Time Machine backing up too much?
 

After a reset, TM is currently trying to backup much more than is apparently there.

Currently, to test it, I've excluded the directories Applications, Library, System, Users - leaving just Developer containing just 2 aliases at 24kb.

TM prefs show Total included 75.9gb, and the progress bar shows 94.57gb total to be backed-up.

What's the cause and fix?

What do you mean by "reset"?

Reformat ext hd.

I've read elsewhere that 'it apparently backs up everything the first time, and only uses the exclusion list on subsequent backups'.

That is not correct. (edit: it *shouldn't* happen, that is) Where'd you see that?

Can you post:

- A screenshot of the exclusion sheet in Time Machine Preferences.
- The result of this command in Terminal:

(yeah, that's it, just 'df')

- A snippet of your system log that shows backupd activity for the time you attempted the initial backup.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....94509&tstart=5

Having again reformatted the ext HD to start fresh, s/shots of each are attached.

A quick tally of what's left after exclusions shows around 16gb to backup - so I'm wondering where that 104.55gb total comes from.

UPDATE: I've again set TM to exclude everything except a single text file - as the s/shot 'exclude2' shows, it still wants to backup 55.5gb. Huh?

My HD shows around 32gb available of 297, and lists...
Applications 7.2gb
backupthisfile 4k
Developer 24k
Library 8.32gb
System 4.21gb
Users 168.77

With that totaling less than 190gb, I'm wondering what's occupying approx 75+gb of space?

Where'd the space go - file sizes, etc?
 

In dealing with a Time Machine issue (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=518019), I'm bemused by what's using the space on my HD.

My HD shows around 32gb available of 297, and lists...
Applications 7.2gb
Library 8.32gb
System 4.21gb
Users 168.77

With that totaling less than 190gb, I'm wondering what's occupying approx 75+gb of space?

You may want to run a du in terminal to see what is all going on. This could take a few minutes to run.

example would be to open up terminal.app then run these commands:

input your password when it prompts for it then let it go, it will take a few minutes to run so be paitent.

I'm not sure, but you seem to be asking about what is occupying space on your hard drive.

The 3rd-party utilities "OmniDiskSweeper" or "Disk Inventory X" or "GrandPerspective" or "JDiskReport" will help show you where the disk space is going.

Alternatively, open a Terminal window (Terminal is under /Applications/Utilities) and enter the following command:
sudo du -x -h -d 1 /
(It is best to copy & paste the command to be sure to get it right.)
Look to see which sub-folder is taking up the most space and repeat with that folder. If you have trouble interpreting the results, just copy & paste them back here and we can help.
(This method will work in cases where the above 3rd-party utilities fail to show where the disk space is going - i.e. the case where the files are in folders that you don't have permission to read. Note that the 'du' command may take several minutes to finish, so be sure to wait until you get the prompt back.)

Note that the "-x" in the suggested command above is important - otherwise it will look at all the disks you have connected instead of just your internal disk.

Note also that there are some 3rd-party utilities that will show you exactly what was backed up at each backup session of Time Machine.
See: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...80714124323976
(read the comments on that article as well)

I merged the two threads to keep it all together.

It does seem like we're on the right path here: something is sucking up a lot of space in an area that is not excluded and you need to track it down. Hayne's suggestions are excellent places to start.

For the record, that person on Discussions is wrong. Time Machine respects the exclusions list on both initial backups and incremental backups.

UPDATE...

I'll run the terminal stuff and add here when complete.

Meantime, I'd said 'UPDATE: I've again set TM to exclude everything except a single text file - as the s/shot 'exclude2' shows, it still wants to backup 55.5gb. Huh?'.

1 Having come back to it, the TM backup folders are each 206.7meg - but only contain a single 4k textfile.

2 I ran OmniDiskSweeper. S/shot attached, overlaid with 'get info' for the HD - Omni 'sees' 207.1gb, but 'get info' says 262+gb used. So 55gb seems unaccounted for.

3 I don't know why Volumes is 17gb for TM backups, as it's only supposed to backup a 4k textfile.

4 The du result:

gs-imac-2:~ g$ sudo du -x -h -d 1 /
44K /.fseventsd
394M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
7.2G /Applications
7.6M /bin
0B /cores
512B /dev
24K /Developer
1.0K /home
8.3G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
2.1G /private
5.2M /sbin
4.2G /System
166G /Users
1.2G /usr
71G /Volumes
261G /

That '71G /Volumes' looks interesting. So re-running...
sudo du -x -h -d 1 /Volumes
0B /Volumes/CC Cloner
0B /Volumes/Time Machine
17G /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
0B /Volumes/WD Misc
55G /Volumes/WD MyBook
71G /Volumes

6 Seems like the ext HD is eating the unaccounted for space. It has 3 partitions - CC Cloner, Time Machine, and WD Misc. Not sure what to do now.

7 Having seen http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=77058, I unmounted and disconnected the ext HD and from Finder did Go to /Volumes. Shows an alias of the HD (modified yesterday), Time Machine Backups (16.77gb, modified April 16, 2008), and WD MyBook (no size available, modified May 1, 2008). Clearly the modified dates are odd. Now deleting all but the HD alias.

8 Now with that space free, problem seems fixed. TM just wants 1.4gb to handle that single text file.

So to summarize for future readers, it seems like the extra space on the internal drive was being taken up by detritus in the /Volumes folder resulting from previous improper unmounting of some external disks.

By "gb" you mean "GB" - i.e. "gigabytes" ?
Or was that a typo?

>So to summarize for future readers...

Yep, that's it.
Interesting issue - the average user would likely have no bloody idea on it. ;-)


>By "gb" you mean "GB" - i.e. "gigabytes" ?

I used lower case as that's what TM seems to do in its progress bar. And it saves me a keystroke.

Thanks for your assistance. :-)

So it really is taking up more than a gigabyte just for that one file?

Yep. Just wiped and tried again to be sure.
See s/shot 'included'.

But s/shot 985 shows it's only doing 985mb.

S/shot 1k shows subsequent backups of just 1k for that text file.

Is it possible that the very first time Time Machine does a back-up, it has to create some kind of internal database, index files, etc? This could be what constitutes the 985MB that is transferred initially. EDIT: The second screen-shot in the above post shows 680,735 files being copied, so it is certainly transferring more than that one 1KB file.

I couldn't find any low-level technical details about Time Machine via Google, so this hypothesis could be completely false...

I think you may be right.
Seems a bloody big database file though.
I'm assuming there's all sorts of invisible stuff gets included.

Time Machine does not create large internal databases or index files.

There is a Spotlight index however, that Time Machine apparently causes to exist.
It will appear on the backup volume *even if* Spotlight indexing has been disabled
(via sudo mdutil -i off on the backup volume).

There is nothing special about that, though. TM/Spotlight index backups so backups can be searched. But Time Machine itself doesn't create a special database or first-time file index on initial backup.

edit: i can't seem to send you a pm, hal, send me one?