External Hard Drive out of space

Mars Bar

I have a Toshiba 500GB External HDD and I use it for time machine. There is no way I should be out of space!

I deleted all of the back ups apart from the latest one about 3 weeks ago. Then plugged it in today and it says I'm out of space again. I know I shouldn't be.

I opened on Disk Utility to see and the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Is that alright? I know USB's tend to be formatted to MS-DOS FAT.

Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,107,829,760 Bytes)
Free Space : 88.33 GB (88,326,991,872 Bytes)
Used : 411.78 GB (411,780,837,376 Bytes)
Number of Files : 1,203,507
Number of Folders : 220,982

I dunno where those 1million files are!

ZENER

Did you empty your Trash after you deleted the files ? I don't think what you did actually works ? The only full backup is the original file created when you first started Time Machine. Every backup after that is just the delta. Therefore by deleting everything bar the most recent 3 weeks isn't a good idea. I also pretty sure there are some hidden directories involved here too, but will concede to someone more knowledgable on such things.

Ken

Mars Bar

Yeah I emptied the trash completely.

It takes hours upon hours to do the first backup to the hard drive!

I think I'll reformat it and have it start fresh again.

Greentree_uk

do you use parallels or VM ware? or Entourage? these files can be large and a recurring backup like time machine will keep copying images for the slightest change

Mars Bar

Nope, use none of those...

donutheadhomer

was your HD replaced under the Seagate Replacement programme? If so your TM will see the computer as being new and will try to create a new backup not incremental

Mars Bar

Replaced under what?! No, it wasn't!

I just reformatted and started it again. 355gB the back up is gonna take. Just under half way there now. Another 3 hours to go!