Why does Time Machine make two copies when backing up

I use Time Machine to back up to an external harddrive and it is duplicating files, how can I fix this?

Daisy Duke is a third party software app I bought on App Store that helps to find easily find files that you no longer want or need and delete to create more HD space.  I don't believe that I reformatted the source volume, is there a way to check for that.  I have been doing some research that talks about multiple users,  DD did show me the files under two different users and I wonder if it showing me the file but is not really on there twice.  As you can probably tell by now I can get around a computer for personal use but do not have much hardware or software experience.

Similar Messages

  • Why does time machine make a second/different backup after new installing a hard drive?

    Hi all,
    Long time reader, first time poster...
    after having to install a new hard drive on my MacBook Pro, the new Time Machine backups are not recognising the original/older backups on the external hard drive connected via network router and has created a new/second backup caller 'xxx Mac Book Pro 1' instead of updating/reading the orginal 'xxx Mac Book Pro backup'?
    Does anyone know why it did this? and more importantly how do i make it recgonise the original and stop making the secondary copy?
    Thanks!

    Hi gb69,
    If you are having issues with Time Machine backups after a recent hardware change, you may find the following article helpful:
    Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
    Regards,
    - Brenden

  • Does Time Machine make back-ups when nobody is logged on?

    Hello,
    Does Time Machine make back-ups when nobody is logged on and does it continue to back-up when I log off?
    I'm using an directly connected external hard drive to back-up my data with Time Machine, the back-ups are encrypted.
    Thanks in advance.

    I had the same problem with Time Machine and solved it by enabling "Enable Power Nap" in Energy Saver:
    System Preferences...
    Energy Saver
    Restore Defaults
    Check "Enable Power Nap: While sleeping, your Mac can back up using Time Machine and periodically check for new email, calendar, and other iCloud updates."
    2013 21.5 iMac
    OSX Mavericks
    Seagate 1 TB slim USB 3.0 (power is drawn from USB port), formatted to Mac Journaling File System

  • Does time capsule make duplicate copies of the files those are already exist in it?

    Does time capsule make duplicate copies of the files those are already exist in it?

    It's not clear just what you mean.
    If you're backing-up your Mac, via the Time Machine software, to a Time Capsule or external HD, then yes, by default, Time Machine will copy everything the first time.  Subsequent backups will copy only what's new or changed.
    If you mean, can you back up other data on a Time Capsule, no, not with Time Machine.  It can only back up TO a network location, not FROM one.

  • Why does Time Machine disappear?

    Why does Time Machine disappear each restart?

    Suggest that you power cycle the entire network, as things are likely out of sequence
    Power every device off on the network, order is not important
    Wait a few moments, then start the modem first and let it run by itself for 2-3 minutes
    Start the Time Capsule the same way
    Start each network device one at a time about a minute apart
    Check for proper operation

  • I'm running OS X 10.6.8-Why is Time Machine all of a sudden backing up 225GB of data after 2 years of perfect service? I have not added, deleted, or upgraded anything, Help!

    I'm running OS X 10.6.8-Why is Time Machine all of a sudden backing up 250GB of data after 2 years of perfect service? I have not added, deleted, or upgraded anything.

    USB 3.0 drives work on USB 2.0 but you do get 2.0 speed. They are cheaper because they are popular PC drives.  If you get a new computer you'll get the bump to 3.0 speed.
    I like the Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives. They come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.  Seagate Backup Plus Right now the 1T is more than the 2 & 3T drives
    This Western Digital drive has good reviews: WD My Book Hard Drive for Mac 2 TB $99.
    Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.
    USB 3.0 is 10x faster than USB 2.0
    Thunderbolt is 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0.
    Format new drives with Apple's Disk Utility rather than the software that come with the drive.
    My plan was to rid a lot of the stuff I have on my computer (to a hard drive) anyhow once it had backed up.
    I wound't necessarily backup those files to Time Machine. I would copy to the external drive then delete from computer. Only backup to Time Machine the data you would want to restore to your Mac if there was a problem. The backup will go much faster this way. Time Machine backup is slower than just copying data in my experience.

  • Why does Time Machine Hang OSX when a USB drive does not respond?

    I use USB drives to store photo data. When I back up the drives using Time Machine to a Time Capsule, If I have added a large amount of data to the USB drive, the backup will consistently fail with the drive hung. I can see the drive in finder, but I cannot see the directory structure. Often OSX hangs too and I cannot even get to finder, just the whirling colored wheel. Sometimes the system has entered sleep mode and it will not wake up. I if I am using the monitor, I can open the MAC Book Pro cover and the screen there shows alternately, a blue screen and the screen wallpaper, flipping back and forth but otherwise unresponsive. If I turn the USB drive off the OS recovers and Time Machine completes, usually indicating a backup failure (but not always). The drive is always very hot under these circumstances, indicating that the system is issuing repetitive operations to the drive. I should emphasize that I am not writing to the USB drives during backup, Time Machine is just reading the drive. So several questions:
    1) How in the world can a non system drive hang the Operating System? This is a big no-no for a supposedly multi-tasking Operating System.
    2) I use Aperture 2.1 to store data on the USB drives with no problems (at least so far). Why would Time Machine drive the USB drive so hard that it fails? I had the same problem using a USB drive with iTunes. It completely fried the drive by writing to it too intensively during one of the frequent software updates. Is there no throttle mechanism in OSX that limits the disc activity so that the throttle mechanism is not the failure of the drive itself?
    3) Does Apple have a list of USB drives that it has validated to be able to work with it's system reliably?

    Are the USB drives powered from the computer or do they have their own power supplies.
    There is a limit to how much power can be drawn from each USB port and also a total limit. If you exceed this, unexpected things can happen.

  • Why does Time machine still ask for a disk when it is switched off?

    My Time Capsule recently died, PSU problems , I think. So I went into system prefs and deselected the Time Capsule as the back-up disk in Time Machine and switched off Time Machine. Yet every few minutes I get a window appearing telling me Time Machine can't find a back-up disk. Why is this happening and how do I stop it? Thanks
    Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 6 Gb RAM, OS 10.8.2

    Mountain Lion may expect to be using a local disk if external is not available..
    Delete the plist.. this gives info.. whether it helps I don't know.
    http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html

  • Does Time Machine make bootable backups?

    I used a beautiful backup program called Backup Simplicity in Tiger that made a bootable Exact duplicate of my HD into my external drive. That's really I want to do.
    This morning I tried Time Machine for the first time. It only put a backup folder on my external drive. That's not what I want to do.
    So here's my question, if I totally erase my external drive will Time Machine make a bootable duplicate of my HD on my external drive also?
    Also, is there a way to schedule Time Machine for backups manually?

    No, TimeMachine doesn't create a bootable backup, nor can it be controlled manually. The purpose of TimeMachine is to work behind the scenes backing up changed files. Later, when you realize something is amiss, you can 'go back in time' and fix the problem. Admittedly, I'm a little shaky on the details of just how flexible the retrieval system is since I've not yet played with that feature yet. But as I understand it, if you installed a new program and your computer suddenly started going nuts, you'll be able to use TimeMachine to restore your computer to the point before you installed that program. Or, if you realize you improperly edited a file, you'll be able to retrieve the file prior to that editing session.
    Apple's team realized three things: 1) most of us don't take the time to perform backups even though we know we should be doing it. 2) most of us don't really understand how to develop a good backup strategy. 3) computers today are so powerful that most of the time the CPU isn't working hard at all and those extra cycles might as well be put to use doing something useful. Hence, TimeMachine's design.
    As you noticed, TimeMachine makes a folder and does its incremental backups inside. Since I have an external drive that is much larger than my boot/data drive, I'll continue to clone my boot drive to this external once a week, just as I've been doing. If disaster strikes and I need to use the computer right now, I can do so and at worst my data will be one week out of date. (I should then be able to use TimeMachine to retrieve the missing data but the important thing is that I'm up and running again as soon as I've rebooted.) Later (or if I have the time right away) I'll use TimeMachine to restore/replace my boot drive.

  • Does Time Machine bundle backup sets when it deletes a month's daily sets?

    I'm asking this question to find out if I can delete the all but the last week in a month, each month, in order to extend the useful capacity of my backup drive.
    In some backup systems, a periodic "bundle" is made when previous sets are deleted, so for instance, the last backup of the month has the cumulative hourly changes of that month. In this way, transient files which appear and disappear within the month are retained in the monthly backup.
    Is this true of Time Machine? Exactly what does Time Machine do? Does it simply wipe out the daily sets and chose the last one to  be the "weekly backup?" Or something more sophisticated and useful?
    Thanks for any insight!

    I've devised a little experiment to discover Time Machine's behavior in this regard:
    On my Time Machine's backup schedule, August 27 corresponds with the end of a week. So, on August 26 at 9:15AM, I created the following [folder]/file structure:
    [Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
       [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
          A one hour lifetime file.rtf
       [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
          A one day lifetime file.rtf
       [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
          A one week lifetime file.rtf
    At 10:10AM of that day I removed
      [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
          A one hour lifetime file.rtf
    At 10:10 the next day, August 27, I removed
       [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
          A one day lifetime file.rtf
    On August 28 at 10:30AM, acheck today of the earliest backup of this structure reveals only the following:
    [Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
       [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
          A one week lifetime file.rtf
    I draw the conclusion that transient files within a time period are not subject to a "roll-up" mechanism that displays all changes after out-of-date files are deleted by Time Machine. Thus, for instance, any file that appeared and disappears during an hour will be lost in Time Machine's daily history. Similarly, files that only persist for a day will be lost in the weekly history. And, presumably, if one wanted to choose a week which represented an accumulation of transient changes during the month it would be impossible to do so.
    Even so, if one wants to manage only one backup volume, rather than accumulating a stack of them over the years, one might well think about selectively deleting all but one week per month in the earliest backups available, as the projected remaining time approaches less than a few weeks. BackupLoupe's Statistics gives an estimate of remaining time left for backups on a volume, and I would suggest using that as a forecast, unless others have experience to the contrary.
    Hope this is useful. It certainly is to me.

  • Why does time machine stall on "calculating changes"?

    I have just purchased a Lacie d2 quadra 2Tb, and have connected Time Machine.
    It has successfully backed up my desktop. However, on about the third incremental backup it stall on calculating changes. I have read that this could be when a deep traversal scan is occuring, so I let it continue for 12 hours before rebooting!
    I have repartitioned and zeroed out the disk, and verified permissions etc, but to no avail.
    I have 2 other external drives, and a Time Capsule that work flawlessly with TM.
    Any other suggestions to remedy this would be most welcome.

    Thanks for your reply Dave. Well, I am on that path with Lacie. The two other drives are theirs also, but who knows. They recommended th zeroing out etc.
    I am also in discussion with Apple, who are tackling it from the Time Machine end, and something that might require a tweak with my system. 

  • HT3275 Why does Time Machine say it's unable to back up because the disk is full -- even tho it's supposed to delete the oldest backups when that happens?

    I'm running OS 10.6.8 on an imac from around 2011.  I back up with Time Machine to an external hard drive that has about 500 GB.  Until now, I've had no problemsm, or at least that's what I thought.  But today I'm getting a message every hour saying "Time machine is unable to back up because the disk is full."  It IS full, but Time Machine is supposed to delete the oldest backups when that happens, and keep deleting them in order.
    Anyway, when I opened up my backup disk I discovered backups from February and most of March, nothing in April and nothing in May.
    I'm a little freaked.
    Does anybody know why that would happen and what to do about it?
    Thanks in advance.

    Hello, I don't use TM, but...
    Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
    http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    Can't imagine something not being covered there.

  • HT3275 Why does Time Machine backup fail when an external drive is included in backup?

    Time Machine will not perform a backup when I have an external drive (formatted Mac OS Extended - Journaled) included in the backup. My understanding is that it should. What am I doing wrong?
    Thanks.

    timtom122353 wrote:
    "The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk."
    Ah, not one of Apple's more informative messages. 
    There's a problem with a file on that disk.  See #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.  It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. 

  • Why does time machine say my wireless hard drive doesn't have enough space when it clearly does?

    I have a 2 TB western digital hard drive connected via USB to my airport extreme (Y2012) that i've been using the past 2 years to connect to wirelessly. The hard drive has 2 partitions, ~1 TB each. 1 partition for backing up, the other for storing media. Recently I deleted my macbook pro backup. My macbook pro has a 500GB hard drive, of which about 120 GB is free.
    Since I deleted the old time machine backup disk image and told time machine to start a new backup, I am now receiving an error. It's telling me there isn't enough room on the drive, when the 1TB partition i'm trying to use (as i've sucessfully done in the past) has nothing on it. 1 full TB free, and my macbook pro can't backup a 500 GB hard drive, which isn't even full itself.
    PLEASE HELP!! I have a macbook pro early 2011, and I never know when the board is going to go koput again and I don't currently have a backup of my stuff while this problem persists.
    Thanks!

    Start with Section C in the 1st linked article.
    Time Machine Troubleshooting
    Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

  • Why does time machine back up when no new files have been added?

    I run time machine manually and even after having just back up, it says it is backing up 50mb of something.  Nothing has been added or taken away.  It just keeps adding and using up disk space.

    System files are constantly changing, TM backs the whole machine up not just the files you are working on,
    And 55mb is small change

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