Timeshift

[JoHubb]

Fairly new Kubuntu user, running 18.04 updated to current.

I've just installed a new 4TB HDD. I have saved about 400 GB of home videos and photos.

I noticed that only 600GB was left on the drive. On investigation, I found that there was a folder called Timeshift containing hundreds of thousands of files from somewhere. It was using up about 3TB worth of space!

I did not install Timeshift. I did not ask it to backup anything.

Where has it come from? What is going on?

I'd be very grateful for an explanation and for help to eradicate. I want my drive back.

[Snowhog]

See Timeshift A System Restore Utility Review

You say 'new 4TB HDD'. New as it 'purchased from a retailer' or 'purchased used' new. IF it was newly purchased from a retailer, and you are 100% sure you never installed/used Timeshift, and you can prove it, return it! Who knows what else might be installed on that HDD. If you purchased it 'used', well, you should have wiped it before installing it.

Give us some background on this HDD.

[JoHubb]

See Timeshift A System Restore Utility Review

You say 'new 4TB HDD'. New as it 'purchased from a retailer' or 'purchased used' new. IF it was newly purchased from a retailer, and you are 100% sure you never installed/used Timeshift, and you can prove it, return it! Who knows what else might be installed on that HDD. If you purchased it 'used', well, you should have wiped it before installing it.

Give us some background on this HDD.

Thanks!

The drive was bought new but it was perhaps 6 months ago. I didn't open it then as I decided to switch from W10 to Linux. That takes time!
The drive was in the usual antistatic packaging, and I opened it about two weeks ago. It was only today I realised that this TimeShift was on it.

I have to say, I bought this drive from a very highly respected supplier who I have dealt with for over 20 years. I cannot believe he would sell me 'used' as 'new'.

It would be impossible to prove I never installed Timseshift - it is impossible to prove a negative!

What is this Timeshift thing anyway?

[Snowhog]

It would be impossible to prove I never installed Timseshift - it is impossible to prove a negative!

What is this Timeshift thing anyway?

2nd Q: Did you look at the link I provided?

1st Statement: Not really. Open Muon Package Manager and search on timeshift. I doubt you'll find it, and if you do, most likely it will be marked as 'not installed'. If the dealer is reputable, take it back and request a replacement or refund.

What are the timestamps on the timeshift files? What's the most recent timestamp?

[JoHubb]

Thanks again. I made a mistake. But I still need your advice. I have read the link and understand better about the program.

My son, home at Christmas, helped me set up Linux MInt on my PC. No problem with that except it was low on storage. So, you guessed, we installed the new 4TB drive. Unknown to me, he installed Timeshift, but he didn't check the scheduling.

After this, I installed Kubuntu from 'live' USB - making a triple boot machine. I prefer the KDE desktop and prefer Kubuntu anyway. So, now when I open up the new drive, I see this Timeshift.

The latest timestamp was 10 minutes ago. There are daily timestamps for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 January.

I would like to be rid of this program. I don't like the way it ate up my storage. Generally, I do backups manually as I find it simpler.

When I search in Kubuntu (Muon Package Manager) the Timeshift program is not discoverable. I can find it when I boot in Mint, and there's an option there to uninstall. Whether or not it well let me, I don't know.

[Snowhog]

Are you seeing the Timeshift backups from within Kubuntu, or only when you are booted in to Mint?

[SpecialEd]

Timeshift can be a pretty useful utility. Go into settings and restrict how many snapshots it retains. It sounds like it is retaining every snapshot it ever made.

[jlittle]

I wonder about your evaluation of how much space Timeshift is taking, particularly given that at the start of the thread you didn't know what it is or how it got there. I don't know much about it, but I've read that when not using btrfs underneath it uses so-called "hard" links a lot. If, using dolphin, you just went to a directory it uses, and found its properties, it would show lots of space taken. But that space is not being used extra to the space being used already. The links are only broken and a copy made if a file is changed. Directories can't be hard linked so some space is taken for them, but that would be small, a few MB.

[JoHubb]

Timeshift can be a pretty useful utility. Go into settings and restrict how many snapshots it retains. It sounds like it is retaining every snapshot it ever made.

Exactly. That is what it was doing.

I wonder about your evaluation of how much space Timeshift is taking, particularly given that at the start of the thread you didn't know what it is or how it got there. I don't know much about it, but I've read that when not using btrfs underneath it uses so-called "hard" links a lot. If, using dolphin, you just went to a directory it uses, and found its properties, it would show lots of space taken. But that space is not being used extra to the space being used already. The links are only broken and a copy made if a file is changed. Directories can't be hard linked so some space is taken for them, but that would be small, a few MB.

I used 'properties' to calculate the File size. I had to stop it after 10 minutes because it had counted only a tiny fraction of the files by that time - hundreds of thousands! It was listing these as it went, so I don't think they were phantom files which somehow didn't really exist. Whatever Timeshift was doing, it was eating up space. What you refer to as 'the space being used already' was space being used by Timeshift. Over 3TB of space had gone AWOL. Perhaps I have missed your point, if so, apologies.

Are you seeing the Timeshift backups from within Kubuntu, or only when you are booted in to Mint?

Both. But they are not the same. I manually deleted the snapshots and folders in Mint and the space on the disk has been restored.
The folders still exist on Kubuntu but I am not allowed to delete them. Clearly, Timeshift is taking its instructions from Mint and not Kubuntu.

I am getting to the point that I think the best and easiest solution will be to just format the disk. All of the data are backed up on another PC.

Thanks to all for your help, Apologies for being rather more mutt-headed than usual.

[jglen490]

It's not on you at all. This, to me, is a case of a distro (Mint, in this case) being more "helpful" than informative. Timeshift can be useful, but it can also very seriously get in your way. I'm with you WRT backups, mine are manual and stay off platform. Writing data to be used for recovery on the very disk that may need recovery from a failure is a recipe for disaster.

[SpecialEd]

I use Timeshift, but I also do off platform backups as well (Every Wednesday and Saturday to two different USB drives). The question to ask yourself is do you want to include the Timeshift folder in your off platform backups or not. (as noted they can take up a lot of space and therefore your backups will take that much longer).

[jglen490]

If Timeshift is a form of "incremental" backup, and your off platform backups are full backups, then any Timeshift backups that are before your full backup are redundant and don't need to be re-saved. Which brings up the point of where are your Timeshifts physically stored?

[JoHubb]

Just to be clear, I am not using Timeshift anymore.

Judging by comments here and elsewhere, it is a useful tool, if it is used correctly. In my case, I got my fingers burned and I find manual copying to a networked PC (sftp/ssh) simpler and easier to manage.

My copying is incremental, in that I 'copy' only those folders/files which have changed since the previous 'copy'. I use the 'date modified' facility to identify these although I usually know anyway.
This is repeated at intervals depending on the amount of new material added to my primary storage. I should say that the material is not critically important.