Sparsebundle versus backups.backup.db

To my iMac is an external HD connected thru FW. This HD is used by several machines as a TM device. The iMac also uses this as a TM device.
Since I wanted to be free where I connected this TM/HD I made the initial backup of the iMac while the HD was connected to another Mac. This way I forced it to make a .sparsebundl instead of a folder backups.back.db. Then reconnected the TM/HD back to the iMac. All has been working well for some time.
However I cannot simply restore a file from the TM/HD. If I activate TM then it shows me only "Today". I know all the backups are there since I can see them in the mounted sparebundle.
If I connect the TM/HD to another system then all works fine and I can restore the particular data.
Is there a way around this so I do not need to unplug the TM/HD and connect it so somewhere else?
(PS: this problem has no link to my other TM problem)

Similar Messages

Exclude FileVaults sparsebundle from backup

Hello,
I'm trying to configure Time Machine to backup my Mac on system level without my home folder. The problem is, that my home folder is encrypted via FileVault and regardless of what I'm doing, Time Machine tries to backup FileVault's sparsebundle every time I logging me out. I have tried to add "/Users" or "/Users/.<username>" to the exclude list or edit Time Machine's configuration file manually but nothing helps.
How can I prevent Time Machine from backing up this file?
Thanks and greets,
Jay2Cee

Jay2Cee wrote:
V.K. wrote:
Jay2Cee wrote:
My system files are the only one I really need to backup and I want to use the build in tool for this purpose. But even if I exclude my home directory from the backup in TM settings, at logout it really backups the FV sparse bundle and I haven't found a way to stopping it from doing that.
why do you think that? how did you check? it certainly should not do that. it doesn't back up the sparse bundle when I test it.
The backup takes a very long time
that doesn't mean anything
and the result is big sparse image file in the backup
and that does not mean anything either. it simply reuses the old existing backup of the sparse bundle and hard links to that. the only true test is to delete all backups of the sparse bundle. then log in/out of the filevaulted account and see if the sparse bundle is really being backed up. my bet it isn't.
deleting backups should ONLY be done from TM interface. enter TM, scroll back in time and select the sparse bundle in any backup. then click on the "gears" action button in finder's toolbar and select "delete all backups of ..."

Tried to move sparsebundle TM backup to External HD, now HD will not mount

Long story short, I have a Macbook Pro 15" i7. I was making backups to an apple time capsule via time machine. My internal HD crashed (making clicking noises, not booting), got it replaced by apple, thinking my backup would work. Sparsebundle file is not recognized by migration assistant and will not mount via Disk Image Mounter or Disc Utility. I attempted to move the sparsebundle file to an external drive (Avastor HDX-800 1.5 TB) via FW800. It was not making any progress so I stopped the copy, deleted the sparsebundle from my Avastor Drive and unmounted it.
Now my Avastor Drive will not mount at all. Disc sounds fine and has barley moved since the incident. The drive was backed up last week but there are some essential files I made within this week that are very important.
What can/should I do?

bglawe wrote:
Hey! Thanks so much for responding so quickly.
I am currently archiving my disc on the TC to an external USB drive so hopefully I should be able to repair that disc and get my sparsebundle to work.
You're doing that via +Airport Utility?+
My main problem is however that the FW drive that I briefly attempted to copy the sparsebundle to will not mount at all. Like when I plug the drive in, nothing happens. The Avastor FW drive has FW800 FW400 and USB 2.0 connections and none of them work. The drive sounds like it is undamaged (no looped processes or clicking). Is there anything I can do to get that drive to mount (so i can see it in finder/disc utility)? Even if its with disc warriors?
I'm sure you've done some or all of this; the standard way to try to mount a balky disk is:
Disconnect and power it off for several minutes.
Check that all connections are snug and secure.
Restart your Mac, then connect the drive.
If that doesn't work, try again with different ports, cables, and combinations (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another one.
If it has it's own power supply, check those connections, too. Try a different outlet. See if you can hear it running, or feel the vibrations.
Try it on another computer.
But from your description, it doesn't sound good for the drive.

Backup on icloud versus backup on imac

What are the pros and cons of backing up to icloud versus backing up to imac?

I do both:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766
Restoring from a local backup is quicker, should the need arise. An iCloud backup is nice to have if the need arises & you're not near your computer. Plus, unlike iTunes which only keeps one normal backup, if you have the space, icloud will keep three backups per device.

Database Size versus Backup Size

Is there a formuly I can use, to calculate the amount of backup space I will need ?
We have a backup script, for backing up to disk - I copy and paste the main body of the script below. My would like to be able to estimate how much backup space we need, as the database grows.
connect target
run
change archivelog all crosscheck;
backup database
include current controlfile
format '/backup/rman/oraadmin/DBF_%d_%p_%s.RMan'
filesperset 4
tag = 'Full_DB_Backup';
sql 'ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT';
run
# Backup Archived Logs
backup archivelog all
format '/backup/rman/oraadmin/ARC_%d_%p_%s.RMan'
filesperset 16
delete input;
run
#* Copy Current Control File to Backup Location
copy current controlfile to '/backup/rman/oraadmin/ControlFile.Ctl';
}

use this script -
column dummy noprint
column pct_used format 999.9 heading "%|Used"
column name format a16 heading "Tablespace Name"
column Kbytes format 999,999,999 heading "KBytes"
column used format 999,999,999 heading "Used"
column free format 999,999,999 heading "Free"
column largest format 999,999,999 heading "Largest"
break on report
compute sum of kbytes on report
compute sum of free on report
compute sum of used on report
select nvl(b.tablespace_name,
nvl(a.tablespace_name,'UNKOWN')) name,
kbytes_alloc kbytes,
kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0) used,
nvl(kbytes_free,0) free,
((kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0))/
kbytes_alloc)*100 pct_used,
nvl(largest,0) largest
from ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_free,
max(bytes)/1024 largest,
tablespace_name
from sys.dba_free_space
group by tablespace_name ) a,
( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_alloc,
tablespace_name
from sys.dba_data_files
group by tablespace_name
UNION
select sum(bytes)/1024 kbytes_alloc, tablespace_name
from sys.dba_temp_files
group by tablespace_name )b
where a.tablespace_name (+) = b.tablespace_name;
Message was edited by:
jittu13

BACKUP LIBRARY versus BACKUP PROJECT?

So I am working on a short film.
I have 2 identical drives. One is for editing, the other is for backing up.
At the end of every edit day, my process has been:
     1. RE-FORMAT the backup drive
     2. COPY the LIBRARY from the edit drive
     3. PASTE the LIBRARY to the backup drive.
     4. Wait 6 hours to finish.
Is there a better and quicker way to do this?
The reason why I ask is because all my audio, videos and graphics are identical. They don't change. The only thing that changes is the project itself.
Is there a way to backup or copy over JUST the project to my backup drive? Will that newly copied project be able to read, understand and locate the clips when it goes over to the backup drive?
Thoughts?
I'm on 10.1.3

IIf you reformat the backup drive there is no other way to do it.

Time Machine backup of a sparsebundle

Hello everyone. I have Googled and looked through the forum in vain to find an answer to this one:
Does Time Machine support backing up another machine's Time Machine backup?
By support I mean; open up the sparsebundle (the backup in question is from a remote machine) and only back up the differences. If so, how does it deal with a sparsebundle being updated whilst it backs it up?
To clarify, my setup is as follows:
A laptop with airport connection to
A Mac Mini with 2 external drives.
The laptop does hourly Time Machine backups to one of the Mac Mini's external drives.
The Mac Mini does hourly Time Machine backups of one of it's external drives to the other external drive.
So, to recap, my worries are two:
1. Will the Mac Mini Time Machine look into the sparsebundle backup on one of the external drives, look for changes and only back those up to the other drive?
2. Will the Mac Mini Time Machine realise when the sparsebundle is being filled by the Laptop Time Machine and either leave it alone (potentially causing it to never get backed up) or somehow deal with the sparsebundle changing under it's feet?
Any answers appreciated.
M@

See #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

How does one transfer only 1 of 4 backups from an old TIme Capsule to a new one, such that the 1 on the old TC can be deleted to save space?

I have a 2-TB TC that currently backs up 4 Macs, which is full - no more space to backup, down to less than a year's worth of backup for one Mac, so I don't want any more old backups deleted.
I bought a new 3-TB Time Capsule, and wish to move only one of the the 4 backups to it, which is currently over 1 TB. The idea is to free space on the old TC for the other 3 Mac backups. Also the two TCs may end up in 2 different locations soon.
I read about how to do this at Apple and at pondini.
Upshot was that I copied over the one sparsebundle using Finder drag/drop from the old to the new TC.
When I go to Time Machine preferences to Select Disk, then click the new TC, and Use Disk, I get this dialog:
I don't want to Use Both.
I assume that if I click Replace "Data" that the 1+ TB file that took 12 hours to copy will be lost.
How do I get Time Machine to just resume backing up to this sparsebundle, and not create a whole new backup, deleting the file that has the past year of backups?
Tom

tomath2o wrote:
I assume that if I click Replace "Data" that the 1+ TB file that took 12 hours to copy will be lost.
I assume you selected the new Time Capsule? If in doubt, and for future clarification, you might want to rename the Data folder on one or both TCs via Airport Utility. Click it on the Disks panel to change the name; then that name will appear on the selection window, etc., so you'll always know which is which:
In any event, the prompt means "Replace (the old) "Data" as the destination for this Mac's backups." It will not touch either the new or old sparsebundle -- future backups will just be directed to the selected location(s). Do note, however, that when you change destinations, the TM Prefs window will show "None" for oldest and latest backups. Don't be alarmed -- that's just TM being lazy and not checking the actual backups yet. See #B3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #34 for details on backing-up to multiple destinations.
By the way, just for future reference, another option would have been to connect a USB drive to the existing TC (that's what "S.TM.Backups" is in the sample}.
How do I get Time Machine to just resume backing up to this sparsebundle, and not create a whole new backup, deleting the file that has the past year of backups?
Click Replace "Data".
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time Machine backup file corrupted and locked

This morning when I switch on my Mac there was a dialogue box telling me that my Time Machine backup file was corrupted and that Time Machine would have to create a new backup file.
I am backing up my Macs to a disk connected to my Airport Extreme. It's been working for months without any problems. Other than this morning. Time Machine buddy had the following message:
+Starting standard backup+
+Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/MyBookHome+
+Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/MyBookHome+
+QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY+
+Runtime corruption detected on /Volumes/MyBookHome/iMac27.sparsebundle (fsck_hfs -q termination status: 3)+
+Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/MyBookHome+
+Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/MyBookHome+
+Backup verification failed for image /Volumes/MyBookHome-2/iMac27.sparsebundle!+
+Moved previous backup image to /Volumes/MyBookHome-2/iMac27_2010-11-01-032949.sparsebundle+
+Recovery backup declined by user.+
+Backup canceled.+
+Ejected Time Machine network volume.+
Has anybody seen something like this before?
I now have a locked and renamed sparsebundle on my disk and backups are not working anymore.

aschmid wrote:
Yes you are right, I know it isn't supported - as so many other things but they work!
This one is notorious for working for a while, then . . . not.
In addition to the problems above I got a pop-up from Time Machine saying the backup file is broken and it needs to create a new one. I told it to go ahead and what happened is that it actually proceeded to DELETE the old backup file before creating a new one - there goes my several months of backup history!
Yes, just as it says in the message. See #C13 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
All I can say do now is connect my drive directly to my iMac and figure out a way how I can backup my other iMac and the MacBook I have. On the AE this just worked remotely.
Yeah. Until it didn't.
Really not much options here to backup a home with 3 Macs!?!
Sure there is. Back the others up to the same drive, over your network, via sharing. See #22 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for details and setup instructions.

I can't migrate from a time machine Back up. I select my TC and it says "some backups can't be opened." My HD failed and I'm Trying to get everything back... Can anyone make a suggestion?

I can't migrate from a time machine Back up. I select my TC and it says "some backups can't be opened. Make sure that all of your network devices are connected and turned on. It appears that some backups are already in use. If you don't see the backup you need, make sure it is not currently mounted by another machine and try again."
My HD failed and i installed a new one... I'm Trying to get everything back... Can anyone make a suggestion?

Read the section E about restore issues.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
But you should be able to mount the sparsebundle and backup the major items if they are not damaged. You might also do a disk verify to see if the corruption can be repaired.
Have a look here also for restore of selected items.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Time machine cannot make a backup

I use Mountain Lion 10.8.4. Recently my Time Machine started to behave wierdly: when backup is going, expected backup size is always by few GB larger than completed part. So that at one point of time it's 70 of 74 GB's done, after that it's 71 of 75 and so on until backup volume runs out of space.
Reported backup size for my system (inside time machine configuration, with some directories excluded), is about 75 GB's. When the backup is failing, it gets as high as 200+ GBs.
For me it looks like some kind of hard link directory loop what "generates" data over and over.
I've already tried emptying the TM volume. Also the Disk Utility doesn't find any problem with volume (which is backupped) data.
What's the best course of action in this kind of problem solving?
Some logs:
Starting automatic backup
Backup failed with error: 19
Starting automatic backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/TimeMachine
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/TimeMachine using URL: afp://[email protected]/TimeMachine
Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine/MacBook Pro - Yury.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Forcing deep traversal on source: "SSD HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 4DDFD444-D060-3885-BF8B-3E75C6CBBF34 eventDBUUID: BB319D29-3CE3-4BE7-A684-B7B56413FCFE)
Warning: Bytes to copy estimate was negative (-8395032716)
Found 1511567 files (104,9 MB) needing backup
104,9 MB required (including padding), 8,6 MB available
Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/TimeMachine/MacBook Pro - Yury.sparsebundle
Compacting backup disk image to recover free space
Completed backup disk image compaction
Starting automatic backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TimeMachine
Disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine/MacBook Pro - Yury.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Forcing deep traversal on source: "SSD HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 4DDFD444-D060-3885-BF8B-3E75C6CBBF34 eventDBUUID: BB319D29-3CE3-4BE7-A684-B7B56413FCFE)
Warning: Bytes to copy estimate was negative (-8395032716)
Found 1511567 files (104,9 MB) needing backup
104,9 MB required (including padding), 8,6 MB available
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro - Yury/2013-07-12-142217.inProgress/19245C51-4270-4E30-936E-0A20D8CACAC3 containing 168,68 GB; 168,69 GB now available, 104,9 MB required
Deleted 1 backups containing 168,68 GB total; 168,69 GB now available, 104,9 MB required
Indexer unavailable due to disk space.
Stopping backup.
Error: (-34) SrcErr:NO Copying /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Adobe Photoshop CS5.app/Contents/Frameworks/AdobeCrashReporter.framework/Versions/A/Resources/A dobeCrashDaemon.app/Contents/_codesignature/CodeResources to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MacBook Pro - Yury/2013-07-12-142217.inProgress/8D4C46F6-145E-4D54-97D2-13311BFD16DE/SSD HD/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Adobe Photoshop CS5.app/Contents/Frameworks/AdobeCrashReporter.framework/Versions/a/resources/A dobeCrashDaemon.app/Cont

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
diskutil list | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

HT201250 Time machine backup fail

I get this message "/Volumes/Data/Toni Martin’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" on backup and backup fails. What does it mean?

Is the rest of the message ". . .sparsebundle ... is already in use"? If so, see #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If not, see if you find it in the "C" section of that link.
If not, see #C2 there to display it again, and either post it all or a screenshot.

TM Alternative allowing NAS Drive Backup

I have a Buffallo T-byte NAS drive and would like to use it for backups. TM does not backup to NAS drives.
Is there an alternative to TM that allows backups to NAS drive, preferably one that does disk imaging?

This article describes how to get TM work with NAS units (ReadyNAS) - I am currently running this configuration and it works like a charm on wireless. Highly recommended - you just have to modify parts of it for other makes of NAS but on the Mac side you should be fine.
Follow the instructions carefully - it's easy to get ahead of yourself.
Here is the article:
http://www.readynas.com/?p=253
Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS
April 20, 2008 by yoh-dah
Filed under Mac Corner
Leave a Comment
The following is a summary of how to make Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS by DavidB based on initial contribution by btaroli and refinements by sirozha and a host of others on the ReadyNAS Mac/OSX Forum. We are thankful of the Mac enthusiasts who frequent and contribute to the ReadyNAS forum.
Ok I’ve just converted a second machine to use the NAS for networked Time Machine backups, and this time things went straight through without any mistakes. Here’s the run-down:
This example was done using a Mac Mini with a hostname of “magpie”, running OS X 10.5.2 and connected via 802.11g to a ReadyNAS NV+ (RAIDiator 4.01c1-p1 [1.00a041] with AFP patch loaded). I’ve created separate AFP shares for each machine (”TMmagpie” in this case) and set them to be accessible just to the “owner” of the machine. I could have set up one share to contain Time Machine backups for all clients, but then it could be possible for a user to access someone else’s private data within the backups.
Do make sure to keep the hostname simple — i.e. don’t have quotes in it like “Maggie’s Mac”, or the process will fail.
With the share set up on the NAS already, everything else we do is local to the client (magpie in this case). Some of the commands I list here are run within Terminal.app, although there are alternate (GUI) ways of accessing some of the functions.
This machine had previously been doing Time Machine backups to a local Firewire disk, and part of the process outlined here is to copy the contents of that disk to the NAS so that further backups build on top of the existing ones. No need to throw away the old backups!
1. In System Preferences, turn Time Machine off.
2. Find the MAC address of the machine’s internal Ethernet port:
$ ifconfig en0 | grep ether
This should produce a single line of output, such as:
ether 00:16:cb:af:91:d7
Even if the network backups will be done using a different port (e.g. AirPort: usually “en1″) the system will use the address of en0 as part of the system identifier.
In this case the identifier that Time Machine will use is “magpie_0016cbaf91d7″.
3. Make a new “sparsebundle” on a local disk (NOT the Time Machine disk!). This sparsebundle is a virtual filesystem image which we’ll copy to the NAS, and Time Machine will then access it remotely (that way Time Machine’s not limited by the filesystem features of whatever NAS it’s using: all the funky stuff happens within the sparsebundle). By default sparsebundles can keep growing until they fill up the NAS, but in this scenario we keep other things on the NAS as well as backups, and we’re going to limit the sparsebundle size to 140 GB. We called this one “Backup of magpie” as that’s the default name created by Time Machine, but in fact you can call the volume anything you like.
$ hdiutil create -size 140g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of magpie" magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
created: /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle $
This Mac Mini hasn’t had things like developer tools loaded: hdiutil comes with the OS. We make the sparsebundle manually so we can impose the size limit, and we do it on a local disk because of a bug that prevents creation of a sparsebundle remotely on the NAS (although they can be used when in place). The sparsebundle doesn’t start at 140 GB: it grows as more data is put in the filesystem inside it, up to a maximum of 140 GB.
4. If you’re not going to copy the contents of an existing Time Machine disk, skip ahead to step 9.
5. Mount the sparsebundle:
$ open magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
You’ll see “Backup of magpie” appear as a mounted volume in Finder.
6. Copy the old Time Machine backups to the sparsebundle. In Disk Utility:
Click on Time Machine disk on the left panel, then select the “Restore” tab:
1. Drag the local Time Machine volume to the Source field
2. Drag the sparsebundle volume (”Backup of magpie”) to the Destination field
3. Select “Erase destination” (possibly not mandatory)
4. Restore
This will take a while, depending on how much data is on the drive…
7. If you selected “Erase destination” in Disk Utility, the volume name will have been copied from the local Time Machine disk. Rename the new volume back to “Backup of magpie” (or whatever name you chose).
8. Unmount (”eject”) the sparsebundle volume.
9. Mount the NAS share the sparsebundle will be mounted on (”TMmagpie” in this case). I mount all our shares via AFP, but you can presumably use CIFS also. Once it’s mounted, it will be accessible within Terminal.app as /Volumes/TMmagpie.
10. Copy the sparsebundle to the share:
$ rsync -avE /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle /Volumes/TMmagpie/.
Depending on your network (802.11g, 802.11n, 100bT, 1000bT, etc) this can take a long time!
rsync is smart enough to only copy the new bits of a file, so you can stop and re-run that command if necessary without re-copying everything.
In the meantime you can go ahead and use the machine. Just don’t turn Time Machine backups back on yet.
11. If the local copy of the sparsebundle is in an area that will be backed up by Time Machine, remove it before proceeding. We don’t want to double the size of the Time Machine backup for no good reason!
12. In the Time Machine System Preferences panel, select “Change Disk…”. It will display a list of volumes you can backup to. If the share containing the sparsebundle isn’t listed (you did mount it, right?) it’s probably because it’s not mounted from a Time Capsule or another OS X machine. To show the share in this display you’ll need to have executed the following command in Terminal:
$ defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
You’ll need to log out and in again for this to have effect (select “Log Out” from the Apple menu: you can Restart, but logging out will do). Now mount TMmagie again, then try Time Machine’s “Change Disk…” again.
13. Select the share on the NAS (”TMmagpie”) as the new destination for Time Machine backups.
Time Machine will automatically turn itself back on and schedule a backup to begin in two minutes. If you didn’t populate the sparsebundle with the contents of a local disk, this first backup will be a full backup and can take a very long time (depending on things like your network infrastructure). If you did pre-populate the sparsebundle, this backup will be an incremental backup and shouldn’t take long at all (depending on how much has changed on the machine since you turned Time Machine off in Step 1 of course).
Once the backup has started, keep going with the remaining steps in this list while the backup is running.
14. You can now eject the TMmagpie share. Time Machine will automatically mount the sparsebundle file directly (during backups you’ll see “Backup of magpie” mounted).
15. Unfortunately Spotlight will try to index the contents on the “Backup of magpie” share, which will slow down the backups significantly. To avoid this, as soon as the share is mounted for the first time go to Spotlight’s Privacy panel in System Preferences. Use the ‘+’ button at the bottom, select the “Backup of magpie” share, and Spotlight will then ignore it. If Spotlight has already started indexing it, it should immediately stop and the backup will speed up.
That’s it. Congratulations! New Time Machine backups should happen every hour, and you can access all the backup files via the usual Time Machine interface.With magpie this has allowed us to disconnect the local 200G Firewire disk previously used for Time Machine backups: this drive was significantly noisier than the Mac Mini itself!
GOOD LUCK!

Sparsebundle and missing GBs?

I have a MBP and a MiniStack external USB hard drive. It has 2 partitions. I did an initial TM backup with the drive connected to the MBP by USB cable (80 GB)onto a partition of 240 GB. All worked great. A day later, I attached the drive to my Airport Extreme Base station. TM found the drive but not the TM files. When it backed up, it backed up the whole 80 GB (very slowly!) in a separate file rather than updating the initial TM backups created through the USB connection. TM created a new sparsebundle file with the wireless backup.
Now, the original wired backup.backupdb file is about 2GB, the sparsebundle is 80 GB, but the disk shows that it has 160 GB on it (as if the whole 80 GB of the MBP backed up twice). How can I recover that 80 GB (and where did it go)?
Can I delete the 2GB backup.backupdb (not the one that's on the drive mounted when double clicking the sparsebundle (called Backup of <drivename>) but the one that lives next to the sparsebundle file on the drive)?
Otherwise, the TM backups seem to be working just fine over airport with an attached USB drive.
Thanks for any and all help with this.

My external drive is an other world computing "mercury elite" drive with a 500 GB IDE disk inside. It has two firewire 400 and one USB 2.0/1.1 port. It uses an Oxford chipset. I have done initial backups of two different macs (macbook pro, powerbook g4) to this drive via the firewire interface, then connected the drive to an airport extreme via the USB2 port. Time machine on each machine recognized its backup and picked up where it left off. This is very convenient, since the backup takes less time via firewire than over the air with wifi.
The disk was partitioned with Disk Utility. I chose the UUID option for the partition map.

My Time Machine can't see/connect to my NAS Thecus

Hello,
I have NAS Thecus N7700Pro V2.
I got it to be my network storage and I enabled teh AFP in my NAS to be able to use my Time Machine backup.
My current OS is Lion 10.7.5.
When I open teh Time Machine and try to connect it to my NAS it can't see it.
Please advise.
Thanks!

Thanks - that worked - although the solution requires a little updating which was mentioned further down that post. In summary it is now this:
1. Create a sparsebundle image manually on your local system. Open a terminal window and enter:
hdiutil create -size $SIZESPEC -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Backup of $MACHINENAME" $MACHINENAME_$MACADDRESS.sparsebundle
Where $SIZESPEC is the size of the backup volume (followed by the lowercase letter g if Gigabytes, e.g. 100g), and $MACHINENAME_$MAC_ADRESS is your Mac's name followed by an underscore and then your Mac's MAC Address (otherwise known as its Ethernet ID; visible in the Network System Preferences panel), but without the colons. So if your Mac is named MyMac, and the Network System Preferences panel lists your Ethernet ID as 00:18:b3:11:84:dd, then you would use MyMac_0018b31184dd for the name of the sparsebundle.
The -size parameter can probably be as large as you want, now that Apple has evidently fixed the sparsebundle issues that were causing all but the most recent backup to be dumped. However, you can also specify a smaller size if you (like me) want to create a hard limit for the amount of space your Time Machine backups will take on your network drive. hdiutil does have a -resize option if you need to utilize that later.
2. Create and set permissions on your network share. Just make sure you have read/write permissions set on whichever SMB/AFP share you're going to dump this to.
3. Copy the sparsebundle to the network share root. Easy enough. Mount your network share and copy it over. I used this Terminal command after the MyBackup share was mounted: cp -r mymachine_0017f2c8426b.sparsebundle /Volumes/MyBackup/. Or just use the regular UI to copy and paste (it worked for me).

Sparsebundle versus backups.backup.db

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