Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

big_malk

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 7, 2005
557
1
Scotland
Sorry if this has been posted before, I'd have searched about but couldn't find any good advice :(

I noticed today that Time Machine was switched of a few months ago, either by accident or bug, so I switched it back on and started a manual backup.

After about an hour of 'preparing' it said the backup was too large for the backup disk... 'requires 418.3 GB but only 212.3 GB are available.'
Thing is, the entire content of the drive I'm trying to backup up is only 414.29 GB, according to Time Machine preferences the actually data size of included files to be backed up (I've excluded a few folders) is only 356.5 GB.

Ok, 356.5 GB is too big for the 212.3 GB available, but why does it say 418.3 GB are required? And at least 100 - 200 GB of content (my iTunes folder and apps for example) shouldn't have changed much since the last backup, even if it was a few months ago, so shouldn't need backed-up again? Should it?!
 
And shouldn't Time Machine automatically delete the older backup to free space if it needs to? Even thought it should only need an incremental backup anyway so shouldn't need all the free space it says it needs... :confused:
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.