MissReena
Level 1
(4 points)
Q: Fastest way to delete a sparse bundle on a Time Capsule with two backups on it
I have a 2TB Time Capsule that I currently use to back up an iMac and a MacBook Pro. I just recently bought a new iMac, and decided that I wanted a fresh start on this new computer. I moved over all the files I need, and installed all the apps I was using on the other one. After spending a day and a half making a backup of the sparsebundle on my old iMac (just in case), I am now ready to get rid of that sparsebundle off of my Time Capsule, so I can start backing up my new iMac to it.
Because I am also backing up my MBP to it, simply erasing it is not an option at this point. I need to be able to just remove that one sparsebundle, which, of course, has to be huge.... I think it is about 890 gigs at this point.
I have been looking online for the fastest way to delete the sparsebundle, but am not sure which method is best, and most of the responses are from 2011 or 2012, so I want to be sure there is not something new I should try.
Here are the options I have seen, and I am hoping someone can point me to the best one, or give me an alternate suggestion. If it happens that the best one takes days to accomplish, then so be it, but it would be good to know the timeframe going into it.
- Change the extension on the sparsebundle file and then delete that file. This seems sort of risky to me, but maybe I am overthinking it. One person said they changed it from iMacbackup.sparsebundle to just iMacbackup.s and was able to delete it. Would this actually make deleting it faster? I don't see it changing the size, so not sure how that would work.
- Mount the sparsebundle using the IP address, and then delete the sparsebundle that way. This was part of a post that actually said the best way to delete it was to access it via Windows Explorer first, and then delete it. That is not an option for me, so in the comments on that I post, I saw someone say to connect using SMB and delete that one. Someone else said it worked within a minute for them, but I didn't see a lot more replies.
- Show contents of the sparsebundle, then delete the contents of the bands folder 5,000 to 8,000 at a time. One YouTube video I just watched showed one guy doing this but it took him something like 4 days to delete them all, and he had to reboot in between every 5,000 bands he deleted. Currently I have about 102,000 items in my bands folder, so if it takes a day to delete 10,000 of them (according to, I am looking at a ridiculously long time to delete these.
Any alternative suggestions that anyone has would be welcome as well. I just want to be able to get this old one deleted and start backing up my new one, without losing my MBP backup.
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)
LaPastenague
Level 9
(52,255 points)
Any alternative suggestions that anyone has would be welcome as well. I just want to be able to get this old one deleted and start backing up my new one, without losing my MBP backup.
El Capo fixed the problem. If nothing much else in El Capo is praiseworthy this is.
Select the sparsebundle in finder.. and drag it to trash or select trash.
It will be gone is about 2min at most.
Give it a try.
maybe I am overthinking it
Yes.. in older Mac versions it could take many hours as it had to delete all the files inside the sparsebundle.. now it seems finally Apple figured out you just delete the container. If you had not thought about and done what comes naturally you would not have even known there was a problem.
