Time Machine

[Lost in LOS]

I have an iMac. my time machine is set up for back up to a 2TB, external hard drive. It has filled this in two months. How do I stop it from backing up my whole drive many times a day? I am used to windows backups that once I have everything backed up, once a day it ony backs up what files are new that day. How do I set this up to do that or do I need a different backup program. IE: I dont need every picture, every book, every movie I download backed up several times a day, only once and then new stuff

thanks for any help

I am considering wiping the drive and starting it all over, but I would like it to do it better

Edited March 10, 2011 by Lost in LOS

[Lost in LOS]

Checking this some more I see that time machine backs up my desktop and everything on it every time. I have many files I keep on my desktop, and some big folders, do I need to put them all into the hard drive and will that help?

I just noticed something else while moving stuff from my desktop to my hard drive. I have "music" folder in my hard drive with lots of sub-folders of albums. I had a an folder with some albums on my desktop and when I put it into my music folder in my hard drive, time machine back up every sub-folder in "music, not just the new one I put in. This is 60 gigs of music that has already been backed up

One step further, putting a file into my hard drive time machine backed up my entire hard drive instead of just the new file

Edited March 10, 2011 by Lost in LOS

[khunron13]

"Once the initial backup is completed, Time Machine performs subsequent hourly backups of only the files that have changed on your Mac since the last backup (as long as your Mac is awake and the backup disk is connected)."

Once your designated HD is full, then Time Machine will begin to "write over" the earliest updates. If you don't want to use the entire 2Tb as your Time Machine backup, then you need to partition your HD.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Edited March 10, 2011 by khunron13

[Lost in LOS]

I have read all that, but time machine seems to be copying all the subfolders in a master folder when I just add one folder. example, i add a music album to the folder music and instead of adding it saving 5 mg it saves all of the subfolders which could be 60 gigs

I see you can tell it to exempt things: what should be exempted

applications

system files

?

[Lost in LOS]

I deleted everything on my back up 2TB hard drive and started over as suggested. my 500 gig hard drive filled up the 2TB backup drive in 2 weeks again. Help

If I have a Movie Folder with many sub-folder of movies and I add an additional sub-folder movie it copies all the movies not just the new one added as advertised. What is happening

[Gippy]

You are not the only person with this problem but I couldn't find a definitive answer.

Some discussions on the Apple support forums may help:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2389814

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11252457

[nikster]

Google for an app called TimeTracker - it will allow you to browse the last backup, see how much was backed up, and which files were the biggest. This way you can find files that are "bad" for TimeMachine, and exclude them.

Time Machine doesn't like large files that change all the time - those keep getting backed up at every hourly backup, filling up the HD space rather quickly.

Examples I have:

- VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine files - each of those is 30GB+, and when I fire up the Virtual Machine once it changes and is backed up again.

- MS Entourage Mail file - over 3GB and constantly changing

- Incoming torrent directory - torrents change constantly, and are very large. Also, it's pointless to back up partial torrents every hour.

With TimeTracker you can find such files on your system. Then let us know what's causing the issue. Or just plain exclude those files.

In theory each hourly backup is very small. Also these get deleted and consolidated into daily, weekly, and monthly as time passes. TM will actually be fine when your disk fills up - but it's still annoying when it's spending a lot of time on every single backup, it's using a lot of CPU and disk resources too. Find your problem files and exclude them.

Edited March 21, 2011 by nikster

[Lost in LOS]

Google for an app called TimeTracker - it will allow you to browse the last backup, see how much was backed up, and which files were the biggest. This way you can find files that are "bad" for TimeMachine, and exclude them.

Time Machine doesn't like large files that change all the time - those keep getting backed up at every hourly backup, filling up the HD space rather quickly.

Examples I have:

- VMWare Fusion Virtual Machine files - each of those is 30GB+, and when I fire up the Virtual Machine once it changes and is backed up again.

- MS Entourage Mail file - over 3GB and constantly changing

- Incoming torrent directory - torrents change constantly, and are very large. Also, it's pointless to back up partial torrents every hour.

With TimeTracker you can find such files on your system. Then let us know what's causing the issue. Or just plain exclude those files.

In theory each hourly backup is very small. Also these get deleted and consolidated into daily, weekly, and monthly as time passes. TM will actually be fine when your disk fills up - but it's still annoying when it's spending a lot of time on every single backup, it's using a lot of CPU and disk resources too. Find your problem files and exclude them.

I thought it might be something like this but everybody said no. I am downloading the file you suggest and will find the bad files and do all over again. thanks for the help

[Gippy]

Another problem would be Filevault if that is enabled, your home folder is then stored as one large encrypted file that would be backed up every time.

[Lost in LOS]

Another problem would be Filevault if that is enabled, your home folder is then stored as one large encrypted file that would be backed up every time.

filevault is off. have downloaded timetracker and will check whats happening. I think i need to stop my utorrent file, my ebook file and my music files but we shall see. too bad this program is not smarter and really only copied the new stuff we do daily. thanks for the help

[Gippy]

Another problem would be Filevault if that is enabled, your home folder is then stored as one large encrypted file that would be backed up every time.

filevault is off. have downloaded timetracker and will check whats happening. I think i need to stop my utorrent file, my ebook file and my music files but we shall see. too bad this program is not smarter and really only copied the new stuff we do daily. thanks for the help

It is smart, unless something goes wrong! I have had Time Machine running for about a year on the current 1TB drive and it's not full yet. Definitely exclude your 'downloads' directory that torrents go to, that data is changing (and is therefore new) every second so of course it gets copied every time. I copy my downloads off to another external drive once they are done so Time Machine never even sees them. I also exclude podcast directories as I don't really need to back up a Dilbert episode safely for 2 years.

[Lost in LOS]

Thanks for all the help. As a poster suggested I excluded my download file from backup and it is good now. I was downloading torrents and that file kept changing a that filled my hard drive.

thanks much

[THAIPHUKET]

A layman's approach=

disconnecting the TimeMachine for a couple of weeks , putting it into a vault gives me more protection from disastrous problems than having everything backed up by the minute. If need be, I would make a temporary back up on a USB stick. Never done so far.

The TimeMachine drove me nuts, running, running, and running with nothing material to do. Overkill and what does it help in case of fire, theft? Nothing.