Hello folks.
I don't know how this has occurred but I've had what appears to be duplicate Time Machine images of disks I'm backing up on my two Time Machine drives. See the attached screenshot. The disks labelled with athe number 1 appended. What's up with this? Can/should I get rid of them?
Thanks for any help.
GGuerrette Said:
"Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk: So, Time Machine uses… 'soft links', or something (some term like that? I forget) to manage incremental backups (I think?).[...]"
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Softlinks:
Correct: Softlinks are the data created from within the Parent directory. So, as changes are made, the entire Parent directory is changed for new TMBs (and ridding of a softlink can lead to catastrophic failure of a TMB). So, for note, let them be.
GGuerrette Said:
"Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk: [...]All but one of the three dupes have very old Date Modified values -- but they're also a bit bigger than the dupes without the "1" in their name (see screenshot in my OP). I COULD delete all backups of them. But should I??"
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Thank you for the screenshot.
Deleting These:
Back up these to an external hard drive, prior to deletion. And, yes, deletion seems the best route to take from here.
GGuerrette Said:
"Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk: Hello folks. I don't know how this has occurred but I've had what appears to be duplicate Time Machine images of disks I'm backing up on my two Time Machine drives. See the attached screenshot. The disks labelled with athe number 1 appended. What's up with this? Can/should I get rid of them? Thanks for any help."
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Thank you for the screenshot.
Troubleshooting TMB Duplicates:
Seems it is OverLapping Somehow. This is the site to use: Use Time Machine on your Mac to back up to multiple disks - Apple Support
Yeah, I wasn't planning on fooling around with filetypes such as the softlinks in the Terminal or something; I only wanted to check that, if I do a drag-and-drop from my TM disk to a separate disk to back these redundant backups, this will happen:
1) As I'm dragging from my TM disk to drop into a separate volume (disk), the Finder will copy as it always does from volume to volume, and
2) The Finder will account for any softlinks in those redundant volume backups that I'm copying, copying the latest iteration of all files to the destination drive.
3) Then, when the redundant TM BUs have been copied, enter Time machine from the root of my connected drives (Shift-Command-C), select the redundant backups and pop up the contextual menu to delete all backups (see screenshot) -- although I might leave that redundant Recovery partition backup, juuuuust in case.
Right?? :D
GGuerrette Said:
"Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk: Yeah, I wasn't planning on fooling around with filetypes such as the softlinks in the Terminal or something; I only wanted to check that, if I do a drag-and-drop from my TM disk to a separate disk to back these redundant backups, this will happen:"
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Thank you for the screenshot.
.
"Yes" to all three questions.
Will have to reread your suggested link as, at first glance, I'm not sure it's pertaining to my problem.
It's quite odd. I do use two different physical Time Machine drives called GG TM1 and GG TM 2. But what you see in my first screenshot is just the duplicates on GG TM 2 (GG TM 1 is not mounted). In the screenshot below, I launched Time Machine at the disk level of the Finder (Shift-Command-C key combi) and the dupes are accessible. All but one of the three dupes have very old Date Modified values -- but they're also a bit bigger than the dupes without the "1" in their name (see screenshot in my OP). I COULD delete all backups of them.
But should I??
Right.
So, Time Machine uses… “soft links”, or something (some term like that? I forget) to manage incremental backups (I think?). So if I do a drag-and-drop in the Finder of those redundant disk backups from my TM drive, ALL files including those “soft linked” (I’m not sure if I’m using the right term) will be copied over during the drag-and-drop?
GGuerrette Said:
"Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk: [...]if I do a drag-and-drop in the Finder of those redundant disk backups from my TM drive, ALL files including those “soft linked” (I’m not sure if I’m using the right term) will be copied over during the drag-and-drop?"
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About Drag-&-Drop:
A. Dragging to the Trash:
When performing a Drag-&-Drop to the Trash, the file(s) wont be copied --the file(s) will be dropped.
B. General Use:
When performing Drag-&-Drop for file(s), it may or may not be a matter of Cut-&-Paste, but rather one of Copy (if you were to hold down the Option key while dragging). Create two empty folders on the Desktop, and try this out for yourself.
Thanks so much for your wisdom! 🙏
GGuerrette Said:
"Thanks so much for your wisdom!"
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You are welcome.
Time Machine Duplicate Disk Backups on Same Time Machine Disk
