Time Machine - Disk Full

[Stridder44]

Isn't that the point?

From my understanding, TM will make an initial "image" of your entire hard drive (minus what you excluded). Every hour it will search for any files that were changed and make a separate backup of just those files that were changed. At the end of the day, it will combine all the changes into one "backup" for that day. It continues to do this for 30 days, then starts combining weeks. Obviously hard drives have a finite amount of space so when it's full, it deletes the oldest backup file which will either be a week backup or a day backup.

I just started using TM today though on a 100gb partition (WD External 160GB drive) for my Macbook Pro. I just want at least a backup for the past few days incase my hard drive goes south.

You'd think that's how it'd work...

It should delete older backups but...

from Apple time machine support:
(http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15137.html)

"If you do run out of space, the best thing to do is to attach a new backup disk. After you attach the new disk, open Time Machine preferences and click Change Disk to choose it as your Time Machine backup disk."

That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever read.

It's obvious TM needs major work, but at least they're going in the right direction I guess. That said, I would never trust any program to back up anything important to me. Call me paranoid, but wondering whether or not things got backed up properly should never be a question.

 

[durija]

I have to agree about that being stupid. So we are supposed to endlessly purchase drives to attach for our backups? This seems to contradict their statement that old backups will be deleted as the drive gets full. Which is it? There must be a fix coming along for this.

One thought...so on a day when you're really feeling lucky, and everything is just how you want it to be on your machine...turn off Time Machine, delete all of its backups, turn it back on and start over. Maybe save the absolute gotta haves to DVD first. Just a crazy thought of how to manage the issue.

 

[ScienceMac]

deleting backup

ok I am sorry if this has been posted already.

The simplest way would be to just delete manually a given backup from timemachine. In the timemachine finder window click the following icon, there should be an option to delete a backup. I have just tried it (finder location was the desktop) and the corresponding backup has been removed (also from the right side).
Maybe someone with knowledge could make an automator script. Otherwise it shouldnt be to difficult to remove some backups manually (for me it is 27 individual backups on a 1TB drive, so deleting say first 5 backups is just 5 clicks, maybe 10 seconds?)

Edit: and actually I think of a "manual user interaction" after a program "warning" is kind of a smart move from apple. Who wants a program to automatically delete maybe precious files? This is further stressed by the fact that you need administrative priviledges for deleting the backup. Am I wrong?

 

[big_malk]

It should delete older backups but...

from Apple time machine support:
(http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15137.html)

"If you do run out of space, the best thing to do is to attach a new backup disk. After you attach the new disk, open Time Machine preferences and click Change Disk to choose it as your Time Machine backup disk."

All that article say about adding an extra drive was just advice, to stop old (maybe recent if it's a small drive) backups getting deleted. It says quite clearly " as your backup disk fills up, Time Machine deletes older backups to make room for new ones".

 

[mac2maverick]

Recommended backup drive for timemachine

Sorry to revive an older topic, but it's relevant.


I'm looking into purchasing Apple's Time Capsule (500GB) to back up both our computers:

iMac G5 1.8Ghtz w/ 80GB HD, ~35GB used. (Wired to network)
MacBook Pro 2.2ghtz w/ 120GB HD, ~45GB used. (Airport only, mainly)

Here's my question: I know mathematically 500GB is sufficient to backup both our Macs (once we do upgrade to Leopard, mind you). However, from reading this thread it seems to me that Time Machine is filling up the Backup HDs far faster than anticipated. Will the 500GB Time Capsule be enough?

Neither computers are used for any heavy-duty video editing. A bulk of the space used consists of iTunes Libraries, and all the music isn't changed very often. (Major iTunes updates will "update existing library")

Will the 500GB be enough?

I've read that a good rule of thumb is to have a backup drive that is twice the size of your regular hard drive. Since you have 80+120=200GB multiply that by 2 = 400GB. That means you would have 100GB extra space on your backup. You could use that for extra backups or partition Time Capsule for extra drive space (files that aren't critical or backup for Windows OS). I don't know how partitioning works on the Time Capsule. Is it the same as a regular external drive?

 

[kingtj]

re: Time Machine running out of space

I ran into this same issue, and started doing some research. I believe the real cause of this issue lies with people making very regular changes to large files.

For example, say you have a large database you're regularly going in and making small changes to. Even if all you do is change the last name of one person in there - because it's all stored as one big file, Time Machine has to come along and make a backup copy of that WHOLE file each time it sees anything different in it.

As another example, if you regularly download a lot of stuff via bittorrent, you tend to have large partially-downloaded files on your machine. Some of these may take as long as several DAYS to finish downloading if they're huge files and are coming in slowly. Yet, Time Machine is going to see those big files changed size every single hour it does a backup operation, so again - the whole thing gets copied over each time.

Still another scenario: You edit a lot of video footage. All those temporary video clips generated during conversion of files from one format to another, or footage temporarily sitting on your drive until you trim what you need out and delete the rest? Yep - again, all getting backed up hourly, even though YOU consider it "stuff not worthy of a backup".

Obviously, this behavior will really burn up some disk space on the backup drive - even though the sum total of things you have to back up may not be all that great.

It looks like the only "solution" to this (besides turning off Time Machine) is being a lot more careful about what's excluded from a backup. I'm thinking myself, I'm going to try to designate a folder as my temporary files folder, exclude it from Time Machine, and point as many things to it as I can that might generate big "scratch" files while processing something.

Excluding the desktop is probably also a good idea, for this same reason. Most stuff on my desktop is data "in transit", that I'm either getting ready to burn to a CD/DVD and delete, or just need long enough to view/print it.

I have to agree about that being stupid. So we are supposed to endlessly purchase drives to attach for our backups? This seems to contradict their statement that old backups will be deleted as the drive gets full. Which is it? There must be a fix coming along for this.

One thought...so on a day when you're really feeling lucky, and everything is just how you want it to be on your machine...turn off Time Machine, delete all of its backups, turn it back on and start over. Maybe save the absolute gotta haves to DVD first. Just a crazy thought of how to manage the issue.

 

[big_malk]

I ran into this same issue, and started doing some research. I believe the real cause of this issue lies with people making very regular changes to large files.

For example, say you have a large database you're regularly going in and making small changes to. Even if all you do is change the last name of one person in there - because it's all stored as one big file, Time Machine has to come along and make a backup copy of that WHOLE file each time it sees anything different in it.

As another example, if you regularly download a lot of stuff via bittorrent, you tend to have large partially-downloaded files on your machine. Some of these may take as long as several DAYS to finish downloading if they're huge files and are coming in slowly. Yet, Time Machine is going to see those big files changed size every single hour it does a backup operation, so again - the whole thing gets copied over each time.

Still another scenario: You edit a lot of video footage. All those temporary video clips generated during conversion of files from one format to another, or footage temporarily sitting on your drive until you trim what you need out and delete the rest? Yep - again, all getting backed up hourly, even though YOU consider it "stuff not worthy of a backup".

Obviously, this behavior will really burn up some disk space on the backup drive - even though the sum total of things you have to back up may not be all that great.

It looks like the only "solution" to this (besides turning off Time Machine) is being a lot more careful about what's excluded from a backup. I'm thinking myself, I'm going to try to designate a folder as my temporary files folder, exclude it from Time Machine, and point as many things to it as I can that might generate big "scratch" files while processing something.

Excluding the desktop is probably also a good idea, for this same reason. Most stuff on my desktop is data "in transit", that I'm either getting ready to burn to a CD/DVD and delete, or just need long enough to view/print it.

Also, virtual machines. The whole virtual machine's hard drive (probably several gigs at least) is saved as one file, and almost every time you use it this file will change. I excluded the parallels folder to over come this. Just remember to manually back it up if you have important files in your virtual machine.

 

[mac2maverick]

It's possible to tell Time Machine things you want it to ignore and not backup. Whenever you delete something it stays in Time Machine, but you can also ask it to delete those files too. One command and it deletes ALL of the multiple copies. It's so new now, people aren't familiar with it's options.

 

[pjrobertson]

Time MAchine for me is only using 30GB so far, mwith my Mac Drive being 120GB and ~ 30GB used.

I've excluded quite a few folders from the backup (Downloads for one as it's constantly changing) and I've had no problems.

The fact that TM backs up every hour DOESN'T mean it eats up so much space. Time Machine uses what are called hard links, meaning if a file hasn't changed, then it won't get backed up. You'll see the file in Time Machine, but it'll just be a hard link to the last time it was backed up (like aliases, but smarter).

Deleting these hard links won't free up space (they take about 4KB) so you have to go back to the first time you backed up the file and delete it. Or as someone else said - go to the settings and click 'delete ALL backups of xxxxx'

 

[samh004]

Sorry to revive an older topic, but it's relevant.


I'm looking into purchasing Apple's Time Capsule (500GB) to back up both our computers:

iMac G5 1.8Ghtz w/ 80GB HD, ~35GB used. (Wired to network)
MacBook Pro 2.2ghtz w/ 120GB HD, ~45GB used. (Airport only, mainly)

Should be enough, I've got a 500GB drive and 2 computers backing up to it since November, there's still 300GB + free and I am using the disk to store spare applications and other files too.

 

[snickelfritz]

It seems like a good idea to exclude certain directories from Time Machine backup.
For example, I see no reason why applications, games and utilities should be backed up; you can easily reinstall them again if you lose them.
I would also exclude movie directories; archive that material on DVD.
The only files I really worry about losing are pictures and documents.

 

[rotlex]

It seems like a good idea to exclude certain directories from Time Machine backup.
For example, I see no reason why applications, games and utilities should be backed up; you can easily reinstall them again if you lose them.
I would also exclude movie directories; archive that material on DVD.
The only files I really worry about losing are pictures and documents.

This is pretty much exactly what I do. My Aperture vaults, which already are not backed up by TM, my documents directory, and any electronic software I've downloaded are pretty much all that I NEED to backup. Everything else can be easily re-installed\setup etc. in the even of a catastrophic failure.

 

[benoitgphoto]

My TimeMachine Drive filled up a while, ago, and I use it much less on my Macbook now. Just out of interest, how big was your drive, and to what time frame did it backup to? I guess you would have to know the system first. So I will start.

Macbook 2.16MHz
Total HD space: 70gig (120gig sharing with XP)
Backup drive space: 133gig
Backup timeframe: Just over a month and a week or so.
Computer Use: Average

So 133gig gave me about a month or so of constant timemachine backups.

Is that average? Anyone go 2 months or only a week?

K

There is something wrong ...means that 133 GB of your HD has changed in 1 month
Here is mine : Mac mini 80 gig HD about 50 gig used
Backup drive 500 GB WD My Book
TM backup file size 53 GB (first backup on October 26th when Leopard went out : 49 GB) So 4 GB of backup file size increase in 3 months and the big difference is that I installed Office 2008 last week...at that pace it's gonna take looong to fill up a 500 GB but I configured TM to not backup music, downloads and videos.

Be smart...look at the real necessity to back up everything.

 

[timothyjay2004]

Yea, I know I can see it in finder, but that means, I would always have to have a finder window open, which is just not practical. It would be so much more convenient to have it in the menu bar, next to the battery icon maybe. I thought I saw it on someones desktop once but that just turned out to be iSync or something.

I believe that this is actually a feature that will be added in 10.5.2. I read it somewhere. They will add something dealing with timemachine into the top menu bar (pretty sure that's what I read).

 

[theman]

I did a little investigation by opening up the TM backups.db directory. Inside is a folder for each backup date. I checked the size of all these folders, and strangely, each folder's size is the size of my internal hard drive on that given date. So, even though my total backup is only 100gb, the folders went like this:

60gb
61gb
61.5gb
65gb
66gb
66gb
66.3gb
67gb

and so on.

I'm not quite sure how that works... but, because of this, it seems like it may be possible just to delete the older ones yourself... though I'm not going to be the one to try it.

 

[big_malk]

I did a little investigation by opening up the TM backups.db directory. Inside is a folder for each backup date. I checked the size of all these folders, and strangely, each folder's size is the size of my internal hard drive on that given date. So, even though my total backup is only 100gb, the folders went like this:

60gb
61gb
61.5gb
65gb
66gb
66gb
66.3gb
67gb

and so on.

I'm not quite sure how that works... but, because of this, it seems like it may be possible just to delete the older ones yourself... though I'm not going to be the one to try it.

Time machine uses 'hard links', which are similar to aliases in the sense that they point to another file, but hard links are more like an exact copy of the original. A hard link of a file will show the same file size as the original in 'Get Info', because it's essentially the same file; making a hard link is sort of like having two heads to the same beast. (I'm no expert, and I don't explain very well, I read it all here).
Each time you backup, Time Machine will take a copy of every file, but it doesn't copy the data, it just uses hard links to point to the original data on the disk (unless the data has changed since the last backup, where it takes a copy).

I would read that page about symbolic and hard links, is should explain all you need to know, although if you've never used the terminal the unix commands might confuse you a bit.

It should be safe to just delete the older backups, but don't blame me if it destroys the universe - and time itself

 

[edwinkasiya]

Sorry to revive an older topic, but it's relevant.


I'm looking into purchasing Apple's Time Capsule (500GB) to back up both our computers:

iMac G5 1.8Ghtz w/ 80GB HD, ~35GB used. (Wired to network)
MacBook Pro 2.2ghtz w/ 120GB HD, ~45GB used. (Airport only, mainly)

Here's my question: I know mathematically 500GB is sufficient to backup both our Macs (once we do upgrade to Leopard, mind you). However, from reading this thread it seems to me that Time Machine is filling up the Backup HDs far faster than anticipated. Will the 500GB Time Capsule be enough?

Neither computers are used for any heavy-duty video editing. A bulk of the space used consists of iTunes Libraries, and all the music isn't changed very often. (Major iTunes updates will "update existing library")

Will the 500GB be enough?


Dankeschon.

well, I doubt it. 120GB filled up within 10 days for me. so 500 GB ....

I stopped using TM, better seek alternative ways.

EK

 

[mac2maverick]

Time Machine help link

Here's a link to Apple's support for Time Machine. It'll answer most of your basic questions and help you solve some problems.

http://www.apple.com/support/leopard/timemachine/

Is anyone else out there happy with time machine but feeling like the backup drive has spoiled the quiet running iMac?

 

[TheSpaz]

I didn't read this entire post but, I thought I'd share my quick story about Time Machine. Time Machine has been working 100% great since I got Leopard (the day it shipped) except for 1 day last month when suddenly Time Machine decided (on it's own) to erase my entire Time Machine drive and start writing the base files from scratch. It freaked me out because I wanted a file that I needed from a week earlier and all Time Machine had was the current day... that's it.

I have no idea why it did this.
I also have no idea how to replicate it.
I didn't change any settings... in fact, I was playing with my iPod touch at the time that it started doing this.
I've run out of disk space before, and it just deleted the oldest backups... not everything.

 

[TheSpaz]

well, I doubt it. 120GB filled up within 10 days for me. so 500 GB ....

I stopped using TM, better seek alternative ways.

EK

Time Machine is SUPPOSED TO fill up your hard drive. That's the point. It saves as much as it can until it's full. If you have enough GB, it can save a years worth of work on it. It depends on how much you modify files and how many files you add or delete. Just deleting a file in the Finder isn't going to remove it from ALL the places in your backup you know. Here's how Time Machine can get filled up fast.

Rip a DVD... decide you didn't like those settings... try again a few hours later
Rip another DVD... decided you didn't want it... trash it... Time Machine still backs it up.
So even though you decided you didn't want all of those DVD rips (which can be multiple GB in space) Time Machine probably backed them all up, even though you've trashed them. Now, those might not get removed from Time Machine until months and months later when Time Machine fills up and has to remove old backups.

 

[DaveF]

It seems like a good idea to exclude certain directories from Time Machine backup.
For example, I see no reason why applications, games and utilities should be backed up; you can easily reinstall them again if you lose them.
I would also exclude movie directories; archive that material on DVD.
The only files I really worry about losing are pictures and documents.

For me, backing up applications is a beneficial feature. If I have a system failure, I can restore apps from TimeMachine and not need manually reinstall all the applications and their settings. No searching for original discs, updates or their registration keys.

I do eliminate the PodCast directory of iTunes -- no need to backup files that I only keep temporarily. Likewise a movies temp folder. I don't want 1-5 GB of movie files backed-up repeatedly while being transcoded for use in iMovie.

I like TimeMachine a lot. But I'm only about 75% comfortable with it. I'm still uneasy about its aggregation process; I don't fully trust that it *really* keeps all my files for recovery. I need to take some time and do some experiments over a month or so to better understand it.

 

[TheSpaz]

For me, backing up applications is a beneficial feature. If I have a system failure, I can restore apps from TimeMachine and not need manually reinstall all the applications and their settings. No searching for original discs, updates or their registration keys.

I do eliminate the PodCast directory of iTunes -- no need to backup files that I only keep temporarily. Likewise a movies temp folder. I don't want 1-5 GB of movie files backed-up repeatedly while being transcoded for use in iMovie.

I like TimeMachine a lot. But I'm only about 75% comfortable with it. I'm still uneasy about its aggregation process; I don't fully trust that it *really* keeps all my files for recovery. I need to take some time and do some experiments over a month or so to better understand it.

By the way... If you own an iPod or iPhone, Time Machine does not backup iPhone setting (iPhone Backup) or iPod Software Updates

 

[durija]

I withdraw everything I said in my earlier post. I have since researched hundreds of posts on Time Machine in several forums and sites.

Time Machine is simple, it is just the lack of documentation that is making everyone do crazy things, and there is a lot of misinformation flying around.

If you want to free up some space, just delete the oldest backups. There is only one way to do this without screwing everything up. Simply open the "starfield" view of Time Machine. Navigate to the day (probably the oldest) you want to delete. Click on the "gear" icon in the toolbar, and select "Delete Backup". You can also select individual files and folders. You can delete one OR all instances of a file.

Also, if you don't want hourly backups, just turn it off. Only turn Time Machine on when you want to backup. you could backup up once a day...a week...or whenever you get the urge.

Whatever you do, don't try to directly delete directories, folders, etc. through finder, or by running commands in terminal. You will only make a mess.

 

[TheSpaz]

I withdraw everything I said in my earlier post. I have since researched hundreds of posts on Time Machine in several forums and sites.

Time Machine is simple, it is just the lack of documentation that is making everyone do crazy things, and there is a lot of misinformation flying around.

If you want to free up some space, just delete the oldest backups. There is only one way to do this without screwing everything up. Simply open the "starfield" view of Time Machine. Navigate to the day (probably the oldest) you want to delete. Click on the "gear" icon in the toolbar, and select "Delete Backup". You can also select individual files and folders. You can delete one OR all instances of a file.

Also, if you don't want hourly backups, just turn it off. Only turn Time Machine on when you want to backup. you could backup up once a day...a week...or whenever you get the urge.

Whatever you do, don't try to directly delete directories, folders, etc. through finder, or by running commands in terminal. You will only make a mess.

All that information is documented. I've known about that stuff since the DAY I started using Time Machine. I don't know why you had to read hundreds of forum posts to figure it out.

 

[kingtj]

re: Time Machine issues and documentation

The problem I've seen with Time Machine is, the documentation of how it handles the whole process is NOT made clear in the software itself. Sure, you can read through help files on Apple's web site and piece most of it together - but you shouldn't HAVE to. Apple products are all about things just making intuitive sense when you first sit down and start clicking around in them.

Time Machine has a pretty intuitive interface for searching through backups and restoring selected items. (Sure beats something like recovering lost emails in Outlook Express in Windows from backup software! Typically in Windows, you have to know exactly where it stores the data you need - and it's many directory levels down in an odd place. Then, the restore will fail if you didn't realize you had to have Outlook Express closed before restoring data to it.)

It lacks in explaining exactly HOW it works "behind the scenes". EG. It needs to explain that incremental backups are done once every 60 minutes, after a "baseline" backup is made of everything on the system, the first time you enable it. They should explain that the 60 minute interval is NOT user-adjustable. They need to explain that it IS designed to fill up the backup drive completely over time, and you'll have to MANUALLY clear off older backups. (Personally, I would think Apple would have designed it so when it gets full, the user is prompted that older backups need to be removed to make room, and ask if they'd like the oldest one to be automatically deleted now? In fact, I think it would be even better if it offered an option to make a given backup "permanent" by archiving it off to DVD-R discs before erasing it.)

All that information is documented. I've known about that stuff since the DAY I started using Time Machine. I don't know why you had to read hundreds of forum posts to figure it out.