Keeping TM from filling up entire drive

I'm looking into using an Airport Extreme + a USB AirDisk for a wireless time machine backup. I also intend to have media files stored on the drive alongside the TM backup images, for use as a media server. I'm hoping to just be able to put all that on one partition, for simplicities sake. However, if I do so, won't Time Machine eventually just fill up the entire disk before it starts dumping things?
Is there a way to set TM to only fill up the drive to a certain point? Say if I had a 1TB drive, I could say only have TM fill up to 500mb of it?
The other option I guess would be to partition the disk, and have a separate partition for the two computer TM backups, and the media files on it's own space. How well do Airdisks work with a partitioned drive?

After thinking about it some more, I can see your point about top or bottom. Here's a link to a thread, but maybe you should post a new topic on the ideal setup and location for Time Machine backups.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8090535&#8090535
I now use Time Capsule for my TM backups, so I am not using my external HDD except for data storage. Ideally your TM partition size should be 2-3 times the amount of data + system files you are backing up.

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Keeping TC from filling up...

I bought a TC last weekend the 1 TB model. Got it hooked up with no problems. I have three computers backing up to it with Time Machine.
After each computer made it's initial back up there was roughly 50% of the 1 tb left.
Now I'm noticing each day when the computers back up they are each adding anywhere from 12 to 24 gigs each to the Time Machine. Seems obvious it's just going to slowly fill up the HD completely.
I want to keep some space available for file exchanges/storage over the net.
I looked at TM preferences and see now way to cap how much space it uses.
What's the solution?

Jolly Blackburn1 wrote:
After each computer made it's initial back up there was roughly 50% of the 1 tb left.
You may not have enough backup space for all those Macs. It varies greatly, of course, depending on how you use your Macs, but our general rule is Time Machine needs 2-3 times the space of the data its backing-up.
I looked at TM preferences and see now way to cap how much space it uses.
What version of OSX are you on? If all your Macs are on 10.6.2 or earlier, you can limit the maximum size of the +sparse bundles+ containing their backups. See #A8 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
But if any are on 10.6.3 or later, or you upgrade any of them to 10.6.3 or later, Time Machine will automatically increase the maximum to the size of the TC's disk every time it runs a backup. In that case, one option is to make a disk image, as Neil suggests. See the blue box in #Q3 of Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for details.
Another option is to connect a USB drive to the Time Capsule, as mentioned in #Q3. You might even want to partition it, and back one of the Macs up to that partition instead of the TC's internal HD.

Library keeps revering from NAS to C Drive

I have set my QNAP server as my library but itunes has recently reset my library to my c drive on my windows pc. How do I stop this?

Explanation 1. is likely correct. If you start iTunes and the currently designated media folder is not available then iTunes silently reverts the media folder to the default path, normally an iTunes Media folder in the same folder as the active database file. Missing item exclamation marks are not necessarily displayed until you attempt to play content. A solution when the media is held on an external drive is to move both media and database to the external drive keeping the library in a portable shape. In such cases a warning is given on startup if the target is offline, and you can cancel, connect the drive then start iTunes. This will also work with a networked library but there is likely to be a performance hit with any library sufficiently large to warrant storing on a NAS in the first place.
You might consider a startup script that checks the availability of the NAS target folder before launching iTunes.
You could make a suggestion via iTunes Feedback.
tt2

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Through home sharing I have now copied the entire library to the new iMac. My problem now is with the individual music tracks doubling themselves. I delete them all and then a few days later all the doubles are back. Random tracks at random times, but they all come back!

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

If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space, I mean I have to delete mu hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using to with new information?

If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space [externak hard drive], I mean I have to delete my hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using it with new information?

Time Machine does not provide archival storage.
If you delete a file from your disk it will eventually be deleted from your TM backup without any notice to you.
You need a second external disk to use for archival storage.
You also need a third disk for backups of the second disk.

How do i stop my itunes from changing the location of my itunes media. i have it saved on a external HD and it keeps changing back to my local drive with out being told

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No, an external drive will not always be mounted. If the drive goes to sleep, it can unmount, or it may unmount for other reasons. As Chris said, confim that the drive is mounted and active before launching iTunes.
Regards.

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Hello, eco1.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like you are wanting to move your iTunes media folder to an external drive and have iTunes this folder from this location. If this is the case then I would recommend taking a look at the article below.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Cheers,
Jason H.

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iTunes does not have provision for automatically storing one kind of media on a separate drive, so you have some basic decisions to make first. Do you want these movies to still appear in your iTunes library, or are you content with browsing filenames on a drive in Finder when you want to look for one? The second's the easiest thing because then you don't have to have an external drive permanently turned on and attached to your computer (wired or wireless). To do that you literelly only need to drag your movies folder to an archive drive and delete movies from iTunes. To watch them again you can add it back to iTunes while holding down the option key so the movie is used from its location on the external drive.
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Realize what you are talking about is not "backup". Backup (which you should do) is putting a second or more copy of items on external drives for the day when your internal drive fails and everything on it is lost, inclduing all your home photos and perhaps things that have been pulled from the iTunes Store and can no longer be re-downloaded.

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Say thanks by clicking the Kudos thumb up in the post.
If my post resolve your problem please mark it as an Accepted Solution

Keeping TM from filling up entire drive

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