External Hard Drive is Full and shouldn't be

[cmenckhoff]

I use time-machine to back up my mac to a 500 GB external drive.
Recently it has stopped backing up because it says there is not enough space on the external drive.
When I go to the hard drive and add up the size of all the files, it comes out to only about 70GB.

What is taking up the rest of the space an how do I get rid of it?

 

[justperry]

First I recommend you to read some documentation on how TimeMachine works.

But, I will tell you a bit, it will back up your whole disk and all the changes afterwards.
Now, I think I might know the problem, do you have Parallels or any other Virtual Machine, if so and you use it daily it will get backed up daily and will add the whole VM each and every time you use the VM.
In Parallels you can set it so that it won't backup with TimeMachine, it's in it's preferences for each VM.

TimeMachine should automatically delete the oldest backup if there is no space, if this does not happens something is wrong.

 

[cmenckhoff]

It worked fine for the past year.
No parallels or virtual machine.
Can't figure it out.

 

[Fishrrman]

"What is taking up the rest of the space an how do I get rid of it?"

This is how Time Machine works -- backup after backup after backup after backup after backup after backup (had enough?) -- until your storage volume is full.

If you want to put a stop to this, and still be protected (actually, better-protected), switch from T.M. to CarbonCopyCloner for your backup system.

CCC will create a single BOOTABLE backup clone of your internal drive. It will also create a clone of the recovery partition if you configure it to do so. It will also "archive" older versions of files (that have changed recently) if you configure it to do so. It will offer you nearly all of the benefits of T.M., without the ever-growing backup monster eating your disk space.

The difference is, that you have to set up CCC as you want it (instead of that stupid "on/off" switch in T.M.), and you have to manually run backups at periodic intervals. I understand that CCC can be configured to execute automatically at timed intervals, but I've never used that feature.

 

[justperry]

"What is taking up the rest of the space an how do I get rid of it?"

This is how Time Machine works -- backup after backup after backup after backup after backup after backup (had enough?) -- until your storage volume is full.

If you want to put a stop to this, and still be protected (actually, better-protected), switch from T.M. to CarbonCopyCloner for your backup system.

CCC will create a single BOOTABLE backup clone of your internal drive. It will also create a clone of the recovery partition if you configure it to do so. It will also "archive" older versions of files (that have changed recently) if you configure it to do so. It will offer you nearly all of the benefits of T.M., without the ever-growing backup monster eating your disk space.

The difference is, that you have to set up CCC as you want it (instead of that stupid "on/off" switch in T.M.), and you have to manually run backups at periodic intervals. I understand that CCC can be configured to execute automatically at timed intervals, but I've never used that feature.

I do and it works extremely well, I have two schedules set, once weekly for the whole disk and once a day for my home folder.