Time Machine 'cleaning up old backups...'

[knarzie]

Hi,

I replaced my internal HDD yesterday and restored from TM backup, all worked smoothly. Now trying to do the first back-up from my new HDD, but for several hours now it's been saying 'cleaning up old backups'.

Surely this shouldn't be taking so long? Any ideas what the problem might be?

Thank you for reading

 

[maflynn]

Probably because TM is going to backup your entire drive and it needs all the space on your TM volume. That is it thinks everything changed and so its going to back up everything.

If you don't have the space on your TM volume, everything will get deleted.

For me, I turn off TimeMachine after a restore just to be sure everything is working as it should

 

[knarzie]

yes, I think you're right. That will just take a while I guess.