I'm running Snow Leopard on an i7 iMac and using Time Machine to back-up wirelessly to a 2TB Time Capsule.

The layout of my system and location of the devices means that Ethenet connection between the iMac and Time Capsule isn't a realistic option.

Time Machine is supposed to carry out an incremental back-up every hour, but many backups take far longer then an hour so it is almost constantly backing up.

In addition, although my iMac runs 24/7 and never goes in to sleep mode, the only User owned process (as far as I know, at least) that runs 24/7 is Folding@Home for which I use v7.1.52

I would expect, therefor, that the number of files and their size backed up every "hour" would be minimal, and yet the backup currently in progress amounts to 84.13GB!!!!!

My 2TB Time Capsule is already over half full!

I know older files are deleted when there is no space, but my iMac's HD currently shows a usage of 669.52GB so these apparently over large back-ups are really taking up a hell of a lot of space each!

I have excluded the HD/Library/Cache and ~/Library/Cache folders, the Parallels Windoze environment file and the Application Support/Sophos folder as I did wonder if they changed frequently and thus might affect the number of changed files, but it has made little or no noticeable difference.

So, what on earth is going on - and how can I find out just which files are being backed up in these massive transfers and why?

Many thanks in advance.



The log for the current (unfinished) backup shows ...

Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 96.67 GB requested (including padding), 780.99 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
...

A sample of previous backups follows in case that helps someone pinpoint just what data is being backed-up and why!

Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 96.55 GB requested (including padding), 815.53 GB available
Copied 27.4 GB of 78.3 GB, 2791 of 2791 items
Copied 57.9 GB of 78.3 GB, 2791 of 2791 items
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 43652 files (78.3 GB) from volume Grumpy.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.62 GB requested (including padding), 815.53 GB available
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data-1
Failed to attach to image: /Volumes/Data-1/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Copied 33595 files (1.7 GB) from volume Grumpy.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.






Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 3.43 GB requested (including padding), 803.53 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 43697 files (684.0 MB) from volume Grumpy.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 12.83 GB requested (including padding), 802.85 GB available
Copied 33647 files (8.5 GB) from volume Grumpy.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Roy’s iMac/2012-07-26-163359: 794.38 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.



Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 14.01 GB requested (including padding), 815.54 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 43065 files (9.5 GB) from volume Grumpy.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.79 GB requested (including padding), 815.53 GB available
Copied 33031 files (141.2 MB) from volume Grumpy.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Roy’s iMac/2012-07-25-041750: 815.53 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.