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Micky Do

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 31, 2012
2,203
3,145
a South Pacific island
Since changing from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on my early 2009 Mini free space on the out board back-up HDD has been disappearing rapidly.

After nearly 3 years of using Time Machine I still had over 240 GB of free space on the dedicated 320 GB back up HDD. In less than three months, since installing OX S 10.8 (and the 10.8.2 update) the free space has gone down to 48 GB.

My usage has changed very little. The main apps I use are Pages, Numbers, Safari and iTunes. I got a camera and started using iPhoto back in May, but not so much that it made a big difference to the system.

The 120 GB on board HDD still stands at 86 GB free.

Has anybody else found the same? What can be done about it?
 

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Jun 10, 2006
7,085
1,558
There's a lot of data backed up there. You can always add folders to the "Do Not Back Up" list in TM preferences. My Time Machine backup is almost 4TB.
 

msjones

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2007
429
4
Nottinghamshire, UK
Do you run virtual machines on your system? I found that every time you run a VM and the file container increases in size (even if by only a kb) TimeMachine will create a fresh backup of the file. I ended up with over 200GB of the same VM.

As Zwhaler said I just told TM not to back up the VM folder.
 

Micky Do

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 31, 2012
2,203
3,145
a South Pacific island
Thanks for the replays

There's a lot of data backed up there. You can always add folders to the "Do Not Back Up" list in TM preferences. My Time Machine backup is almost 4TB.

I have added several folders to the do "Do Not back Up" list. Still I noticed this morning it was busy doing an 11 GB back up.... heck there is less than 40 GB of Data on the internal HDD, including OS X 10.8.2, and iWork.

It looks like it could be backing up whole files, not just the changes.

Do you run virtual machines on your system? I found that every time you run a VM and the file container increases in size (even if by only a kb) TimeMachine will create a fresh backup of the file. I ended up with over 200GB of the same VM.

As Zwhaler said I just told TM not to back up the VM folder.

What are Vitual Machines? As far as I know I don't run any, but to be honest I don't know much about computers. I just use them, which is why I use Apple.
 
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