Mac OS X 10.8.4's Time Machine is taking a long time to back up...

Finally, it finished. I saw it go under a GB free too! It backed up over
15 GB of data! It did tell me it had to delete the first few snapshots
up to October 2012. Will this happen again for the next one due to low
free disk space? If so, then is there a way to just go ahead and delete
a lot of snapshots to make plenty of free disk spaces? :(

Post by Ant
Is it because there is only about 10 GB of free disk space on the
external USB2 HDD partition (250 GB)? It was almost done, but its disk
size backed up and remaining/left kept growing. Oldest/First back up
snapshot was from 9/13/2012. Latest one was before now was last Saturday
(8/10/2013). It has already been over 30 minutes and used over 25% (was
99%) of the battery life so far. External HDD's free disk space is down
to about 5.5 GB now.

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David Empson

2013-08-18 04:40:05 UTC

If Time Machine backed up 15 GB, then it must have worked out that 15 GB
of data had changed since the most recent backup.

The amount it backs up has nothing to do with the amount of free space
on the backup drive, only the total size of files that have changed or
been added to the source drive (in folders which have not been excluded
from backup) since the most recent backup.

There are tools for working out what changed between two Time Machine
backups, so you can see _why_ it needed to back up that much. The
"tmutil" command line utility (introduced in Mac OS X 10.7, if I
remember right) is one option, and there are third party utilities which
also work on older OS X versions.

Post by Ant
If so, then is there a way to just go ahead and delete a lot of snapshots
to make plenty of free disk spaces? :(

Assuming you are dealing with a single computer being backed up, you
don't need to delete anything manually on the TM backup volume just
because it is short of free space.

If the backup disk is approaching full, Time Machine estimates whether
the next backup will fit, and if not, is deletes the oldest backups
until there is enough space for the next backup to start.

The first time the oldest backup is deleted, a message is displayed
telling you this has happened.

Subsequently, Time Machine will continue to automatically delete the
oldest backups as required to make room for further backups, but it
won't tell you it is doing this.

If the amount of data changing per week is roughly constant, the number
of weeks of backup history should remain about the same, but if there
are a large number of changes at one point, several older weekly backups
may need to be deleted to make room for the next backup.

--
David Empson
***@actrix.gen.nz

Wes Groleau

2013-08-18 05:02:57 UTC

Post by David Empson
If the backup disk is approaching full, Time Machine estimates whether
the next backup will fit, and if not, is deletes the oldest backups
until there is enough space for the next backup to start.

However, sometimes that estimate is inaccurate and Time machine
announces that it does not have enough free space to complete the backup.

--
Wes Groleau

In any formula, constants (especially those obtained
from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.

Paul Sture

2013-08-18 08:44:12 UTC

Post by Wes Groleau

However, sometimes that estimate is inaccurate and Time machine
announces that it does not have enough free space to complete the backup.

I have seen that happen, and in the instances where I have watched its
progress here, it throws away what it just backed up as part of its
cleanup from the attempt.

Of course all that data will get backed up on the next attempt, and it's
frustrating to watch that one fail as well, which can happen when you
are doing large reorganisations of your data.

If I know I am going to be shifting many gigabytes of data around, I
will switch TM off until that's done. If TM space is running low as
well, I will go into the TM interface and manually delete backups of
large files I am no longer interested in.

--
Paul Sture

Ant

2013-08-18 16:59:58 UTC

Post by Paul Sture
If I know I am going to be shifting many gigabytes of data around, I
will switch TM off until that's done. If TM space is running low as
well, I will go into the TM interface and manually delete backups of
large files I am no longer interested in.

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

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Tom Stiller

2013-08-18 17:12:22 UTC

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

Enter the Time Machine, select the backup to be deleted, click the
Action (gear icon) menu in the window toolbar, and select delete backup.

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Paul Sture

2013-08-18 17:21:55 UTC

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

It's not in the TM options but in the Time Machine display which you get
when you click on the Time Machine icon in the Dock.

The easiest way to do this is to highlight the folder you are interested
in in Finder, then open up Time Machine.

So for example, if I have moved a load of stuff from Old-Hiearchy to
New-Hiearchy, I will click on Old-Hierarchy in Finder and immediately
launch TM from the Dock. When TM appears the Old-Hierarchy folder will
already be highlighted and from there I can right or control click on
the file and select "Delete All Backups of Old-Hierarchy". At this
point it asks me for my admin username and password and if those are
successfully validated it goes ahead with the deletion.

To get out of Time Machine, either click on Cancel in the bottom left
corner of the display or hit the escape key.

--
Paul Sture

Michael Vilain

2013-08-18 22:28:09 UTC

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

The advanced options in the TimeMachine Control Panel has an option to
exclude disks and ask you if you want old Time Machine backups deleted.

Others have explained that you have to be Time Machine to delete files
and stuff from backups.

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Jolly Roger

2013-08-19 00:12:17 UTC

Post by Michael Vilain

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

The advanced options in the TimeMachine Control Panel has an option to
exclude disks and ask you if you want old Time Machine backups deleted.

Actually, the System Preferences > Time Machine > Options sheet only
lets you disable *notifications* about old backups that have been
deleted.

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Paul Sture

2013-08-19 11:39:22 UTC

Post by Michael Vilain

Where is that in TM options to delete backups manually? I did not see
it? I should do that before it automatically do it since it takes too
long from yesterday's incident.

The advanced options in the TimeMachine Control Panel has an option to
exclude disks and ask you if you want old Time Machine backups deleted.

You can also exclude individual directories there. For example I am
currently using Audacity to edit a radio show I recorded. The original
FLAC recording is 1.04 GB and the Audacity work files (at 1.1 MB apiece)
for that total 3.61 GB. Those work files will be gone once I have
tidied up after my editing so I am not interested in TM backing them up.

By saving the Audacity project into a directory that I have excluded
from TM, I ensure that those workfiles don't clutter up my backups.

Post by Michael Vilain
Others have explained that you have to be Time Machine to delete files
and stuff from backups.

--
Paul Sture

Ant

2013-08-18 06:43:59 UTC

If Time Machine backed up 15 GB, then it must have worked out that 15 GB
of data had changed since the most recent backup.

Weird. I wonder what my client did to change so much data since last
Saturday. He's just a causal user (MS Office, Firefox, etc.).

Post by David Empson
The amount it backs up has nothing to do with the amount of free space
on the backup drive, only the total size of files that have changed or
been added to the source drive (in folders which have not been excluded
from backup) since the most recent backup.
There are tools for working out what changed between two Time Machine
backups, so you can see _why_ it needed to back up that much. The
"tmutil" command line utility (introduced in Mac OS X 10.7, if I
remember right) is one option, and there are third party utilities which
also work on older OS X versions.

Do I run them when I am running TM in progress?

Post by Ant
If so, then is there a way to just go ahead and delete a lot of snapshots
to make plenty of free disk spaces? :(

Assuming you are dealing with a single computer being backed up, you
don't need to delete anything manually on the TM backup volume just
because it is short of free space.
If the backup disk is approaching full, Time Machine estimates whether
the next backup will fit, and if not, is deletes the oldest backups
until there is enough space for the next backup to start.
The first time the oldest backup is deleted, a message is displayed
telling you this has happened.
Subsequently, Time Machine will continue to automatically delete the
oldest backups as required to make room for further backups, but it
won't tell you it is doing this.
If the amount of data changing per week is roughly constant, the number
of weeks of backup history should remain about the same, but if there
are a large number of changes at one point, several older weekly backups
may need to be deleted to make room for the next backup.

Hmm. Weekly backups range hundred of MBs to a GB. Today was weird. Free
disk space kept shrinking, data backed up kept growing at the end, etc.
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\ _ / If crediting, then use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.
( ) If e-mailing, then axe ANT from its address if needed.
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on this computer.

Bill

2013-08-18 21:17:56 UTC

If Time Machine backed up 15 GB, then it must have worked out that 15 GB
of data had changed since the most recent backup.

Weird. I wonder what my client did to change so much data since last
Saturday. He's just a causal user (MS Office, Firefox, etc.).

Do I run them when I am running TM in progress?

Post by Ant
If so, then is there a way to just go ahead and delete a lot of snapshots
to make plenty of free disk spaces? :(

Assuming you are dealing with a single computer being backed up, you
don't need to delete anything manually on the TM backup volume just
because it is short of free space.
If the backup disk is approaching full, Time Machine estimates whether
the next backup will fit, and if not, is deletes the oldest backups
until there is enough space for the next backup to start.
The first time the oldest backup is deleted, a message is displayed
telling you this has happened.
Subsequently, Time Machine will continue to automatically delete the
oldest backups as required to make room for further backups, but it
won't tell you it is doing this.
If the amount of data changing per week is roughly constant, the number
of weeks of backup history should remain about the same, but if there
are a large number of changes at one point, several older weekly backups
may need to be deleted to make room for the next backup.

Hmm. Weekly backups range hundred of MBs to a GB. Today was weird. Free
disk space kept shrinking, data backed up kept growing at the end, etc.

If you changed several files since the last backup, each of them will be
fully backed up on the new backup, even if you only changed a few bytes
of data in each.

Ant

2013-08-18 17:01:17 UTC