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!

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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.

I can't install OSX 10.6.3 as it says HD used for Time Machine backup, I can't install OSX 10.6.3 as it says HD used for Time Machine backup

I've just received Snow Leopard disc and tried to install it but nothign is ever that easy. It says that hard drive in use for Time Machine backup so can't install. I've never used Time Machine and settings appear to confirm that. I don't want to set it to restore and lose everything and have to install it again so not sure what to do. Can anyone advise me

Jane Doubleday wrote:
I've got an Intel mac otherwise I wouldn't have bought Snow Leopard.
Please update your profile info, then Jane - we can only go on the info you give us.
Glad you're sorted though

Re: Migrating my IPhoto from Time Machine Backup to my just-installed Snow Leopard OSX... the program is there, all my photos are there..... but my photos had all been neatly arranged in folders, and there is absolutely no sign of my folders. What a mer

re: Migrating my IPhoto from Time Machine Backup to my just-installed Snow Leopard OSX... the program is there, all my photos are there..... but my photos had all been neatly arranged in folders, and there is absolutely no sign of my folders. What a mess, 20,000 photos. How can I restore my folders?
(iphoto 08)

Restore the library from Time Machine as shown in this screenshot:
Then open the library with iPhoto. No importing necessary.
OT

Why is my Time Machine backup so much larger than the files being backed up?

Mac Mini Server 10.7.1 on a 2011 Mac Mini Server
Here are the drives on my system:
Here are the items excluded from backup:
Note that Server HD and Archive are the only non-excluded disks and the estimated backup size is 563.2 GB (this corresponds with the actual usage on those drives.
However, when I run time machine, it keeps going until by 2TB backup drive is nearly full! And that's with only a single backup instance and nothing else on the drive:
What's going on here??? If I don't backup the other external drive, the backup size doesn't blow up like this.

Just to clarify, the reason why Time Machine backups are generally small is that TM makes extensive use of hard links. symbolic links are small files that point to a different file system entry, while hard links point directly to the original file data on disk (hard links are unintuitive - they are like having multiple doors into a room, except that you can place the doors anywhere you like and still get to the room). So even though there may be dozens of backups of a disk, most of the backed-up items will only have one data source on disk, with only items that have changed needing new representations.
I suspect that when you try to backup a time machine backup, it is converting the hard links into separate on-disk representations - basically taking every pointer to a given piece of on-disk data and creating a new file from it. I'm not sure if that would be a linear or geometric size increase (it sounds like the latter), but either way it's going to get ugly fairly fast.

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

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

Why is my Time Machine Backup Taking More Space then my Hard Drive?

I have a Late-2009 MacBook model with a 250GB hard drive. My external drive is 1TB. I use it for Time Machine backups as well as other storage. My backups on that drive are a bit less then 900GB, which is 90% of that disk. My hard drive is only 250GB so how is it over 3 times as large? I would like to have more storage for other files. What would you recomend doing? Can I partition the external disk?

How time machine works is that it makes an initial back up and from there it scans your system for changes. When it finds a change it adds the changes on top of your current backup. So if you have a folder full of pictures then rename them or change them, etc it'll resave/archive the pictures ontop of what it already backed up. It doesn't keep a single "state" of backup. This allows you to "look back in time" and see if you can find something you might have accidentally changed or deleted or etc. Once the disk becomes full it will delete the oldest backups to keep archiving newer files.
I would suggest that you partition your external drive to a size that allows you to keep free the desired extra storage space you're looking to use. For example partition the drive to two 500GB partitions one for storage one for time machine.

Time Machine backup files ... going from SL to ML.

I've done a clean install of ML from SL on my MacBook Pro.
Under SL, Time Machine backed to portable HDD. All these backups are still visible and date back to early 2012. That is, if I "Enter Time Machine" I can browse all the backups upto early 2012.
So far, I have not done a backup. What happens when I run Time Machine for the first time (assuming I keep it pointed it to the earlier backup file on the portable HDD)?
Will it delete the older backups/data? Or will it just continue adding Time Machine backups to the existing ones? I have a feeling that there will be some files from these backups that I would like to use in future, but not sure right now. In the mean time, I want to run Time Machine and would love it if new backups just added to the earlier ones.
Cheers,
Mark.

markyd wrote:
I've done a clean install of ML from SL on my MacBook Pro.
That means the disk is treated as a different one, at least temporarily.
Your best bet was to use Setup Assistant when your Mac first started up after installing Mountain Lion, to transfer your apps, settings, user accounts and data from your backups.
It sounds like you skipped that, and created a new user account. That's going to be a problem. Your best bet now is to use one of the workarounds, probably #4, in the green box of Problems after using Migration Assistant.
If you do, the erased drive should be "associated" with the old backups -- the backups are actually changed to make it look like the backups were done from it. Then they'll all appear in the same timeline.
If not, the new installation will be treated as a separate HD, that's no longer connected. You can see and restore from them via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting. However, the user account you created probably won't have permission to the old backups. The pink box in the fist link above explains why. Thus the need for the workaround.

I am using an external drive for a time machine backup. It has disappeared from the desktop. How do I get it back again?

My time machine backup disc, which has been working ok for a couple of years has suddenly disappeared from the desktop. The time machine program tels me it is unavailable. I have checked that the drive is working by booting up in Windows. and Windows can see it and read it ok. What has gone wrong, and how can I fix it?
I have tried unplugging it and reconnecting, but it is still apparently not seen by the system.
I could use Windows to reformat it, and start again, but this would loose all my previous backups, and I've no guarantee that the system would notice it even then.
Has anyone any ideas?

I think it's formatted on FAT 32 system, but I'm not sure. It's been working for a couple of years so far without any problems, so I think it must be compatible with Mac. The problem is that all of a sudden, the Mac doesn't acknowledge that it is present.

Time Machine backups after a clean install

I recently performed a reinstalled Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro as it was suffering from running quite slow. Since I had upgraded this machine from an old Tiger install, I decided to manually migrate my files from a second backup, rather than restoring from my Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule.
Now I'm up and running, I wanted to be able to view my old TM backup on my Capsule, and restore other files if I needed to, but don't seem to be able to.
When browsing the Time Capsule, there is just the one sparsebundle for my backups, but when I enter Time Machine, it doesn't seem to read the older backups.
I would like to either:
1) Get TM to read my older backups
or
2) Clean them off
I still have my second backup so I'm not worried about losing the old data, but I am hoping to be able to claim back some disk space on my Time Capsule, without having to create a whole new TM backup.
Anyone got any ideas?

Dominic Barnes wrote:
I recently performed a reinstalled Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro as it was suffering from running quite slow. Since I had upgraded this machine from an old Tiger install, I decided to manually migrate my files from a second backup, rather than restoring from my Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule.
Now I'm up and running, I wanted to be able to view my old TM backup on my Capsule, and restore other files if I needed to, but don't seem to be able to.
When browsing the Time Capsule, there is just the one sparsebundle for my backups, but when I enter Time Machine, it doesn't seem to read the older backups.
Have you tried to click-and-hold (or control-click) on the Dock's Time Machine icon and selecting "Browse Other Time Machine disks..."?

Hi, Question about secure empty trash. I moved some Time Machine backup files to the trash from an external hard drive. Now I can't secure empty trash. It starts, finds 74,003 files, and does nothing. The external hard drive shows it's empty, but it isn't

I moved some time machine backup files from an external USB hard drive to the trash. Tried secure empty trash. It counts 74,003 items, then just sits there. The external hard drive window shows it's empty, but the info pane says it only has 50G of memory left. I left the secure empty trash on over night. It did nothing. Ideas?
Thanks,
Ron

Relaunch the Finder, then from the Finder menu bar, select
Finder ▹ Preferences ▹ Advanced
and uncheck the box marked Empty Trash securely. Try again to empty the Trash.

How to restore time machine backup without disturbing already installed app

Hi!
My school recently reconfigured/reformatted my macbook and install the school image. Now it is filled with applications that the school help us installed. Now how do i restore the backup that my time machine backups last time? Migration assistant or what? I did not change my mac, it is just that my hard disk got reconfigured. How do i restore backup without disturbing the apps my school installs?
Please help thanks!
ALa.

alazahee wrote:
I did not change my mac, it is just that my hard disk got reconfigured.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Is your user account still there?
If not, and if you have either Time Machine backups or a "clone" as backups, yes, use Migration Assistant. See [Using Migration Assistant|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Migrate.html]. Note that you must be logged-on with a user account that's named differently from any of the accounts you want to transfer, or else be prepared to rename the duplicate.
If your backups aren't either Time Machine backups or a "clone," you'll have to drag and drop or restore using the app that made them.

Restore Time Machine backup on fresh Leopard install without disc.

I just got my iMac back from the Apple Store where they fitted a new hard drive with a fresh installation of Leopard. I've got an external drive with a Time Machine backup of my old HD, but don't know how to restore it. Unfortunately I forgot to ask them about it at the store and now realise that I don't have the Leopard install DVD with me, only the Tiger ones that came with the iMac (which obviously don't have the time machine option).
Is there any way to restore my data without the disc? It seems odd that they would install leopard after asking me if I had a time machine backup if I would just have to install it again.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'd love to get my Mac back to normal without having to have my Leopard disc sent to me.

You can use Migration Assistant, or re-create your user accounts from scratch and then selectively retrieve just what you need from your backups.

Time machine backup files disappeared after moving from Osx 10.6 to 10.8.2 .

I had moved from a 6+ year old iMac to a new one with 10.8.2

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
I don't think that they have disappeared. They are just "hidden" in your Time Machine drive because Time Machine detects your old backups as for a different Mac than the one you are using right now.
In order to see your old Time Machine backups, read > http://pondini.org/TM/E3.html

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

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