Time Machine strange issue, very strange

[Jasontech]

I went to backup my Mac mini that I am using as my apple tv server and I have a 500GB internal HD and a 500GB External HD for TM. When I run TM I get a error message that says I have 570GB taken up on my Local HD and that I need a bigger TM hard drive. How can I have 570GB on a 500GB HD? is there a cache somewhere I need to clean out? I have check and I don't have a space taken up on my local drive to backups. The purple indication under storage is 0kb. Any ideas?

 

[xlii]

I went to backup my Mac mini that I am using as my apple tv server and I have a 500GB internal HD and a 500GB External HD for TM. When I run TM I get a error message that says I have 570GB taken up on my Local HD and that I need a bigger TM hard drive. How can I have 570GB on a 500GB HD? is there a cache somewhere I need to clean out? I have check and I don't have a space taken up on my local drive to backups. The purple indication under storage is 0kb. Any ideas?

I'll admit that the message is pretty strange. But I do believe that Time Machine needs some spare space on on the Time Machine drive to work. If you had a 500GB TM disk and had 500GB of data it wouldn't work. You might be able to backup 480GB of data on it.

 

[Jasontech]

I formated the HD for TM and it is 100 % free of space. Zero space taken up on the TM drive.