Time Machine backing up way too many files

Messing around with the internals of Time Machine like that is extremely dangerous. You could easily get Time Machine to miss files that have actually changed. When you need to restore these files in three months, you won't have any backups.

If you are having trouble with Time Machine, erase your backup drive and start a new one.

@etresoft: I had tried that (as did many other people), but erasing the backup drive didn't solve that. Perhaps since we're erasing the backup drive anyway, maybe a better solution would be to erase the backup drive, move the (presumably corrupted) /.fseventsd folder, and then do a full backup after that.

When Time Machine can't find /.fseventsd, it does a deep traversal (according to my system.log), which I'm guessing scans for changed files, and then rebuilds the metadata for /.fseventsd.

In any case, one should have more than one backup drive anyway, so make sure you have at least one with a full good backup on it before trying this with the other drive.

I already replied a while back but I'll say again... I am convinced that the CD that came with the computer is corrupted. I have a MacBook Pro, about a year and a half old, and I was experiencing the same problem.
As soon as I installed Lion on my computer, the problem was entirely fixed. I went back to 10.6 (just to see what would happen) by reinstalling it from the original CD, and the problem came back. Back to Lion... no problem. Same computer, same backup drive.

Shoot, I was hoping this fix would work for me, but no such luck. I've tried this twice and I still get "Copied 90123 files (5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD" or similar numbers. There's no way I'm copying more than a few hundred files, as revealed by BackupLoupe.

I wish I could solve this by moving to (Mountain) Lion, but I'm stuck on 10.6.8 on my Core Duo MBP. I feel like I've tried everything, and I fear I'll find no solution as most of the user base has moved on to 10.7+.

Sorry to hear that Jeff. I was using 10.6.8 as well on a Core 2 Duo MBP (early 2008). I forgot to mention one needs administrative privileges to change /.fseventsd, so the command for step 1 is

sudo mv /.fseventsd /.fseventsd.bak

but you probably already knew that. Anyway, the usual disclaimer:

use at your own risk/back up your stuff on another drive first. =]

Another thought: did you by any chance unplug your drive without ejecting it at some point?

Message was edited by: xfactorial

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I know sudo. After removing /.fseventsd and /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist as per this and other hints, rebooting, and watching a rescan of all the files, I'm still stuck with that same message about 85-90K files backed up after about 40 minutes. What and where the heck are they? My wifes Core Duo Macbook with 10.6.8 has no problems, and backs up to the same NAS in about 2 minutes.

If I could watch the backupd process in more detail I might have an idea about what files are hanging it up, and be able to react accordingly.

This turned out to be a problem with iCal filling up "~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Sync Changes" with THOUSANDS of temporary files named like F3B77CEC-62A7-4D82-AACF-6FA89BE141DA.tmp. I had almost 90,000 files in this directory. In other threads on this site others have complained of MANY more than that.

It's a bug. The workaround is to exclude this directory from TM backups, and periodically erase all the files in the directory.

Can you please open Terminal.app and post the results of "grep -e "backupd" /var/log/system.log" so I can see what's going on? That way we'll know whether your system is wading through large numbers of files or it's some other problem with a different resolution. If it's a problem like the one I had, you can then hunt for the problematic directories and take action.

Hi,

I have the same problem and tried every solution mentioned in this thread:

- deleted the ".fseventsd"-file, the backups afterwards were really faster, but the problem came back.

- repaired the TimeCapsule disk (which was good)

- checked the folder "~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Sync Changes"-folder - which is empty on my system.

Any new ideas? Running 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro, backing up on a TimeCapsule 3rd gen.

Thanks

Here's my last backup log:

May 29 13:39:51 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Starting standard backup

May 29 13:39:51 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Wern@TimeCapsule.local/Almighty%20Bob

May 29 13:39:52 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Wern@TimeCapsule.local/Almighty%20Bob

May 29 13:39:54 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

May 29 13:39:56 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Disk image /Volumes/Almighty Bob-1/Macintosh.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups

May 29 13:39:56 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb

May 29 13:41:34 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.14 GB requested (including padding), 723.72 GB available

May 29 13:48:06 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Copied 48443 files (17.9 MB) from volume Arthur Dent V.

May 29 13:50:01 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 723.72 GB available

May 29 13:55:28 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Copied 18949 files (1021 KB) from volume Arthur Dent V.

May 29 13:58:40 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Starting post-backup thinning

May 29 13:58:40 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

May 29 13:58:41 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Backup completed successfully.

May 29 13:58:44 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.

May 29 13:58:45 localhost com.apple.backupd[33276]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

It looks like you have directories somewhere in your backup tree loaded with many files that are slowing things down. To find them, you can use the following commands in Terminal.app:

find ~ -type d -exec sh -c 'ls "{}" | wc -l '\;

find ~ -type d -print -exec sh -c 'ls "{}" | wc -l ' \;

The first command scans subdirectories in your home directory and displays only the number of files in each directory. The second does the same, but it also displays the directory name. If you see directories with thousands of files by issuing the first command, you'll want to use the second to display the name of the directories. Knowing the name you can then delete its files if appropriate. Let me know how it goes.

Thanks for the two command-lines, Jeff. I did the search and sorted the results in an Excel-chart. The only folders holding that many files were my mailboxes - or folders already excluded from backup.

So I rebuilt my mail indexes and made a backup after that. First run was over 7 GB, when it backed up all my mails - second run was with the same error as before. Thousands of files with almost no size. As before the backup-comparison-tools (I use "Back-in-time") can't find these files. When I look into this backup, it holds only a small amount of files, which sounds quite reasonable. But it's console entry looks like this:

29.05.13 18:58:10 com.apple.backupd[16487] Copied 18962 files (5.0 MB) from volume Arthur Dent V.

So, no change after all. Think it's a strange bug in 10.6.8, as other users in this thread already pointed out.

Before I could perform the search, I found a typo in the first command line (missing space). Just for others in the forum - it should read:

find ~ -type d -exec sh -c 'ls "{}" | wc -l ' \;

So did you only search your home directory as I suggested? The problem may then lie elsewhere. You can also try "find / -type d..."

I'm still convinced you've got a rogue directory somewhere.

Werner Kranwetvogel wrote:

...The only folders holding that many files were my mailboxes - or folders already excluded from backup.

I'm not sure, but if you have 10,000 files in a TM-excluded directory, but that directory itself resides somewhere within the TM-included zone, you may still be in trouble. Let me know what you find.

Hi Jeff,

thanks for the tipp. This time I searched my entire computer for large folders. The only one I found holding that much files was one inside the aldready excluded Aperture library (since TimeMachine backs up between 18.000 and 50.000 files each session, we're talking about really large amounts of files).

Maybe I have to do it the hard way, excluding folder by folder manually and see, if I can find the rogue one...

I'll keep you posted...