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Time Machine Just Ate 50gig Why ?

C

cokeacola

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 10, 2006
71
0
Dundee Scotland
Have done a little bit of re-organizing my movies folder and time machine has just ate 50 gig .

now i haven't added anything to the folder just created a few sub folders and put movie files that were already there into them

Now i thought that seeing as they are already backed up why did time machine back them up again ?

thanks in advance
 
Assume that you have DieHard.mov (10gb) and DieHard2.mov (10gb).

Both are in the "Video" directory.

/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard2.mov 10gb

/users/cokeacola/Video total 20gb

Time Machine would back them up once, then every hour ignore them assuming they do not change.

So the Time Machine drive would have:

/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard2.mov 10gb

Now you move the two movies into a "Movies" directory.

/users/cokeacola/Movies/DieHard.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Movies/DieHard2.mov 10gb

Next time Time Machine backs up, it will add those two files. Remember, TM exists to protect you from accidental deletions, so it does not remove the original.

Now Time Machine looks like this:

/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard2.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Movies/DieHard.mov 10gb
/users/cokeacola/Movies/DieHard2.mov 10gb

Total 40gb


Solution?

Open Time Machine. Go to /users/cokeacola/Video. Select the two videos, press the Gear, delete all copies of this backup.

If this is part of your routine (say you download into "Downloads", then you organize into folders), just exclude the "Downloads" folder from TM.
 
lol, that sounds amazing, Time machine better used in pair with 2TB HDD :)
 
Thanks for the post, CashGap. It helps me understand TM.

Time Machine purges older backups as it runs out of space, correct? So eventually (sooner if you have more space free, later if you have less), /users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard.mov and /users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard2.mov will be purged anyway (to continue your example).

I stated that, but what I really mean to do is ask the question: is that correct?

I ask, because I'm wondering whether or not I ought to clean up my TM backup drive manually or not. I've done some of that kind of stuff (moving around large files).
 
iSee said:
Thanks for the post, CashGap. It helps me understand TM.

Time Machine purges older backups as it runs out of space, correct? So eventually (sooner if you have more space free, later if you have less), /users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard.mov and /users/cokeacola/Video/DieHard2.mov will be purged anyway (to continue your example).

I stated that, but what I really mean to do is ask the question: is that correct?

I ask, because I'm wondering whether or not I ought to clean up my TM backup drive manually or not. I've done some of that kind of stuff (moving around large files).
Click to expand...

If you're talking about large files, go clean it up manually. The reason is that when the HD gets full, TM will start deleting backups starting with the oldest. So deleting large files that may be newer will keep some of the older (and maybe more important) files on the HD for that much longer.
 
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