Time capsule time machine backup size limit

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Time capsule time machine backup size limit

Using a firewire hard drive I limit the size of my time machine backup by controlling the size of the partition I use for the time machine backup.

Now I am considering on buying and sharing a time capsule with other users for time machine backups. My understanding is that you would not create partitions for each time machine backup within the time capsule. If this is the case, is it possible to limit the max size that each time machine backup can grow to?

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 29, 2009 10:31 AM

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Answer 1

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Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Dec 29, 2009 11:26 AM in response to opodder

My understanding is that you would not create partitions for each time machine backup within the time capsule.

That is correct. You would have to remove the internal drive to repartition it. The Time Capsule (TC) was designed to handle multiple Time Machine (TM) backups. Each backup is stored on the TC as a Sparsebundle "file" unique to each device being backed up.

If this is the case, is it possible to limit the max size that each time machine backup can grow to?

Not directly. Indirectly, you can control what TM backs up from each computer so as not to include unnecessary files ... but there is no way to limit each of the Sparsebundles themselves as these files were meant to expand to take up all available space on the drive.

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Answer 2

opodder Author

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Dec 29, 2009 12:28 PM in response to Tesserax

Thanks very much. I understand time capsule can be used to store files independently of time machine backups (as a network drive). If time-machine backups cannot be size restricted, when the time-machine backups expand to the capacity of the time-capsule, do the non-time-machine files on the drive get overwritten or does the oldest time-machine backup data get overwritten?

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Answer 3

opodder Author

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Dec 29, 2009 12:35 PM in response to opodder

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Message was edited by: opodder

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Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Dec 29, 2009 12:43 PM in response to opodder

If time-machine backups cannot be size restricted, when the time-machine backups expand to the capacity of the time-capsule, do the non-time-machine files on the drive get overwritten or does the oldest time-machine backup data get overwritten?

The oldest TM backups get overwritten; other files are not affected. Also note that TM-created sparse bundles are not fixed in size ... they can both grow or shrink as their contents change.

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