Time Machine, High Sierra - A Serious appetite.

[Omega Mac]

Got hammered by Too Many Corpses.

Reinstalled the macOS High Sierra and migrated data over from original HD to a new externally connected (USB3) 1TB SSD (APFS), original drive was also 1TB (HFS+ / MM Server).

Tried to run Time machine (excluded all drives connected) and it estimated a 3.1TB space requirement.

I get that TM needs Drive Size + 20% , the 1TB system drive is approx 80% (0.8TB) so even a 1.2/1.5TB estimate would be to surprising but 3.1TB!?!

That seems excessive but perhaps it is not. I don't know. Maybe this is a APFS > HFS+ issue?

I have noticed drive size estimated in finder are way off for externally connected machine.

In my backup regime I will carry at least 2/3 clones of the drive but also want one Time Machine backup. I never want to be caught out by this. I don't think an update even ram but I did shut the machine down for the first time in months and on reboot, perhaps an update (not crucial) ran and borked, or I suspect malware bytes may have done something nasty. Hard to say. Tried some terminal fixes but they didn't work.

No Data loss by the looks of it! Most important of all.

 

[HDFan]

Preferences/Time Machine/Options shows only your boot drive is being backed up?

What is it's size, how much is used (Finder/get info)?

 

[Omega Mac]

Preferences/Time Machine/Options shows only your boot drive is being backed up?

What is it's size, how much is used (Finder/get info)?

A ha! All the external drives were deleted for the exclude list, why did I not spot this! So obvious! I've put them back in the list and the estimated size is sub 0.9TB, perfect!

Thanks. I think Too Many Corpses recovery fatigue has not left me yet.

 

[Fishrrman]

Want to "slim things down"?
Try creating a bootable cloned backup using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Both create backups that do not continuously grow and grow and grow and grow.

With CCC, you can also clone over the recovery partition, AND you can "archive" older (changed) files if you wish.

 

[jbarley]

Want to "slim things down"?
Try creating a bootable cloned backup using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Both create backups that do not continuously grow and grow and grow and grow.

With CCC, you can also clone over the recovery partition, AND you can "archive" older (changed) files if you wish.

In the OP's original post he mentions...
"In my backup regime I will carry at least 2/3 clones of the drive but also want one Time Machine backup."
So it sounds like he's got that covered.

 

[Omega Mac]

In the OP's original post he mentions...
"In my backup regime I will carry at least 2/3 clones of the drive but also want one Time Machine backup."
So it sounds like he's got that covered.

Yep that's right CCC all the way, it's my primary backup for all macs for many years. Since this is daily use machine a companion TIME machine backup is required after hitting Too Many Corpses, I've also upgrade primary drive to SSD as a lot of the down time is slow data transfer, booting, restarting, booting, restarting, booting etc. etc. as you try to solve the problem initially.

I generally run CCC as straight clone and leave safety net off. It has saved my ass about three times over the years, best money ever spent on software.

This is my first Apple inspired OS failure, not bad run for 12 years on Macs over 6+ machines of varying vintage. I can forgive them this once and not skimp on the backup regime. It's one area I don't think they'll ever catch up with M$

Also I remember once some years ago probably Snow Leopard, discovering to my horror that Time Machine hadn't been backing up for 6 months, though it looked like it was working the background! Yikes!