Redundant Backups?

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Redundant Backups?

I first used Time Machine to back up my MBP to an attached firewire drive. Later I decided to back up to the same drive while it was attached to another Mac. So now there appear to be two back ups -- the folder backup created while attached directly to the MBP and the sparsebundle back up created when TM ran while the drive was connected to the other Mac.

My question is: Are these back ups redundant? IOW, if I plan to continue backing up the MBP through TM to the firewire drive while connected to the other Mac, can I delete the original folder back up made while the firewire drive was connected directly to the MBP?

Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 1, 2007 7:52 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 1, 2007 8:05 PM in response to CornDog

If both backups are of the MacBook Pro, then they will be redundant. Backing up through a network creates a "sparsebundle" image, whereas backing up directly creates files and folders on the disk. When you backed up via the network it created a more updated backup, but the unchanged files were redundant, and the next time you back up directly to the disk, the disk's backup will be more recent than the one in the sparsebundle. Its too bad you can't currently use the same backup structure between direct connection and network connection, so the computer really isnt portable in that respect, but it is what it is for now.

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Answer 2

CornDog Author

Level 1

49 points

Dec 1, 2007 9:53 PM in response to Topher Kessler

Thanks. That's what I thought was going on, but I didn't want to delete the first back up in case the sparsebundle version was somehow dependent on it, although I suppose there's no harm and maybe even some advantage to having two separate backups as long as disk space permits.

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