Disk Image Setup on Time Capsule

Question

I currently use my 2TB Time Capsule as a backup for one laptop and for my iTunes media files (which I periodically back up to an external hard drive manually).  I'm planning on adding my wife's laptop's backups to the mix and would like to reserve room for the growing folder of music plus other data files.  After some research, it appears that the best way to keep Time Machine from filling all available space with backups from our computers would be to use disk images.  I'm considering two different tactics:
1.  Create a disk image with a capacity of, say, 1TB to which I'd move the library (I'm assuming that Time Machine will respect the capacity even if the image isn't full, right?).  The issue I have with this is that I don't want it to affect how iTunes accesses the files wirelessly.  Is there a particular way I should create the disk image so that iTunes simply access the files as it does now (i.e., no encryptions, passwords, turning into sparsebundle files, etc.), but also maintains the capacity in such a way that the backups won't encroach?
2.  Keep the library in its existing folder on the Time Capsule, but create a bunch of empty disk images that will keep the sparsebundle backups from encroaching.  I could then delete the empty disk images as the need for room increases in the library.
Any thoughts on the best way to do this, or on showstoppers I haven't thought of?  Assuming either approach works, I'm also looking for advice on format, partition, and image format specifications for setting up the disk image(s) in Disk Utility.  I'm assuming I can avoid the encryption/password problems by simply leaving encryption marked "none."

Answer 1

daveb74 wrote:
if I were going to use one of these drives as my primary iTunes media location, I'd either have to leave it plugged into the TC all the time or manually attach it every time I wanted to access those files.  The former seems like a bad idea
Not really.  Running constantly is one of the least-stressful things that a disk drive can do, much easier on it than regular starting and stopping.
Do you know of any reason why the disk image idea wouldn't work, specifically?
I wouldn't put your iTunes files into a disk image unless you were sure you were only going to mount that disk image from one Mac at a time.  I'd expect the mounting of a read-write disk image on multiple Macs to cause trouble.
Putting empty disk image files on the Time Capsule disk would accomplish what you're trying to do (reserve space so that Time Machine doesn't consume it all), but that requires a fair amount of management on your part to monitor the space usage.
If you decide to go with disk images, be sure that you don't use a "sparse" variety.  You want the type that initially reserves the entire amount of requested disk space.