Thanks for that Ronni, I'm on the road at the moment up north so detailed response to all your questions tomorrow.
I've learnt from your last sentence though that iphoto must be quit to do a backup of any new content in it. I didn't know that. Also let me confirm my configuration. My iphoto library is contained on an external drive connected via USB all the time to the MBP. The Time Capsule has a powered hub connected to its usb port and the backup 1TB drive is connected to the hub. So while it is wireless between MBP and the TC, all drives are connected via USB. Sorry if I wasn't clear on this before and it may be that misunderstanding which confuses the issue here. I hope is clear now. Regards Pete. <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Ronni Brown <[email protected]> </div><div>Date:16/09/2014 11:46 (GMT+08:00) </div><div>To: WAMUG <[email protected]> </div><div>Subject: Re: Enormous Time Machine backup </div><div> </div>Hi Peter, I don't really know why Time Machine did a 'full' backup of the iPhoto Library. What size was the next Time Machine backup (the one after the full backup)... was it a incremental backup? I'll first try to explain my previous comment: You can backup iPhoto wirelessly, that's not a problem. It's using it wirelessly that has potential risks. I don't like storing the iPhoto Library on a wireless drive like you have. I am aware you have it connected via a powered hub which does help. You can backup the iPhoto Library wirelessly, that is fine. However, if you are doing anything that involves actual management - adding to the iPhoto library, organising, editing shots and so on, then definitely not. A drop out on the network will cause issues. The network connection will not only be slow, there is additionally a significant risk of a temporary connection loss when the iPhoto application is writing to the iPhoto library, which can easily corrupt the entire image library. Even scrolling through your photos requires a lot of data transfer. iTunes, on the other hand, works fine. You don’t “see” the music all at once, so it can stream files from a Wi-Fi drive without much issue. --- Hmmm.... So what caused Time Machine to do a 'Full' backup of iPhoto? 1. Was iPhoto 'Quit' after you imported the video file into iPhoto? 2. Was Time Machine 'Turned OFF' in System Preferences when you were uploading the Video to Dropbox? If TM was left 'ON' 3. Was Time Machine doing a backup during any of this activity? 4. From what you mentioned earlier, you left Dropbox uploading and went to bed. Was the MBP set to never sleep during this time or would the computer have gone to sleep? We might be able to sort out why TM did a full backup of iPhoto, with additional information as to what happened during the above activity. You do realise that Time Machine will not backup iPhoto if iPhoto is open. iPhoto must to 'Quit' first for TM to back it up. Cheers, Ronni On 15 Sep 2014, at 11:21 am, Ronda Brown <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Neil, You are correct. The Time Capsule - Time Machine sparsebundle is not a huge single file. I did realize after I sent my quick reply last night that I had not worded my reply accurately and was going to explain further today... but my work time today has not allowed me to as yet. Peter had a lot going on at the same time - with Data being uploaded to Dropbox, Dropbox probably syncing, Time Machine backing up... All this was happening wirelessly. I will try to clarify later today (when I finish work or find a break in the day) that there can be problems working wirelessly with an iPhoto Library. You can backup iPhoto wirelessly, that's not a problem. It's using it wirelessly that has potential risks. Cheers, Ronni Sent from Ronni's iPad4 On 15 Sep 2014, at 10:17 am, Neil Houghton <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Peter, Hi Ronni, Ronni, I thought that the difference between the old sparse disk image and the newer sparse bundle was that the sparse bundle is NOT a single huge file but a bundle of small (around 8MB) files which look to the user like one file but allows time machine to just back up whichever files have changed (rather than the whole bundle). Obviously a video is generally much bigger than a few photos so would involve more of the (8mb) files and the backup would be bigger – but should not involve the whole iphoto library – or am I missing something? I don’t use iphoto myself – does it do things differently? Apologies if I have missed the point ;o) Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: [email protected] on 14/9/14 21:44, Ronda Brown at [email protected] wrote: Hi Peter, Short answer to why Time Machine has done a larger backup of iPhoto. You had made changes in iPhoto by importing video. Then you were uploading that video file to Dropbox. You are storing your iPhoto library inside of a disk image file (sparsebundle), which obviously is a single (huge) file. So any time the disk image changes, Time Machine will back up the entire file, which in your case is many gigabytes. Cheers, Ronni Sent from Ronni's iPad4 On 14 Sep 2014, at 8:31 pm, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Ronni, been a bit busy and off caravanning for the weekend. But this evening I finally got the Time Tracker downloaded and within a minute or so I could see the “enormous backup”. Whilst Time Machine was saying it’s 175GB in size, the Actual file from Time Tracker is 148.4GB. So by zooming into the BIG stuff, the culprit is iPhoto. It’s the folder called “Masters” responsible for 136GB of the 148.4GB which i presume holds the image Master files and the Thumbnails folder responsible for 9.6GB of the 148GB. This iPhoto library has been backed up before and for months has been routinely doing all the backups normally. Why would it trigger a Full backup of the iPhoto library all over again. I’ve effectively lost 175GB of space on the backup drive for seemingly no good reason. The Master folder contains beneath it a number of folders one for each year and each of these reports in this backup for their respective sizes I presume. Is there anything I should do? If I do nothing it will proceed ok but I am puzzled why this “Enormous Backup” had to exist. Thanks for the tip on Time Tracker, it is a beauty. If I blow away the old sparesebundle and rebuild a backup from scratch, I would recover the space but the do nothing option is easier at the moment. Regards Pete. On 8 Sep 2014, at 9:46 pm, Ronni Brown <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Peter, Why did you download Pacifist? I didn't mention Pacifist, you don't want Pacifist! I said to download 'Time Tracker' TimeTracker TimeTracker is a quick-and-dirty application that displays the contents of your Time Machine backups, and shows what's changed since the previous backup. TimeTracker is in an extremely early state, and is as such very unpolished. Download <http://www.charlessoft.com/TimeTracker.zip> TimeTracker (prerelease), which works with 64-bit Intel Macs running OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) or greater. <http://www.charlessoft.com/TimeTracker.zip> Cheers, Ronni On 8 Sep 2014, at 9:29 pm, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Ronni, I have downloaded the Pacifist software and in the process of "Loading Pete's Macbook" (ie Macbook Sparsebundle file). I don't have a Thunderbolt to Ethernet connection so I've gotta do it wirelessly (but I just ordered one) so I expect it will take ages to 'Load'. Oh well, hopefully it will present the culprit taking up huge data volume from my TC backup disc. I have stopped routine TC backups for now - nothing to loose. Whatever is the cause for this I can do one of two things. Either I understand from this exercise what is the cause of this huge data consumption and just leave the sparesebundle alone OR I blow away the sparesebundle and do a complete backup from scratch again and manage the cause of why this all happened so that I can keep the freeboard I had prior to this. Regards Pete On 7 Sep 2014, at 7:20 pm, Ronni Brown <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Peter, Time Tracker <http://www.charlessoft.com/> is free; it is pretty basic but usually works well. It only shows backups on the current backup destination, though, so if you've got more than one, you have to select the one you want (if you're using "rotating backups," it's the set most recently backed-up to). Time Tracker works by comparing a completed backup you select to the one before it. So if you select a large backup, it’s going to take a while to determine, calculate, and display the items. If your backups are on a network, connect via Ethernet if possible. It will still take a while, but be 2-3 times faster than WI-FI. That also means that, after 24 hours, you're not really looking at what was backed-up on a particular backup, but all the backups since the previous one. And you can’t select the oldest backup, since there’s nothing to compare it to, or one that’s running, failed, or was cancelled. The Time Tracker display is similar to a Finder window in "List View" The dated backups will show 0 bytes until you select one, then the app will calculate the size, so may take a while. You can click the disclosure triangles to see the items in that folder that were backed-up. Time Tracker will only show backups on the volume currently selected for backups (or most recently backed-up to) in Time Machine preferences. The recent version of Time Tracker may give you a permissions error on network backups; if it does, try double-clicking the sparse bundle via the Finder to mount the disk image. Cheers, Ronni On 7 Sep 2014, at 5:36 pm, Peter Crisp <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, I have a MacBook Pro Retina 13" 256GB with a 2TB attached external drive (currently with around 550GB on the external drive). I have the external drive INCLUDED in my TC backups and the backup size (according to the TM Options panel) is 659GB. It has been backed up for many months now and routinely has been doing the updates hourly per the normal schedule. The backup drive is 1TB attached via the USB with a powered hub to the 3TB TC. I know some might think having only 1TB is small for a machine capable of being around 2.25TB (on board Mac Pro drive + the 2TB external) but for the moment the held memory is well inside the 1TB limit. Last night i took a video with my iPhone and then imported it to the MacBook Pro to iPhoto. The video file was ~330MB only 2 minutes worth. Last night I also tried to push the video file up to my Dropbox and it said around 1 hour to complete which was fine so I just let it go. This morning when I woke up the Macbook, it still hadn't completed and it said it had 10 minutes remaining. Then I noticed it commencing a routine backup and I often check the size of the backups just to keep a mental track of data backup size. The Backup is 174.92GB (yes GB)!! I was very surprised to see this as normal backups are in the order of ~50MB or maybe 1 or 2GB if I have imported some photos but I have never had a routine backup this size. Is there a way that I can interrogate what files are being backed up so I can see what has caused this? It will significantly reduce the freeboard I had to the 1TB for what appears to be for a meaningless reason. Maybe it was the Dropbox activity that's caused this. Regards Pete
-- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
