Erasing one TC image, leaving others intact

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Level 1

21 points

Erasing one TC image, leaving others intact

Is there a way to erase one of a number of individual backups (sparseimages?) on TC without affecting other. Several people backup to our TC on our home network. A visitor now wants to backup temporarily to our TC before having his Macbook repaired locally. When he returns to his home, he would resume backing up on his own TC.
Can he/we erase the backup he makes on our network (and release the space) without affecting our own backups?

Macbook, iMac 24, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 18, 2009 5:12 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 18, 2009 6:17 AM in response to John Bevan

Welcome to the discussions!

You could setup the MacBook for Time Machine backups on your TC, but the application would see this as a "new" device and will backup the entire computer. If you have the space, it shouldn't be a problem...just be sure to use ethernet for the backup since it is much faster than wireless.

Once the backup is complete, there will be a sparsebundle file with the name of the computer on your Time Capsule. To locate this, open your hard drive and look under the SHARED heading. Click the Time Capsule icon, then double click the Time Capsule folder and each individual sparesbundle for each computer will appear.

Click the sparsebundle file that you wan to delete to highlight it, then click the gear shaped icon at the top of the window and select Move to Trash.

+Be careful+, the file you select will be deleted instantly and will not be retrievable.

If you ever need to delete any other sparsebundle files, follow the same procedure above.

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Answer 2

John Bevan Author

Level 1

21 points

Aug 18, 2009 6:41 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks. That's reassuring. Just one last recheck. After trashing the sparsebundle, will the space it occupied be available again?

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Answer 3

Aug 18, 2009 8:51 AM in response to John Bevan

Yes, you will regain the space although it will "appear" as if you haven't after you delete the file.

Sparsebundle files behave differently than a regular file in that the sparsebundle file size expands as you add more data, but if you delete data it will "appear" as if the size stays the same.

For example you had 40 GB on your TC and deleted 5 GB. It will still appear as if you have 40 GB. Now, if you add more backups, the file size will not change until it gets above 40 GB at which time it will start to expand.

There's a Terminal command sequence that can be used if it's important for you to know the exact amount of space. I don't remember what those commands are, but will check into this if I have time later today.

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