Time Machine making constantly huge backups

[desertman]

I'm using Time Machine for backups of my 500 GB startup disk to a 1 TB external hard disk. I noticed now that the Time Machine backups are at least since days (if not weeks) more than 60 GB big - even if hardly anything has happened on the Mac.

Yesterday night Time Machine showed a remaining time of 6 hours for this backup and I left the machine running without going to sleep. This morning Time Machine shows that it started some time ago again with a 60 GB backup, showing the remaining time with 18 hours. I believe that this is going on since quite a while because I have since quite a while the impression that my computer is much too often slowed down by some background process.

I am making another backup with Carbon Copy Cloner once a day, and this backup usually need less than 30 minutes to complete.

I think something is very wrong with the Time Machine backup. I guess that the only thing I can do is to stop the Time Machine backup, erase the disk, and start fresh.

Does anybody else had this happen, too? Is there another possibility to fix this other than stopping, deleting and starting fresh again?

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestion:

TURN OFF Time Machine. Forever.
Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently

 

[desertman]

TURN OFF Time Machine. Forever.

Why? Can you elaborate on this more? I am usually hearing no bad things about Time Machine.

 

[leventozler]

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/21/compare-time-machine-backups-tmutil/

 

[MagicBoy]

Are you using any virtual machines?

 

[iConnected]

My suggestion:

TURN OFF Time Machine. Forever.
Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently

I volunteer to disagree vehemently.

Are you backing up any vaults (created by a third party product) that are very large?

The smallest change to a big vault can result in the entire vault being backed up afresh.

 

[desertman]

Are you using any virtual machines?

Bingo! Thanks!

I am working a lot in Parallels these days and the machine file is almost 60 GB big.

Apparently Carbon Copy Cloner deals in a smarter way with the changes in this file than Time Machine. My daily backup with Carbon Copy Cloner does not take remarkably longer than always.

PS: I have now excluded the Parallels machine files from the Time Machine backup ... and the new backup size is a mere 509 MB.

 

[MagicBoy]

Turn Time Machine off for the VM. As soon as a single byte changes in the virtual hard disk, Time Machine backs up the entire .hdd file, rather than just the changes.

I tend to back mine up once in a while, delete the old ones from the Time Machine drive then turn it off again for the VMs.

 

[iConnected]

Turn Time Machine off for the VM. As soon as a single byte changes in the virtual hard disk, Time Machine backs up the entire .hdd file, rather than just the changes.

You say VM, I say vault

Have you pursued your dead GPU under the MBP 2011 Repair Extension program?

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

 

[MagicBoy]

Have you pursued your dead GPU under the MBP 2011 Repair Extension program?

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Apple replaced it with an rMBP about 9 months ago as the refurbished logic boards kept failing after the no-cost repair they offered under consumer law.

RIP = Rest in Pieces.

Given you're the third person that's commented on it this week, I think I may well remove it from the sig.

 

[iConnected]

Apple replaced it with an rMBP about 9 months ago as the refurbished logic boards kept failing after the no-cost repair they offered under consumer law.

RIP = Rest in Pieces.

Given you're the third person that's commented on it this week, I think I may well remove it from the sig.

Good stuff Removing it from your sig sounds like a plan