Need space on Time Machine disk

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Level 1

7 points

Need space on Time Machine disk

My Time machine backups are failing - based on the message it's 3GB short of the space needed to do the backup. I need help reclaiming space on my time machine drive.

I realized that I should not have been backing up my Aperture library - so I have excluded that from the backup. I then went into Time Machine and erased the Aperture library backups. (after making an extra copy of the library on another disk)
Since my Aperture library is 278 GB, I thought this would free up plenty of space on the time machine drive (2TB drive, has 667.48 GB free, but needs 671 GB) - however, even after I erased the aperture library backups from within time machine - the free space didn't change.

What am I doing wrong? It seems like there should now be plenty of space on my 2TB drive for the backups. My brute force approach would be to format it and start over (it's only got one backup right now anyway).

imac 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 14, 2011 7:55 PM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 14, 2011 8:48 PM in response to loriac

loriac wrote:
My Time machine backups are failing - based on the message it's 3GB short of the space needed to do the backup. I need help reclaiming space on my time machine drive.

I realized that I should not have been backing up my Aperture library - so I have excluded that from the backup. I then went into Time Machine and erased the Aperture library backups.

Did you do that via Time Machine, or the Finder or Terminal?

(after making an extra copy of the library on another disk)

Is that an internal disk, or an external?

Since my Aperture library is 278 GB, I thought this would free up plenty of space on the time machine drive (2TB drive, has 667.48 GB free, but needs 671 GB) - however, even after I erased the aperture library backups from within time machine - the free space didn't change.

What am I doing wrong? It seems like there should now be plenty of space on my 2TB drive for the backups.

Is there anything else on that drive, besides the backup of your Mac?

My brute force approach would be to format it and start over (it's only got one backup right now anyway).

How much data is on your system, including any other drives being backed up, but not the Aperture library?

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Answer 2

loriac Author

Level 1

7 points

Mar 14, 2011 9:11 PM in response to Pondini

I erased the backups of the aperture library via TM.

The copy the library is on another external drive that's also excluded.

Only the TM backup is on the drive.

Total data being backed up is about 800 GB.

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 14, 2011 9:20 PM in response to loriac

loriac wrote:
I erased the backups of the aperture library via TM.

The copy the library is on another external drive that's also excluded.

Only the TM backup is on the drive.

Total data being backed up is about 800 GB.

Then something is very wrong. 😟

If there's only one backup left, your TC should have only about 800 GB used.

Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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Answer 4

loriac Author

Level 1

7 points

Mar 14, 2011 9:31 PM in response to Pondini

Well, TM has the last 2 backups left. I'll try to repair the disk -but wouldn't the next step just be to reformat the backup drive and start over? After a day, I'll have a new backup started that won't fill up as fast since I'll exclude huge aperture library?

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Mar 14, 2011 9:36 PM in response to loriac

loriac wrote:
Well, TM has the last 2 backups left. I'll try to repair the disk -but wouldn't the next step just be to reformat the backup drive and start over? After a day, I'll have a new backup started that won't fill up as fast since I'll exclude huge aperture library?

Yes, that would be the next step. It's just that something is wrong, as it appears there's still 1.3 TB of data on the TM drive, which doesn't make sense.

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