Time Machine wants to back up everything again

Hi. I use Time Machine and my Time Machine drive currently has almost 300GB free (the drive is 500GB total). Time Machine has been working fine and its last backup session was last night.
However, today I noticed Time Machine was taking longer than usual (I could hear the external drive). I clicked on the Time Machine icon in my menubar and saw that it was "Cleaning Up Old Backups," which seemed strange to me because, as I said, I have almost 300GB free on my Time Machine drive. Time Machine continued to clean up old backups for over two hours.
I started writing this message as it was continuing to clean up old backups. But finally, it stopped. However, it then proceeded to start backing up the entire contents of my hard drive to the Time Machine drive — 220GB. I then clicked "Skip this Backup" to make it stop.
I don't know what happened — Time Machine worked fine last night and backed up incremental changes as usual — but now it wants to back up my entire drive.
In the Finder, I looked at the contents of the Time Machine drive and the drive appears fine; I see all the previous backups.
I just clicked on "Back Up Now" in the menubar to see if Time Machine still wants to back up my entire drive and it does.
I think the only thing I can do is erase my Time Machine drive and then let Time Machine back up my entire drive. If I let it back up my entire drive without erasing the Time Machine drive first then the drive will have very little empty space afterwards.
But does anyone know why Time Machine got confused and want to back up my entire drive instead of backing up incrementally?
Thanks!

The Pondini site is a wealth of information on how Time Machine works. If you check out the faq page I linked, and also his troubleshooting page, you will see that there are several reasons why Time Machine cleared the space. He also has instructions on how to do a "full reset" and how to safely delete files from Time Machine.
Have a nice day.

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Having the same problem. Initial Time Machine backup goes fine. After that, no new files are backed up. I've reformated the external/Time Machine drive twice now.
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Time machine doesn't back everything up anymore B-)

I have two computers, a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini, both running 10.5.8. Both have external firewire drives (a LaCie on the Macbook Pro and an Iomega on the Mac Mini) and in both cases Time Machine has stopped backing everything up - it does all the right things but the number of files backed up is small.
I'll ask separately at this point, as the fixes may be different for each one and it will get confusing (to me and everyone else!).
The MacBook Pro backs up to a LaCie 250Gb external firewire drive. It used to work happily (since 2008) until last month (approx), now when I connect it it backs up normally but quite often nothing in the /Users/ directories gets backed up. Maybe about the time I upgraded from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3.
Here's an example from this morning from the system log:
Mar 20 10:00:53 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Backup requested by user
Mar 20 10:00:53 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Starting standard backup
Mar 20 10:00:54 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb
Mar 20 10:01:11 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 102.9 MB requested (including padding), 8.36 GB available
Mar 20 10:01:43 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Copied 465 files (10.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 10:01:43 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 8.35 GB available
Mar 20 10:01:44 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Copied 62 files (93 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 10:01:46 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Starting post-backup thinning
Mar 20 10:01:48 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Deleted backup /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/falstaff/2010-03-13-113744: 8.35 GB now available
Mar 20 10:01:50 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Deleted backup /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/falstaff/2010-03-13-113622: 8.35 GB now available
Mar 20 10:01:51 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Deleted backup /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/falstaff/2010-03-13-113500: 8.35 GB now available
Mar 20 10:01:52 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Deleted backup /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/falstaff/2010-03-13-101432: 8.35 GB now available
Mar 20 10:01:52 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Post-back up thinning complete: 4 expired backups removed
Mar 20 10:01:52 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Backup completed successfully.
Mar 20 10:02:11 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[19205]: Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!
(the previous backup was 18th March at 20:30, since then I used the machine all day at work, reading mail, rss feeds etc).
But if I look at the backup using TimeTracker nothing got backed up in the /Users/ directories, especially in the "Pictures" directory where my Aperture 3 library and vaults live.
Interestingly, just now, I rebooted after installing the latest version of "little snitch" and when I re-attached the LaCie disk it backed up a lot more, but still not the Aperture Library and vaults.
Mar 20 12:07:18 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Backup requested due to disk attach
Mar 20 12:07:18 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Starting standard backup
Mar 20 12:07:20 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb
Mar 20 12:07:43 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 151.0 MB requested (including padding), 8.35 GB available
Mar 20 12:11:29 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Copied 3452 files (660.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 12:11:37 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 7.68 GB available
Mar 20 12:11:43 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Copied 588 files (14 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 12:11:46 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Starting post-backup thinning
Mar 20 12:11:46 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Mar 20 12:11:46 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[437]: Backup completed successfully.
It estimated 151Mb but actually backed up 660Mb!
If I look at TM restore, my Aperture Library hasn't been backed up since 1st March, even though I added some photos Thursday night.
I have just copied two jpeg files into the Pictures folder, that seems to have triggered it into
backing up 4.6Gb worth of Aperture Library, but not the Aperture Vault.
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Mar 20 12:26:09 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Starting standard backup
Mar 20 12:26:09 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb
Mar 20 12:26:16 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 7.68 GB available
Mar 20 12:31:08 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Copied 628 files (4.6 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 12:31:09 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 3.04 GB available
Mar 20 12:31:09 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Copied 498 files (54 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Mar 20 12:31:10 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Starting post-backup thinning
Mar 20 12:31:10 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Mar 20 12:31:10 dhcp102 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[494]: Backup completed successfully.
I have run disk verify and permissions verify on the startup disk, and disk verify on the LaCie disk, I have also tried a time machine reset (several times) and a spotlight re-index (several times). I have nothing excluded in TM or Spotlight.
Confused,
Dave

Hi. Sorry for the delay, work always gets in the way!
See #D5....
Already checked the exclude list, have also tried a full reset.
That said, I mentioned above that TM seemed to have started working again, it has continued to work since. I had done a verify on the disk(s) and not restarted afterwards, I wonder if the SL bug also applies to Leopard - it did seem to start working after the reboot.
I'll keep an eye on it and see if it happens again.

I want to schedule my back ups to my Western Digital Elements HDD so that it doesn't interfere with my Skype calls with clients. Operating system - version 10.7.4. The default for Time Machine is to back up every 1 hour. I'd like daily at 3am. Any ideas?

I want to schedule my back ups to my Western Digital Elements HDD so that it doesn't interfere with my Skype calls with clients. Operating system - version 10.7.4. The default for Time Machine is to back up every 1 hour. I'd like daily at 3am. Any ideas?

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Time machine/TC is backing up suddenly my entire disc again.

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OSX MT Lion, imac 27 in/3.4 ghz/32 gb
thanks so much!

Do you mean it is backing up the entire external drive on every backup? I would not be surprised if it did it once for the reorganisation.. but should not do it continually.
Are you doing the backup over wireless? That does tend to cause a level of corruption.
You should get some messages from TM why it is doing what it is doing.
Load the widget to get some log info from TM.
A1 here
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
There is also a few guides to fixing continual full backups or over large backups.

How do I redirect time machine to current back up?

I just sent my Powerbook to Applecare for a repair (screen, fans, and keyboard), and I just received it yesterday. The first thing I did was click time machine to go back into time to retrieve some files that I didn't want to be somehow (purposely or more likely accidentally) affected by Apple's repair. Only the problem is, there is nothing there. Can't go back in time. Then an error pops up telling me that my disk has 1.99 GB's left to use and it needs 77 to create a new back up. The issue here is the fact that my partition has 200 GB's to back up on, and the reason that I only have 1.99 is because everything is already currently backed up to the backup bundle already created and used before sending it to Applecare. How do I make Time Machine recognize the current back up again (which has been in use since October) so that I can actually access all the files and continue to back up? I know the files are there, and I know the .sparsebundle still exists (I'm looking at), so how do I make Time Machine recognize and utilize it like nothing has happened?

Thanks a lot for responding, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I did check the computer name and it is the same. There are no new backups since I've received my computer back from Applecare so I'm not afraid to loose and current saves, all the ones I want are in that bundle. Once I saw that it tried to create whole new back up (sparsebundle) and couldn't because it didn't have enough space, I turned time machine off to make sure nothing changes from what was previously set. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make Time Machine recognize all the backups again so that I can access the them and continue to back up on it.
I'm not sure if I wrote this in already, but thought I would to see if it helps. My external hard drive is set up with the backups on it. When I access the external hard drive in finder, it shows a file that says "Kagan Buck's Powerbook G4's backups.sparsebundle" (not exact, but you get the drift). And it's trying to create a new one of those. So my basic question how do I make Time Machine access the current bundle again to utilize it like it always used too.
Sorry again if I'm being repetitious, but I feel like that's the first time I've actually correctly described the issue.
Thanks a lot.

HT1175 Time Machine wants to start with a new, full backup instead of using the existing one

Hi, my Time Machine wants to start a new, full backup, instead of continuing with the existing one on the time Capsule.
Looking a the Troubleshooting guide, I've found the following piece of info, which is, as 99% of the times with the troubleshooting guides, totally useless to resolve my problem...
Message: Time Machine starts a new, full backup instead of a smaller incremental backup
There are three reasons why this may occur:
You performed a full restore.
Your Computer Name (in Sharing preferences) was changed--when this happens, Time Machine will perform a full backup on its next scheduled backup time.
If you have had a hardware repair recently, contact the Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store that performed your repair. In the meantime, you can still browse and recover previous backups by right-clicking or Control-clicking the Time Machine Dock icon, and choosing "Browse Other Time Machine disks" from the contextual menu.
It should be noted (hence the uselessness of the guide) that:
-I haven't performed ANY full restore
- I havent changed my computer name
- My computer has not had ANY repair, much less a hardware repair. Neither recently, nor in the 9 months I've owned it.
Which puts me back to square one, with the marginal improvement that now I have a way of browsing my old backups.
In the event I decide to start all over again, will there be a way for me to "sew" the two backup files?
Or will I always have to go the silly way around?
Anybody has any idea?
Thank you for your time (machine/capsule, your choice;-)

Hi John,
no, that doesn't have anything to do with my problem.
Just look at the image below.
Time Machine thinks that the disk I've always used to do my backups has none of them.
If I open the disk with Finder, obviously they are where they should be.
It is even possible to navigate them as per the instruction reported above, but even following Pondini's advice #s B5 and B6 (which are more applicable to my problem) didn't solve the problem.
Actually, not being a coder, I'm always scared of doing more damage than good when I have a Terminal window open.
My question is: how is it possible that Apple hasn't thought of some kind of user command to tell the idiotic Time Machine software that a hard disk backup is a hard disk backup, no matter what?
Estremely frustrating and annoying: I'm wasting HOURS in trying to find a solution to a problem that should not have arisen in the first place...
Have a nice weekend
Antonio

Time machine won't back up

I just got a new MacBook Air with Lion. On my old Mac, I thought I remembered that Time Machine would only backup files that have changed since the last time I backed up my drive. I used Time Machine to transfer my old desktop to my new Air. Today when I tried to use TIme Machine to back it up, it said I did not have enough space.
I'm not clear if it's trying to back up the whole drive or just things that have changed since the install (which is all I need).
What should I do to make more room for my current back up or to instruct Time Machine only to back up items that have changed since the last backup?
Thanks.

FWIW I had this sort of problem which generally #$%^& me off. I had a brainstorm and tried somebody's MBP and it worked just as expected. So I reinstalled Leopard after erasing and formating the drive and using time machine off my external LaCie.
That didn't work worth a #$%^&
So I once again, reformatted the drive and reinstalled leopard FROM THE DVD and then used time machine as part of the migration assistant, and everything worked perfectly, and I can now use TC with my Mac Pro octo.
So something MIGHT be hosed on your system, and if you feel that you have a solid back up, reinstall off the DVD and then migrate with time machine.
Hope this helps. I spent about 2 days getting this straightened out.

Time Machine - won't back two external drives

At least I cannot get it to do what I want. Our MacBook died. Not sure what's wrong but it does not appear to be the hard drive. Also, that drive has not been backed up in a few months.
The main drive is a 320 GB with 246 GB used.
The Backup USB drive is a 500 GB with 260 GB used. All 260 GB are the backup of the main drive.
I pulled the main drive out and put it into a USB enclosure and connected it to my MacBook Pro via USB.
The Backup is also connected to my MacBook Pro via USB.
I've disconnected the MBP's backup drive and put the MBP's main drive into the "Do Not Backup" list in Time Machine's preferences.
I then set TM's Preferences to backup the external 320 to the external 500. I then get an error message saying there isn't enough room.
I think this means the Time Machine wants to start this as a new backup instead of an incremental backup.
I would like TM to only copy the items that have changed or been added since the last backup. However, it appears TM does not recognize this backup as being from the MacBook's drive.
Can Time Machine do what I want it to do? If not and I must keep two backups on the backup drive, which folders should I trash?

I don't see anything you have done wrong.. perhaps it does backup in a different way.
Load the widget.. A1 here... http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
That will allow you to track the log of TM to see what it is doing.
I would also try rebooting the computer.. exclude the drive again.. reboot.. and remove the exclusion.
You should be able to check the actual settings of TM in plist file.
And you can do a full reset of TM as well.. See A4. Check what is in the file. Pondini lists the location for you.
Nothing surprises me with Mountain Lion ...!!

Time Machine - The First Back-Up

I have a 300 GB Maxtor OneTouch II, and I am attempting to use Time Machine with this external drive.
So, Time Machine begins to back up to the drive at a rather quick pace until the download window disappeared at 13.16 GB out of 60 GB. I believed that this was just part of the quoted long process. So, I waited the needed hour, and the download window popped up again. Over the course of the next hour, Time Machine backed up 10 KB of data. That's right: 10 KB.
Has anyone else had the same problem. I have tried reformatting my hard drive, erasing my hard drive, checking and repairing permissions, and excluding certain files to insure a certain piece of data was not causing the issue, but the same thing happens, much to my chagrin. Furthermore, no error message pops up. I have tried backing up the files with both USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 (I believe).
Has anyone had a similar issue, and if not, does anyone have any ideas to fix the problem?
Should I just wait for an update to Time Machine and Mac OS X?
EDIT: Are you guys just calculating your speed by eye?
Message was edited by: Gilbere

I know this does not really help, but I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard and had all sorts of weird and wonderful problems with time machine doing the exact same thing as you.
As I could not be bothered trying to fix it all, I manually backed up my home drive and apps folder and re-installed Leopard using the customize option and deleting the contents of my drive.
I copied everything back, ran time machine and low and behold it is working sweet.
Obviously this is not a fix but I am a happy camper now!

Time Machine - data to back up keeps on increasing as it's backing up!

Apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but I couldn't find anything on it when I searched.
I want to install Mavericks on my iMac, currently running 10.8.5, but before I do so, I want to do an up-to-date Time Machine backup.
I already had Time Machine set to back up to an external 1TB drive, but after several versions of backups over the past few months, and also me adding and creating several GBs of new data on my iMac, Time Machine ran out of space to do any more backups to the external HD.
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So then I leave my Mac to get on with it, as it estimates it's going to take several hours.
After the estimated time has passed, I come back to see if it's done, but to my surprise, the progress bar is now reading something along the lines of 850GB of 900GB. Where did the extra 50GB come from to take it up to 900GB?
Worse still, as I sit and watch it continue, it progresses along the lines of 860GB of 920G (60GB remaining), then 870GB of 940GB (now 70GB remaining), then 880GB of 960GB (now 80GB remaining) and so on.
So not only is the total amount increasing for some bizarre reason, but it's also increasing faster than it's backing up!
What on earth is going on here?!
It may be worth mentioning that I originally tried doing this with approx 900GB of data to back up to the external 1TB disk, and a similar thing happened, but when I came back to check on that a couple of hours after it was due to complete, I came back to see an error message stating that Time Machine could not do the backup because it needed an additional 100mb of space. Just 100mb, that's all.
After that error, I removed approx 50GB, way more than 100mb, and got my data down to 850GB before starting this again. But the same thing is happening. The total amount just keeps on increasing and increasing and increasing as it progresses!
It's worth noting that I am not doing ANYTHING else on my Mac whilst this is running that would take up data / disk space. No apps are running at all.
Can anyone please tell me what's going on here, and more importantly, how can I fix it?
Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions.
I am aware that you can turn Time Machine on and off completely via the preferences, but that basically defeats the purpose of having a "set and forget" backup. Especially since Time Machine specifically includes an option to not backup when on battery power.
I'll try the "full reset" option described in the link to see if that helps.

IMac freezes while Time Machine updates the back up. What to do?

Ever since I upgraded to Lion my iMac freezes or nearly freezes for 5 - 10 minutes every hour while Time Machine updates the back up. What to do?
I have tried everything I can think of but its only improved from total freeze while Time Machine backs up to freeze with an occasional few seconds of activity.
I am really fed up with this.

When I first updated to Lion everything was a mess with freezes happenng constantly like every two or three minutes. Then when looking at the app store I noticed in purchased items that Lion was showing install instead of installed so I downloaded and installed again.
After this install every time Time Machine updated a backup my iMac froze for about 5 or 10 minutes while the backing up was in progress. I was getting really fed up and started this thread. Then one morning I got up and the iMac would not start up. It just sat there with the progress thingy spinning. I started in T mode to look at it from my MacBookPro and two copies of the HD appeared. Both showing zero files. I ran Disk utility on the MacBookPro to try to fix the disk. It showed 8 copies of the disk and all not reparable.
I then created a startup USB drive using my MacBookPro, used it to start up the iMac and restored everything from the previous day's backup. Since then it has been running smoothly with no freezes so maybe the answer is simply to restore a recent backup.
I am using Imation external drives and I don't believe the problem is drive specific.

Time machine does not back up iPhoto in mountain lion ?

My Time Machine does not back up my iPhoto library. When I open Time Machine I get Desktop display going back to installation date.
All other applications respond correctly including Mail, Contacts, etc. My Seagate drive is not involved in the present programme of repair I have been told by Apple. Any ideas?

I'm now fixed and done (update to latest software and learn how to use it)
Thanks again Ivan for the article, it alerted me to otherwise incomprehensible changes in iPhoto/Time Machine operation such as in my case would transfer 3.8GB of data to restore a single photo, while apparently loosing all photos added after that backup time.
However the article says:
When using iPhoto ’11 (version 9.2 or later) and Time Machine with OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later), iPhoto no longer has the Browse Backups option. This means that instead of restoring specific photos within your iPhoto Library, you must restore your entire iPhoto Library.
This may be practically true but it is technically false.
To restore a single photo in iPhoto '11 with Time Machine it goes something like this:
Start with your Time Machine hard drive and navigate many steps (including showing package contents where necessary) all the way through to the photo/date you want. Drag it to your desktop. (Do not make any edits in Time Machine!) Import to iPhoto. Click on last import in iPhoto. Right click the photo and change the event name, then look for it at the right date in iphoto with the new event name.
Hopefully those with more time and patience can check this out and see what it can do. I had to do it twice with Apple suport senior tech to get it. What a pain compared to iPhoto' 09 but at least now I can restore iPhoto library or a photo if necessary.
David

Time Machine did not back up one of the user accounts

Hi All,
I just notice that time machine stops backing up one of my user accounts. So I created a new admin account to test it and that new account was backed up. I did turn on File Vault. I am using Lion 10.7.3. Thanks for any advice!!!

FanApple wrote:
Hi Pondini,
Thank you for your reply. I am not transfering from SL to Lion.
So you have File Vault 2 turned on, not File Vault1, correct?
Time Machine no longer back up one of my accounts. Time machine used to back up that account but not any more.
That sounds like either it's been excluded, or the preferences file (where the exclusions and other things are kept) is corrupted. Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I think I changed on/off local snapshot for time machine back up by running sudo tmutil disablelocal/enablelocal l don't think that would effect my time machine behavior.
No, that won't change what is or isn't backed-up.
So l launch Migration Assistant and Migration Assistant dosen't recognize my external TM backup. It shows my hard drive and a network drive (Time Capsule).
That display is misleading: if it shows a yellow or green icon and the name of your Mac and HD, instead of the name of the drive the backup are on, those are your backups.
If not, the backups may be damaged. Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Or, if you excluded System files and Applications from backups, they won't show up there at all.
Now I am thinking of deleting my account and creating it again and try to back up with time machine and see whether it would work or not and roll back my TM backup .
Don't do that. You risk losing everything that way!

Time Machine wants to back up everything again

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