Time Machine HD won't fill up HD

[Flobber88]

Ive been using TM since it came out in October, and have it backing up on a 250GB partition on my external hard drive. I have noticed lately that the partition has 190GB used and 45GB free, but the thing is my time machine only has backups dating back to April.

Why is there over 40GB of free space on my TM? Shouldn't it be almost filled since it's been deleting older months to make room for new ones?

 

[kolax]

Sure Time Machine is still enabled if you only have backups dating back to April?

 

[Flobber88]

Sorry I should have clarified. The backups on my TM hard drive are from April -> Present, it has been doing the backups every hour although Im just confused about the large space not being used.

 

[ayeying]

Time Machine doesn't back up the entire drive, only changes to the drive. Thats why you're taking a long time to fill up the drive.

 

[kolax]

Time Machine doesn't back up the entire drive, only changes to the drive. Thats why you're taking a long time to fill up the drive.

Yes, but the OP said that TM is deleting older backups to make space for new ones, even though there is still 40GB worth of space.

Sure you don't have any really large files (such as a Virtual Machine) which could be near 40GB in size, causing TM to have to delete older backups to make space for it all?

 

[Flobber88]

I have my virtual machine (15GB) on the do not back up list.

I don't really have anything that I can think of that would be 45GB. I have some video clips, but they are all separated and less than 2GB each.

Any other ideas?

 

[JNB]

In purging the oldest backups to make room for the newer incrementals, you're likely to lose larger hunks from some periods, smaller from others. As time progresses, you're probably going to see variable amounts available.