Timew Machine - Backup Too Large

One of my computers has stopped backing up to Time Capsule, so I deleted the backup sparse file on Time Capsule, and attempted to initiate the Time Machine backup process all over again. Although I have 440gb of free space available, and the Mac is only 110gb, I get a Time Machine error saying the backup is too large for the backup volume. In fact, it says the backup requires 669.5gb !! Any ideas?

If you do not have other data on the disk, I would recommend you reformat the hard disk in the Time Capsule again.
Go to Airport Utility --> Manual Setup --> Disks --> Highlight "Time Capsule Disk" on the left --> Click "Erase" on the right.
Rename the disk and select the level secure erasure. You're done and ready to begin backing up again.
It may be that while you are convinced you deleted files, Time Machine hasn't registered the free space and still thinks there is data on the disk.
Let us know if this helps.

Similar Messages

Time Machine backup too large for backup disk

My Mac hard drive is 750GB (25GB free).
My LaCie external dedicated backup hard drive is 1TB (342GB free).
I am now getting the error "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup" "This backup is too large for the backup disk"
I thought once my initial backup of 750GB happened, it would be incremental backups from then on (with old changes betting deleted as space was needed for new changes).
Is this not the case? Do I need a much larger backup drive or something?
Thanks much for any help.

It's true but Time Machine has also to make complete backups again in case you want to restore your Mac with a more recent Time Machine backup.
Clearly the external drive you have doesn't have enough storage to back up your Mac. As you have about 725 GB of used space, I recommend you to get at least a 3 or 4 TB external drive to make backups, and even with this, don't think you will have more than four backups. Another thing you can do is to remove folders from the backup in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options

Time machine backup too large

i had a weird quirky thing happen to my computer. It crashed and when I restarted, all my login items and programs were asking me for my licenses and registration nos. as if i had just installed them. Plus all their settings went back to default. Recovering all my registration information would have taken an act of god, as my appshelf data was corrupted too. After many different recovery attempts, I scrapped it all, did one final Time Machine backup, and restored my computer from a date I knew was working (about 3 weeks earlier), using the system disk. My Time Machie backups went back nearly a year. When I was up and running, I then went in to Time Macine and brought over piecemeal new files that had been added since three weeks ago.
A couple days later, I attempted to get something from an old Time Machine backup, but now the bakups did not extend back as far, but they only went to the date I restored from 3 weeks earlier. I thought that was weird, but continued on. Later, it was only going back a couple days. Having a "working system" I thought nothing of it..but now it is telling me July 25 is the oldet backup, taking up 230.84 GB of 499.76, and any successive backup fails. Instead of incrementally backing up, Time Machie is now attemptng to do a full bnackup, requiring 250 GB, but only 230 are available. Does asnyone know it's not just backing up the changes, but attempting to backup the whole thing??

Sometimes, this error is legitimate. The user may not realize that they need to exclude additional hard disks that TM may be seeing. This is done in the “Options…” window of the Time Machine Preferences.
Nevertheless, many times this error just doesn’t make sense, stating that not enough free space exists for a backup that is clearly smaller. (“The backup requires 45.9 GB but only 182.6 GB are available”)
The answer and fix may have been discovered by a poster in the macosxhints forums: (http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-84284.html)
Essentially, while Time Machine DOES delete old backups from the sparsebundle, it DOES NOT free up the space occupied by those old backups. Eventually, "all previous backups were deleted and no space was gained. . . . What appears to be going on here is that the sparsebundle isn't self-shrinking - unused bands aren't being automagically discarded."
The solution is to compact the TM backup sparsebundle in Terminal using:
hdiutil compact yoursparsebundlefilename.
He concludes, "I gained 30+gb of space on the backup volume by compacting that sparsebundle. And now TM runs just fine, since it has plenty of space."
Obviously, this is a bug in TM. It does not appear to effect everyone, and only seems to appear under certain curcumstances.
Let us know if this works for you.

Backup too large for the backup volume??

Hi,
My disk is 30Go of windows and 120Go of Mac. Only 115Go are used. My backup volume is 185Go.
But Time machine tells me, *on the first backup*, that it needs 330Go for backup??? What the f**?
All my external disks are excluded, and it does say the size of the included files is 115Go. How come time machine needs *three times* the space of the original data??

When my Time Machine disk had only 50GB left, I got the message that it couldn't back up because it required 118GB to do so. Because there was, for some reason, only one day backed up, I deleted the backup files to start fresh. Now I am getting the message:
"This backup too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 1056.6 GB but only 929.4 GB are available."
Well, the backup only require 118GB a little while ago, and the initial full backup that I deleted was 880 GB. Nothing has been added to the startup disk, and a 400GB disk has been excluded to try to make this work, so this message can't be right.
How do I make this work? I did not interrupt or abort another backup, and I've already reformatted the drive, with the same result. Do I have to keep reinstalling Time Machine every time I want to backup?

Backup too large for volume

I have 2 macbook pro's (120GB & 160GB) backing up to a 500GB TM.
both were backing up just fine, however in the past month the 160GB
macbook pro keeps getting this message.....
"backup too large for volume?"
and subsequently the backup fails?
the size of the backup is less than the free space on the TM drive...
any help?

dave,
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Open the Time Machine Prefs on the Mac in question. How much space does it report you have "Available"? When a backup is initiated how much space does it report you need?
Now, consider the following, it might give you some ideas:
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” [http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412]
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file for file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it looks for EVENTS (fseventsd) that take place involving your files and folders. Moving/copying/deleting/saving files and folders creates events that Time Machine looks for. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
If none of the above seem to apply to your case, then you may need to attempt to compress the disk image in question. We'll consider that if the above fails to explain your circumstance.
Cheers!

Time Machine Error - backup too large

I haven't backup my Macbook Pro for more than 10 days. I was out of town for a week and then had to turn it in for repair to replace the faulty nvidia GPU (lost all display - see http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/10/some-macbook-pros-affected-by-nvidia-gpu-fai lures/).
So I just picked it up from the repair facility and tried to backup and got this message:
"+This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 174.0 GB but only 106.3 GB are available.+
+To select a larger volume, or make the backup smaller by excluding files, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine.+"
My computer's hard drive is 200GB and my Time Machine is 500GB. Why doesn't it just do it's job and delete old backups to make space for the new backups? Does it no longer recognize that I have previously backed up my computer? I don't want to delete the sparsebundle and start all over.
Mark

billsharar wrote:
I also have this problem after selecting the option to restore a new computer from a backup.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Do you mean you got a new Mac and restored the backups from an old one? If so, exactly how did you do that? If not, what do you mean?
I assumed I could continue using the backup with Time Machine on the new computer, but this does not work.
On Snow Leopard, you should get an option to make a new backup or "re-use" the old ones.
It tries to backup to a new name on the same volume.
Did you select the same volume in TM Preferences > Select Disk?
Has anyone successfully resolved this issue?
Yes, probably, but it varies depending on exactly what the situation is, and whether you're now on Leopard (per your profile) or Snow Leopard. So please clarify.
Have no Apple engineers helped?
This is a user-to-user forum. Apple does not monitor it for technical issues.

HT201250 Backup too large & time machine not backed up for over a year.

Today I got this message:
This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 188.89 GB but only 73.07 GB are available.
Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk, in addition to the space required to store backups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files.
Then when I go to preferences it said
73.1 GB of 320 GB available
Oldest backup July 10, 2011
Latest backup July 10, 2011
Next back up Today at 7:25pm
I was under the impression I had been backing up everyday and today was the first day I go the warning the backup was too large. Why is it that I have not had a back up for over a year? That worries me. I had a HD crash just over a year ago and the time machine saved my life. I thought everything was back to normal once I had my new HD installed, but wondering if that was the last back up it ever did for some reason.
Any suggestions? I am going out to get a new external HD of 1TB and hoping all will start backing up again.

Hi, what Mac Utilities is this you ran?
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

Time machine backup too big for empty disk??

So I restart my MacBook Pro a few minutes after completing a full Time Machine backup. When it restarts it goes through the grey startup screen, then gets stuck on the blue screen just before the desktop normally appears. This happens whenever I startup. I am still able to hit the power button and get the Restart/Shut Down dialog, so I restart using my Snow Leopard boot disk, run Disk Utility, repair permissions, and repair disk, but the problem still remains. I decide to Restore from Time Machine Backup, so I erase my disk (80 GB, had only 200 MB free), go to the Restore screen and connect my backup disk. Now the weird part -- it says my latest backup is too big for the disk, even though i just erased everything, and 74.2 GB show as free. All my previous backups seem to fit fine, but apparently the last time Time Machine backed up more from my disk than can fit on my disk! It seems having a hard disk close to full is enough to render a backup effectively useless. Guess I'll have to restore from a previous backup, then manually copy the newer files. Just wanted to alert others to this insane problem, so it doesn't happen to them.

dgordon412 wrote:
(80 GB, had only 200 MB free)
That's likely corrupted your system. You should have a minimum of 10% - 15% free at all times. That's almost certainly why it wouldn't restart.
even though i just erased everything, and 74.2 GB show as free.
There must be something else on the drive; if you erase it, it should have just under 80 GB free. Is there another partition?
Did you erase with a Leopard Install disc or a Snow Leopard disc? If you used a Leopard disc, that might explain showing only 74.2 GB free (it counts differently).
If so, use your +Snow Leopard+ install disc to do a complete reformat, and try to restore the backup. A Leopard disc cannot restore a Snow Leopard backup. Even the Snow Leopard disc may not work, as it's just too full and/or your system was damaged by getting too full.
All my previous backups seem to fit fine, but apparently the last time Time Machine backed up more from my disk than can fit on my disk! It seems having a hard disk close to full is enough to render a backup effectively useless.
Having an OSX drive that full will make your Mac extremely sluggish, cause data corruption and/or loss, apps to crash, etc.
Guess I'll have to restore from a previous backup, then manually copy the newer files. Just wanted to alert others to this insane problem, so it doesn't happen to them.
If you can get your Mac running, you need to make several GBs of space immediately.
If all else fails, reformat the internal HD and install OSX from your Snow Leopard Install disc, then use +Setup Assistant+ after the Welcome video to transfer +*most, but not all+* of your stuff from the backup. Omit the contents of one or more large sub-folders in a home folder (such as Photos, Music, or Movies).
See #19 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for details.

Error: Backup too large, but I have more than it needs

Today I started getting a funny Time Machine Error:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 4.3 GB but only 4.6 GB are available."
Yes, you read that right. It requires less than is available and still fails with this error. What's going on?
More to the point, how do I fix this short of excluding items to backup? I thought TM would start dumping the old backup items to make room for the new. This obviously isn't happening.

Exactly. I captured two of the screens with that type of error message. Here's a link to one of them.
http://www.dt-concepts.com/images/error3.png
Also, why doesn't the system just remove the oldest backup? I thought that was supposed to happen automatically.
Randy

"Backup too large"...but i still have room on HD!

So I have a 300 GB external HD, and this issue keeps on popping up. Its the 3rd time its happened now. Both previous times, I have just started over, reformatted external drive and started Time Machine from scratch again. I'm real tired of doing that.
So heres the problem: After a while of normal updates, (usually a few weeks or so) at some point I encounter a Time Machine error message stating: "This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 91.0 GB but only 60.1 GB are available." ( well obviously that last part changes. But thats specifically what it says right now).
OK, so isn't TM supposed to do incremental backups and then when it runs out of space, start deleting the oldest information? Thats my understanding. So in other words, maybe i start losing backups from a month ago or so, but I should still have recent backups. However, when I go into TM, it has not been backup up since I first got that message. The earliest I can go back to is July 20th in Time machine (even though I should be able to access July 21-Today,August 2). Although its true that i only have 60GB left on my external HD, why is TM trying to do a 91GB backup? I have not added 91GB of stuff lately.
My iMac HD is 297GB, so even if that was totally full, since my external is 298GB, i technically should NEVER get a message that my backup is too big. I guess worst scenario, is that my backup only goes back a day or two, when my Imac hard drive is maxed out.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Darren

DauthiSlayer wrote:
So heres the problem: After a while of normal updates, (usually a few weeks or so) at some point I encounter a Time Machine error message stating: "This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 91.0 GB but only 60.1 GB are available." ( well obviously that last part changes. But thats specifically what it says right now).
As Larry says, your TM drive is wayyyy too small.
But it looks like something else is going on here, too, that's causing extra-large incremental backups. Whatever that is, getting a larger disk will allow more room for those backups, but won't make them any smaller.
There are some OSX features and 3rd-party applications that cause large Time Machine backups. Common ones are FileVault, vmWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop, Entourage, and Thunderbird. Any application that uses a single large file or database may do this.
FileVault (System Preferences > Security) converts your entire Home Folder into a single, encrypted disk image. So any change to anything in your Home Folder is treated as a change to the encrypted image, and the whole thing is backed-up. TM minimizes the impact, though, by only backing it up when you log out, but it's still going to eat up a lot of space on your TM disk.
Some apps, such as Entourage, sometimes use a single file, often a database, to store their data. With Entourage, for example, every time you send or receive a single message, the whole database is changed, and will be backed-up the next time. Apple mail, of course, stores messages individually, so this doesn't happen.
We've also seen this with folks using the +Directory Backup+ feature in the +Tech Tool Pro+ app. It makes lots of large files in a: +*~/Library/Application Support/TechTool Protection/<name of hard drive/*+ folder.
If in doubt, Click here to download the TimeTracker app. It shows most of the files saved by TM for each backup (excluding some hidden/system files, etc.).
One solution is to simply exclude the item from TM so it isn't backed-up regularly, then when you do want it backed-up, just copy it somewhere that's not excluded.

Backup too Large?

I recently had to take my iMac in for repair since I completing reformatted it when try to install windows via boot camp.
The mac genius at the apple store did fix it. I do have an external drive where TM backed up everything.
While I was using migration assistant, and my external drive to restore everything, at the end it asked me to either replace my current username or just create a new one. (I had to create an account at the mac store once Mac OSX was reinstalled, but apparantly gave it a different name).
I chose not to replace, and it created another admin account. Now when my TM tries to backup, it says there is not enough room.
Would this be because I have 2 admin accounts and double the info?
Can I just delete my current backup drive and start over with a fresh backup?
Thanks for any assistance!

jjjamy wrote:
I did erase my external, but it still says too large to back up.
Yes, sorry, I'd forgotten that.
Do you know why there would be so much more informational now?
Without knowing just what Apple did, it's hard to say.
According to your messages, you've excluded about 68 GB. What is that?
Take a look at your top-level folders (select your computer name in a Finder sidebar, and choose View > As List. That should show one line for each (visible) top-level folder.
Do you have a Previous System folder? If so, that's from an Archive and Install: for now, just exclude it from TM. (You'll want to delete it eventually, but not yet.)
You should have Applications, Desktop (not yours), Developer, Library, System, User Guides and Information, and Users folders. If there's anything else, what name(s)?
Inside Users should be one home folder for each user, plus Shared. Again, if there's anything else, what name(s)?
Use Get Info on each of the home folders: see if either is much larger than you think it should be.
There's an application called WhatSize, available from VersionTracker.com or MacUpdate.com, that many recommend for analyzing disk usage. It used to be free, but I've seen posts that it now costs a few dollars. I haven't used it, but it might be worth trying, if we can't find it otherwise.

Time machine backup to large to migrate to MBP

Hi everyone,
I really hope someone can help me with this problem.
A while ago I took a time machine backup of my old macbook pro, which I no longer have. Now I want to use migrate assistant to get all my old files, applications, settings etc. onto another macbook pro. The problem is that the backup on the external hard drive is 339 GB, but the hard drive on the "new" macbook pro is only 320 GB. Is there any way for me to retrieve my files from the time machine backup without getting another computer with a larger hard drive? I don´t mind losing 20-30 GB of my old files, as long as I can get most of them back.
Ingibjörg Högna

With a new MBP you want to use Migration Assistant instead of TM Restore, that should eliminate a few GB, like the OS, which may not work on the newer one anyway.
If you are restoring a backup made by one Mac to a completely different Mac
Important: If the backup you are about to restore is from a completely different Mac, use theMigration Assistant to transfer data from the backup, as described in the next section.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4413

TM backup too large?

Ever since I moved my TM hdd to the AEBS I've been having problems. TM gives me an error "backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 802.8 gb but only 3.3 gb are available." Why doesn't it ask me if it could delete an older backup to make room for the new one like before?

Daggo wrote:
I am having the same issue. I did a fresh backup while connected and then I switched to Airdisk and tried to back up and it told me I needed X amount of space and only X left. It appears it wants to back up my whole drive onto the TM drive. Never asked to delete old backup.
If you move the drive from "directly connected" to your Mac to Airdisk, you MUST delete the old backups, as you will NOT be able to use them as Airdisk since the formats are different: folders for directly connected and sparse bundle for Airdisk. Reformat the drive as HFP+ Journaled and then connect it to the AEBSn. The first time it will backup the whole drive. To speed up that initial backup I recommend doing it with a direct ethernet cable to the AEBSn instead of using wireless.

Why is my time machine backup to large to install from?

I'm trying to setup my new MacBook from a time machine backup of my old IMac. My backup file is 250gb and there is over 400gb of space on the hard drive but it keeps coming up with a message saying there is not enough space to do the install.
I've had to leave my IMac at home interstate and need my iBook setup the same - unfortunately doing another backup with only the essential files and configurations is not an option. The situation seems strange though - is there another way?

lplex wrote:
I need help with TM, too, as it tries to do a full backup after I restored my Macintosh HD from TM as suggested by Disk Utility.
If you're on Snow Leopard or Lion, and did a full system restore by starting from the Recovery HD (Lion) or your Install disc (Snow Leopard), Time Machine should have figured it out and done an incremental backup.
If it didn't, and you're on Lion, and your backups are on a local disk (ie, not on a network), you may be able to tell TM to "associate" the restored disk with the backups manually, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. That usually works, but not always.
If you're not on Lion, or your backups are on a network, there's no way to force it.
Message was edited by: Pondini -- omitted the link!

Daily Backup too large

Hello,
I ran my Time Machine backups since Saturday (Full Backup) and daily backups (manualy). Today I know that I only made about 300MB of changes on my work files and now Time Machine is backing up since one hour with over 21GB of data.
Why? When this will go on like this, I can buy a new Drive next week.
May it be possible that these 21GB are the changes of my Leopard update to 10.5.7? Thats the only thing I can think of. But I did this update yesterday and not today - so why is Time Machine backing it up now?
Thanks for any hint.
Ps. I have a Lacie 2big Network drive connected to my router.

P.C. Haring wrote:
Pondini wrote:
Have you tried either the +Time Tracker+ or +Backup Loupe+ apps, per previous posts in this thread, to see what's taking up the space?
Yeah. Backup Loupe came through for me and for some reason my Thunderbird E-mail system was eating up gigs and gigs at a time.
Ah, yes, Thunderbird is one of the common causes of big backups. It keeps all your emails in a single file (or database), so when you send or receive a single tiny email, the whole thing is changed and must be backed-up in full again.
Suffice to say I excluded thunderbird's library. I also ended up wiping the backup volume clean and starting fresh. I've only had two backups since then, but if Backup Loupe's any indication excluding thunderbird along with the other exclusions seems to have done the trick.
Many folks copy the Tbird file to another, that's not excluded, once a day or so, to be sure it does get backed-up. This can even be automated, via an Applescript or Automator.
Or you could use CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper!, or the like, to back-up the file periodically. Those are most often used to make full "bootable clones" (which many of us do in addition to Time Machine), but can do this sort of thing as well. CCC is donationware, so you can try it before you buy it; and while SD has a free version, I think you need the paid one (about $30) to do this.

Timew Machine - Backup Too Large

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