time machine help.....

[superspud]

ok so im sure there have been MILLIONS of threads on this, but i dont have the time to sift through pages and pages for what i think will probably be a simple answer.....

i JUST NOW started using time machine after having OS X for about a year now... i have a seperate external disk and everything.

my problem, the disk filled up after about a week of backups, and now everytime i back up it warns me "disk full, deleting previous backups" or sometimes it fails to back up b/c its too full....

my questions are:

A: is there a way to make it NOT back up every damn hour? thats pointless....

B: what the hell? my 120 gig HD is full and its deleting back ups? am i only going to be able to keep a weeks worth of "history" for backups b/c it deletes old backups to replace them with new ones?


am i doing something wrong here?

 

[iVeBeenDrinkin']

120 GB is not a sufficient size for time machine, you should have an external at least 3 x that of the HDD you are wanting to archive.

 

[superspud]

120 GB is not a sufficient size for time machine, you should have an external at least 3 x that of the HDD you are wanting to archive.

so basically, whats happening is normal, i just have to small of a drive?


its a little firewire "non external powered" drive i had and figured it'd be of good use.... guess not

 

[iVeBeenDrinkin']

so basically, whats happening is normal, i just have to small of a drive?


its a little firewire "non external powered" drive i had and figured it'd be of good use.... guess not

IMO, yes, I have a 320 GB HDD I am backing up to a 1TB Time Machine backup.
If your Time Machine drive matches the size of the HDD you want to back up, it is no good. You need to clone in that case.

 

[superspud]

IMO, yes, I have a 320 GB HDD I am backing up to a 1TB Time Machine backup.
If your Time Machine drive matches the size of the HDD you want to back up, it is no good. You need to clone in that case.

cool man, that makes sense to me, thanks for the help.... maybe santa will bring me a nice new external for xmas!

 

[iVeBeenDrinkin']

cool man, that makes sense to me, thanks for the help.... maybe santa will bring me a nice new external for xmas!

Good luck and, Merry Christmas

 

[erostratus]

One of the things that always has bothered me about Time Machine is that you can't see which files are being backed up. Someone like you could really use this feature, as you might be able to see where you can save space (by not having Time Machine back up certain files). I wrote an article at Mac Guru Lounge on how to see what Time Machine is backing up each time. There are a couple of ways to do it. You'd be surprised how much data changes every time you do the backup.