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Level 1

8 points

Time Machine Error - backup too large

I haven't backup my Macbook Pro for more than 10 days. I was out of town for a week and then had to turn it in for repair to replace the faulty nvidia GPU (lost all display - see http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/10/some-macbook-pros-affected-by-nvidia-gpu-fai lures/).

So I just picked it up from the repair facility and tried to backup and got this message:
"+This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 174.0 GB but only 106.3 GB are available.+

+To select a larger volume, or make the backup smaller by excluding files, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine.+"

My computer's hard drive is 200GB and my Time Machine is 500GB. Why doesn't it just do it's job and delete old backups to make space for the new backups? Does it no longer recognize that I have previously backed up my computer? I don't want to delete the sparsebundle and start all over.

Mark

2.2Ghz MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 26, 2009 4:14 PM

Best reply

William-Boyd-Jr

Level 6

10,578 points

Posted on Aug 26, 2009 4:54 PM

musicelect wrote:
I haven't backup my Macbook Pro for more than 10 days. I was out of town for a week and then had to turn it in for repair to replace the faulty nvidia GPU

So I just picked it up from the repair facility and tried to backup and got this message:
"+This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 174.0 GB but only 106.3 GB are available.+

My computer's hard drive is 200GB and my Time Machine is 500GB. Why doesn't it just do it's job and delete old backups to make space for the new backups? Does it no longer recognize that I have previously backed up my computer? I don't want to delete the sparsebundle and start all over.

I think it's possible that enough of your computer was replaced that Time Machine no longer recognizes it as the same machine. In that case Time Machine may be trying to create an entirely new backup. One solution to that would be to reinitialize your Time Machine volume and start over.

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16 replies

Feb 16, 2010 4:19 PM in response to Ron Bailey

Ron Bailey wrote:
sorry if this is a dumb question but how exactly do I 're-initialize time machine'?

First turn Time Machine off. If your Time Machine volume is on a disk drive attached to your Mac, use Disk Utility to erase that volume. If it's a Time Capsule, use AirPort Utility to erase the volume. In either case, then use the Time Machine panel of System Preferences to "choose" the disk volume and turn Time Machine on again.

Time Machine Error - backup too large