Time Machine backup fails after restore

Using 10.9.4 on 24-inch, Early 2008 Mac desktop. I recently had to do a restore from Time Machine. That went fine. Now, however, my backup fails and I get this error message:
The backup disk needs 1.03 TB for the backup but only 211.95 GB are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files

My internal hard drive is a 750 gb disk and only has about 135 gb on it after the restore. I am using a 1TB Apple extrenal drive for TM.
It appears Time machine is confused re what I want to be backed up. How can I edit what is backed up or otherwise troubleshoot this problem?

TIA
John
T

JayElDee said:

Using 10.9.4 on 24-inch, Early 2008 Mac desktop. I recently had to do a restore from Time Machine. That went fine. Now, however, my backup fails and I get this error message:
The backup disk needs 1.03 TB for the backup but only 211.95 GB are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files

My internal hard drive is a 750 gb disk and only has about 135 gb on it after the restore. I am using a 1TB Apple extrenal drive for TM.
It appears Time machine is confused re what I want to be backed up. How can I edit what is backed up or otherwise troubleshoot this problem?

TIA
John
T

Click to expand...

JayElDee there is an easy way and a harder way to tackle this. Firstly why did you perform a restore? If you had a major problem with your Mac HD you might want to use Disc Utility to Verify your Mac HD to ensure it is healthy. You might also want to Check Permissions. If you find no problems and you are satisfied all your data is intact you could simply erase your external HD and perform a new Time Machine Backup. This will take some time but it is the method I prefer.

Alternatively you can delete earlier backups from your external HD to make more space.
DO NOT be tempted to delete earlier backups from the TM backup using the Finder window. As long as you delete them the proper way there's no problem. Enter Time Machine, select the backup you want to delete in the column on the right side, click the gear button, and select "Delete Backup".
NEVER delete Time Machine backups outside of the Time Machine interface, i.e. drag to the Trash with Finder. That will corrupt your TM backups.

Hi, Rod,
I had already gone through the disk utility options and it told me to save as much as I could and then do a restore. Fortunately, I had everything critical on external drives and backed up so I was just restoring OS and apps mostly. I think I lost nothing but time.

What I did was to set up another Time Machine backup, deleting the old one (in TM), and now it backed up properly. It was as if using TM for a restore prevented it being used for backup after the restore. I don't know if that behavior is a "feature" of TM.
Thanks
John