Time machine too big : wants 1000 gb to back up my 500 gig drive

I have tried to find this on the forums. but I am SOL.
I use the internal 500 gig drive on my iMac, most current OS for all my work. We have two user accounts. I bought an external LaCie 500 gig drive to use as my time machine backup drive.
It wants 1,019 GB to make an initial backup, and only 465 is available. On my internal drive, I only have 191 gig used, with 273 available.
What is going on?
Also, does Time machine automatically back up both users or do I have to go to the other account and set it up as well?
We have a hurricane coming here in a few days and I would like to have this backup working....

HI!
Thank you for that thought. I have a second external HD which is not attached, it just contains my backups from OS 10.4 (I know I am a slow adopter, but I really hate fixing bugs like the one I am in now). So, that can not be the reason.
Still a mystery as to why it wants more than a TB of space. I do not think there is a drive that big on the market!

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