How much space does Time Machine eat?

[I'mAMac]

I have my Mac on a TM backup on a 500gb HDD and its been backing up for about a month now. The maximum space is just about 500gb but time machine has brought it to 338gb with each backup taking 10-20gb. Is this normal? On my other Mac (an aluminum imac C2D), the backups take roughly 80gb of space and on my MBP im already up to 159gb worth of backups. Is there a way to minimize the size of backups? Thanks

 

[miles01110]

It takes as much space as you give it. You can reduce the size of backups by excluding folders.

 

[Caleb531]

You can also delete older backups in Time Machine by entering TM, going back to a previous backup, and choosing Delete Backup from the Action menu.

 

[Le Big Mac]

It takes as much space as you give it. You can reduce the size of backups by excluding folders.

Of course, eventually it will take up all that you give it still.

That's a feature Apple should implement: Imposing a cap on backup size. Far better than requiring partitions and such.

 

[Willdta]

if unchecked it can eat up a entire drive,i had a 320gb drive for my time machine and within 2 months it was almost full.

 

[Dimwhit]

I think it totally varies. My main machine has 140GB on it. My backup drive (which is a 1.5TB drive) currently only has about 300GB on it, and the backups date back to Nov 2007. I'll fit 10 years of backups on it at this rate.

 

[GGJstudios]

if unchecked it can eat up a entire drive,i had a 320gb drive for my time machine and within 2 months it was almost full.

That's not true. If you give it only allocate a 100GB partition of a 320GB drive, that's all it will use.

 

[Willdta]

That's not true. If you give it only allocate a 100GB partition of a 320GB drive, that's all it will use.

thats why i said unchecked,it would be very easy for a new user to simply fly through the set up and not set the correct allocation.