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How to limit the size of Time Machine backups to Time Capsule

Many have expressed the desire to partition the internal hard disk in their Time Capsule -- presumably because they wish to limit the amount of space allocated to Time Machine backups. I myself wanted to do this. Thanks to instructions posted at http://www.readynas.com/?p=253, I believe I have found a solution. Note: although it is working for me, this is not guaranteed to work, it may contain errors, and it is not for those who are unfamiliar in working in Terminal. I also do not offer tech support. You're on your own. With those provisos, here are the instructions:

1. In System Preferences, turn Time Machine off.
2. Find the MAC address of the machine’s internal Ethernet port by typing at the prompt (not including quotation marks:
"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.

If your computer's (not your hard disk's) name is "Mac", the identifier that Time Machine will use is “Mac_0016cbaf91d7"

3. Create a new sparsebundle directly on the Time Capsule share. Decide how many gigabytes in size you want it to be, and substitute the figure you want for "125" below. Be sure to append the "g" for gigabytes. The easiest way to do this is to type after the prompt:

"hdiutil create -size 125g -fs HFSX -volname "Backup of Mac"

and then, *without hitting return*, dragging the Time Capsule volume appearing on your desktop directly from the desktop into the Terminal window (assuming you have the Finder set to display connected servers). So if the name of the Time Capsule volume is "david", the final command should look something like this:

hdiutil create -size 125g -fs HFSX -volname "Backup of Mac" /Volumes/david/Mac_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle

Note that in place of "david" would be whatever the name of the particular Time Capsule volume you have chosen (I use "Secure Shared Disks: With Accounts" under Disks > File Sharing in AirPort Utility , so volumes for each account name are created).

Hit return. You should see:

created: /Users/david/Mac_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle

4. Now double-click that .sparsebundle file residing on your Time Capsule volume, and it should mount.
5. Launch Disk Utility
6. Choose "Backup of Mac" in the Disk Utility sidebar
7. Click on the button "Enable Journaling"

Note: the reason why I do this is because in the course of testing, I found that Time Machine created .sparsebundle files which when mounted had filesystems that were both case-sensitive and journaled, and the hdiutil command apparently doesn't allow one to create a .sparsebundle file with both of these attributes simultaneously.

8. Unmount "Backup of Magpie"
9. Open the Time Machine prefpane, and select "magpie" as the new destination for Time Machine backups
10. Turn Time Machine on

PowerBook G4/1.67 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 7200rpm 100 GB HD, 2 GB RAM, iPhone 8GB (1.1.4)

Posted on May 15, 2008 12:56 PM

Reply
23 replies

May 19, 2008 9:23 AM in response to odysseus

I don't know about specifics,

But my LaCie 2Big NAS drive, after suffering from a power-cut, went completely crazy.

The Linux system on it just failed to work, and AFP was non-existent.

I managed to get my data off of it using SMB (Samba), which may have worked because that service was disabled when the power went out.

After a reset, AFP on the NAS seems OK now, however I'm only using it to store disk-image backups of data.

I'm not storing anything on it I can't afford to loose, let alone loose access to.

--

As for Time Machine - I use mine for just that - so I can retrieve the odd file I may have deleted accidently, or somehow lost. (On an hourly basis)

I wouldn't trust Time Machine for a full restore, as it can wreak havoc with prefs such as Adobe Activation and serials.

In my case, I clone my entire disk to a disk connected to my server. (On a daily basis)

If anything was to happen to this Mac, I'd restore that cloned disk to get it back up to a 'That day state', and then use Time Machine to get files back up to the hour.

I tried Retrospect, but found it slow and confusing - plus it crashed all the time at 99%.

May 19, 2008 10:42 AM in response to Robert Tolton

And no, it doesn't create the size right from the get-go.

It does it in exactly the same way as those terminal commands.

I created a 200Gb sparse bundle disk image via Disk Utility, with all the settings set correctly for Time Machine use, and the final size of the output was around 100Mb or so.

So like you said, it sets a limit of how big the image can grow to - which is one of the main features of using sparse bundle disk images.

May 19, 2008 9:53 PM in response to odysseus

Tried to post this yesterday - but it did not show up in the forums! Strange, but also frusting as I can not get it to work...

I would like to use the Time Capsule HD for the Time Machine backups and for other computers on the net to store files on also.

Have tried the solution you suggested using Terminal again - same error reported - "image name parameter missing".

I think the parameter is there as I followed and copied your suggestion posted here.

The lines from Terminal are below: (I dragged the image to the terminal window)

hdiutil create -size 200g -fs HFSX -volname BakJohn/Volumes/Time\ Capsule/John24GHzPBCoreDuo_XXXXXXXX.sparsebundle

hdiutil: create: image name parameter missing

What am I missing here? The volname "BakJohn" is the name I want to give the new created space - right?

Message was edited by: John Christiansen

May 20, 2008 5:48 AM in response to John Christiansen

Hi John,

The Apple forums went offline for a time yesterday, that could have been the root of your posting problem.

But on to the matter at hand.

Open Disk Utility, and click on 'New Image', then make the settings exactly as I have laid out for you in the following image:

User uploaded file

Remember the X's in the 'Save As' dialogue box MUST be replaced by your ethernet ID.

You can get your ethernet ID using the Terminal commands as before, or you can go to System Preferences, highlight Built-in-Ethernet, click Advanced and then click on the Ethernet tab on the far left.

Then save and create that disk image onto your Time Capsule.

Then mount the disk image by double clicking it in the Finder, then turn on Time Machine, select your Time Capsule, and start the back-up.

Everything should then work fine,

How to limit the size of Time Machine backups to Time Capsule

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