Q: Partitioning my Time Capsule

It isn't possible to partition a Time Capsule in the normal way. Use the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to create a disk image of the desired size instead.

(102519)

Hi Neil,

sorry to bother but I have a question in relation to your info.

When I bought my TC I followed a tutorial in order to keep a portion (500GB) of my 2TB TC free from TM backup in order to store my temporary files.

I went to disk utility and used the Partition TAB. Now it looks like my TC has 2 partitions, as it is explained when I click on the big or the small one...

Is there something wrong in this?

Many tnxs.

Jet787 wrote:

 

I went to disk utility and used the Partition TAB. Now it looks like my TC has 2 partitions, as it is explained when I click on the big or the small one...

Is there something wrong in this?

 

You have partitioned the sparsebundle for time machine. Not the physical disk.. now you will cause problems because any files you drag to the partition you cannot delete.. try it. Drag a file to your new partition and then try and delete it.

You will more than likely have damaged Time Machine backups as well.. you will need to erase the drive and start over.

Create the disk image in the TC as per Pondini instructions here.

Q3 http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Sorry but I do not understand exactly what you mean by saying "Drag a file to your new partition and then try and delete it." I daily to that and have no problem in copying, deleting, moving files to the 500GB partition.

I restored sometimes parts of my TC TM backups without any issues...

When I did the partition for the first time I tried also to reduce the partition to something like 1.5TB for TC TM  and 500GB for the rest, in order to try what happen in case the TM backups need more than 500GB; that worked, old backups were deleted...

So what you mean by saying that I cannot delete files which are dragged into the partition?

Tnxs

I add this screenshot aswell. It looks a bit different from the one attached before. The 1.5TB is the max dimension of the Time Machine Backup Partition on TC. Is there something wrong with this?

As explained before, I have no probs in copying and deleting files from the other one...

Ok.. please look at the Time Capsule hard disk in finder.. does it have more than one partition. Or in the airport utility.

Is there a second partition shown there??

By default there is just one partition.. it is named Data but it can have a few different names.

When you start TM it creates a sparsebundle in the Data partition. That sparsebundle is able to be mounted as a virtual disk in finder.

It is Time Machine Backups

If you then open the disk utility you can then partition that virtual disk.

I can see this is what you did because it is named Time Machine Backups in your language.

What you have done is spilt the TM backup defined sparsebundle and used it for local files.

This normally does prevent you from deleting files since the sparsebundle is owned by TM.. but in your case perhaps the partitioning has allowed you ownership of it.

Whatever it is the wrong way to partition.. And is not a real physical partition.. you have simply created a partition inside a virtual disk.

The correct method to do that is here.

http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html

What I did was to follow exactly the website you're linking to me at this page http://pondini.org/TM/A8.html

In the first block "To reduce maximum size of a sparse bundle" it looks it is exactly what I did and its screenshot aswell is similar...

Is there something I am missing??

Sorry I think we are talking cross purposes..

What you have is a secondary virtual disk.. plus the TM virtual disk (its sparsebundle).. but none of your screenshots have shown the second partition .. only the time machine partition and I am not following the language in the screenshots..

What you have done is fine..

But you have NOT partitioned the disk.. Going back to the original post.. you told Neil you have partitioned the disk.

When I bought my TC I followed a tutorial in order to keep a portion (500GB) of my 2TB TC free from TM backup in order to store my temporary files.

I went to disk utility and used the Partition TAB. Now it looks like my TC has 2 partitions, as it is explained when I click on the big or the small one...

Is there something wrong in this?

Ok.. so you understand this.. You did not partition the TC at all.

You created a sparsebundle or dmg file in the one partition.. it is a virtual disk.. not a partition.

It functions as a partition  and from your point of view works fine.. but it is not the same as creating physical partitions on the disk.. so if you go to airport utility and erase the partition you will erase TM sparsebundle and your "partition" and everything.. in a true partition scheme you need to erase each partition separately.

I hope that all makes sense now..

And sorry I did misunderstand what you posted.

Yes it makes perfectly sense to me, and the main reason of this misunderstanding is probably me, I was not correct maybe due to my ignorance when I wrote "I partitioned the disk", I am sorry for that... excuse me.

When I created a "virtual partition" by keeping only one physical partition on the disk was because I wanted to be sure to have a 500GB available to store extra data without the need to connect an external HD. Of course the main feature of TC has to be the availability of a TM backup on WiFi, so I wanted to be sure that what I did is not creating any issue to my TM backup on TC. It'd be bad if one day, with my Mac KO, I realised that my backup is corrupted or not working...when it is too late.

So I hope what I did is correct (actually I think you gave me this pondini link times ago thank you ) and in this way I have both my spare data "virtual partition" and sparsebundle for TM perfectly working...