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User profile for user: RandyM1972
RandyM1972 Author
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time capsule

I recently purchased a WD 8TB external drive to plug into my Time Capsule and use as a dual Time Machine backup for my iMac and my wife's MacBook Pro. I partitioned the drive into 2 parts, one for the Time Machine backups, and the other for general storage backup. For my first back-up, I plugged the external drive directly into my iMac in order to quickly back up the 1TB of data. Afterwards, I plugged the external drive directly into the Time Capsule so my wife could also use it wirelessly to back up. The next day I noticed that my iMac was backing up the whole 1TB of information again on the external drive even though I had picked the same drive to backup to in the Time Machine settings. Why would it not recognize my computer as the one it had backed up the day before??? I appreciate any help on this.


Posted on Jul 29, 2019 11:53 AM

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User profile for user: Bob Timmons
Bob Timmons
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Posted on Jul 29, 2019 12:38 PM

When you plugged the drive directly into your Mac, the drive behaved as if it were a "local" drive. The Time Capsule hard drive and any drive connected to the USB port on the device are "network" drives. Big difference.


Time Machine backups up differently to a "local" drive than it does to a "network" drive. The two types of backups are not interchangeable, so that would explain why Time Machine started a new backup when you changed the location of your WD drive from a "local" connection......connected directly to a Mac.....to a "network"location.


When Time Machine backs up to a "local" drive connected directly to your Mac, the Time Machine backups are all kept in a normal looking folder called Backups.backupdb.


When Time Machine backs up to a drive over a "network" location, all of the files are stored in a special type of container called a sparsebundle file. As we mentioned previously, these two types of files are not interchangeable.




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User profile for user: Bob Timmons
Bob Timmons
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
160,886 points

Jul 29, 2019 12:38 PM in response to RandyM1972

When you plugged the drive directly into your Mac, the drive behaved as if it were a "local" drive. The Time Capsule hard drive and any drive connected to the USB port on the device are "network" drives. Big difference.


Time Machine backups up differently to a "local" drive than it does to a "network" drive. The two types of backups are not interchangeable, so that would explain why Time Machine started a new backup when you changed the location of your WD drive from a "local" connection......connected directly to a Mac.....to a "network"location.


When Time Machine backs up to a "local" drive connected directly to your Mac, the Time Machine backups are all kept in a normal looking folder called Backups.backupdb.


When Time Machine backs up to a drive over a "network" location, all of the files are stored in a special type of container called a sparsebundle file. As we mentioned previously, these two types of files are not interchangeable.




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