Time Machine Mystery

[lugesm]

My "Time Machine" external drive was only about 1/4 full according to the "get info" panel for that disk.

Then, I installed Fusion 1.1 with Win-XP, Home Edition yesterday afternoon. This afternoon while the computer was idle a small window appeared on the screen with a message stating that Time Machine needed additional space and had deleted everything prior to yesterday ! ! ! I checked the "get info" for that drive and found that only 40GB of 250GB are used. This is not only puzzling; it is disturbing.

Could Fusion 1.1 with Windows have caused this? I only allocated 25GB for the Windows VM. The "get info" panel today (after the 25GB was allocated to the VM) for my primary hard drive indicates that I have used only 65GB of the 300GB available on this 24" iMac running OSX 10.5.1.

Is this a malfunction of TimeMachine?

Hope someone can provide some insight.

Thanks for your comments.

 

[robbieduncan]

It's Fusion. Every time Windows writes to your virtual drive it changes the file that is this virtual drive. This means that next time Time Machine takes a backup (every hour) this entire file will be copied. All xGb of it (where x is quite a big number).

This is not a Time Machine bug: it's doing the correct thing.

This is not a mystery: it's well know behaviour.

The solution is to mark the folder with your VM virtual drive files to be ignored by Time Machine.

The long-term solution is for VMWare to use the API in Leopard to mark this file as not being backed up by Time Machine.

 

[lugesm]

The solution is to mark the folder with your VM virtual drive files to be ignored by Time Machine.

Thank you for the quick response. I have not found a way to exclude the VM folder from Time Machine. Is that the one I need to exclude?

Thanks,
L

 

[robbieduncan]

Thank you for the quick response. I have not found a way to exclude the VM folder from Time Machine. Is that the one I need to exclude?

Thanks,
L

Erm, probably. I use Parallels personally (and don't use Time Machine). Whichever folder contains the very large file that Fusion uses as the Windows C: drive is the one you want...

This Apple support document tells you how to exclude things from Time Machine backups.

Note this will prevent your VM being backed up: you must now ensure you back it up yourself at regular intervals.

 

[lugesm]

This Apple support document tells you how to exclude things from Time Machine backups.

Note this will prevent your VM being backed up: you must now ensure you back it up yourself at regular intervals.

Thanks for your rapid response to my issue. In fact, the Time Machine was doing yet another 25GB backup as we were communicating. I found the file and excluded it from further Time Machine backups.

As it turns out I really didn't need to allocate 25GB for Win-XP, as I am only running a few rather simple Windows programs . . .those few that I must use that don't run on the Mac. I could have gotten away with as little as 10GB. Do you know if there is some way to reduce the size of the VM once it is installed and running?

Thanks again for your very valuable and much appreciated help!

 

[robbieduncan]

Do you know if there is some way to reduce the size of the VM once it is installed and running?

No idea. You'll have to wait till a Fusion user comes along. In Parallels it compresses the VM file and only uses the space actually required, not the whole space you tell it to allocate. Not sure if Fusion can do the same or not...

 

[lugesm]

No idea. You'll have to wait till a Fusion user comes along. In Parallels it compresses the VM file and only uses the space actually required, not the whole space you tell it to allocate. Not sure if Fusion can do the same or not...

Thanks again.
Cheers !

L