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Time Machine Bakup Strategies

R

reallyoldman

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 7, 2011
17
0
I have a 2TB external hard drive that I use for my time machine backups but it is continually deleting the older backups to make room for the newer and because of that my oldest backup data is from August 18th (at this point just over a month's worth). I know that that's SOP but I'd like to store less each time so that I can have older backups.

What strategies to people use to accomplish that?
 
Get a bigger backup disk! :)

You should probably have a TM backup disk that is 1.5 to 2 times the size of your iMac disk or more. Also be sure to exclude any virtual machine (parallels or Fusion) disks which are huge files (30GB or so) and constantly changing and thus included in your frequent backups.

Hopefully, your backup is simply deleting redundant backup material as part of the normal compression scheme ... not actual primary data.



-howard
 
Since a terabyte is 1024 GB and my MAC's HD is just under 1000 GB I already have a ratio of just over 2 to 1.

You did start me on the right path however because I use Parallels on my MAC and in my Windows virtual machine I have many photos, 99% of which are now also stored in iPhoto so I can get rid of the ones in the virtual machine which will free up a lot of space.

Thanks.
 
I turned my automatic backups off. I don't need it to backup every hour. Whenever I do something/buy something/create something/add photos I backup to Time Machine. Sometimes that is everyday. Sometimes I go several days or even a week without it. But to do this you do have to be the type of person who remembers to manually backup.

Also, I am pretty sure that when it deletes your oldest backup that is what it is doing.
 
I don't do backups every hour either, but rather once each evening. There's a very nice app that I use to do that called TimeMachineEditor that let's you set the schedule for when time machine does it's backups.
 
I am having a problem with Time Machine running on 10.6.8 backing up lots of files that have not been modified. The workaround I use is to occasionally boot into safe mode.

After booting in safe mode and restarting normally, the fsevendsd is cleaned out. Time Machine then executes much quicker, backing up only modified files.

That might help your situation, but sounds like you need an archiving solution. Time to buy more storage!

If you are using VMware or Parallels, you might want to consider excluding the virtual machine data directories.

B


reallyoldman said:
I have a 2TB external hard drive that I use for my time machine backups but it is continually deleting the older backups to make room for the newer and because of that my oldest backup data is from August 18th (at this point just over a month's worth). I know that that's SOP but I'd like to store less each time so that I can have older backups.

What strategies to people use to accomplish that?
Click to expand...
 
What about my iPhoto Photos, can I store them permanently and safely in iCloud?

----------
bernuli said:
...If you are using VMware or Parallels, you might want to consider excluding the virtual machine data directories.

B
Click to expand...
Wouldn't I then be subject to losing the data files stored on my virtual machine?
 
reallyoldman said:
What about my iPhoto Photos, can I store them permanently and safely in iCloud?

----------

Wouldn't I then be subject to losing the data files stored on my virtual machine?
Click to expand...

I would NEVER trust any "cloud" storage with data I couldn't afford to lose ... NEVER !
Cloud storage is for convenience, mobility, and sharing ... not for primary storage. Keep your primary storage safely at home under your personal control.

I also wouldn't trust a VM with storing my actual data files. I would write them to a location in OS X and let TM do the backup of that data. You might use DropBox for that purpose with your DropBox account active in both your Windows VM and OS X.

I do so little in Windows (Quicken for Windows and Solitair games) that I only use TM to backup the VM the first time TM runs (for easy restore if necessary), then exclude the VM from any further TM backup. Otherwise TM will try to backup a 30GB file every hour, quickly filling up my backup disk. You could manually copy a VM backup to the backup disk on occasion as necessary (i.e. after a major update to Windows).

I would also suggest buying a separate external disk drive and manually keeping a 3rd copy of all your photographs on that disk. You really don't want to ever lose your photo library!


-howard
 
Last edited:
Adding a cloud backup to your backup scheme would not be a bad idea. Assuming you have at least a 1Mb upload speed, you can get cloud backup of unlimited amounts of data, that stores every file change forever for just a few bucks a month.
 
I plan to get a 2Tb HDD in my next iMac so will I need 4Tb ext HDD for TM?

Even with 2Tb I don't plan to fill it right away, maybe have it about 30% full storing most of my media files on external HDDs and a network drive.

I really need them to take a leap in HDD sizes, I know they are now at 4Tb but I'd kill for 10Tb on a single drive.

FYI I'm currently using a G5PM with Leopard and have CCC for backing up weekly.
 
Lancer said:
I plan to get a 2Tb HDD in my next iMac so will I need 4Tb ext HDD for TM?

Even with 2Tb I don't plan to fill it right away, maybe have it about 30% full storing most of my media files on external HDDs and a network drive.

I really need them to take a leap in HDD sizes, I know they are now at 4Tb but I'd kill for 10Tb on a single drive.

FYI I'm currently using a G5PM with Leopard and have CCC for backing up weekly.
Click to expand...

I have 2TB in my iMac and have been running an external 3TB backup disk for the past year or so. The main 2TB drive isn't all that full, so everything is backing up fine so far.

You can get some 4 drive RAID-5 external drives which will give you that kind of backup storage. I have a OWC system with 4 ea. 2TB green drives on my Mac Pro which gives me about 6TB of Time Machine backup on that system.

-howard
 
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Be aware that doing some very simple file moving can result in HUGE TM backup sizes.

Example - you download a bunch of images from your DLSR memory cards to your desktop - say 16GB or so. Before you do anything with them, you pack it in for the night. Time Machine backs up your 16GB of files while you are asleep. The next day you move them from your desktop into your Pictures folder. Maybe you sort through them there and cull out 2GB or so, so now down to 14. Later on, that 14GB gets written to TM. Then, you import those 14GB of images into your iPhoto app - iPhoto moves them from your pictures folder into the iPhoto Library, and also creates previews of them (which can be 5MB per image depending on your preferences). Later on, TM backs up those 14GB of images and maybe another 4GB or so of previews. So, for the 14GB of images that you put into your iPhoto Library, TM is storing 49GB worth of images all in different locations.

Changing a folder name or location of a folder with lots of files in it can have a similar effect.

There is an app called Time Machine Perspective (which is based off of Grand Perspective) which lets you visually see the files on your TM drive and look for large chunks of files that TM has only backed up once. The premise is that if you move a file around just after a TM backup, you probably want to remove it from its original location but keep backing it up from its new (and hence current) location.

I use this every few months or so to keep my TM backups manageable.
 
You MAY be able to enable local time machine backups on your iMac's internal disk (to get "oh crap, i clobbered that file") recovery, and plug the time machine disk in only once a week to get disaster recovery backups.

enable local TM backups (lion onwards only I think?) with


sudo tmutil enablelocal

from a terminal window.


this will consume space on your internal disk for time machine that will automatically be freed if required - if your time machine external disk is not connected.
 
Mike in Kansas said:
Be aware that doing some very simple file moving can result in HUGE TM backup sizes.

Example - you download a bunch of images from your DLSR memory cards to your desktop - say 16GB or so. Before you do anything with them, you pack it in for the night. Time Machine backs up your 16GB of files while you are asleep. The next day you move them from your desktop into your Pictures folder. Maybe you sort through them there and cull out 2GB or so, so now down to 14. Later on, that 14GB gets written to TM. Then, you import those 14GB of images into your iPhoto app - iPhoto moves them from your pictures folder into the iPhoto Library, and also creates previews of them (which can be 5MB per image depending on your preferences). Later on, TM backs up those 14GB of images and maybe another 4GB or so of previews. So, for the 14GB of images that you put into your iPhoto Library, TM is storing 49GB worth of images all in different locations.

Changing a folder name or location of a folder with lots of files in it can have a similar effect.

There is an app called Time Machine Perspective (which is based off of Grand Perspective) which lets you visually see the files on your TM drive and look for large chunks of files that TM has only backed up once. The premise is that if you move a file around just after a TM backup, you probably want to remove it from its original location but keep backing it up from its new (and hence current) location.

I use this every few months or so to keep my TM backups manageable.
Click to expand...

All the more reason to use CrashPlan. Block level file backups means this never happens. :)
 
reallyoldman said:
Since a terabyte is 1024 GB and my MAC's HD is just under 1000 GB I already have a ratio of just over 2 to 1.
Click to expand...

That's 1:1. A 2TB HDD would be 2:1 in comparison to your 1 TB HDD.

EDIT: Nevermind, read also that you have a 2TB. Disregard.
 
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