How do I keep a time machine sparsebundle image from filling up my hard drive to the point where it chokes and breaks the backups?

I have several machines in the office using Time Machine over a network to back up to a partitioned hard drive on our network. The size of the partition for each machines backup is ~3x the size of the data being backed up. Everthing hums along fine until the backup disk is almost full. Some of the Tme Machine backups sieze up because they almost completely run out of room on the target disk. There is so little room that even if I can mount the backup disk, there doesn't seem to be enough room to delete the older backups. Isn't Time Machine supposed to be smart enough to ditch the old backup first to avoid this problem? Any advice would be greatly appreciated regarding 1. How to make the siezed up backups work again; and 2. How to keep this from happening in the future.
Many thanks in advance!

Here's my old bookmark for User Tips.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/user_tips_library_documents?view=overvie w
I haven't played, to any extent, with the new search function; that's about number one hundred on my list of things to learn to use in this new abomination of a forum. Might be easier to just do a Google search using pondini + whatever terms come to mind + site:discussions.apple.com

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How do I set up Time Machine to work with an Iomega network hard drive?

I have just bought a new iMac having switched from Windows, and am very much a beginner when it comes to all things Apple. Previously I had used my NAS hard drive with my old windows pc. i successfully used it to transfer a lot of data from the old pc to the iMac but can't seem to get it recognised when I try to configure time machine. I have downloaded the latest version of Iomega Home storage manager which appears in the application folder in the dock, but when I click on The HSM icon it just disappears and nothing happens. I can access the drive through the Bonjour service and can see its contents in Finder. I have looked through the forums here but much of the info assumes a level of knowledge that i don't have. Is there an 'idiot's guide' anywhere to enable me to set up time machine to use the network hard drive?

You would probably benefit from a couple of things, first going through these 2 links
Time Machine FAQs & Time Machine Troubleshooting.
If you still have questions there is a TM forum, because TM is part of OS X you will find the forum in the Snow Leopard forum. Click Apple Support Communities and in the search field type Snow Leopard. Once you are in the correct forum you can narrow your search by clicking Refine this list.
Roger

I have just installed a 2TB time capsule on my iMac i7, it see my second 1TB hard drive but the 256 SSD doesn't come up in the list of hard drives I can back up. How can I enable the time machine to see my first SSD 256gb hard drive?

I have just installed a 2TB time capsule on my iMac i7, it see my second 1TB hard drive but the 256 SSD doesn't come up in the list of hard drives I can back up. How can I enable the time machine to see my first SSD 256gb hard drive?

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How do I access my encrypted User Account files from my Back Up hard drive? Time Machine was used to create the back up disk; File Vault was used to encrypt the files.

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Thanks. I will try going through TM. Since my Simpletech is on the way out, I'll be plugging in a new external hard drive (other than the back-up drive) and trying to restore the library to the new drive. Any advice or warning if this is NOT the right thing to do?
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Carbon Copy Cloner.

How do I copy my time machine back up from a smaller Hard disk to a larger hard disk; so that I can then continue to back up, through Time machine, on the larger hard disk?

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Hello UmeshNB,
Thanks for the question. Based on what you stated, it seems like you are not able to move a backup to another drive. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you isolate or resolve the issue.
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support
If it is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition. If you do not know how, see the steps in this article.
If the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended but without journaling, OS X may state that "the volume has the wrong case sensitivity" to be used as a back up disk.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Mario

HT3275 When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option. How do I change this?

When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option. How do I change this? My external hard drive is a FreeAgent GoFlex Drive.

Hi, what Format is the external Drive?
They usually come PC Formatted for Fat32/MSdos, or NTFS... is there anything on it now?
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

I have the new 2011 macbook pro, with lion preinstalled. I want to change the harddrive. I have backed up everything on time machine. when i put my new blank hard drive in will the lion screen startup.How do i get the lion dmg when i am already using lion

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NicholasLiban -
When you use the Lion restore as described, it does a fresh install on the hard drive that you can select at the beginning of the process. This provides a complete install of the very latest version of Lion, including the recovery partition. The drive that you choose for the installation destination winds up like what you would have on a brand new computer from Apple.
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How do i set my time capsule up to function as an external hard drive

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It depends on what you already have equipment wise..
Just bridge the TC..
I cannot walk you through it either if you use v6 airport utility.. due to my refusing to run Lion until it gets network issues sorted.
Download and run the real utility http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Go to manual setup..
Internet tab
Connection sharing.. select off bridge mode in the drop down box.
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Can time machine back up a computer with multiply hard drives?

I have a MacPro with three hard drives in it. I have been very impressed with how Time Machine works on another iMac I have and want to try using Time Machine on the MacPro - BUT - I want to know if Time Machine could handle backing up three different hard drives, and, if so, in the unfortunate event that one of those three hard drives fails, could I get Time Machine to restore just that one drive and leave the other two untouched?
Thanks - Rob

RobRR wrote:
I want to know if Time Machine could handle backing up three different hard drives
Yes, if the drive is large enough.
See #1 and #2 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
in the unfortunate event that one of those three hard drives fails, could I get Time Machine to restore just that one drive and leave the other two untouched?
Also yes. OSX drives are restored per #14 in the FAQ, other drives per #15 and/or #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

HT201250 I run time machine on my iMac using an external hard drive. I just bought a MacBook Pro and want to know if i can run time machine on it using my wireless network on to the iMac external hard drive

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How do I set up Time Machine to a shared drive on another Mac?

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

I am using referenced images, saved on an external hard drive. It would be most helpful to transfer the new captions (version name) to the referenced images which still have the camera code on them. How can this be done? Thanks so much!

I am using referenced images, saved on an external hard drive. It would be most helpful to transfer the new captions (version name) to the referenced images which still have the camera code on them. How can this be done? Thanks so much!

You're question is hard to follow. Are you looking to rename your master files to the version name? Or are you looking to do something with IPTC caption field and the masters?

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"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Your Time Capsule". The backup disk image “/Volumes/Steven Weinberg's Time Caps-1/Steven Weinberg’s MacBook Pro (4).sparsebundle” is already in use."
I have both a Time Capsule and a 2Tb external drive using Time Machine to back up my laptop.
Is it as simple as when the Time Capsule goes to do a backup and finds that the other drive is in the midst of using Time Machine to do its backup that I get this notice on my desktop?
It's 10:30 AM now. The last Time Capsule backup was almost 12 hours ago.
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Sounds like the Time Capsule really is being blocked from doing its job.
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1. How can I solve my primary problem of freeing up the .sparsebundle file for the Time Capsule?
2. Since both drives are using Time Machine to do the backup, why are they producing such diffrent backup file structures?
Steve

David Bean wrote:
So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing
Have you run Repair Disk on it?
I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup,.DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup
That does get damaged on occasion. I haven't seen it in quite a while, so it's pretty rare.
You can delete it from the backups, via the TM interface, but you must be able to show invisible items).
First, open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be very careful with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.
In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: <Computer Name>:~ <your name>$
(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.
Copy, do not type, the following after the prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
and press Return.
You should just see the prompt again.
Then see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 to delete all the backups of it.
and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.
Yes. You will, of course, lose all previous versions, but since the file is corrupted, you may have lost some, most, or all of them already.
When done, run the same command to hide the invisible items, but replace the "1" with a zero.

Having trouble restoring old files from an external Time Machine back-up to a new internal hard drive...HELP!

O.k. So my main hard drive died on my iMac and I had to replace it. I have my old system backed up on my external with Time Machine. How do I access it to get my old files back on my new hard drive? I have read multiple forums and I have yet to find a solution. I was told that when I first turn the computer on and get to the third screen, it would ask me if I wanted to restore from a previous back-up. It did but it didn't show my external until I went through the set-up and got to my home screen. The drive showed then. It also asked to install updates...and I did. So everything is up to date. I have not turned time machine on yet because I'm affraid that if I do, it will erase my old back-up on my external. I tried using the Migration Assistant in Utilities and all I get is the spinning wheel when I tried to get that to work. So now I am here asking for help. I'm not very hopeful that I'm going to be able to get all of my old files back... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the video link. I did it pretty much exactly the way the young man explained. The one thing I didn't do was click "customize" as he does and unclick the multiple language support and he also clicks "rosetta" to support older programs. I wonder if that's the issue? The guys at Macmall told me that I would need to update the o.s. before I restored. I did that originally but have since (as mentioned before) erased the main drive. I noticed that when he does his install, his external drive does not show up on the list in which you want to install the o.s. on... should I unplug my external? I'm just trying to look at ever detail. I know the recovery file is there. The one thing it (the external) did say before I started posting here was "in progress". I'm not sure what that means? I promise I'm not an idiot. I consider myself an above average user. I usually help other that have issues... but I've yet to restore from a Time Machine back-up and I'm looking forward to learning how to do it.... the right way. I appreciate all of the advice. I have some pretty important files on my external back-up. I am really hoping that this is possible. I'm beginning to think the external is where the issue lies. The "in progress" next to the file name concerns me. I know there's a lot of data on the drive because it's nearly half full. So there's stuff there....
Deep breath in...... reeee laaaaaaaxxxx

HT3275 where did my time machine back up go to on new hard drive?

Hi, I recently had hard drive fail on my late 2006 iMac. Had a new hard drive installed. Restored my computer from the most recent time machine back up from my external drive, but can't find restored data on iMac. Any ideas?
Went to the latest backup and hit 'restore' took about 2.5 hours for the data to transfer to new hard drive. I can tell it's chewing up the new hard drive space but the data/profile from my old mac is nowhere to be found on the new hard drive.

It might have created a new user and loaded under that.. new user being the old user. But if you have issues do it again, only this time pick where the backup will go.
http://pondini.org/TM/16.html
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See 14-18 for restore info.

How do I keep a time machine sparsebundle image from filling up my hard drive to the point where it chokes and breaks the backups?

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