Time Machine Back-Up

[MacChris]

When setting up my Time Machine for back-up onto an external hard drive w/ 1TB of space shared between 2 Macs, should I exclude Applications from future back-ups? I would like to have a full back-up for each initially and the rest to follow with just important data. I read that Time Machine only backs up data that changes but my drive is always backing up everything.

 

[SoybeanStasher]

If your applications don't change, they'll only be backed up once anyway. The backups are incremental, so only changed files will be backed up on subsequent runs.

Are you sure that TM is backing up everything each time it runs? It might seem that way, but unless the amount of data being backed up is equal to the size of everything on your hard drive, it's not.

 

[MooneyFlyer]

If your applications don't change, they'll only be backed up once anyway. The backups are incremental, so only changed files will be backed up on subsequent runs.

Are you sure that TM is backing up everything each time it runs? It might seem that way, but unless the amount of data being backed up is equal to the size of everything on your hard drive, it's not.

I agree. When I look at the size of the backup directories on the TM drive, they look very big. But, when I watch TM run it's only backing up a fraction of the data. In my case it's about 2.1G which I think has to do with Entourage that I have to run -- but that's a different thread.

When I "Get Info" each of my backup folders is around 75G -- and there are a lot of them. But my drive is only using about 200G total... so clearly it's incremental though it's tricking me on how it's calculated.

 

[bombtrack]

MacChris,

I have having the same issue--and have a separate thread for it--my TM is backing up all files from my external drive every time, which amounts to over 350GB. I am hoping someone can tell me why. I called Apple and they did not have a clue.