Time Machine Disk saying its full when it shouldn't be

[parrothead]

I was hoping to get some help with an issue I am having with Time Machine. I have a 500GB drive that I am using as my TM disk. My computer drive is a 1TB drive, however I am only using 220 GB of it. I figure that there should be plenty of room on the TM drive for months of backups, but it is saying that the disk is full. When I get info on it it says that 412 GB are used.

Does anyone know what is going on and how to fix it?

Specs:

brand new 21.5" iMac 3.2 GHz 1TM HD 4GB RAM OS 10.6.4
External drive is a 500GB USB 2 drive.

Thanks

 

[gnasher729]

I was hoping to get some help with an issue I am having with Time Machine. I have a 500GB drive that I am using as my TM disk. My computer drive is a 1TB drive, however I am only using 220 GB of it. I figure that there should be plenty of room on the TM drive for months of backups, but it is saying that the disk is full. When I get info on it it says that 412 GB are used.

Does anyone know what is going on and how to fix it?

It looks like you have changed lots of big files a lot of the time. For example, if you rip a DVD and convert it with Handbrake, then delete the DVD, chances are the DVD ends up in your Time Machine backup. If you are using Parallels or similar, it is possible that your complete Windows hard drive is backed up. If this or something similar applies to you, you can go into Time Machine preferences and exclude a folder from backup. For example, I have a folder that I use for ripping DVDs, and that folder will not be backed up.

And, of course, Time Machine will continue working, it will just remove older copies.

 

[bigus7674]

Time Machine backup

I had a similar situation happen with me - and though I don't have definite confirmation (other than what I did), I believe the following:

I believe Time Machine needs the same amount of space to temporarily "cache" the backup - so, if you have a 1 TB drive (even though only 400GB is being used) then you would need a 1 TB backup drive for Time Machine.

I think this is the case because I have a 500GB internal drive and a 500GB external, but the external was in 2 partitions, with the larger partition having more than enough room for the 180GB that is being used on my 500GB internal. However, Time Machine wouldn't do a backup. As soon as I made my external 1 partition at 500GB, Time Machine had no problem doing the backup.

So, that's my theory at least.

 

[bigus7674]

Time Machine backup

I had a similar situation happen with me - and though I don't have definite confirmation (other than what I did), I believe the following:

I believe Time Machine needs the same amount of space to temporarily "cache" the backup - so, if you have a 1 TB drive (even though only 400GB is being used) then you would need a 1 TB backup drive for Time Machine.

I think this is the case because I have a 500GB internal drive and a 500GB external, but the external was in 2 partitions, with the larger partition having more than enough room for the 180GB that is being used on my 500GB internal. However, Time Machine wouldn't do a backup. As soon as I made my external 1 partition at 500GB, Time Machine had no problem doing the backup.

So, that's my theory at least.

 

[parrothead]

It looks like you have changed lots of big files a lot of the time. For example, if you rip a DVD and convert it with Handbrake, then delete the DVD, chances are the DVD ends up in your Time Machine backup. If you are using Parallels or similar, it is possible that your complete Windows hard drive is backed up. If this or something similar applies to you, you can go into Time Machine preferences and exclude a folder from backup. For example, I have a folder that I use for ripping DVDs, and that folder will not be backed up.

And, of course, Time Machine will continue working, it will just remove older copies.

It looks like you are right on the mark. Since getting the new computer I forgot to exclude my Parallels virtual disk file which is about 51 GB. Since I use Parallels all the time that huge file was always changing. Now that I excluded it and deleted all the backups, I am back to having 331 GB free on my external.

 

[mstrze]

I too had issues with handbraking DVD files until I ignored that folder which was changing by multiple GBs at a time.


Good to hear that MR solved your problem!