time machine

A 500 MB Time Machine drive is next to nothing to be honest. At a minimum you should have a drive the size of your internal HD. To be honest it sound like TM is operating perfectly if you add or change data frequently. You can go into TM preferences and choose what you DON'T want it to backup. Another suggestion is using TimeMachineEditor to set how frequently it backs up. For example I have mine set to backup 4x per day instead of 24x per day.

If you haven't already I'd recommend reading both:

Time Machine FAQs

Time Machine Troubleshooting

Roger

Time Machine doesn't only keep a mirror backup of the data currently on the hard drive, so if you add or change thing often, it will take a lot more space. Its a trade off for being able to go back and recover a multiple versions of the same file.

How to set up the time machine?

All you need to do is use TimeMachineEditor (Google it) and set your system to backup 1x day. Time Machine does not have that ability on it's own. However I still recommend replacing the 500MB drive with one that is at least 1GB or even 1.5GB, that is a much more effective solution.

Download TimeMachineEditior and you should be good to go for now.

sirgunther wrote:

Of course you do not know, but what are the odds that the new Lion operating system fixes this hourly-update problem?

Would it behoove me to wait a month before downloading TimeMachineEditor?

With any computer problem it should be fixed before performing any type of upgrade. Thinking a new version of OS X is going to fix an existing software or hardware issue is foolish. In your case as I have repeatedly said buy a larger HD and begin using Time Machine Editor if you want TM to backup less frequently.

Note that Time Machine routinely "thins" expired backups, per the schedule on the Preferences panel.

That's so it can keep a few backups for a longer time.

But if it's routinely making too-large backups, see #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for some common culprits, and ways to see exactly what's getting backed-up.

It should not be necessary to reduce the frequency of backups in most cases, and Time Machine will protect you best if you let it do them hourly.

All sorts of things will go wrong.

For one thing, you cannot manually add files to a Time Machine backup.

For another, if you just drag & drop what you remember, you'll forget things, and all sorts of oher things will be missed.

First, is Time Machine deleting old backups, or just expired ones? How old is your oldest backup, and how much space is available on the TM drive?

Second, assuming it really is near full, you need to figure out why. Take a look at #D4 per my previous post -- that lists some commont causes, and a way to see what's getting backed-up repeatedly.

A 500 GB drive is a bit small to back up 300 GB, but depending on how you use your Mac, it should allow several weeks to many months of backups.

Use one of the tools mentioned in the yellow box of #D4 to find out exactly what's being backed-up. Then you can take corrective action.

Running TM manually may be an acceptable solution. If you choose to turn TM off and use a drag and drop approach, you will loose the possibility of choosing amongst different versions of the file you want to restore.

If you can live with this, you might opt for SuperDuper, which will at least make sure that you don't forget anything. It also gives you the added possibility og using your external HD as a start up volume including all the utilities you may have aquired, if/when something goes wrong with your HD, making for easier repairs, not to mention finishing the job you have a deadline on first.