cleaning up

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cleaning up

When in Time Machine, what does "cleaning up" mean? It is taking a long time and does not indicate how many min/hr till done.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Mar 3, 2013 2:15 PM

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Answer 1

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leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

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Mar 3, 2013 2:25 PM in response to nikonmike

Running through the database and consolidating what it can to save space.

Just have to let it run it's course. Sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's shorter.

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2013 2:24 PM in response to nikonmike

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Answer 3

Mar 3, 2013 2:28 PM in response to nikonmike

One of the maor items it does during cleaning up, and one that may take some consoderable time is Post-backup thinning.

That is, the proccessing of pruning hourlyy backups leaving one daily backup, then dailies into one weekly.

This can take some time.

You can find evidence of this using the Console App. search for "backupd" and you'll probaby see messages like this:

3/3/13 2:51:18.020 PM com.apple.backupd[535]: Starting post-backup thinning

3/3/13 2:51:31.516 PM com.apple.backupd[535]: Deleted /Volumes/OWC 3T TM Current/Backups.backupdb/Homer/2013-02-01-105303 (35.9 MB)

3/3/13 2:51:36.739 PM com.apple.backupd[535]: Deleted /Volumes/OWC 3T TM Current/Backups.backupdb/Homer/2013-02-28-172526 (39.4 MB)

3/3/13 2:51:36.739 PM com.apple.backupd[535]: Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed

3/3/13 2:51:36.812 PM com.apple.backupd[535]: Backup completed successfully.

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