[Don Pickett]

I have two internal drives in my G5. One, Wintermoot, is my main drive, so the info on there changes almost daily. The other, Feezmoe, is a storage drive, and almost never changes. However, if I look at the Time Machine logs I see this:

[codex]Dec 19 00:28:33 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Starting standard backup
Dec 19 00:28:33 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Desktop Backup/Backups.backupdb
Dec 19 00:28:49 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 984.0 MB requested (including padding), 402.32 GB available
Dec 19 00:31:55 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Copied 5886 files (772.5 MB) from volume Wintermoot.
Dec 19 00:31:59 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Copied 5899 files (772.5 MB) from volume Feezmoe.
Dec 19 00:32:01 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 401.55 GB available
Dec 19 00:32:08 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Copied 681 files (0 bytes) from volume Wintermoot.
Dec 19 00:32:10 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Copied 694 files (0 bytes) from volume Feezmoe.
Dec 19 00:32:14 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 19 00:32:35 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Deleted backup /Volumes/Desktop Backup/Backups.backupdb/Feezmoe/2007-12-17-233135: 401.58 GB now available
Dec 19 00:32:35 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Dec 19 00:32:35 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[467]: Backup completed successfully.
Dec 19 01:28:32 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Backup requested by automatic scheduler
Dec 19 01:28:32 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Starting standard backup
Dec 19 01:28:32 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Desktop Backup/Backups.backupdb
Dec 19 01:28:42 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 976.9 MB requested (including padding), 401.58 GB available
Dec 19 01:30:35 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Copied 4336 files (763.5 MB) from volume Wintermoot.
Dec 19 01:30:37 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Copied 4349 files (763.5 MB) from volume Feezmoe.
Dec 19 01:30:38 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 400.82 GB available
Dec 19 01:30:43 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Copied 857 files (1.7 MB) from volume Wintermoot.
Dec 19 01:30:45 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Copied 870 files (1.7 MB) from volume Feezmoe.
Dec 19 01:30:47 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Starting post-backup thinning
Dec 19 01:30:47 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Dec 19 01:30:47 Feezmoe /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[531]: Backup completed successfully.
[/codex]

Time Machine seems to be copying the same amount of data from both drives, even though the same amount of data wasn't added to both drives. In fact, the only thing added to Feezmoe during the time covered by those backups was a ~35 MB disk image. Yet, according to this, Time Machine copied something like 1.4 GB from that drive.

Am I reading this log incorrectly, or is something weird going on?

[Hal Itosis]

Even though nothing changes, Time Machine may -- and I say "may" because
at this point I still need to guess -- [where was I? oh yeah] ... Time Machine
may be assembling its hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly views, so it can
properly display certain timelines and/or prepare for future changes.

It's not the simple tool it appears to be.

-HI-

<edit> for example:

Copied 694 files (0 bytes) from volume Feezmoe

that looks like some unlinking and/or relinking was going on,
to "move" stuff where it needs to "go". Or... maybe only some
metadata changes (permissions, label, etc, etc,) were done.
</edit>

[Don Pickett]

What interest me is it seems it copies the same from both volumes, regardless. So, if there's 700 MB of new stuff on Wintermoot, there will be 700 MB copied from Feezmoe.

[Hal Itosis]

You're right, that is . . . interesting.
At this stage, bugs are still highly possible.
Hopefully it's just in the activity log section.