Daily TimeMachine backups are too big

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Level 1

8 points

Daily TimeMachine backups are too big

Hi community,

since a couple of month my daily backups have sizes between 5 and 60 GB. They take incredible long and often cannot complete (because somehow they stopped to occur when my MBP is idle, although the power nap is on)

What the **** can change 50GB daily? how can I find out, what it is doing all this time and gigabytes?

All usual suspects (like VMs, Downloads etc.) are excluded from Backup

Can anyone explain me, what to do?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Nov 4, 2020 2:15 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 4, 2020 7:15 AM in response to Don Alberto

Don Alberto wrote:

...(like VMs,....

Likely the biggest culprit. VMs typically being one large file,

just opening and closing a VM will trigger a "file changed" flag

and the entire file will be backed up. Best to set time machine to

ignore the VM for backups and use alternate means for backing up

the content of the VM or the VM itself.

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2020 7:20 AM in response to Don Alberto

Don Alberto wrote:

That's what I meant - I have pot them all on ignore

"Time Machine has completed a new backup for you, or get a message saying it can't create the backup,"

or “failed to complete the backup.”

This message reappears most likely the TimeMachine disk is operating in a state of failure and will continue to fail with increasing frequency. The solution would be to replace the drive.

If you need to create a new backup from Mac—

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-you-need-to-create-a-new-backup-mh34042/10.14/mac/10.15

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