The average size of 'empty' back-up is 100-200Mb on my machine. By 'empty' I mean that sometimes you log-in into a computer after few hours and see time machine working with a message like 'copying 200Mb in 3 files'.
How can I see which exactly files have been processed in a particular backup? I tried looking into backup directories themselves with bash, but Time Machine seems to mimic full directory structure for each back-up. I.e., I see lots of folders containing other folders, but can't find any files.
What can I do to reduce backup sizes? Obviously, if some background OS process did some routine clean up, there's no big need for it to be saved in Time Machine. I exclude several folders, but only
~/Library/Caches
saves some decent amount of space. Which else frequently updated files can I exclude?
Thanks!
~/Library/Caches
is automatically excluded from Time Machine.