Time Machine backing up way too many files

In Time Machine preferences, make sure that external drive is excluded.

Run disk repair on the startup drive. Is it over two years old? It could be dying.

Verification of disks is only significant if it says the disk is dead. If so, the disk is dead. If it does not say the disk is dead, the disk could still be dead.

When things start getting flaky, it is usually a drive problem. It could be file system corruption, which can be cured by disk repair sometimes and repartitioning the rest of the time. The problem could be with the internal or the external. At least if you run disk repair and it reports the file system is good, then it really is good.

Unfortunately, the only way to proceed is to logically map out all of your machines and drives, see which ones you use in combination with which others, and try to identify the single failed component that could explain all issues. For example, if you Time Machine drive is bad, then all machines using that Time Machine disk should be flaky. If your startup disk is bad, then any Time Machine drive you connect to it will result in flakiness.

What I do usually is just assume that 3.5" disks are fine and get another $50 notebook drive. Either way, I get a new file system and disk. The problem should go away at that point. If it doesn't, then it must be the 3.5" Time Machine drive. If it still persists, then there is some truly nasty hardware/software problem. If your external drives are actually 2.5" drives, then they could be dead due to typical 3-year lifespan or overheating due to poor enclosures. Fun, fun.

Sometimes people complain when I say notebook hard drives die after three years. The "typical" lifespan may be much longer. But among those people that complain about mysterious problems that sound like dying hard drives, most have notebook hard drives that are at least 3 years old. And of all the parts that can fail, the hard drive is the quickest and cheapest to test and, if necessary, replace.

Did you ever work out anything on this? I am seeing similar behavior. Aggravating. My MacBook Pro seems like it is backing up at least 50% of the time, as each hourly backup takes an inordinately long time. In checking the logs, I see 20,000-40,000 files for each hourly backup, but rarely over 30MB.

Fred

Same problem here! I've had this issue for about 7 months. MacBook Pro - 10.6.8

Each backup will run about 10-20 minutes. It backs up about 10-15K files every time (only 10MB total), wether I use the machine or not. I also made sure I am not connected to the internet during the process. When I go to Time Tracker to check the backup, those 10,000 files are not there. This is a big mistery. It's as if Time Machine was looking and trying to back up ghost files.

I've tried many things, from reinstalling the system to using Onyx and some Disk Utility features. Short of formatting the drive and start over, I'm not really sure what to try next. I will however upgrade to Lion in a few days. I'm hoping this will fix this annoying problem.

GFIVE wrote:

Same problem here!

There is a new "me too" feature in Apple Support Communities. Check the bottom of the initial post:

I will however upgrade to Lion in a few days. I'm hoping this will fix this annoying problem.

Be very, very careful with that strategy. Installing an operating system update to a system already exhibiting flakiness is usually a bad idea.

I suggest a good backup using a cloning tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner. Time Machine is best for backups, but if you know you are going to need a backup, a clone is a good thing to have.

Once you have that backup, erase your hard drive, install Lion, reinstall the latest version of your applications, and then migrate over only your documents.

BJP & GFIVE (and anyone else experiencing this)--

Are you, by chance, experiencing this problem on a machine that has had Lion installed previously and/or on another partition currently? I'm wondering if this may have something to do w/ the invisible Recovery Partition that Lion creates. My MBP shipped in July w/ Lion on it, but I reverted it to Snow Leopard instead, leaving Lion's Recovery Partition in place. Have any of you done something similar, or were you 10.6 all the way?

Thx,

Fred

P.S. Still getting seemingly unending backups that cause my MBP's battery to drain in a big hurry. Awesome.

Very good point, Fred. But no, I had never installed Lion on that computer.

However, I believe I fixed my problem by going to Lion.

I reformatted my entire drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard from the CD that came with the computer. I ran a Time Machine backup right away and it backed up the whole computer (first backup). After that, same problem... 10,000 files every time (only about 10MB) and each backup would take about 15 minutes! with a freshly intalled OS, and just a few files and emails.

As soon as I went to Lion, the problem was gone. I'm wondering if the Snow Leopard CD that came with the computer was bad. I'm gonna leave it at that, because there's no way I'm going back to Snow Leopard!

I was having the same problem (hours-long backups of a few MB) after using CCC to transfer my files to a brand new SSD. I don't think the SSD has any problems, as it is brand new, and the disk verification checks out. After hours of searching online, disabling Spotlight, and using TimeTracker to see if 100000+ files were actually changed (they were not), I found the following seems to work:

1. Delete /.fseventsd on your startup drive or move it to another location:

mv /.fseventsd /.fseventsd.bak

2. Reboot

3. Start a Time Machine backup

Afterwards, the first time TM is run, it took much less time to reach "Finishing Backup," though it stayed on that step a really long time. However, subsequent TM runs are back to normal.

Source: http://www.ehmac.ca/archive/index.php/t-100787.html

(Posting here so more people can find the solution; it took me several hours to find that one.)