this might have been already tackled but every time i made a search about it, i always got this message: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 12582912 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /newhdd/home/philmug/web/forum/search.php on line 988 so here goes my inquiry... i always thought Time Machine worked this way: i first back up my entire HD; Time Machine copies the entire drive's contents unto the ext. drive. to simplify things, let's say i only have five items in my drive: 1. one music file 2. one video file 3. one text file 4. one app and 5. one picture after the initial backup, i will have found one backup folder in my ext. drive containing all these five items, right? suppose i add one song to my mac. upon backing up a SECOND time thru Time Machine, i THOUGHT it would just copy the NEWLY ADDED song, keeping the untouched or un-updated original files intact. but somehow, i notice it also RE-COPIES the original or SOME of the original contents. so i now not only have five plus one files, but nine or ten in two separate folders! presently, i now have 4 backup folders: the first containing all the contents of my HD (which is good). the second, third, and fourth folders contain only SOME of the first folders' contents IN DUPLICATE. not all, just SOME. what's weird is, some of these files weren't even re-edited nor updated at all. like some SONGS in my Music folders in all the back up folders are the same... so essentially, Time Machine re-copied these songs! now apply this situation to other files in my Mac, such as TV shows, Podcasts and Movies, and you'll see how soon I WILL RUN OUT OF SPACE in my ext. drive. is Time Machine REALLY suppose to work this way??? now, i tried removing and deleting these "double" files but noooo, Time Machine (or my Mac) won't allow it! what gives?
Best to let Time Machine just handle the backups to avoid screwups. It's possible that the songs you mentioned have been played after the initial backup so their tags, and subsequently their files, are now different. Same song but modified file. Hence the backups. No need to worry too about running out of space-Time Machine will handle this also. It will just delete some of your previous backups to make space, from the oldest (copying unchanged files of backup to be deleted to make sure you have a complete backup). You can also tell Time Machine to exclude certain folders from the backup, if you want to.
I agree with gaol, Time Machine is designed so that you just set it and forget it. Just let it do what it has to do. If you want more control over what you backup, just turn it off and back everything up manually yourself. I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner for that. But that's a lot of work and you have to remember to run it. Me, I just let TIme Machine run and not worry about how big it gets. EDIT: I can't remember where, but someone said it's good to have a Time Machine Drive that's twice the size of the drive you're backing up. Bare minimum, it should be the same size. Obviously if you are backing up a 120GB drive to a 120GB external, you will run out of space soon, especially if you have your internal close to or filled to capacity.
@rogue, Time Machine by default will backup your entire drive. Time Machine is designed to keep older copies of files that have changed, very handy for Office documents that become corrupted, you can always go to a previous, not-corrupted, version. If you see duplicates, those can just be pointers or aliases, not actual copies taking up additional space. Do not delete files from the Time Machine backup using Finder, you're going to screw it up. The best Time Machine strategy for you is to exclude certain folders from the backup. I do this for my iTunes podcasts directory. If I didn't exclude that, I'd probably be adding over 2GBs worth of files everyday. Files which I don't care to keep once I've listened to them and I won't really mind losing if I have a catastrophic disk crash since they're easily re-downloadable. Check if you have any files that are the same and exclude them from your Time Machine backup.
@patrickgaerlan. Questions: IS TM the only backup you need in case of catastrophic hard disk failure? Or is it more prudent to use, say, carbon copy on the side? or both?. I use TM a couple of times then turn it off on my MBA (not convenient to attach my external drive and have TM on everytime I use MBA).
Here's a technical overview of how Time Machine works (using symbolic links and hard links). http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14 I think it's best we don't fiddle with any of TM's backup files. Excluding folders and files you don't need to backup would be the best solution to those concerned with disk space. TM also handles the management of the past backups (deleting the early hourly, daily, weekly backups) slowly anyway as you run out of disk space so I think there really is no need to worry. Just my two cents...
TM is the only backup I use. You can do a full restore with just TM (assuming that you don't exclude any system files form the backup). I stopped using SuperDuper! ever since I moved to TM. The only advantage I can think of with SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner is that you can boot from your backup drive, you can't do that with TM backups. That's the reason I have my backup drive attached to my AEBS. All our Macs (3 mobile and 1 desktop) backup to that drive wirelessly. No need to connect to the drive manually, as soon as any of us open our notebooks at home, TM will start working. It's really backup none of us ever need to think about.
i've never really FULLY understood how TM works so i just let it do its job (without even excluding any files/folders )
@patrickgaerlan..ok...I think I'll stick with what I'm doing: TM and manual backup and not bother with the others. Just another app to clutter my Mba. thanks.
i also have a problem with time machine, i have essential files that can only run on windows that i made a back-up on my external hd, but when i sync my external hd to my mac it prompts me to erase all the files to sync properly, my question is, is there a way to sync my external drive without erasing my files? or a rephrased question, is there a way to sync my external hd to both windows and mac? or do i have to do it manually?
@just bry....also curious to know how to do that (for my future reference) . My guess is you need to create another partition on the machine (fat 32) and run windows in boot camp. Then use TM to back up mac files on your external drive and another backup program to backup your windows file on the external drive, which has 2 partitions: hfs+ and fat32.
@just bry, for best results with TM, either create 2 partitions as raypin suggested (HFS+ for TM and FAT32 or NTFS for Windows), or use an app like MacDrive on WIndows to allow it to read an HFS+ drive.
thanks, guys for all your comments and suggestions. my back up drive is twice my internal drive. i excluded certain files and got down to just backing up my "new" files, whose total size could not go over 1gb. thing is, when i launch TM, it says it can't back them up coz it needs 26gb! weird. i gave up and manually dragged my "new" files na lang.
If you already backed up with TM before you started excluding files or folders, you might need to delete your old TM backup and start from scratch. TM should also work better with the 10.5.5 update, so make sure you install that too.
hi, is it possible to selectively bring back files via Time Machine or the only option is to go back to the exact state that your computer was on that selected point in time?
