as I am increasingly getting worried about backups and so forth, I have developed a new backup strategy with 3 different backup locations and different type of setups. One of them being CCC, which I am using with an attached 8TB drive to my iMAC. While the first full backup is running, I got a bit worried, that CCC takes more than 24h for 3TB of data, so I started digging into that and realised that the cause of trouble seems to be the Images folder under
which contains (everybody sits down, please) 5.793.709 images taking 127GB of space I have in total 8.436 contacts in my Contacts App - so about 0,15% of the related images files
Is that a well know problem, has anybody heard from it before? When I started to google it I did not find a lot of sources for this phenomenon.
What I am planning to do is to disconnect Contacts from iCloud, delete the content of the Contacts App Support folder, and then connect to iCloud again and sync from iCloud back to my iMac - does that sound like a decent tactic? Any better thoughts?
Why would you think the error is related to iCloud? Reading this my first reaction would be to contact Bombich to see whether it is a known bug in CCC.
Gosh - I pushed the wrong button and now I flagged your response, of course with no reason, everything’s fine
With regards to your thought - interesting approach, but unlikely as the dates of the files reach months back and I have installed CCC two days ago
To me it looks as if Contacts is replicating data without any good reason … just for the fun of it
I wonder if we’re getting the whole story here. 686 images per contact? In Contacts – which only stores avatars and things like business card snippets contained in .ics files.
CarbonCopyCloner would have to be explicitly wrongly configured to dupe back to the same folder – repeatedly. If that’s even possible given the failsafes built into the app.
If iCloud – you would have blown your account limit probably.
So, what are these images? By looking at them you might get a clue as to the source.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Well, it is not CCC as the dates of the files reach back to 2015 and CCC is not writing back anything so far, as I do not recover any files.
I have looked at the files with preview and all of these are pictures of people in my Contacts DB and each of these has been duplicated hundreds of times apparently.
That looks to me pretty much as being a problem with the app Contacts.
I have in total 8.436 contacts in my Contacts App - so about 0,15% of the related images files 
