Why is TM doing a full backup?!

After two attempts, I finally thought I had TM working properly. The initial backup took HOURS to complete but, once done, every hour thereafter, it did just a small (measured in kilobytes) incremental backup. Excellent, right?
Well, I put my machine to sleep for about three hours and, when I fired it back up, TM now has started to do another FULL backup of 70 GB's. It is, of course, taking forever to complete once again.
What gives? After the initial full backup, every backup thereafter should be incremental, no? This is going to be completely unusable if it doe a full backup daily, or every time the machine has been off for 3+ hours.
The only thing I did before shutting the machine off was to install two small applications that are used to update the content of my portable GPS. Does the installation of an application force a full backup? Grr...

I'm running a Macbook Pro C2D. I had 70 GB worth of data that kept getting backed up every time I plugged in my external hard disk even if I hadn't changed any files.
Maxthewildthing's advice in a different thread worked for me -- your mileage may vary. His advice reportedly came from Apple Support and applies to Intel machines. I've reformatted and elaborated on his steps a bit.
1. Start Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
2. Highlight the disk you intend to use for Time Machine.
3. Click "Info" on the file bar. The Partition Map Scheme should read: "GUID Partition Table".
4. If it does not, you need to re partition your Time Machine disk. Under "Volume Scheme" click the down arrow and select "1 partition".
5. Name your time machine drive, making sure that the selected format is "Mac OS Extended (Journalled)".
6. Click "Options" at the bottom and select "GUID Partition Table". Select "Apply." WARNING: This will erase all of the data on the selected disk! Performing this step triggers the repartitioning process and wipes your disk clear.
7. When it's done, Time Machine will likely open on its own. Turn it off and then on.
8. Set it up as you would normally, e.g. excluding directories if you wish.
9. When you finish selecting your options, let it do the initial backup. This will be a lengthy process since it's backing up all of your files for the first time. Subsequent backups will backup only changed files.
Good luck.
Steven

Similar Messages

Time Machine Does Excessive Full Backups

Time Machine used to just backup changed material on a hourly basis. It seems that recently every time I look at the progress indicator it is trying to do a full backup of my entire hard drive. Any ideas why?

Have you recently done a restore?
I have the same problem. I did a full restore, and TM did a full backup afterwards. This is a "documented feature". Then it did skims every hour. However, if I reboot, it does a full backup the first time after the reboot. It's done 5 full backups (50 GB each) in the past 5 days. I can't afford to shut down my Mac until I figure this out. I only have 170GB of free space on my Time Machine drive.
Is there any way to see how big each backup is, and delete un-needed ones?
I'd really like to figure out what causes this problem, before Time Machine starts deleting old stuff I want backed up to make room for all these wasteful new backups.

Time Machine doing a full backup every time it runs

My Time Machine seems to be doing a full backup every time it runs on the hour. The backup size is about 19GB. Shouldn't hourly and daily backups be much smaller after you run Time Machine for the first time?
I remember a while back, my hourly backups were a couple of minutes.....now they are 30 minutes.
John

Hi Steve,
http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3687285?start=0&tstart=0
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine does a full backup every time I reconnect my portable drive to my macbook pro

How do I stop time machine from doing a full backup every time I disconnect & reconnect my backup portable drive to my macbook pro. It doesn't recognize the old backups.

Hi Steve,
http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3687285?start=0&tstart=0
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Repaired permissions, now TM doing a full backup?

Hi, intelligent user who doesn't have much advanced knowledge concerning what Repairing Permissions even means here.
So I'm planning on replacing my Macbook Pro's HD, and I just finished making a full bootable backup onto a 200GB FW drive using Super Duper, and checked the "Repair Permissions first" option. I figured that having a latest Time Machine backup (1TB Time Capsule) would make sense as well, so before powering down to unscrew the case I did a Back Up Now. It scanned the entire computer and decided that it would backup all 70 GB fresh. I'm assuming this has something to do with having repaired permissions, but I don't quite know what that means. It may be something similar to what recently happened to me, when I erased my whole computer and refreshed from Time Machine, and then on the next backup it did everything over again instead of updating (for that backup I can still browse dates before that happened as long as I start at the root drive).
Anyone know what I could do to fix this?

Brian wrote:
We have to be careful here: there are three different scenarios:
New computer or logic board. Time Machine identifies your computer by it's +Media Access Control address+ (MAC address), embedded in the hardware of the logic board. There is a way that some folks have gotten around this on Leopard after a new logic board, but it's tedious and very easy to mess up (I did that, twice!) per the link in #C8 of Troubleshooting. (It's very dangerous on a different Mac).
That was automated for Snow Leopard, resulting in the Re-Use prompt mentioned in #B5 of Troubleshooting. But, as #B5 specifies, Time Machine usually still does a full backup; the advantage is, Time Machine will delete the old backups normally.
New drive on the same Mac (per the link you provided). I don't believe that works on Snow Leopard, and I've not seen a hack specifically for Snow Leopard posted here.
Full restore (from Time Machine, a "clone", or otherwise) to the same drive on the same Mac. This almost always results in a new, full backup. An Apple engineer said that would stop with Snow Leopard, but obviously didn't. Some real techie UNIX guru decided there ought to be a way to do it; he posted a two-page log here a few months ago, of altering all sorts of things via Terminal, converting UUIDs to hex, etc., and claimed to have made it work. But he did it only as an exercise, and even he wouldn't recommend it, even to expert UNIX types.
. . . I suppose the best way to save space on my Time Capsule (it now has at least 3 copies of my entire system with only very minor differences in the existence of some files) would be to make sure I have all the files I will ever want to have backed up, then delete the old records, which is something I presume wouldn't be too hard, make a fresh backup, then delete whatever I don't think I need right now, knowing it will all be found by scrolling back to July of 2010?
I'd have to agree. It just isn't worth the hassle, or the risk of damaging something that you might not notice for a long time. I have no problem hacking around with most things, but not my backups.
Depending on whether Time Machine made new sparse bundles, it may not be too tedious to delete the old backups. See #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

TC keeps doing a full backup

This is the third time my 1TB Time Capsule has done a full "initial" backup. I have absolutely no idea why it's doing this. Each time it apparently overwrites the previous backup.

Zmantra,
Welcome to the Apple discussions. Next time feel free to start a new thread as you will likely get more responses that way. But the following might give you some ideas as to what is happening.
*_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.
*Recovering Backup Space*
If you have discovered that large unwanted files have been backed up, you can use the Time Machine “time travel” interface to recovered some of that space.
Launch Time Machine from the Dock icon.
Initially, you are presented with a window that represents “Today (Now)”. DO NOT make changes to file while you see “Today (Now)” at the bottom of the screen.
Click on the window just behind “Today (Now)”. This represents the last successful backup and should display the date and time of this backup at the bottom of the screen.
Now, navigate to where the unwanted file resides.
Highlight the file and click the Actions menu (Gear icon) from the toolbar.
Select “Delete all backups of <this file>”.
*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.
Cheers!

HT4859 Is backing up over iCloud not using iTunes the same as doing a full backup on iTunes?

My recent laptop has broken, I had to format it and now when I try downloading iTunes again it doesnt work at all, I have tried ridiculous amounts of times. I am going to send my phone off for repair and I need to know if backing up over iCloud via the iPhone backs up the same contents as doing a full back up on iTunes.
Thanks!

Should i just run a full back up?
Yes.

Time Machine does a full backup after a full restore

Hi,
To test Time Machine (as you should always do with any backup system) I decided to do a full restore of one of my Macs. This went fine (after figuring out how to mount my remote backup disk).
However I noticed that when the restored machine did its first scheduled Time Machine backup after being restored it did what pretty much amounted to a full backup (taking ages).
I believe Time Machine should be clever enough to know that the restored files are the same as the backed up ones, and there is no need to copy new versions.
Cheers, Ed.

Indeed not unexpected, however it would be easy to fix this in the future by linking the restore into the existing baseline (given that it is a direct copy of it) as it writes the files.
It is worth mentioning because if you have a smallish backup disk (I don't) then writing the second baseline may flush out a number of your older weekly backups that you would rather have retained. It will also eventually mean that you will always have those two baselines and therefore restrict the number of valid backups that you can keep.
Cheers, Ed.

After "Reconnecting" to my backups, TM still does a full backup

I upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.8 (yes I skiped 10.7) last week, and would very much like to keep my Time Machine backup history. I followed the instructions on Pondini's website http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html, but TM still performed a full backup of all my data. I then followed http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html to reset Time Machine, still TM performed full backup. After TM performed the full backup, I ran BackupLoupe and saw that TM did recorgnize the histroy. I tested it by deleting a small unimportant file via TM's interface, and TM did delete it from all backups.
What happened with TM? How do I avoid this unnecessary full backup? The following are the messages from the Console while TM performed the backup. Thanks in advance.
12-9-5 12:29:49.758 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Starting manual backup
12-9-5 12:29:49.773 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Backing up to: /Volumes/TM4T ST2T-Hi2T/Backups.backupdb
12-9-5 12:29:51.250 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Inheritance scan required for /Volumes/Multimedia, associated with previous UUID: 09077F6F-5D2D-30E5-AE7B-2DF8F26907FD
12-9-5 12:29:51.259 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Inheritance scan required for /, associated with previous UUID: 1DB217CD-86B7-3A22-918B-B1804C505BC4
12-9-5 12:29:51.283 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Inherited root volume Main, UUID: CBFD27EC-0674-36E0-B775-1D0126D15780
12-9-5 12:29:51.318 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Multimedia
12-9-5 12:29:51.337 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Main
12-9-5 12:29:51.351 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/Multimedia reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
12-9-5 12:29:51.351 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: First backup after disk inheritance for /Volumes/Multimedia - complete scan required
12-9-5 12:31:43.994 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Finished scan
12-9-5 12:33:55.752 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
12-9-5 12:33:55.768 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: First backup after disk inheritance for / - complete scan required
12-9-5 12:34:52.132 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “keyedobjects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7ff18cdc8a50 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/TM4T%20ST2T-Hi2T/Backups.backupdb/Mac%20Pro/201 2-08-08-194751/Main/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/TemplateDataInspe ctor.nib/keyedobjects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/TM4T ST2T-Hi2T/Backups.backupdb/Mac Pro/2012-08-08-194751/Main/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/TemplateD ataInspector.nib/keyedobjects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7ff18cdbe9a0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
12-9-5 12:37:43.351 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Finished scan
12-9-5 12:38:46.188 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Error (256): fetching properties: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=256 "The file “keyedobjects.nib” couldn’t be opened." UserInfo=0x7ff1911f2c20 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/TM4T%20ST2T-Hi2T/Backups.backupdb/Mac%20Pro/201 2-08-08-194751/Main/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/TemplateDataInspe ctor.nib/keyedobjects.nib, NSFilePath=/Volumes/TM4T ST2T-Hi2T/Backups.backupdb/Mac Pro/2012-08-08-194751/Main/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/TemplateD ataInspector.nib/keyedobjects.nib, NSUnderlyingError=0x7ff1911e8ed0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Not a directory"}
12-9-5 12:42:08.466 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Found 1087307 files (1.08 TB) needing backup
12-9-5 12:42:08.923 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: 1.29 TB required (including padding), 2.36 TB available
12-9-5 12:42:46.691 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Copied 9650 files (624.7 MB) from volume Multimedia.
12-9-5 12:42:48.093 AM com.apple.backupd[11586]: Backup canceled.

Hi Steve,
http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3687285?start=0&tstart=0
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Accidentally doing a full backup

I was trying to temporarily suspend Time Machine while doing operations on large temporary files I didn't need backed up. Then I screwed up. I did a Time Machine "Back Up Now" rather than turning Time Machine off in Time Machine preferences.
The result was a massive backup of my entire drive that fills up nearly all my Time Machine drive, which now has only 20GB free. My system drive has about 100GB used. The unwanted backup was about 90GB.
What can I do now? Can I just delete the unwanted backup?

stirling-dad wrote:
1. I deleted a backup and reclaimed about 15GB, not the about 90GB I was expecting. Now, Time Machine won't let me delete any further backups. Whenever I try to delete a backup, Time Machine asks me for an admin password. I know I'm entering the password correctly, but I get a beep back from Time Machine. I even tried the operation while logged on to an admin account (the password had no problem logging in!). Even while logged in admin, Time Machine asks for an admin password to delete backups, but won't accept mine.
You may need to repair the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
2. I also suspect that the backup I deleted wasn't the latest, and that may be confusing Time Machine.
No. As long as you did it via the Time Machine programming, that's not a problem.
The above don't make sense since the total capacity of the drive is 249.72GB, with used being 212.77GB! (size of the files is measured by doing a command-i on the file in finder; the drive statistics are measured by doing a command-i on the drive.) in finder. Obviously the command-i file size is not correct for Time Machine backups. How do you measure how do you measure how much you recover by deleting a backup, assuming issue #1 could get solved?
You can't. That's all correct, as odd as it seems. See How Time Machine works its Magic for an explanation of this "smoke and mirrors."

Time Capsule always doing a full backup

After many months of no issues, Time Capsule is starting to act very weird.
My Time Capsule ran out of room, and did not have any room to delete old backups, so i formatted the Time Capsule's internal disk, and started a new backup.
I let it run over night, and after the intial 200GB back up (of all my data) it seems to be doing this over, and again.
By the morning, my time machine back up was over 500GB of used backup space, i don't even have this much data on my MBP 15".
Any ideas would be much appreciated.

FWIW, check out section D in this user tip.

How can I stop Time Capsule doing a full backup?

Hi guys
I had to restore my work from a Time Capsule after having a new hard drive fitted. Now Time Machine has started to do a full ... and very, very slow backup!
Is there any way I can get out of this given that it has been at it 2 days already and has only backed up 32.78GB of 74.89GB?
Please can you helpful folks who have the answer reply in words of one syllable ... I'm no techie wizz kid (no sort of any kid really).

You can set the TC to join the campus wifi but I do not recommend that method. You make the TC available to everybody in the process.. and it will be super slow. All files to and from your TC, then go via the campus routers and wifi system.
You cannot have two independent wireless connections at the same time..
You can use ethernet to the TC.. this is fastest and best method.. keeps the TC totally isolated from the network.
Or you can use a USB wireless stick in the computer to join a second wireless network.. I recommend using 5ghz as it is much faster.

Time Machine doing full backup of external drive again

I have a Time Capsule, as well as an external data drive connected to my Mac. The external drive (named Yoda) is NOT excluded from backups. Yoda has about 703 GB of data on it.
I recently replaced the hard drive inside my time capsule. Consequently, a full backup was made, which was to be expected.
When the new full first backup was done, I disconnected the Yoda drive. A day later, I reconnected it, and now Time Machine is saying it's doing a 703 GB backup. Since the size TM indicates its backing up is ever so slightly larger than the total amount of data on Yoda, I'm assuming it's doing a full backup of the Yoda drive for some reason (the only other drive, the system drive, only has about 200 GB on it).
The files on Yoda weren't changed, certainly not all 703 GB of them. No hardware changes were made, no updates, tinkering, modifications, or anything. The Mac itself has not even been shut down or logged out. The ONLY thing that's happened was the Yoda drive was unmounted and disconnected, then several hours later it was reconnected.
Why is Time Machine repeating a full backup of this external drive? Is this going to happen every time I disconnect and reconnect the drive? Is there any way to make this not happen, short of excluding the drive (which I don't want to do)?

After posting this thread, I did find a similar thread (in the "More Like This" section) and saw your responses in it. You had suggested the same thing, as well as doing #A5 if that didn't work.
I tried #A4 and although that seemed to work in the other thread, unfortunately it didn't work for me. So I moved on to #A5, but I could not get my Time Capsule drive to show up in the Disk Utility. I didn't see a "data folder", but I did try directly dragging the sparsebundle to the left pane of the Disk Utility, but that seemed to hang Disk Utility.
At this point I'm probably going to try deleting the plist file as per #A4, erasing (reformatting) the drive, rebooting, and starting a whole new backup from scratch. It's not going to take much longer than backing up the entire external drive by itself would have, and I still have older backups (up to a few days ago) on the original Time Capsule drive in case of massive disaster.
So we'll see how that goes...

New Time Capsule 2Tb does not do FULL backup

I've been using a 500Gb USB drive and decided to upgrade to a Time Capsule 2Tb.
Installation goes without a problem. Everything the manual says should happen, happens. So far so good.
Starting Time Machine, I'm asked if I want to replace the previous Time Machine or use both. I select replace.
Using an ethernet cable to speed the process, Time Machine starts making the initial backup. This should be full.
However, after it finished - no apparent error messages, Time Machine just closed on its own - I decided to check that some of my most important files had been backed up. I have 3 VMs. Only 1 had been backed up!
I'm assuming there will be other files that haven't been backed up. But why isn't this a FULL backup??

It is all the information that was backed up in the first one. After it started backing up after the second time I deleted that .plist file, it only backed up 4MB...it seems to be doing that now.
Edit: an interesting error seen in the time machine widget is "Could not mount recovery partition"

NW65 SP7 doing Full backups not Inc.

I have recently upgraded to NW65 SP7 and the backup
software (Veritas Netbackup) does a Full backup instead
of Incremental backups on these upgraded clients.
Before the upgrade it worked fine.
Any ideas ?

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Why is TM doing a full backup?!

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