Why does my external hard drive fill up so quickly with Time MAchine. It's 160 gigs, and I have excluded my 50 gig itune collection from backup but it still fills up after several days saying there is no room left and it will delete old files. Does this not defeat the purpose of Time Machine if I only have three or so days backed up on my hard drive?
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Time Machine Help
- Thread starter jekite
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I know that this has been addressed before but it still is confusing. I have excluded downloads, I have excluded music (which I really don't even want to do). I do download frequently but if I have excluded that shouldn't this not be an issue. I only have some 70 gigs of documents stored on my computer including music files, how much should I expect to be taken up. I have partitioned the external HD so that I have some space for personal storage and some space for Time Machine.
How big is your Time Machine partition? How much data are you backing up? How often do you add or modify files?
A portion of a 160GB drive isn't going to last long if you work with large files (either downloading or modifying them).
Files that will only last 3 days are clearly ones that you use frequently, so you should know when you'd want to revert those. It'll keep at least one backup copy of every file you've selected. It'll keep multiple copies as space allows.
A portion of a 160GB drive isn't going to last long if you work with large files (either downloading or modifying them).
Files that will only last 3 days are clearly ones that you use frequently, so you should know when you'd want to revert those. It'll keep at least one backup copy of every file you've selected. It'll keep multiple copies as space allows.
Have you excluded anything?
I excluded both the Safari and Firefox caches
Right click time machine -> Time Machine Preferences
Click on Options
Hit the plus sign on bottom left
If you have Firefox, use the finder to go to
<your user>/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/a26r2rhu.default/
Then add the Safari Cache directory
<your user>/Library/Caches/Safari
This will avoid you saving all the web pages / images that you surf all day. They take up a lot of space. My firefox cache was 85MB, Safari was another 19 MB.
I would do this for any other data you don't need to save, such as RSS feed caches, etc.
I excluded both the Safari and Firefox caches
Right click time machine -> Time Machine Preferences
Click on Options
Hit the plus sign on bottom left
If you have Firefox, use the finder to go to
<your user>/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/a26r2rhu.default/
Then add the Safari Cache directory
<your user>/Library/Caches/Safari
This will avoid you saving all the web pages / images that you surf all day. They take up a lot of space. My firefox cache was 85MB, Safari was another 19 MB.
I would do this for any other data you don't need to save, such as RSS feed caches, etc.
1
100 gigs is dedicated to Time Machine. I have about 60 gigs of material total on my hd, I do frequently add files, I have excluded backing up 50 gigs of music but for some reason it is still too much and Time Machine fills up after about a day. I have excluded caches but it is still filling up too quickly. I guess I don't understand exactly how Time Machine works, what good is a backup if it only goes back one or two days in time because that's all it can store even though the backup device has more storage space than I have material stored on the hd of my computer?
100 gigs is dedicated to Time Machine. I have about 60 gigs of material total on my hd, I do frequently add files, I have excluded backing up 50 gigs of music but for some reason it is still too much and Time Machine fills up after about a day. I have excluded caches but it is still filling up too quickly. I guess I don't understand exactly how Time Machine works, what good is a backup if it only goes back one or two days in time because that's all it can store even though the backup device has more storage space than I have material stored on the hd of my computer?
If the file hasn't changed, what difference does it make? Yesterday's copy will be the same as the three week old copy will be the same as the six month old copy. Why would you need multiple copies of the same unchanged file?
If your drive is filling up after a day, you're either doing something wrong or committing changes to several gigabytes each day. It will store as many copies as space allows. Your unchanged files will remain in backup and your oldest copies of the frequently changed files will be deleted to make room for the current changes.
I'm not seeing the problem, except that you should buy a bigger drive if you want to be able to store multiple copies of frequently changed large files.