Elijah Tabet
Level 1 (90 points)
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Q: Disk space on TimCapsule not changing

I’m going into “Enter Time Machine”, picking old backups then clicking the gear icon > Delete Backup. I have deleted half of my old backups but the disk space on TimeCapsule doesn’t seem to be going down. What am I missing?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Aug 14, 2016 10:34 AM

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Elijah Tabet

Q: Disk space on TimCapsule not changing

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  • by Bob Timmons,

    Bob Timmons Bob Timmons Aug 14, 2016 10:56 AM in response to Elijah Tabet
    Level 10 (105,448 points)
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    Aug 14, 2016 10:56 AM in response to Elijah Tabet

    Apple does not make it easy.

     

    Time Machine backups on a Time Capsule are stored in a special type of container called a sparsebundle file. The sparsebundle expands as needed to accept new data......but, if you delete data from the sparsebundle file, the file will still show the maximum size that it was before the data was deleted.....until new data is added to bring the storage back up to the maximum displayed size.  At that point, the sparsebundle will start expanding again.

     

    For example, the size of your backups (before you delete any data) might be 500 GB. You delete 100 GB of data, so it would seem logical that the new size of the backup file would now be 400 GB.

     

    And actually it is, but if you look at the size of the file, it will still indicate that 500 GB of data is being used.  When you have added 100 GB of new data to bring the size back up to 500 GB....then.....the sparsebundle file will expand in size to reflect the new data added.

     

    There is a Terminal command that you can use if you want to see the actual size of the file after you have deleted data. But unfortunately, the Terminal is a very scary place for most users, so best to avoid it if you can. See the pink box in this support document if you feel confident with Terminal.

     

    http://pondini.org/TM/12.html

  • by LaPastenague,

    LaPastenague LaPastenague Aug 14, 2016 4:14 PM in response to Elijah Tabet
    Level 9 (53,016 points)
    Wireless
    Aug 14, 2016 4:14 PM in response to Elijah Tabet

    You can compact the sparsebundle..

     

    Rather than wait for it to refill with backups you can test to find the amount of space by using Terminal command.

     

    $ sudo hdiutil compact /path/to/disk-image

    Starting to compact…

    Reclaiming free space…

    ................................................................................ ................................................................................ .................................................

    Finishing compaction…

    Reclaimed 11.2 GB out of 118.7 GB possible.

    As Bob notes.. using Terminal with sudo command .. make sure you type the right command.

    I took the command from here.

    http://thegreyblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/shrink-your-time-machine-backups-and. html