Folder size being displayed incorrectly

[iHaddock]

Hi,

I am trying to archive a time machine backup from my old iMac, but OSX thinks the file is 17TB (its approx 900GB) - on a 3TB 2013 iMAC Fusion Drive.

Any clues on how I can make Mountain Lion report the correct file size.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Where is that folder size being displayed as 17 TB and what method do you want to use to backup the Backups.backupdb folder, if that is the folder you want to backup and is getting reported as being 17 TB in size?

 

[iHaddock]

Where is that folder size being displayed as 17 TB and what method do you want to use to backup the Backups.backupdb folder, if that is the folder you want to backup and is getting reported as being 17 TB in size?

Hi,

Its on my desktop, and the 17TB was given by 'Right Click - Info' which took about 30 mins to report.

I have just moved the Folder into a new folder and 14.5 TB is reported - but cant get the correct size displayed.

I (hopefully) wont need to use the backup file via Time Machine (on the old machine obviously) - but handy to be able to grab previous versions of files manually.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Hi,

Its on my desktop, and the 17TB was given by 'Right Click - Info' which took about 30 mins to report.

I have just moved the Folder into a new folder and 14.5 TB is reported - but cant get the correct size displayed.

I (hopefully) wont need to use the backup file via Time Machine (on the old machine obviously) - but handy to be able to grab previous versions of files manually.

Ah, then it is problem of displaying proper file/folder sizes, as Time Machine does a full backup in the beginning and then only backups the changed data, but every backup looks like a full backup, thus if the initial backup was 100 GB and you had done 170 backups (1 backup per hour the machine was running, in a sense), Finder somehow sees 170 folders with the size of 100 GB and reports that as 17 GB.

Btw, copying that folder manually can introduce permission errors with the files inside. Why do you not just grab the latest versions of the files you want to keep and store them somewhere else?

And also know, a backup is a copy of the data, thus if the original data is not in existence anymore, the backup data ceases to be a backup.

Here is how I do a backup of my non-recreateable data:

I have one 500 GB HDD for my photographs (digital and analog) libraries and editing documents, one 500 GB HDD with my personal video footage in an editing friendly format.
Both 500 GB HDDs get backed up to one 1 TB HDD via CarbonCopyCloner.
And that 1 TB HDD gets backed up to another 1 TB HDD via CarbonCopyCloner.
Therefore I have three copies of my important data.

 

[iHaddock]

Many thanks for the info..

That makes sense, something I never realised - decided to delete all the files and it even had the number of files incorrect (went well into the minus figures while deleting!).

It's a bit confusing really - all my iPhoto library backup files (the current ones on my TM drive) show as 85GB when in actual fact they aren't presumably. Even stranger if I pull one out manually (through finder rather than TM) they are 85GB..

Anyway thanks again, will remember this for future.

 

[iHaddock]

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