How to limiting the size of an existing Sparse Bundle for Time Machine?

There seems to be a solution for locking the size of a new sparse bundle to be used for Time Machine backups (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2383738?tstart=0).  However, I have a Time Machine sparse bundle with a year's worth of history that is getting very large and I would like to limit its size.  Is there a way to constrain the size of an existing sparse bundle without trashing it. 
Appying the suggested techniques"
hdiutil resize -size 300g xyz.sparsebundle
and
SetFile -a L PATHTOSPARSEBUNDLE/Info.*
on an existing sparse bundle somehow corrupts it and TM wants to start from scratch. 
A method for constraining the size of a TM sparse bundle without trashing it would be very appreciated.

budden10, please try this:
Disconnect the external drive to simulate it not working or having failed
Open Time Machine on your Mac and wait a few minutes for your backups to load fully
Go back in time and select a date when you were backing up the external drive
Now look at the Finder window and locate your Mac on the left side of the window under DEVICES
Click on your Mac
What do you see in the window there just to the right?

Similar Messages

  • How to reinitialize an external hard disk drive which serves for Time Machine?

    How to reinitialize an external hard disk drive which serves for Time Machine?
    Thanks for your answer.

    Everything you need to know about initializing (formatting) is here.
    http://pondini.org/OSX/DU1.html
    Lots of useful information on TM is here in the same place.
    http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

  • Can you unplug the external hard drive you are using for time machine

    can you unplug the external hard drive you are using for time machine and then plug it back in and it work normals because i have a mac book and don't want to always be carrieing the external hard drive every where i go so can you ?

    Yes, that will work fine. It will back up normally once you plug it in again. I do this with my MacBook.

  • My mac mini quit recognizing the external hard drive i am using for time machine.

    I have an IOMEGA external hard drive hooked up to my mini for Time Machine.  It was working for about 4 months then quit.  The PC will not recognize the hard drive and I have switched usb cables and tried different ports to no avail.  Any help would be gladly appreciated!!

    Yes, that will work fine. It will back up normally once you plug it in again. I do this with my MacBook.

  • How do I part ion an external hard drive used for time machine?

    I have a Seagate 1.5 T external harddrive I'm using for Time Machine. I would like to partition it so I can store other files and photos on it. How do I do it??
    Thanks,
    JD

    In Disk Utility
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mchlp1725.html
    Message was edited by: b j t

  • How do i reformat a 'my book' external hard drive for time machine???

    i have a 'my book' external hard drive that i would like to reformat to use for time machine -what are the steps to do this? thank you!

    Hi alba,
    Make sure you don't have anything on the drive you need to keep.
    *Open Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities)
    *Select the drive from the list on the left (the line you select should say something like "250 GB WD" followed by some letters and numbers)
    *Click on the "Erase" tab
    *For the volume format, choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
    *Name it whatever you want
    *Click "erase"
    That's it! Hope that helps.
    —Hazy

  • How to reduce the size of my pdf X3:2002 for online printing

    Hello Adobe,
    I have been creating a photobook (33 x 28 cm) with my photo editing software.
    The problem is, that I've got a PDF X3 2002 with around 7 GB and the online printing office accepts only 2 GB.
    What can I do, how can I reduce this large pdf in 2 GB?  I'm working with Acrobat X Pro.
    Thanks for your help,
    Best,
    Andrea

    You are sending public messages, don't worry about that. It's working fine. Now, rather than trying to share screen shots and send PDFs, please focus on answering ALL of my questions. Thanks. I will recap. If any of the questions don't make sense, just say so. We need to stay focussed, not go off on a tangent.
    - the size in pixels and inches (or mm) for your photos.
    - what app you use for layout
    - What is the EFFECTIVE resolution you are using for your images (not the original ppi, but adjusted for layout size)?
    - How are you making up the pages?
    - How do you make the PDF? -
    - What PDF compression settings are you using?

  • How do I Access purple backups from external hard drive for Time Machine

    My hard drive crashed and I installed a new one.
    Did internet recovery and upgraded to my previous OS.
    I am trying to get my data but the backup is purple that I need and I cannot access it.
    How do I do this.
    Also if I did something wrong, how do I setup Time machine to restore my whole system and set it up so the backups are accessible instead of purple.
    Thanks in advance.
    I am using Mavericks
    External hd connected with USB

    donavonknight 
    Very impressive that it is that easy but trying to get my data is a pain.
    Time Machine is a  backup of your computer SYSTEM,  not idealized as a data archive.
    Consider other options for the future  >
    Data Storage Platforms; their Drawbacks & Advantages
    #1. Time Machine / Time Capsule
    Drawbacks:
    1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.
    2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
    3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.
    4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.
    5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
    6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
    7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
    8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.
    9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.
    10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.
    11. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
    12. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
    Advantages:
    1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
    2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
    3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
    #2. HD archives
    Drawbacks:
    1. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
    2. Unless the user ritually copies working active data to HD external archives, then there is a time-gap of potential missing data; as such users must be proactive in archiving data that is being worked on or recently saved or created.
    Advantages:
    1. Fills the gap left in a week or 2-week-old HD clone, as an example.
    2. Simplex no-software data storage that is isolated and autonomous from the computer (in most cases).
    3. HD archives are the best idealized storage source for storing huge and multi-terabytes of data.
    4. Best-idealized 1st platform redundancy for data protection.
    5. *Perfect primary tier and level-2 security of your vital data.
    #3. HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
    Drawbacks:
    1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).
    2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
    Advantages:
    1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
    2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
    3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
    4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
    5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
    6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
    7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
    #4. Online archives
    Drawbacks:
    1. Subject to server failure or due to non-payment of your hosting account, it can be suspended.
    2. Subject, due to lack of security on your part, to being attacked and hacked/erased.
    Advantages:
    1. In case of house fire, etc. your data is safe.
    2. In travels, and propagating files to friends and likewise, a mere link by email is all that is needed and no large media needs to be sent across the net.
    3. Online archives are the perfect and best-idealized 3rd platform redundancy for data protection.
    4. Supremely useful in data isolation from backups and local archives in being online and offsite for long-distance security in isolation.
    5. *Level-1.5 security of your vital data.
    #5. DVD professional archival media
    Drawbacks:
    1. DVD single-layer disks are limited to 4.7Gigabytes of data.
    2. DVD media are, given rough handling, prone to scratches and light-degradation if not stored correctly.
    Advantages:
    1. Archival DVD professional blank media is rated for in excess of 100+ years.
    2. DVD is not subject to mechanical breakdown.
    3. DVD archival media is not subject to ferromagnetic degradation.
    4. DVD archival media correctly sleeved and stored is currently a supreme storage method of archiving vital data.
    5. DVD media is once written and therefore free of data corruption if the write is correct.
    6. DVD media is the perfect ideal for “freezing” and isolating old copies of data for reference in case newer generations of data become corrupted and an older copy is needed to revert to.
    7. Best-idealized 4th platform redundancy for data protection.
    8. *Level-3 (highest) security of your vital data. 
    [*Level-4 data security under development as once-written metallic plates and synthetic sapphire and likewise ultra-long-term data storage]

  • Relative size of external hard drive needed for Time Machine

    I have Time Machine up an running on an old 250Gb disk. My new iMac has a 500Gb disk, but lots of free space, so Time Machine is reporting adequate remaining space on the backup disk. Has anyone calculated the sort of ratio in disk sizes that will be necessary over time? For instance, with a 500Gb disk in the Mac, will a 500Gb external drive be sufficient for all time, or will it get full. Should be be considering doubling the external disk size to 1 Tb?
    I need to replace the 250Gb drive and am wondering what size is optimum.

    I've been seeing knowledgeable people writing that a good rule of thumb for "typical" home users is they should have a drive with a capacity of 3 - 4X their system's normal operating size...to maintain a full year's worth of Time Machine data before it starts scrolling off.
    So I guess that means I should be looking at a 1TB drive for my iMac which currently has ~250GB of data on it. Time to review that Bare Feats 1TB drive shootout (http://www.barefeats.com/hard94.html).

  • I have an issue with time machine, it doesn't find the Lacie external driver it use to use. it is the same drive that I usaly use for time machine back ups. It is corectly plugged. What can I do ?

    Hi,
    I'm trying to back up my macbook with time machine on the Lacie external driver I usualy use for this, but today my computer doesn't find the driver. I haven't done back up in 6 month.
    Today, the Lacie driver is pluged and running, but the computer just does'nt find it.
    what shall I do ?

    Some things to consider:
    Is the drive mounted, i.e., visible via Finder and/or on the Desktop?
    Is the drive still selected in System Preferences, Time Machine? If not, use the "Select Disk" button.
    Is Time Machine still turned on (System Preferences, Time Machine)?
    Can you see the drive (and mount it) using Disk Utility (in your Utilities folder)?
    charlie

  • How do I delete a sparse bundle in Time Machine?

    I backup two computers over a home wireless network to a Time Capsule. But there are three TM sparsebundles on the TC; one is from a computer that is long gone. I need to create space on the TC as I got an error message stating that; I have a new disk and TM is trying to create a new backup for that.
    I read the TM FAQs that are often cited in Discussions but I don't know what vintage those recommendations are; can someone give me an up-to-date proceedure for deleting the uneeded sparsebundle? It is 123 GB and my TC is 500 GB.
    Thansk;
    Bruce

    I tried this:
    If a sparse bundle is very large, and OSX says it will take many hours to delete it, there is a faster, but more tedious, way:
    •Cancel the deletion. 
    •Right-click the sparse bundle in the Finder and select Show Package Contents. 
    •Open the bands folder (it may take a while to show the contents).
    •Select a large number of bands (up to about 8000 at a time), and delete (trash) them.
    •When they’re all deleted, delete the sparse bundle.
    I got an error message:
    "This operation cannot be completed because df4 [one of the bands] is in use."
    Next step?

  • Is the Airport Extreme Hard Drive sharing ok for Time Machine?

    With leopard on the eve of its release, I wanted to get a large network accessible storage solution that would allow my wife's and I's Macbook pros to use time machine on the network drive when we were at home. Since we rarely use our laptops while sitting at a desk connected to an external drive, I figured this would be a great idea and started to look into various NAS solutions.
    Surprisingly, most generic (netgear, western digital) network drives require you use proprietary software to connect to them, and are only compatible with windows xp. After seeing the options the airport extreme opens up in terms of network storage I figured it would be the best bet.
    Do you have any other suggestions besides getting an airport extreme? I would rather not have to buy a full blown mac that I have to leave on 24/7 to share the drives. Or do you see any possible pitfalls to this idea? Such as, would time machine forget to use the network drive after a while since it wouldn't always be available to it when away from home?

    Unless the content of time machine is minuscule, USB will perform the worst at consistent data throughput. You might consider an ethernet storage device instead. The base station supports Gigabit Ethernet (though Wireless 'n' is maximised well below that).

  • I bought a 3TB Time Capsule with the intent of using 2GB as space for Time Machine to backup my MacBook Pro Retina; and the remaining 1TB as network disk space for the Apple and my PC.  But the 3TB all went to the Time Machine.

    How can I get from what I have ti what I want.  I am a new Apple user and appreciate detailed instructions.  Thank You

    The TC is not able to be partitioned. (Well not without pulling it apart.)
    You can create a disk image on it.
    See details under Q3 here.
    http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
    It might be better to do as Pondini suggests and plug in a USB drive to use for alternative data storage.. Mixing TM and data can lead to issues.

  • HELP !!! How to check the size of an object in Photoshop ?

    Hello,
    I'm using Photoshop CS 3 to design a website. I used several shapes such as rectangle, line or ellipse of different size. Probably it is a stupid question but I don't know how to check the size of an existing rectangle. I tried free transform tool that selects my rectangle but doesn't show its size. Then I made a selection with rectangular marquee tool but I see nowhere the size of the selected area.
    If you know the name of such a tool please help me !
    Have a nice day !

    Web images are all pixels. View at 100% at pixel view. that is your exact size

  • HT3275 "The external disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because it has an incompatible filesystem." What if I don't want to erase the disk?

    I'm trying to use Time Machine on my Macbook (which is a year old) to back up onto a 1Tb external hard drive. I have 860 Gb free on the hard drive. But for some reason Time machine presents me with the statement above. How can I back-up my laptop without clearing out the data I already have on the hard drive?

    Time Machine must back up to a hard drive that has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Your drive is likely formatted in FAT 32.
    If you want to use the drive for Time Machine backups, you will have to erase it and reformat using Disk Utility on your Mac.
    First, move the files that you do not want to lose to another temporary location and test to make sure they are OK.
    Second, erase the drive that you want to use for Time Machine backups and format it for Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
    Third,  move the files back to the hard drive.  Test  to make sure they are OK. When you are sure that the files are safe, you can erase them from their former "temporary" location. (Although I do wonder how you are backing up these files).
    Time Machine will not touch the other files that you have on the hard drive.

Maybe you are looking for

  • My External Drive...with ALL myTunes Library, is now a paperweight!

    I HAD a Seagate External hard drive that I'd partitioned to hold my iTunes library. It is now totally dysfunctional, and according to the Seagate technicians, valuable only as a paperweight. I still have all my music on my iPod, but what do I do to "

  • A problem about WRITE statement

    Hi all I want to use the WRITE statement in the program.But when I write it ,the result doesn't show all in the screen . It only shows a part of the result. CALL TRANSFORMATION id   SOURCE root1 = source1          root2 = source2   RESULT XML xml_str

  • Creating a alphabetical book

    Hello, I'm not a regular user of Acrobat 8 professional, and would like to now: Is there a possibilty to create a kind of Alphabetic/Thematic Index :: Notebook :: Address Book (You name it !). I case, i have all necessary applications to start with:

  • IPod sync issue since installing SL

    I installed Snow Leopard several weeks ago and I have been having a problem with my 4 1/2 year old Classic iPod since. iTunes gives me the message "The iPod cannot be synced. You do not have the privilege to make changes". I am logged on to my usual

  • How to see themes on full page of firefox like chrome and not only on the top bar

    <blockquote>Locking duplicate thread.<br> Please continue here: [[/questions/876505]]</blockquote> how to see themes on full page of firefox like chrome and not only on the top bar