Estimated backup file far too big

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Level 1

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Estimated backup file far too big

Hello all;

after a Mojave fresh install, I decided to set up the Time Machine to backup my Mac (MacBook Pro 2017). However, the estimated size of the full backup (450gB) is far too big (the whole Macintosh HD disk has around 130gB). I notices also that the Macintosh HD info says that there are a little bit more than 440gB of purgeable file). I tried to look for deleting it but nor CleanMyMac nor the About this Mac storage info show anything that big.

Once I'd like not to gobble half of my backup space with this 450gB "nothing", would any of you point me a way to follow?

Thanks for the attention

macOS Mojave (10.14)

Posted on Oct 6, 2018 1:34 PM

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Answer 1

Moxphere Author

Level 1

7 points

Oct 6, 2018 2:15 PM in response to Moxphere

Solved! After hours after my tail, found the answer here: Solution: Reclaim storage back from "System" | MacRumors Forums

Stupid OS created localsnapshotsfiles that were "invisible" for everything, except bloating the HD. Hope it saves someone else

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

158,286 points

Oct 7, 2018 10:03 AM in response to Moxphere

I'm glad you solved your issue with Time Machine, but I do have a few comments/suggestions:

Time Machine (TM) local snapshots are designed to allow TM to continue to perform backups when a TM backup destination drive is not available. As you can imagine, this is more common with notebooks than desktops. Normally, when this destination drive becomes available, the local snapshots are purged "automatically" over time or as storage space is required.
The article you provided does provide a method to purge these snapshots manually, but it doesn't include a very important step BEFORE you run the given Terminal command ... and that is to disable Time Machine. You could also just turn off TM and give it a few minutes to purge them too without the Terminal command.
Finally, and this is my suggestion, get rid or CleanMyMac or any other "cleaner" app. We see numerous posts here with folks having more issues using these types of apps than they resolve.

Ref: About Time Machine local snapshots- Apple Support

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Answer 3

Moxphere Author

Level 1

7 points

Oct 7, 2018 10:12 AM in response to Tesserax

Thanks, Tesserax. Very useful. As a comment: I cound not to anything do that because the purgeable files were so big (probably a 500gB music library I moved away from one directory to another) that I could hardly backup the disk as it was. I tried to create an image of it as well to see if I could pinpoint the files, but there was no disk space. Ideally, I'd let the OS do the job, but I was on the edge of functionality.

Regarding the advice to disable Time Machine before, luckily, I did. I totally disabled TM, even deleting the .sparsebundle file, so, unknowingly, I was on the right page. :-) Thanks a lot!

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Estimated backup file far too big

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