Time machine incremental backups are huge

[max90034]

I am new to Mac OS and have been using it since I got MBA 2011 a few weeks ago. One thing that drives me crazy is backup size by time machine. I have ~120Gb of data on the disk (250Gb total) and each (hourly) back up (that is supposed to be incremental) takes 10-20Gb. I use Time Capsule over Ethernet and backups go almost continuously.

All I am doing is MS Word/Powerpoint, some Illustrator work and web browsing - no way I can have that much data updated every hour. I have 64Gb dedicated for VMWare - Windows 7 and it uses about 20Gb of disk space now. However, I turned VMWare completely off and it still does not make any difference.

Is this normal for Mac OS (I hope not)? If not, what can I do to trace the problem? Thanks!

 

[spidey3]

I am new to Mac OS and have been using it since I got MBA 2011 a few weeks ago. One thing that drives me crazy is backup size by time machine. I have ~120Gb of data on the disk (250Gb total) and each (hourly) back up (that is supposed to be incremental) takes 10-20Gb. I use Time Capsule over Ethernet and backups go almost continuously.

Use the new tmutil compare command to compare two recent backups and see what is changing. man tmutil will give instructions. Also see http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html as a resource.

Once you know what is taking up all of the space, you can go into Time Machine preferences and exclude it.

A guess: You mention that you use VMWare. Is it possible that a VM image file is being included in your backup? You should explicitly exclude these, as they constantly change, and there is no value in backing them up.

Spidey!!!

 

[max90034]

Thanks. I will check this.

Yes, VM image is included to backup, however, I thought that since I turned VM off the image should not change.

Use the new tmutil compare command to compare two recent backups and see what is changing. man tmutil will give instructions. Also see http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html as a resource.

Once you know what is taking up all of the space, you can go into Time Machine preferences and exclude it.

A guess: You mention that you use VMWare. Is it possible that a VM image file is being included in your backup? You should explicitly exclude these, as they constantly change, and there is no value in backing them up.

Spidey!!!