Time machine thinks my disc is larger than it is

All of a sudden time machine thinks my backup is 1.92 TB I only have a 1.5 TB disk with 609GB on it. I am backing up to a 1.5 TB disk. I have reformatted the backup and thrown out the time machine prefs and checked my startup disk with disc utility.
"This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 1.92 TB but only 1.50 TB are available."

Two possiblities:
Most likely, there's another volume (disk or partition) connected to your Mac that Time Machine is trying to back up. The 1.92 TB figure is actually inflated by 20%; the estimated size of the backup is about 1.6 TB.
Also possible is something corrupted on your internal HD, leading TM to think a file/folder is enormous. You sai you've checked the internal with disk utiltiy, but did you run Verify Disk (not Verify Disk Permissions)? If not, give that a try.
If neither of those helps, you might use the widget #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to find the messages for the backup. Copy and post them here and we might be able to spot a clue.

Similar Messages

Time machine claiming my backup is larger than the capacity of my computer

I have a Macbook, Version 10.5.8. It crashed in July but I had everything on a WD Passport external backup. Once I transferred the backup to my computer after Apple replaced the hard drive, every time I have tried to back up, time machine is unable to backup to my WD Passport because it says the backup is too large for my volume. My WD Passport's available capacity (when erased) is 111.7. The capacity of my Mac HD is 148.73 GB but I have only used 125.45 GB. In my options in time machine, I have reduced my backup to only 111.7 GB so it will fit on my external, but when I try to back up, it says the backup requires 134.1 GB and only 111.7 are available. What is going on? Where is this extra data coming from (especially when I haven't even used as much as the backup claims it requires)?
I know that my WD Passport has a smaller capacity than what I have used on my Mac HD, but even when I previously attempted to back up my entire computer, time machine claimed that the backup required 150 GB when only 111.7 were available. Basically, time machine is consistently saying that there is an extra 20 or so GBs that need to be backed up, when I have no idea where this is coming from.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
See the pink box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time Machine thinks I have more data than I have

I have re-setup my time machine after it seemed to be having troubles after I installed a new internal hard drive. I formatted the drive and started from scratch.
I setup the options to exclude folders I dont want to backup and it says that the estimated size of full backup is 890.81 GB, which should fit fine on my 1 TB time machine drive.
But when it comes time to actually do the backup, it eventually gives me the error that there is not enough room on the drive and that I have 10 TB of data that I need to backup. How can it get that number when both drives on my system are 3 TB total?

I did a repair and still had the same issue. Here is what Time Machine Buddy says:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TimeMachine-1
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support TM Lock Stealing
Warning: Destination /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 does not support Server Reply Cache
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine-1/EdmondiMac_0022412b6a01.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/TimeMachine 1
Backing up to: /Volumes/TimeMachine 1/Backups.backupdb
Detected system migration from: /Volumes/Macintosh HD
Backup content size: 780.3 GB excluded items size: 414.2 GB for volume G-DRIVE
Backup content size: 7269.3 GB excluded items size: 928 KB for volume TimeMachine
Backup content size: 451.9 GB excluded items size: 192.2 GB for volume Macintosh HD
Starting pre-backup thinning: 9.25 TB requested (including padding), 922.67 GB available
No expired backups exist - deleting oldest backups to make room
Error: backup disk is full - all 0 possible backups were removed, but space is still needed.
Backup Failed: unable to free 9.25 TB needed space
Backup failed with error: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.

How does one SUCCESSFULLY transfer Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk drive using OSX 10.5.8

I have read a number of articles about how to transfer a complete Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk-drive. Some of these articles are specifically for OSX10.6 users, which are not applicable to me since I am operating with OSX 10.5.8.
However, I have tried several times to use the Disk Utility 'Restore' function, dragging my old time-machine volume into the 'Source:' box and my new volume into the 'Destination:' box. This works, of sorts, BUT the newly created volume on the new larger hard disk-drive remains the same size as the original volume on the old Time-Machine HDD, with no apparent way of increasing the new volume's size. So I am not really any better off:
E.g. the total capacity of my new HDD is stated by 'Disk Utility' to be 465.8 GB, of which I'm told 228.2 GB is used for the Backups.backdb folder, but only 4.6 GB of free space is actually available. Yet under the 'Partition' tab of 'Disk Utility' it tells me that there is still 236.4 GB of available space.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue without upgrading to OSX 10.6?

First, how did you prepare your new drive? See:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, 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. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
If you plan to partition this new drive then be sure you create a larger partition for TM than your old volume.
Next, clone your old TM volume:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

How to restore from Time Machine WITHOUT install discs using a second Mac

It's a question that is asked repeatedly all over the web by Mac users like me that bought in to Time Machine (TM) on the assumption that if their computer died one day it would be a piece of cake to restore from it, only for that day to come and then to be told "ahh, okay the first thing is to get your computers install discs..." (loud crashing sound of world falling around ears).
I've never been able to afford a new Mac and both of my machines were bought second-hand. Neither came with Leopard (both have Tiger and have been upgraded to Leopard via the net). This was never supposed to be a problem as I've been backing up with TM. However it appears that Tiger discs are as much use as an inflatable dart board when it comes to using TM. So I've been faced with the possibility of having to spend £130 (about two hundred Pres Sheets, Yankees) on the Leopard install discs just so that I can have the option of restoring from TM. Bonkers.
However after much nashing of teeth, a very long weekend learning all sorts of things about 'Target Mode', 'Single User Mode', 'Verbose Mode', 'Open Source 9' etc the following solution has worked without the need to go out and buy those over-priced discs...
What you will need:
1 broken Mac requiring restoration
1 second donor Mac running Leopard (or Snow Leopard so long as the broken Mac can run it)
1 firewire cable with the correct fitting at either end to attach both Macs together
1 Time Machine backup
Note: The following is for when you have given up trying to boot from your hard drive. In my case I couldn't boot in to Safe Mode etc. so was forced to format my drive and re-import everything. If you've read this far I'm assuming your at the same point as well and have tried everything else that's out there first.
Also - both my Macs are Power PC's so can't run Snow Leopard, so I can't say 100% this will work with SL (Intel) machines. From what I've read Snow Leopard will work with this procedure too, but if you've found differently please feel free to add your experiences below...
STEP ONE: Format the corrupt Hard Drive or replace with a fresh HDD
*Link the two computers with a firewire.
*If you're replacing your HDD, remove your corrupted hard drive from the 'broken' machine and insert a new one.
*Power up the broken Mac whilst holding down the 'T' key. This will start it up in Target Mode and you'll get a nice firewire symbol floating around that machine's screen.
*Power up the second 'healthy' Mac. This will be our 'donor' machine. When it starts up after a few seconds you will see the hard drive of the broken Mac appear on the donor Mac's desktop.
*Using your donor Mac's 'Disc Utility', format the broken Mac's hard drive (now's the time to partition it etc. if you want to).
STEP TWO: Clone your donor Mac
Your broken Mac is no longer broken and now needs a new OS. But you don't have the discs, right? Well get this... you can clone your donor mac on to your machine, even if they are totally different i.e. a laptop on to a tower.
*Again using Disc Utility, click on your donor Mac's hard drive. The restore tab appears as an option.
*Click on restore and drag the donor Mac's hard drive that contains the operating system in to the Source box.
*Drag the newly formatted hard drive on the broken Mac in to the Destination box.
*Click restore. Your donor Mac's hard drive will now be 'cloned' on to your no-longer-broken Mac. Once this is done, eject the first Mac's hard drive from your donor Mac's desktop. You no longer need the donor Mac.
Ta daa! Your machine now starts up happy and smily again. Time to restore all that stuff that's been sat on your Time Machine drive...
STEP 3: Restore from Time Machine using Migration Assistant
This is the really clever part that prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Time Machine IS accessible without those Leopard install discs you don't have. You need to use something called 'Migration Assistant'.
*Start up your machine as normal and you'll see it is an exact clone of the donor machine. Weird huh?
*Attach your Time Machine hard drive. It will show up as an icon on the desktop and because of it's size, you'll be asked if you want to use it as a Time Machine backup. Err, NO YOU DON'T! Click 'cancel'.
*Open Migration Assistant (if you can't find it just type it in to Finder and click). There are three options, the middle one being to restore from TM or another disc. Yup, you want that one.
*Migration Assistant will now ask you what you want to restore in stages, firstly User Accounts, then folders, Apps etc. It will even import internet settings
And that's you done. Let Migration Assistant do it's thang... altogether I had about 140gb to restore, so it wasn't exactly speedy. This wasn't helped by the fact that my TM hard drive is connected via USB (yes, I know). Just leave it alone and it'll whirr happily away...
Before I go - you don't have an option of when to restore from, and will restore from the last Time Machine save. At least then you should be able to access TM and go 'backwards' if you need to.
Also - for a Mac expert, the above will be up there with 'Spot Goes To The Farm' in terms of complexity. However, for the rest of us the above is only available in fragments all over the net. By far the most common response to 'how do I restore from Time Machine without install discs' is 'you can't'. If I'd found the above information in one place I could have saved a lot of hair pulling and swearing over the last couple of days, so forgive me for sharing this workaround with the rest of the world. Meanwhile your expertise will come in very handy for the inevitable questions that will get posted below, so please feel free to help those people that won't be sure if this solution is the right one for them. I'm no expert, I just want to help people that were stuck in the same situation (and looking at the web, there's a LOT of them).
Hope this is of use to someone, thanks and *good luck*!

Most maintenance and repair, restore and install procedures require the use
of the correct OS X install DVD; be it an original machine-specific restore/install
disc set or a later retail non-specific general install disc set.
By having an unsupported system, perhaps installed via an illegal download or
other file-sharing scheme, where no retail official discs are involved and the
initial upgrade was done by other means outside of the License Agreements,
you are asking us to discuss a matter of illegal installation and use of a product.
There are no legal complete OS X system download upgrades online; only bits
that are update segments to a retail or as-shipped machine's original OS X install.
+{Or an installation where a previous owner had correct retail upgrade discs, &+
+chose to not include them with the re-sale of the computer it was installed in.}+
However, to answer the initial question. To get and use an externally enclosed
hard drive in suitable boot-capable housing, and get a free-running Clone
Utility (download online; often a donation-ware product, runs free) you can
make a bootable backup of everything in your computer to an external HDD.
This is the way to make a complete backup to restore all functions to the computer.
The Time Machine has some limits, in that it can restore only that which it saves.
It does not make a bootable clone of your entire computer system with apps and
your files, to an external drive device. A clone can. And some of the clone utility's
settings can also backup changes to an external drive's system; if that other drive
is attached to the computer correctly.
Carbon Copy Cloner, from Bombich Software; and also SuperDuper, another of
the most known software names you can download and use to clone boot-capable
system backups of your computer's hard disk drive contents, are often cited.
However you resolve the matter of the running OS X system in your computer,
derived from what appears to be questionable means, is part of the initial issue.
Since you do need to be able to fix an existing installation by unmounting the
computer's hard disk drive and run the computer from the other (install disc or
system clone) while it is Unmounted; and use the correct Disk Utility version to
help diagnose and perhaps be able to fix it. You can't use a Tiger version Disk
Utility to fix a Leopard installation, and so on.
So, the situation and replies as far as they can go (since the matter does
constitute an illegal system, if it was arrived at without correct discs) is a
limited one. And file sharing of copied Mac OS X (and other) software is
also considered illegal.
And, one way to get odd malware and unusual stuff, is to get an unauthorized
system upgrade from an illegal source online. You never know what's inside it.
The other reply was not a personal attack; the matter is of legal status and as
you have a product with a questionable system, the answer is to correct it.
And if you want to save everything in your computer, make a clone to a suitable
externally enclosed self-powered boot capable hard disk drive. With older PPC
Macs, that would best be to one with FireWire and the Oxford-type control chips.
However that works out...
Good luck & happy computing!

Move external HD to a new drive, but have Time Machine think it's the same?

I have two external drives, one for data and one for Time Machine backups. Time Machine backs up both my internal HD and my external HD. My external HD is dying, so I bought a new one and plan to migrate the data over.
Is it possible to somehow move the data to the new HD and still have Time Machine think that the new HD is the old one, since the data is the same? I usually just use Finder to move files from the old HD to new one (and then remove the old HD and rename the new one to use the same name), but from what I understand that wouldn't copy over the Time Machine data, however.

In most of the cases, that Disk Utility message means that the hard drive is damaged.
However, you can try to erase the disk and restore the Time Machine backup to see if it works. Follow these steps:
1. Insert the Snow Leopard DVD and press the C key while your Mac is starting.
2. Go to Utilities menu > Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD on the sidebar, go to Erase tab and erase the disk. If there's an error during this step, take the Mac to an Apple Store to get a new hard drive.
3. Close Disk Utility, go to Utilities menu, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup and follow the steps.
If the computer is slow after doing this, take the Mac to an Apple Store as soon as you can

TS1550 can time machine back up discs other than the start up disc

My question is, can Time Machine backup your entire system. By entire system I mean my startup disk and all my internal hard drives and the 3 or 4 external hard drives I have hooked up to my computer. I'm working a lot with videos, pictures and music which is very space intensive, so I need to back up all my information not just start up disk. Can Time Machine take care of that?

To answer you question directly, I don't think so.
To offer my $.02, don't rely on TM. It puts all your data into one big file. When it works, it's great, when it fails, even just a little, it's useless.
You may want to look at SuperDuper or CarbnCopyCloner. They cost a little bit, but you can make bootable backups, schedule backups, easily backup more than one HD, and the backups will be readable on any Mac. Your backups will be individual files, not just one large file that can only be read by TM.

Time Machine - This backup is too large (incorrect sizes)

Good morning.
I'll start by saying that I've searched for an answer to this problem in these discussion forums and elsewhere on the internet. I haven't found this exact problem anywhere. So I apologize if this has been posted and answered already and I'd appreciate just a quick link to the solution if it's out there. So, with that said...
Got a Time Machine question I wonder if some of you folks might be able to help me out with. Here's the deal: I've got two internal hard drives, one 2.0TB and one 240GB (SSD, which I'm using for my boot/application disk). I back them up to the same external Time Machine drive, a 2.0TB Western Digital. I've been backing up both drives without a major problem for about six months (aside from an occasional "ran out of space unexpectedly" error, which I was able to fix with help from Pondini and his awesome Time Machine troubleshooting guide).
In addition to my main backup, I also have a separate 2.0TB Seagate that I keep offsite and bring in to update it every month or so. I'd just finished running my monthly update to that drive and switched back over to the WD drive. It refused to pick up where it had left off, which it does sometimes. So I sighed and reformatted the drive using Disk Utility to the usual Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. I'm ok with having to start the backup from scratch if need be since I've got a redundant drive. Unfortunately this time things didn't go quite so smoothly.
When I went to do the first new backup to the newly formatted WD drive, it sat and spun for about a minute then gave me the following message:
"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "The Master's Watch". This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 2.00 TB but only 2.00 TB are available."
Okay, now you know as well as I do that no drive ever reports an exact 2.00TB of space available (on a 2TB drive). After a fresh reformat, my WD typically reports about 1.92TB of available space. And the maximum size of the backup (which, again, had been working just fine up until the swap back to the WD drive) would be in the neighborhood of 1.7TB (1.5TB on the internal 2TB and 190GB on the 240GB SSD). At the most.
I tried everything I could think of, including every suggestion I could find on Pondini's site. I re-reformatted, verified all disks involved, repaired permissions, chucked the TM preferences file, even ran some intensive scans on the backup WD using Drive Genius. Every test I ran came back and said the disk was perfectly fine.
So... for the moment I'm running temporary backups using Carbon Copy Cloner, which is definitely doing the job, but if possible I really would like to get Time Machine running on this drive again. I haven't ruled out the possibility that the drive may just need replacing (since it's... 3 and a half years old, I think?). But if there's anything that I may have missed that may get me up and running again, I'd really appreciate the insight.
Thanks for taking the time to consider my problem. Let me know if there's any further details about my system that may help track this issue down.

LightningChaser wrote:
Good morning.
snip
So... for the moment I'm running temporary backups using Carbon Copy Cloner, which is definitely doing the job, but if possible I really would like to get Time Machine running on this drive again. I haven't ruled out the possibility that the drive may just need replacing (since it's... 3 and a half years old, I think?). But if there's anything that I may have missed that may get me up and running again, I'd really appreciate the insight.
I would make this temporary situation part of a permenant plan that excludes TM from any critical duties.
I know this may not be what you want, (and I hear Pondini breathing over my shoulder), but I offer my opinion only.

Time Machine reports backup disc needs to be 8.78 Tb. I only have a 250Gb system drive???

Thought I'd do a TM backup before installing Mavericks. It messed up big time!
I backup manually depending on how much stuff has accumulated. It varies between a few Mb to 3 or 4 Gb sometimes more. Today Time Machine decided that it wanted to reorganise the backup in some way. I watched as the available space on the TM disk went up as TM set about the task. After a couple or three hours TM actually started to do the backup. The size of the backup being 500Gb or something like that. Several hours later of listening to my fans working flat out I cancelled the back up with TM reporting that there was 200 odd Gb to go. No warning from TM to say this was a bad idea. It had been chuntering away for something like 5 hours.
After halting the backup I thought I'd start the backup again just to see how much more needed to be done. This is when I got the report that the backup disk needed to be in the order of Tb. And the oldest backup is now Nov 2013. The oldest backup before this was way back in June 2012 (MacBookPro Rertina mid 2012) when I first bought the computer.
Entering TM I find that even that is not complete. All but a couple of applications have dissapeared as have many other files.
Trouble is I use it as an archive and happily delete files on my hard drive knowing that there is a copy in a backup that pre dates the deletion.
There is also an earlier backup from my previous machine - again as a rarely accessed archive. So that's another reason not to reformat.
I'm pretty sure all is lost and I think I just have to bite the bullet and risk not needing anything from the archive. After all I have CD and DVD backups/archives that go back to the late '90s and I have rarely needed to access them over the years. The biggest loss will be photos. ****!
Anyway. What happened? Why has TM gone off the rails? I have done nothing different to what I have done in 5 years or so. Is this normal behaviour? If I hadn't have cancelled the back up would TM have slowly rebuilt all my backups as was?
Andy

Trouble is I use it as an archive and happily delete files on my hard drive knowing that there is a copy in a backup that pre dates the deletion.
Before going any further please understand that's a very bad idea. It's beyond Time Machine's scope to do that. It is not an archival system and cannot be made to become one. Time Machine guarantees nothing other than one complete copy of the source volume's contents. Anything erased from the source becomes fair game for Time Machine to delete from the backup, the moment it requires the space it occupies.
Next: I have no idea why the problem occurred, but a first and harmless troubleshooting step is to reset Time Machine by doing the following:
Turn off Time Machine first, and make sure a backup is not in progress.
Triple click to select the entire line, then control-click and select Services > Reveal in Finder. Drag the selected file to the Desktop, or directly to the Trash:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
This will not delete your existing backups.
Turn on Time Machine and reselect your backup volume. The effect of deleting that file will cause erroneous values to be shown in the "backing up xxx of yyy" messages until the subsequent backup.
If it's any consolation, terminating Time Machine as you did is not an abnormal user action and did not cause the problem. It may have resulted in inaccurate information being written to the property list, which you will fix by deleting it. It's quite possible that your backups have remained intact. Just remember that anything you delete from the source may no longer exist following the subsequent backup, and that is to be expected.

Time Machine takes up much more space than actually data backed up...

Every time I backup with time machine, it uses up gigs of space on my backup drive, regardless of increment or decrement of data on Mac. I could put 200 megs since last backup and TM eats 4 gigs. I don't change the file exclusion selections at all. Just curious if anyone knows why that is?

I find it hard to believe I added 4gb since last backup.
You'd be surprised. Sometimes you add more than you think. Any downloads, recently edited documents, etc all will add to the total. Plus system files such as browser history are updated and backed up as well. If it has been a few days since your last backup, I wouldn't worry. If this is happening ALL the time and you know that you have been barely using your computer, you may have a problem that needs to be further looked into.

Moving Time Machine backups to a new larger drive?

Just wondering whether using Disk Utility to 'restore' the drive (ie. making a duplicate to a new larger drive) would be 100% functional and compatible with Time Machine?
ie. I want to switch my time machine backups to a larger drive, but I want to take all my existing backup history to the new drive, rather than just doing a fresh backup to the new drive.

bilbo_baggins wrote:
Just wondering whether using Disk Utility to 'restore' the drive (ie. making a duplicate to a new larger drive) would be 100% functional and compatible with Time Machine?
yes, it will work. just turn off TM while you are doing this.
ie. I want to switch my time machine backups to a larger drive, but I want to take all my existing backup history to the new drive, rather than just doing a fresh backup to the new drive.

Time machine causing inaccurate disc space readout

Hi,
there's clearly a bug with relation to time machine as my hard drive disc space readout is continuously giving ridiculous readouts (and this changes as time machine is doing its thing)
Currently it says i have 2 petabytes free! on my 500gb SSD (I wish!). Turning time machine off and on again gives me back the correct reading. But it doesn't last for long (well until the next time machine backup).
Is there any way to fix this? or is there any was we can notify Apple of this bug, as its quite annoying not knowing how much free space I have left
thanks guys!
N

don't think ill be switching OS in a hurry!
I meant rather using a reliable version of OS X.. eg your profile version.. Mountain Lion.. works pretty well for me!!
Not as good as Snow Leopard but OK..
I would do a CC to the time capsule, but I've read somewhere thats its not totally recommended to copy any other files to the TC data disc if you're running a time machine as well. Do you have any thoughts on this?
You can do CCC to a sparsebundle.. that is identical to the way Time Machine works..
In fact using sparsebundle on a network disk is the recommended method for CCC.. and it can co-exist very happily with TM..
The reference to not mixing data and TM backups is more to do with placing files directly on the data partition of the TC.. And is still good advice.. although there are workarounds.
I would however do at least one CCC backup to a USB drive plugged into your computer.. called a bootable clone. You do not need to do this on a regular basis.. but even just having one proper bootable clone.. alongside the network backups will allow you to restore your computer to operational status in about 2 min.. the time it takes to boot the bootable clone.
Macs are difficult to get to boot over network.. that is why it needs to be a local disk.

I have logic pro has filled my computer. When i move it to Time Machine / the startup disc says it is still to full to use App

I am trying to move all files to time machine .
After i move them my start up disc says it is still full and can't use app. Also I noticed Logic App is making a copy od tracks on another part of computer. Is this why memory is full? Can i save these large files straight to the back up and still use them?

You need a non-time machine hd to move files off of your main drive.

Time Machine thinks back up is 3X the size of my HD.

I am trying to back up my MacBook Pro to my NAS with Time Machine. I have had this exact same set up working before, but I recently had a disc failure and am having to reset up my backups (long story). But I keep getting told the back up drive is not large enough.
My MacBook Pro has a 500GB drive in it with only 380GB used. And TIme Machine recognizes my NAS has the right amount of storage available at 780GB. But it says that my 1.03TB backup is too large for my available 780GB.
Any and all help is appreciated.
Exact Message:
"This backup is too large for the back up disk. The backup requires 1.03TB but only 771.01GB are available."

This article solves the problem. . . http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330105-263.html

I have reinstalled my OS without time machine (using the disc). I want to restore some pictures in the iPhotos which are already in the time machine i was using previously. How can I restore iPhoto from previous time machine?

My mac book was incredibly slow. When I went to Mac store, they asked me to reinstall the OS with CD and not with the time machine. I reinstalled the operating system. But when I opened the applications, all those started as fresh applications as usual. I have the backup of all other data in another hard disc. But unfortunately, I forgot to copy the photos before reinstallation. I have those photos in my time machine back up. But when I opened time machine, it started like a fresh (very new) time machine and it started backing up my present OS (the reinstalled one). I cannot open the previous time machine, which is in the same hard drive. I wish to open the previous time machine to get the photos which are backed up previuosly. When opened the time machine disc (manually by clicking the icon), i can see all the thigs which I had previously in my macbook. But unfortunately, i cannot access those through time machine! Can anybody help me please?

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Time machine thinks my disc is larger than it is

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