MacBook – Time Machine backs up a huge quantity of data on every run

backupmacbook prosnow leopardtime-capsuletime-machine

I have a MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard and a Time Capsule. In the last few days every backup took over 100GB of data. I don't know if there is some issue with permissions or something similar, but to be sure I removed all the old backups and reformatted the Time Capsule disk. I've also run filesystem checks and permission checks on my MBP disk using the installation disk.

Then I've restarted backup from scratch, the first backup took 160GB and for a few days following backups has worked fine (with a decent quantity of data for each run).

Now after some days I started my MBP and the backup is still in progress, when it was started it says that it needs to backup about 40GB of data (which obviously is not true) and while running the limit is increasing constantly, currently is at 95GB and it continue to grow.

I suspect that there could be some hardware issue with Time Capsule, but not sure.

Any hint to solve this issue?

Best Answer

Take a look at BackupLoupe:

http://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/

The blurb on the website describes what it can do far more eloquently than I can, but to summarise it's commercial software that you can evaluate for free and then pay for if you with to use it. Once you have determined which backup intervals or which files are taking up more space than you wish, you can delete files across all backups or delete snapshots as needed to maintain storage space per your requirements and preference.

Modes and ownership

Ideally, use chmod(1) and chown(8) to have the mode and ownership, of the copy of the disk image, consistent with how Mountain Lion normally creates a local disk image for Time Machine.

Example

GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ sudo ls -al /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle/
Password:
total 16672
drwx------@ 3 root   staff     10  7 Jun 19:07 .
drwxr-xr-x  8 gjp22  staff     10  6 Jun 18:57 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff    500  7 Jun 18:03 Info.bckup
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff    500  7 Jun 18:03 Info.plist
drwx------  2 root   staff  78855  7 Jun 19:07 bands
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff    444  7 Jun 18:02 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.bckup
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff    444  7 Jun 18:02 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff   1473  6 Jun 21:28 com.apple.TimeMachine.Results.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root   staff  10698  6 Jun 22:24 com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotHistory.plist
-rwx------  1 root   staff      0 19 Mar 19:36 token

– and for each band, you should have:

-rw-------  1 root  staff

Attaching the copy of the disk image

With Terminal, for the example above:

sudo hdiutil attach -readonly /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle/

If you use Terminal from within Recovery OS: you'll probably not need the sudo prefix to the command.

Additional detail

… whether I can still restore …

You require:

a copy of a Time Machine destination, a copy that will be good for restoration
not an additional Time Machine destination.

Assumption

You wish the copy to be usable, for restoration only, in the event of loss or failure of the Time Capsule.

If the disk is attached from a local image where modes and ownership vary from the norm for a local image:

OS X or Recovery OS might use that disk without difficulty; I can't be certain.

Thoughts

If you're preparing for the possibility of loss or failure of a Time Capsule – and restoration from a copy of what was there – then think a step further, to backing up without the original Time Capsule. (If you wish the copy to be writeable by Time Machine, that could be a separate question.)

All things considered

It's probably quicker and simpler to use the external hard disk, or a part, as a Time Machine destination.

MacOS – Finder window pops up every time Time Machine makes a backup

I solved it by running

sudo defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-rw-root -bool false

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/584237/make-time-machine-stop-opening-a-new-window-when-backing-up