Time Machine backup and VmWare Fusion

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Time Machine backup and VmWare Fusion

Hello,

I added a 500GB external hard drive to my new iMac so that I can take advantage of Time Machine backups.

My question is that does Time Machine also make backups of my XP system that is running in VmWare?

I'm not really keeping any "files" on my XP machine as I am keeping them on my Mac's drive.

Thanks
David

iMac 2.8 24inch 2 GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.5.5), VM Ware Fusion

Posted on Nov 5, 2008 1:30 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 5, 2008 3:19 PM in response to fortworth

No. TM only backs up Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted drives. If you need to backup you Windows system then you will need to use a Windows backup program. What TM will do is to backup the pseudo-drive that VM Fusion creates, but that means each time you access Windows TM will attempt to backup the entire disc image file. Usually you would prefer to exclude the VM Fusion files to avoid having TM do a backup of them each time there's an incremental backup. It would end up eating a lot of disk space on your backup drive.

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Answer 2

Nov 5, 2008 4:54 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy wrote:
No.

Not true Kappy. TM will backup both Parallels and Fusion virtual drive images.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 5, 2008 5:15 PM in response to Templeton Peck

Please read my reply further: "What TM will do is to backup the pseudo-drive that VM Fusion creates, but that means each time you access Windows." I'm quite aware of what TM will back up.

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Answer 4

fortworth Author

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Nov 6, 2008 4:29 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks for all the replies so far.

I'll investigate further on the VmWare site for backing up the virtual drive. I've seen something in there called snapshot so that may do the trick.

My next question is in regards to the Time Machine Backups.

I have a 500GB drive that I using for the backups. But after only using it for a week it only has 100GB of free space left.

How can I free up space when the drive starts getting full?

Thanks

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 6, 2008 5:33 PM in response to fortworth

Open the TM application, locate the files you want to delete, then use the tool gadget drop down menu in the Finder window's toolbar where you can select options for deleting selected items.

Consider excluding some items from you backups to reserve space. Exclude system files such as the System folder, exclude your VM Fusion files, exclude any additional hard drives connected to your computer. Excluding such things can save gigabytes on every incremental backup.

Use a third-party utility such as TimeMachineEditor to change the frequency of backups from hourly to daily, for example.

Message was edited by: Kappy

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