storage of iTunes videos that have already been watched.
If your installation is filling a 250 GB hard drive, you might consider your file management, and just what is consuming so much disk space. It could be that you have some data that would be better stored externally.
Those that would benefit most from using a Time Capsule are those using portable computers, since these are the least convenient to connect directly to an external drive. Certainly, it doesn't make sense to have a portable connected directly to an external to allow hourly backups, which could occur easily when using a Time Capsule. And, I dare say that most portable computer users have internal drives smaller than 250 GBs. I know I certainly do.
All this said, your question is really whether or not a Time Capsule is right for you. If you are filling a 250 GB hard drive, the 500 GB model would do, but just barely. Adding a second machine, also using all of a 250 GB hard drive, wouldn't be possible. In this case, even the 1 TB model would be just barely enough, if that. Again, you might want to consider your file management, or just stick with directly-connected external drives for use with Time Machine. There are scenarios where a Time Capsule makes sense, and scenarios where directly-connected solutions are better.
Scott

I get a message saying backup failed on my Time Machine because backup disk image is already in use. I am the only one using this machine.

My Time Capsule keeps telling me that backup failed because backup disk image is already in use. I'm the only one using this machine.

Pull the power cord from the back of the Time Capsule
Count to ten
Plug the power cord back into the back of the Time Capsule
Wait a few minutes, then try a backup

Time Machine says backup disk is full

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