OS X Mountain Lion :: Why Is Time Machine Filling Up HDD With Incremental Backups When Computer Is Not In Use
Jun 23, 2014
I ran an experiment with Time Machine. Last Monday I attached a freshly erased 2TB Time Machine external HD to a Mac Mini with 400GB of data on the internal 1TB HD with no exclusions. I left the Mac Mini off network -- no wifi, no ethernet -- and did not use it for one full week. Today the 2TB Time Machine HD has only 35GB of free space.
Why is Time Machine filling up the HD with incremental backups when the computer is not in use?
I started using Time Machine on Jan. 9th with an initial backup onto my LaCie Firewire drive (MBP 17inch SSD with three partitions). That backup was about 55GB. I am using the 'regular' settings on Time Machine - the LaCie Drive is the only item on the exclusion list (I guess Time Machine put it there itself). Since then TM does its thing every hour. When I enter TM I see all those backups. However, there's a big difference between the 'NOW' and all the backups, even the one just an hour ago. E.g., the download folder has now 47 items, whereas the backups all show 35 (the number of the initial backup). The Entourage database has also grown, but any backup shows the size of the initial backup.
I verified this by restoring a database and opening it in Entourage and sure enough the last message shows a date of Jan. 9th. TimeTracker shows many backups since the initial backup with 0 bytes or some smallish number of KB - only a few are in the MB range (total is around 150MB since Jan. 9th). Bottom line, TM does not really backup incrementally. Has anybody experienced this malfunction? What would be the solution to this problem? Any tweaks, settings to change? I'm using a Firewire 800>400 cable (9-pin to 6-pin, 24K gold-plated connectors) from SIIG - could this be the cause? But why would the initial backup work just fine plus all the others allegedly being performed?
I had a Mac from 2006. Bought a new one in 2011. I have a time machine back up from my old mac.. This HD was damaged in 2010 and recently repaired. I bought a new HD and used it with time machine on my new mac. I am looking for something on my old Time Machine... Specifically iTunes playlists.. They are very difficult to find by just searching through the back up folder.. What I want to do is, enter the old time machine on my old HD and export some of the iTunes playlists to my new HD. Then of course go back to my current time machine back up and continue using my computer... Can I do this? and Can I have both Time machine devices connected to the computer at the same time?
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
I use Bootcamp occasionally for some software that is not available on a Mac as well as MS Office, but unfortunately, I had the partition set to 150 Gb when I set it up which is way too much. I don't want to reformat etc. to reduce the size so just recently, I decided to use that partition for my iTunes folder plus Gb's of work documents which suits me just fine.
I have Time Machine setup to backup my Mac and whereas before I had Bootcamp excluded, I am now trying to have the settings so that all of Bootcamp is excluded EXCEPT for 2 folders - iTunes and Personal. I can't see a way to do this because since I have Bootcamp excluded, the subfolders are non-selectable. I tried one way where instead of selecting all of Bootcamp, I did a CMD-A and selected all with an idea of deselecting folders, but even this way, I am unable to deselect the 2 folders because all folders are greyed out.
So the question is - Is it possible to exclude Bootcamp and at the same time to de-exclude the 2 folders? If not, I suppose my option would be to backup (well, actually copy!) the 2 folders to my TM drive.
Info: MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), ...
How to restore a file from the Time Share volume of one mac to a different mac.
I have 2 machines: macbook pro & mac air both both running latest mountian lion. Each keeps its own time share volume on a network server. The two have some sync'd shares, but in general, they are not fully sync'd.
the macbook pro is in the shop for repair for a few days and I'd like to fetch some of it's files from its time machine backup onto the macair. I'm a little reluctant to simply fire up Time Machine on the mac air and respecify it's storage volume to be the macbook pro's volume. I'm concerned about internal configuration changes Time Machine might make to the mac air, including making changes that might cause it to have to do a full (not differential) back up when I reconfigure the mac air's Time Machine to use it's own backup volume after I'm done getting files from the macbook pro backup volume.
In addition to simply getting access to some of the files of the mac in the shop, I want to get the mac calendar from that machine and use it on the mac air. I understand that this may be somewhat trickier.
So after replacing my OS X disk drive with a larger-capacity one, I make sure that the drive has the same name (Macintosh HD) it had before.
Then I go to "Sharing" in the preferences and use the name "Alex's MacBook", with the exact same type of single quote, to match the name used on the TM machine disk (under Backups.backupdb).
Next I am expecting Time Machine to do an incremental backup.
No such luck: Everything gets copied.
What happened? I have had trouble in the past with Time Machine not allowing me to see the history when inside the star-wars-like TM interface, but the files were all there (I could still sudo and copy back anything I needed by hand). The backups were incremental.
OS X 10.7.3 all updates. Is it possible to set time machine to do incremental/delta backup of truecrypt container? I have big container - 10 GB and time machine backup every hour backup complete container. So at end of day I get 24 * 10 GB = 240 GB. Is it possible to have something like dropbox which only sync changed bits of truecrypt container?
My macbook pro laptop recently died and I am trying to access its time machine backup data through Finder on a different computer. In each one of my folders from different dates, however, the majority of the computer folders I would like to access (i.e. desktop, documents, dropbox, etc) have a little red "no" sign in the corner and prompt the following message when selected:
"The folder “FolderName” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents"
How can I gain permission to see its contents? As the former user, I know whatever passwords are restricting these files, but I don't know how/where to go to give permission to these folders. I've tried going into Disk Utility and changing the permissions there, but to no avail, despite successful changing of the "Sharing & Permissions" to "Read & Write" for all listed accounts.
I'm currently trying to view this on an imac OSX 10.6.8. The dead MacBook pro ran OSX
I have an iMac 27 (end of year 2009) I5.It has 1 TB internal and I want to replace it with a 2 TB internal. I have time machine backups on an external hard drive that has been connected via Firewire. I have another iMac (my son's)Imac 24 Intel Core 2 Duo that has it's own separate Time machine backup to it's own separate firewire connected external drive.Both machines are completely up to date with the latest version of Lion and all other necessary software updates.When the internal hardrive is replaced - I want to use my latest time machine backup to create one profile on the imac and then use my son's latest time machine back up for a second profile.The end goal being to have everything from my current set up ie: apps, documents, itunes, etc existing in one profile and everything in my son's current set up existing in the other profile.We can both be administrators for the time being as well.I should note even though we both have some of the same apps, we both also have other apps that the other does not.
My profile will be using about 900 gigs of total space.My son's profile will be using about 250 gigs of total space.This is temporary until the new iMac is released.Then I will want to transfer my profile to that leaving my son's intact on the iMac 27 I5.I realize that during the temporary period that Time Machine will be making backups of this entire two profile setup, which I am now understanding as I write this will create a new issue for me when I want to transfer only my profile to the new computer as well.But one bridge to cross at a time, I guess.I need to do this because we must bring his current computer to my father - as his iMac G5 is inoperable. We have been doing this round robin hand me down in our family since IMac DV special edition :-)
both my MacBook and my time machine backups just got destroyed by the water sprinkers coming on. All I have left is the data on my iPhone. I keep all my iPhoto, music, contacts, calandar, and bookmarks on my phone. How will I transfer them to my new computer (even if it is a paid program, I REALLY need to keep this data. Also, how will I keep my new computer from deleting everything on my phone, ESPECIALLY my text messages, when I sync it for the first time? Again, a paid program would be fine because I REALLY need to keep this data
OK, kinda a long story. Pardon the ranting, but if feels like everything is going wrong and I'm getting pretty tired of it.
I was going along nicely with my Mac. Then I had a time-sensitive iMovie project that was going totallly screwy. I ended up buying Lion hoping that would fix the problem. It didn't spent several more hours trolling forums and figured out it was a weird problem with the software.
So... then I was stuck with Lion. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Rosetta Stone, etc. don't work on it. Not cool. Would have been nice if I was warned before doing this. So, I figured I'd go back in my Time Machine backup. However, I was really busy and didn't get to it until a few weeks later. I'd never actually used Time Machine, but when I went into it I was astonished to find that it backed up on the hour, filling up the external hard drive so it only kept backups for a few weeks. And of course, it was too late to backup to my old OS. So not cool. Who in the world needs an hourly backup??? I'd much prefer a weekly backup a little further back. That's just absurd.
So, anyway, I had the old Time Machine backup. I figured if I messed up, I could always restore to the recent Lion backup. So, I restored to Snow Leopard from the disk, wiping the hard drive. Then, I tried to go in and get my files off of the external hard drive/Time Machine backup. It didn't recognize I even had an external hard drive plugged in.
So... I decided to go back to Lion, maybe I needed to be in Lion to access the Lion backup. Spent hours putting Lion back on. And... still doesn't even recognize that there's an external hard drive plugged in. What gives?
I've been trying to think of what all could be the problem here. Did I just think I was backing up to the external hard drive this whole time, when really I was backing up to the computer? No, because it would send me reminders when the external hard drive wasn't plugged in. Is the cord or something broken to the external hard drive? I suppose it's possible, but just a few hours before I saw the Time Machine backups... And there is power to it.
I have a Mac Book Pro. Due to the total amount of files and data, I keep my media files on an external drive connected via USB to my Airport AEBS. Of course, I connect wirelessly to the AEBS.I use Time Machine to back up my computer onto an second external drive also connected to my AEBS in the same fashion.However, TM does not allow me to choose the files or folders from the external AEBS drive containing all of my media files to also incrementally back them up using Time Machine. It should. I wish it would. Why won't it? Can I make it work that way? If so, how? TM is the best incremental backup program I've seen. I really want to back up my media that way. But I don't want to tether my laptop by connecting an external drive directly to it, and I don't have the space to store my media files directly on my laptop.
I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effects on using other programs. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?
I've backup my Macbook Air Using time machine before reformat it to have window partition.However, after installing OS Lion 10.7.4, how do I restore back all my application and data on my last backup from time machine?
I have been using Preview to view and fill in PDF forms. The font that Preview uses to fill in the forms is very small and difficult to read. I would like to make it larger to match the document font size.
Info: iMac (20-inch Mid 2007), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)
I have recently connected a NAS and have attemted to use Time Machine as a backup and have been met with failure. I have attempted most things in the forums to no avail. I have also transferred about 700gb from another mac to the NAS with no problem. Here is the syslog:
Feb 19 12:15:47 Office-Mac com.apple.backupd[1154] <Notice>: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://admin@192.168.17.107/Mac%20Time%20Capsule Feb 19 12:15:49 Office-Mac com.apple.backupd[1154] <Error>: NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 2 for url: afp://admin@192.168.17.107/Mac%20Time%20Capsule
There appears to be several threads regarding deleteing Time Machine backups but I can't seem to get the correct answer to delete the entire backup folder (Backups.backupdb). I move the location of my backups files and they are working fine now so I want to delete the folder on the disk it used to backup to. How can I do that? I have everything backedup to the proper disk so I don't need this folder any longer.
My new MacBook Air running latest as of today Lion seems to do full backups way more often than I'd like. Just this morning it finished up a full back up, then I noticed it did a small incremental. Now it is doing another full back up for no apparent good reason. I have not made any significant changes to the system at all. I'm backing up to an external drive that is attached to my AE. How to reduce the amount of Fulls it does because each day seems it does a couple.
MacBook Pro mid-2012, 8GB RAM, 750GB hard drive, Mac OS X 10.8.5
One Time Capsule at home
One Time Capsule in vacation home
MBP backs up everything on internal hard drive to Time Capsule at home, where we live during summer and spring. When moving to vacation home in fall and winter, MBP backs up everything to Time Capsule in vacation home.
During the 6 months at each residence, the backups work great to the Time Capsule at that particular house. However, after some time (maybe a week?), Time Machine displays an error in Notification Center: "Time Machine can't complete backup to Home Time Capsule" (when in vacation home) or "Time Machine can't complete backup to Vacation Time Capsule" (when at home).
It's obvious that this occurs because Time Machine was set to back up to 2 Time Capsules and expects both of them to be reachable. Is there a way to suppress these Time Machine errors for the time that we're away from one of the Time Capsules?
I'm having a strange problem with Time Machine. Any backup older than 1 week seems to go missing when viewed from Time Machine. Time Machine preferences shows my oldest backup as February 13th, 2012. But, when I enter Time Machine only entries back to March 14th, 2012 are shown. When I use "sudo tmutil listbackups" all my backups are shown including the one from February 13th. Why aren't they showing up in Time Machine? The disk still has 89 GB available and I can see that the log is adding incremental backups and deleting old ones from February that are no longer useful (daily-backups removed so that only weekly ones are visible).
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Time Machine
I have a 1 TB external hard drive that I've been using as a time machine drive & also as a place to put random files i dont need on my computer and its starting to get very full. Most of whats on there is old backups from the past year & 1/2 that I have no use for anymore. is there a way to delete all of the backups that are on there right now without deleting the other files I've put on there. I have a bunch of projects and files on there that I cant put anywhere else and just format the drive. Basically, i need a way to delete all of my time machine backups off my external hd without deleting all my other files on there.
I just bought my time capsule. It works doing backups manually but the button is in 'on' and the next backup field always says 'automatic backups off'.
I installed Snow Leopard, upgraded it to OS X 10.6.8, paid for and spent the hours necessary to download Lion, but Lion will not install. Even though it says the requirements are 10.6.6 or greater, when I try to install, I get a message saying I need 10.7. to install Lion.
There is possible to lock down a generation of my time machine backups?I want to lock permanently a version of my backups using Time Machine. I can copy to another disk but, I want to know if there some kind of configuration available using Time Machine to configure for not delete from my disk?
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Time Machine
My Time Machine has been making the usual regular backups for a few months onto my Time Capsule. I just found that all the backups prior to about a week ago have vanished. It's not a disaster (I think) as I assume that the current backups reflect what's on my iMac (I haven't had to delete files from it yet).
Where did they go? Why did they go?
A possible connection: My TC is 500GB; my iMac 1TB. I recently put extra files for temporary use onto the iMac hard drive - Time Machine said (in effect) 'that's too much, try removing certain folders from the backup'. I excluded said folder and things seemed okay, but it would be at around the time I did that that my old backups have gone.
I use Time Machine to wirelessly backup my MBA to a Buffalo NAS. It will work fine for weeks or months, then I will see the dreaded "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” error. Of course this means I lose all my backups.I have researched this pretty thoroughly and I know that using TM with a NAS has some risk. But I am hoping to not have to resort to dragging out a USB drive everytime (daily) I want to do a backup.Can anyone share sucess stories of how they make TM work reliably with a NAS? Is it a Buffalo problem and a different NAS works better?
Time Machine is not working correctly since installing Lion. I found (from using Adobe Bridge) that there seem to be automatic back ups being made 20 times a day and onto my hard drive! Usually I back up to an external drive specifically for back up using Time Machine. Now time machine takes several hours to back up when I have that disk wired in (with USB) and the Time Machine icon in the Apple menu is always showing that the back up is delayed.
How can I show invisble items on //Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb? I've backed //Lion/ Users/User/ Library , but when i checked the backed folder, i could not find it.
I have an iBook G4 running 10.5.8 and a new iMac running Lion. Migration assistant will not accept Timemachine backups. I can't upgrade the OS on the iBook anymore. I only want to move my music, photos and documents.Can I do this by Firewire?
