Back-up SSD Drive

Hi! Got a MBP9.1 and replaced the 500GB HDD with a Samsung SSD 840. Have used the old HDD as external back-up on which 266gb is still available.

My SSD now has 290gb and planned to do a back-up again to the HDD. But when I tried to use TM to back-up, it prompted that the destination disk (HDD) does not have enough space to accommodate my SSD's 290gb. I thought that TM will only back-up the newly saved files on my SSD onto the HDD. Or did i assume wrong?

How do I execute this back-up? Will Carbon Copy Cloner be better?

Appreciate any help.

If you made a previous backup using TM onto that external drive, TM may not be recognizing the previous backup for any number of reasons - you changed the name of the external - you're in a different user account... You can just delete the previous backup and run it again.

Is CCC better? Only you can answer that. Do you need access to previous versions of files &/or files you have deleted or do you need a bootable backup that you can run your machine from in case the internal drive dies until you can get it replaced?

@bobtomay: thanks. Guess it's simpler to just erase the hdd and clone my ssd into it again. I think I remember I used CCC the first time out.