Time machine troubles

right now i am using a 160 gig external HD to back up my mac with time machine....
i have about 120 gigs of stuff on my mac...
i want to back up my computer every few weeks.....time machine keeps telling me there is not enough room....how do i make time machine only keep one back up? or just back up what has changed?????
help

TM does only backup what has changed. However, with 120 GBs of data to backup you don't have much free space on the backup drive for incremental backups if you have a lot of files changing hourly or daily. TM does not overwrite changed files with each hourly backup. You might help things along by adding items to the Exclude list that you don't need to include in the backup such as the System and Library folders. If you use Parallels or VM Fusion you should exclude their pseudo-drives. Otherwise you need a larger backup drive. Given the archival nature of TM backups you should start with a drive at least twice as large as your startup drive.
You can change the frequency of TM backups by downloading a freeware utility called TimeMachineScheduler from VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Otherwise, take Mort's advice.

Similar Messages

HT201250 Time Machine trouble

I'm having trouble with time machine backups on lion. I set up one of my external drives as my backup in snow leopard weeks ago, it was working fine, now in lion it shows in the preferences that the external I was using for tm is on the exclude from backups list and my backup is not on my computer, as a matter of fact when I look in the backups folder the only backup TM is today's. Does anyone know what the problem is?

photokit wrote:
Thanks Pondini, Its all very confusing. My imac drive has about 1TB of data, my time machine drive BFBUD is a 2tb external, and the other items on that drive add up to 1.7tb
That means there's only 300 GB available for backups? No wonder there isn't room to back up your 1 TB internal HD!
Time Machine needs considerably more space than the data it's backing-up, to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #1.
And, it's not a good idea to keep other data in the same partition as your backups. See #3 in the FAQ.
I'm trying to exclude some of the 1.83TB from the time machine bu drive from backup...
The Time Machine drive is already excluded (automatically).
One more issue, I connected my Iomega TM backup drive from my other computer to move some files and I think time machine thought it was looking at the backup drive. I cannot select either BFBUD (big friggin back up drive) or Documents drive from the exclusion list.
Again, it's already on the exclusion list. And since it's listed in gray, that means it's not formatted for a Mac and Time Machine cannot back it up, so you can't remove it.
Sounds like you need a 2 TB drive to dedicate to your backups.

Time Machine -- trouble restoring a file

I need to restore a Quicken data file (GorfFinances.qdfm) that was saved by Time Machine to my backup drive about a month ago.
Whenever I try it, a window pops up with this message: "The operation can't be completed because you don't have permissions to access "GorfFinances.qdfm."
Yet, when I check permissions on the backup file from within Time Machine and compare that with permissions of the current file as checked in the normal Finder window, they are exactly the same -- as follows:
     Name                              Privilege
     Gorf (Me)                         Read & Write
     wheel                              Read & Write
     everyone                         Read & Write
Why am I getting that message and how can I fix the problem?
Thanks,
Gorf

I just had this problem with testing restoring a Quicken file from Time Machine. (I'm on OS 10.6.8 with Quicken Essentials 1.7.4.) Although I found lots of advice online about changing file permissions in different places, the less-extreme methods didn't work for me. Then I found a comment about restoring the directory/folder that contains the Quicken file rather than just the fil, and that worked like a charm. I test restored the entire Documents folder to my Desktop, and all 3,000+ files restored successfully with no complaint about insufficient permissions for any of the files, including the Quicken file.
I've since moved my Quicken file into a subfolder so that, if I ever need to restore the Quicken file for real, restoring that subfolder will take much less time than it took to restore the entire Documents.

New hard drive-Time machine trouble

I exchanged my hard drive from a 160GB to a 500GB recently. All went well with the installation of the old programs and transferring all my old files back from my time machine.
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thank you
Sophie

Soffan73 wrote:
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
Eeek! A week? If you make many changes, you really should back up more often.
Are you getting a message? If so, what?
Try just re-selecting the drive via Time Machine Preferences. If that doesn't work, do a "full reset" of TM per #A4 in [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).
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Good plan!
You may lose some, or many, old backups anyway, though; the new drive will be backed-up in full, so if there isn't room for that, TM will delete old backups trying to make room. If your TM drive isn't at least 2.2 times the size of the data on your system, TM will probably delete all but the last backup, then fail for lack of space. If that's the situation, consider getting a larger external HD for your backups.

Time Machine trouble, tried everything !

Hi,
I have a Mac OSc Version 10.7.5, with 2.5 Ghz Intel Core i5, with a hard drive that is 500 GB, i"ve used 180.73 and have 318.52 free space. I'm trying to do a backup using Time Machine using a 3TB, Seagate Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0. I keep getting the following error message, and neither Seagate nor Apple Tech Support can figure it out.
Can anyone help ?

Sorry about that.
Not your fault. The screenshot is showing now. The forum software is quite unreliable lately.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Post the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

Time machine trouble

Dear Apple,
wenn i started time machine on the mainscreen i see a big black square that hides the rest of the time machine window.
I can "solve" this by placing the the window from the mainscreen to the second screen and then start time machine.
Now i can travel in time but can't open any file.
Can you give me some help?

daniel kitson wrote:
Hello There,
I got an error message saying that my backup had been verified by time machine and that i needed to make a new back up, i did a tiny bit of research, it said this could take hourr, so i thought i would deal with it later.
That must be the message in #C13 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) for details.
The other is the most recent one, last opened november first 2010. Migration assistant seemingly cant see the more recent one, whereas, its there in finder.
in the "Get info" tab for this parsebundle the checkbox for locked, is marked. and when i unmark it, it marks itself again.
Yes, Time Machine has marked the sparse bundle as damaged.
Since it's damaged, you may or may not be able to recover anything; what you can recover may or may not be corrupted.
Via the finder, right-click on the sparse bundle and select +Show Package Contents.+ Do a +Get Info+ on the Token file; that's what's locked. You may be able to unlock it from that panel; if so then +Migration Assistant+ might recognize it and at least attempt to transfer your data from it.
If it does get started, but fails partway through, don't give up (and don't delete anything). Try to figure out what it was able to transfer, and post back with the results. Then we can figure out how to get some of the rest back.
Good luck, and keep us posted.

Time Machine making Daily backups of Entire Itunes Library

Hi There,
I have searched around the forums and cannot find an answer to my problem.
I am using time machine over a 1TB time capsule, my laptop is the only computer that is backing up to the drive,
Originally I noticed that my time machine backups were taking a long time (over 7 hours while connected through Ethernet)
I have downloaded BackupLoupe and using this utility I have found that daily backups of my entire Itunes music Library are being made (122GB).
Does anyone have any idea what may be causing this issue? I have followed the Time machine trouble shooting guide and Completely wiped the drive and started again,
I have performed a disk and permission repair on both the time capsule drive and on the Macbook through the install DVD, however each time I initiate time machine on the freshly reconditioned drives it happens again.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I am going slowly insane.
Cheers
Josh

bigjnz wrote:
I have downloaded BackupLoupe and using this utility I have found that daily backups of my entire Itunes music Library are being made (122GB).
Is it only the iTunes folder; and the entire contents?
If so, the iTunes folder itself may be damaged. That happens occasionally; something in a folder object gets corrupted, and Time Machine either doesn't find real changes, or thinks everything changed.
In those cases, the only solution we've been able to find is to rename the folder, create a new one, move the contents, and delete the old one. The first backup afterwards will back up everything, but thereafter it should be ok.

Time Machine - suddenly back up's fail...

Hello,
I have been using an external hard drive as my time machine for years, then suddenly the back ups started to fail.
So I went in to Time Machine settings and found that the reported size of the next back up was greater than space that existed on the drive, then I noticed something odd, my Imac has an internal HD of 250GB of which 94GB is used.
However the next back up had a reported size of 490GB!
All my external drives (one for iTunes, one for video content) are excluded, and yet the estimated size of the back up is 490GB from a 250GB drive...
So, I erased the drive, so now it's empty and ready to take a back up, but with such a huge estimated size it will not fit...
Any ideas why suddenly Time Machine thinks there is 490GB to back up from a 250 GB system drive with only 94GB used?

Gilesm,
I'm going to refer you to the Time Machine FAQ's and Time Machine Trouble Shooting areas. Because TM is part of OS X that is where you will find the correct forums. How you get there is click Discussions in the upper left of this screen, choose the version of OS X you are using (I believe you are on 10.5.x Leopard) and you should see the Time Machine forum area.
Roger

Manually tell new mac to use previous Time Machine backup

Hi There,
We have a Mac Mini server which we use as a Time Machine backup disk - and we have a new Macbook which I migrated from the previous one using Migration Assistent.
But after configuring Time Machine to use the server's backup drive, I didn't see or missed the options to "Use previous disk" or "Inherit backup history".
Is there a way to manually tell Time Machine to use the previous backuop - the Macbook was migrated so has the same username and files.
Any help would be much appreacited.
Cheers
Ben

The page had a lot of other stuff on it so here's what I did to inherit a backup:
Info from: http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html
Get ready:
Turn off Time Machine in: >System Preferences >Time Machine
Mount the Time Machine Backup Drive
If a network or Time Capsule, mount the network drive share
Open Terminal: /Utilities/Terminal.app
Paste the following (ignore $) but don’t hit enter
$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup
Make sure there’s a space after “inheritbackup “
If inheriting from a hard drive:
Open the drive and open /Backups.backupdb
Find the folder name of the backup you want to inherit
Drag the folder into terminal after “inheritbackup “ so the path looks like this:
$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Backups\Backups.backupdb/Computer\ Name
If inheriting from a Time Capsule or network drive:
Mount the drive
Find the .sparsebundle name of the backup you want to inherit
Drag the .sparsebundle into terminal after “inheritbackup “ like this:
$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Client\ Backups-1/Computer\ Name
Inherit the backups:
Ensure there's a space between "inheritbackup" and the path to your backup and hit enter
Enter your machine’s admin password
When finished you should see:
Claiming disk image for machine...
Ejecting disk image...
$
Quit Terminal
Turn on Time Machine in: >System Preferences >Time Machine
Trouble shooting:
If you see the following error: “Failed to attach disk image. (error 35)”
Then Time Machine wasn’t off or hadn’t shut down before you ran the command

Cannot restore some files/folders from Time Machine Backup

When I try and restore files or folders from my Pictures folder, which is a sub folder of my user I get the message "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access xxxx". As far as I can tell this has only just started to happen because I've recovered stuff from the folder since I bought the machine in July. Yesterday I deleted an old Time Machine backup folder from the Time Machine disc. This caused empty trash to go berserk - the "files to delete" count went negative and I had to stop/restart the empty trash command about 20 times before it sorted itself out. Maybe this has screwed some permissions somewhere? I have run disc utility and repaied permissions on my hard drive and verified the TM drive. Still no joy. The permissions for Pictures look OK. Anyone any ideas?

Yesterday I deleted an old Time Machine backup folder from the Time Machine disc. This caused empty trash to go berserk - the "files to delete" count went negative
Probably you corrupted your Time Machine Backup by manually deleting older backups- that is dangerous.
See Pondni's advice on how to fix it - Time Machine trouble Shooting
I hope that helps
Léonie

Time machine & Logic

Time machine sees old Logic files but only restores the graphic, not the actual midi and other information. Is there something I should know?

Hm, it should backup the entire most recent project?
I personally don't use Time Machine for Logic anymore. It's easier if I just manually move my Logic folder to my external drive every now and then. I've had some Time Machine trouble there too (for all my other apps and files it works perfectly fine).

Trouble with restoring an iPhoto library from a time machine backup.

I'm having trouble restoring my iPhoto library from a time machine backup.
I have created a new library in my pictures file.
When I try to restore the library the restore process is trying to copy it to an external drive that no longer exists - it failed and I had to have it recovered and all the recovery (including backups) data is now on a different external hard drive.
iPhoto had been using that old external drive location to start. iPhoto is now pointed to the newly created iPhoto library in my pictures file on my MacBook Air.
Is there a way to have the restoration process point to that new iPhoto library that is now empty and not to the old external drive?

You might try this with the restored library:
Starting over from scratch with new library
Start over with a new library and import the Originals (iPhoto 09 and earlier) or the Masters (iPhoto 11) folder from your original library as follows:
1. Open the library package like this.
2. Launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and, when asked, select the option to create a new library.
3. Drag the subfolders of the Originals (iPhoto 09 and earlier) or the Masters (iPhoto 11) folder from the open iPhoto Library package into the open iPhoto window a few at a time.
This will create a new library with the same Events (but not necessarily the same Event names) as the original library but will not keep the metadata, albums, books slideshows and other projects.
Note: your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.

Trouble with itunes and time machine

i am having trouble with my iphone and thought it may have been itunes, so i went into time machine and tried to replace my current version of itunes with the last one. Everything went fine until i got right to the end of replacing it. it said i didnt have the authorization to do that...or something along those lines... now i cant even open itunes, ill click on it and it just bounces once and thats it. can anyone help me!?

I haven't been able to back up to my FreeAgent external hard drive
The TM disk is your backup destination and I assume it is the Seagate FreeAgent disk. The source is your Mac.
Wireless. I have a Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive plugged in by USB to the mac.
You say it is connected via USB, yet your are saying backups are done wirelessly.
From Terminal, can you post the output of tmutil destinationinfo (remove any personal information as you see fit)?

Trouble Accessing Virtual Machine After Time Machine Migration

I am hoping that someone else has run up against this problem and is able to help.
I recently purchased a new iMac. I upgraded to 8 GB of ram specifically because I have VMware Fusion and want to use it on my new machine.
I chose to migrate my entire old iMac to the new machine using my Time Machine backup.
VMware appears to have migrated successfully. I do not have any trouble accessing the application, but when I try to resume my only virtual machine, which is for Windows XP I get the following message:
VMware Fusion cannont connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and to access all directories it used and rights to access all directories for temporary files.
How do I resolve this problem?
Thanks in advance to anyone who is able to offer me a clue on how to overcome this.
If I can't access this machine it appears as if I will be able to create a new one. I would like to avoid having to do that if it is possible.
Terri Schurter

Captfred,
In that folder there is a virtual machine. It is called Windows XP Professional. So it is there. When I am in VMware Fusion I can see Windows Media Player, which is what I was probably accessing the last time I was in the machine, so it does appear to have backed up the virtual machine. I would expect it to because it is a part of a Mac application, VMware Fusion.
It appears to be an issue with permissions that I don't know how to solve.
I know there is a VMware forum, but I can't even figure out how to sign up for it the darned thing is so confusing. I can't seem to post to it no matter what I do.
Terri

Trouble with Time Machine (runs constantly). Erase and install?

Trouble with Time Machine (runs constantly). Tried re-installation (equivalent of archive install) of Snow Leopard. Time Machine still unable to complete a back-up. Erase and install recommended at Genius Bar. Have backed up data to external HD using Super Duper. Should be a bootable backup. Last successful backup through Time Machine was 6/1/11. Not sure if I can access this back-up if I erase and re-install.
Computer shipped with Tiger (7/2007). Have original disks. Now running Snow Leopard. So: erase HD, install Tiger, then update to Snow Leopard? Start-up from Tiger disks does not appear to work (starting up holding "C" key). Suggestions? Want very much to transfer data to new iMac, but do not want to carry bugs forward. Very nervous about erasing HD. And have the questions above about reinstalling system software.
Advice desired! Thanks.

Well if you can hold option and boot off the Superdupes clone and it works fine then you should be set to do what you need to do to the original boot drive.
Disconnect all drives and c boot off the Snow Leopard install disk, use Disk Utility to Erase > format HFS+ journaled your internal boot drive.
Quit and reinstall OS X Snow Leopard, setup (do not use Setup/Migration Assitant!) and update to 10.6.8
When you setup the new install, use the same hard drive name and user name as you did before.
Now the free iLife that came on the Tiger disks you won't get naturally, but you can pick them off the disk with the shareware program called Pacifist.
install your programs from fresh sources, this way you don't get the "crap" from the older setup.
Once your machine is up and going. Hook up the clone and transfer your user folders over manually. With iTunes just replace the whole folder. Because you kept the same user and boot drive name as before, the playlists should be fine.
Once your all peachy, take the opportunity to clone this new setup to a external drive, label and disconnect.
Make another clone for day to day, or week to week clone updates and your just a hold option boot away for recovery.
You know Superdupes and Carbon Copy Cloner both have auto-scedualing/updating ability, so you can leave them plugged in and it will perform a update so your clone stays fresh and recent.
But you should keep a clone timed back about a couple of weeks back just in case you install something bad and don't learn about it right away.

Time machine troubles

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