Time Machine gobbling up HDD space.

[Micky Do]

Since changing from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on my early 2009 Mini free space on the out board back-up HDD has been disappearing rapidly.

After nearly 3 years of using Time Machine I still had over 240 GB of free space on the dedicated 320 GB back up HDD. In less than three months, since installing OX S 10.8 (and the 10.8.2 update) the free space has gone down to 48 GB.

My usage has changed very little. The main apps I use are Pages, Numbers, Safari and iTunes. I got a camera and started using iPhoto back in May, but not so much that it made a big difference to the system.

The 120 GB on board HDD still stands at 86 GB free.

Has anybody else found the same? What can be done about it?

 

[Zwhaler]

There's a lot of data backed up there. You can always add folders to the "Do Not Back Up" list in TM preferences. My Time Machine backup is almost 4TB.

 

[msjones]

Do you run virtual machines on your system? I found that every time you run a VM and the file container increases in size (even if by only a kb) TimeMachine will create a fresh backup of the file. I ended up with over 200GB of the same VM.

As Zwhaler said I just told TM not to back up the VM folder.

 

[Micky Do]

Thanks for the replays

There's a lot of data backed up there. You can always add folders to the "Do Not Back Up" list in TM preferences. My Time Machine backup is almost 4TB.

I have added several folders to the do "Do Not back Up" list. Still I noticed this morning it was busy doing an 11 GB back up.... heck there is less than 40 GB of Data on the internal HDD, including OS X 10.8.2, and iWork.

It looks like it could be backing up whole files, not just the changes.

Do you run virtual machines on your system? I found that every time you run a VM and the file container increases in size (even if by only a kb) TimeMachine will create a fresh backup of the file. I ended up with over 200GB of the same VM.

As Zwhaler said I just told TM not to back up the VM folder.

What are Vitual Machines? As far as I know I don't run any, but to be honest I don't know much about computers. I just use them, which is why I use Apple.