macOS Sonoma 14.6, Time Machine re-backing up entire Photos Library frequently

I store my Photos Library on an external 2TB Thunderbolt SSD. I did so following Apple's instructions here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. When using Time Machine to backup my Mac Studio Time Machine often re-backs up my entire Photos Library of 945GB of photos and everything else in the Pictures folder (another 500GB). Why is Time Machine doing this? I also have "Ignore ownership on this volume" checked on as mentioned in the Apple Support document.

Why is Time Machine re-backing up everything seemingly on a regular basis?

Mac Studio, macOS 14.6

Posted on Aug 7, 2024 11:26 AM

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Barney-15E

Level 10

118,890 points

Posted on Oct 27, 2024 11:09 AM

You should remove the Adware you installed. I'm pretty sure EtreCheck can help with that. But, I doubt that is your problem.

The most likely problems are caused by all of the junk ware you have installed to "maintain" your Mac. macOS doesn't need any maintenance and any software that purports to do so will just wreck the system.

Everything that purports to clean, optimize, protect, monitor, or otherwise maintain your Mac will only serve to cause problems, perhaps the one you are currently experiencing with Time Machine.

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Dec 4, 2024 4:26 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

So, I removed a few things EtreCheckPro mentioned and now Time Machine seems to be backing up much faster. Instead of single backups taking 7 hours plus to complete now Time Machine can complete a backup within 170, 10, or even 7 minutes.

Dec 4, 2024 4:40 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

So, I removed a few things EtreCheckPro mentioned and now Time Machine seems to be backing up much faster. Instead of single backups taking 10+ hours to complete one one-hour backup, Time Machine is now completing an hourly backup in 7 minutes, to 2 hours, to 3 hours max. BIG improvement.

Jan 27, 2025 8:51 AM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

I thought I'd fixed this issue, but Time Machine is still backing up over a terabyte of my Pictures folder. My Pictures folder is 1.49TB in size and resides on a fast external Thunderbolt SSD. Ignore ownership on this volume is check on for that drive. My Photos Library is 999.15GB. Last night I went to sleep with Time Machine saying it had backed up 1.17TB of data. Today Time Machine has been "Cleaning up..." for hours.

Jan 29, 2025 1:24 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

Today Time Machine has been backing up since some time last night. It has currently backed up 834.98GB, 88.8% and has said "About 3 hours remaining" since early this morning. I think I'm going to try EtreCheckPro again to see if it sees anything additional to fix. Then I might upgrade from Sonoma to Sequoia to see if that helps.

Feb 1, 2025 8:08 AM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

I may have fixed my issue. I finally upgraded to macOS Sequoia. Since upgrading from Sonoma to Sequoia Time Machine, as seen via BackupLoupe, has backed up 8.56GB, 2.87GB, 9.62GB, 2.62GB, 1.76GB, and 396.05MB. That's a whole lot less than the 1.32TB, 1.09TB, 1.35TB, 738.57GB, Sonoma was backing up.

Feb 22, 2025 12:03 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

I think I have finally fixed my Time Machine issue. Removed the BackupLoupe from Login Items & Extensions (very handy utility to see exactly what Time Machine is backing up), restarted, and now Time Machine is working properly again. Wonder if the developer can fix this.

Mar 13, 2025 12:51 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

I finally have Time Machine behaving normally again. Turns out it was Backup Loupe's background scanner that was somehow making Time Machine re-backup much of my photo library; not just Photos Library, but much of what's sitting in the Pictures folder. Removing Backup Loupe didn't help, but then I found a background process installed by Backup Loupe that was still running. Running the Backup Loupe unintaller that removes that background process solved my issue of Time Machine backing up waaaaaay too much.

Mar 31, 2025 1:33 PM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

So, to summarize what I did to get Time Machine working properly again:

1) I removed Backup Loupe's background scanning process.

2) I read on a forum that removing Goole updater helped other people.. so, I removed Google updater

and finally after many months Time Machine is back to behaving normally. Yay!

talveoli

Level 1

12 points

Apr 1, 2025 2:30 AM in response to Ken Shimabukuro

Time Machine may be re-backing up your entire Photos Library due to how macOS handles external drives or file system changes. Even with "Ignore ownership on this volume" enabled, it might see changes in the library, such as metadata or file modifications, triggering a full backup. To prevent this, ensure the Photos Library is properly excluded or optimize Time Machine's backup settings.

Barney-15E

Level 10

118,890 points

Apr 1, 2025 4:14 AM in response to talveoli

talveoli wrote:

Time Machine may be re-backing up your entire Photos Library due to how macOS handles external drives or file system changes. Even with "Ignore ownership on this volume" enabled, it might see changes in the library, such as metadata or file modifications, triggering a full backup. To prevent this, ensure the Photos Library is properly excluded or optimize Time Machine's backup settings.

It doesn’t work that way. The photos library is not a monolithic database. It’s just a folder that looks like a single file, I.E., a package.