Any Time Capsule experts?
Ian Piper
Still dealing with the fall-out from my disk crash. At least that's all
back in place now, and the RAID seems healthy.
When checking out my Time Capsule (in preparation for the recovery that
never happened, fortunately) I realised that I was backing up a disk
that I didn't need to, and it had around 100 GB of files on it. So I
thought I would use the Time Machine "Delete All Backups" to get rid of
the unwanted backups and free up the space. Well, the delete process
went quite smoothly, but at the end of it, although the backups have
gone, there is no more free space now than there was before. I would
expecting that I would retrieve at last 100 GB of space. Weird.
Looking at the Time Capsule disk when it mounts on the desktop during a
backup, it appears to be a database, so perhaps it just hasn't
compacted after removing the records. Does anyone know how I might claw
back the space?
Thanks,
Ian.
--
Chris Ridd
It is a folder pretending to be a file - right-click on it and show
package contents to see its innards.
If memory serves TC uses sparse disk images behind the scenes, and I'm
not sure what happens to those if you delete stuff from them. There
might be a compact option in Disk Utility - there certainly is in
hdiutil - but I don't know how you'd go about mucking with the disk
image in a safe way that didn't confuse TC.
--
Chris
Ian Piper
Yes, the file is reported as a sparsebundle, though it also just opens
as if it were a normal folder (i.e. there is no need to do the
right-click to open it. Once you open it you see a folder for each
backup event, labelled by date and time, and then inside that is a
collection of all of the folders and files.
Hmm. Think I'd better not twiddle with this. I've also posted this on
the Apple Forums (for what that's worth). If all else fails I will
simply rebuild the Time Capsule.
Ian.
-
aroojequ
I use this terminal command:
hdiutil compact /Volumes/MyTimeCapsule/MyTMBackup.sparsebundle
MyTimeCapsule=Name of your Time Capsule
MyTMBackup =Name of your TM Image
It does what it's supposed to - tutn off TM backups while you're running it.
--
--
Ian Piper
That is getting me somewhere. I ran the compact utility on the
different TM backups on that Time Capsule, and it clawed back some
space from all of them *except* the one in which I had deleted its
backups. When I try I get the error message: "hdiutil: compact failed -
Resource temporarily unavailable". Is there a command to make it
available? Actually, I don't need this backup at all now. Can I just
delete it as if it were a normal folder tree? When I look at the
listing in the Terminal for the Time Capsule volume I see this:
========================================================
ellis:TheBiz Time Capsule root# ls -al
total 104
drwx------ 15 root wheel 466 Jan 30 15:27 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 5 root admin 170 Jan 30 23:14 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 16 Jan 30 15:01 .0016cbaf878a
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 16 Mar 6 2008 .0017f2c4f735
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 16 Apr 12 2008 .001b63a4e637
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 16 Nov 8 02:09 .001ff3cc3bfe
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 6148 Jan 30 15:27 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 root wheel 0 Nov 6 23:32 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
drwxrwxrwx@ 6 root wheel 264 Nov 6 23:34 donne_0017f2c4f735.sparsebundle
drwxrwxrwx@ 6 root wheel 264 Nov 8 00:06 ellis_0016cbaf878a.sparsebundle
drwxrwxrwx@ 6 root wheel 264 Nov 6 23:35 sayers_001b63a4e637.sparsebundle
drwxrwxrwx@ 6 root wheel 264 Nov 8 02:10 rendell_001ff3cc3bfe.sparsebundle
ellis:TheBiz Time Capsule root#
========================================================
If I navigate into one of the sparsebundle folders I see a folder
called bands. This contains the 8MB slice files that TM uses, it seems.
So in summary what I am wondering is, can I either make this
sparsebundle "available" so that I can compact it? Or can I just delete
it (since it is using up 150GB of space that I want back)? And if I
delete ellis_0016cbaf878a.sparsebundle should I delete the
corresponding .0016cbaf878a file (see listing above)?
Ian.
--
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>On 2009-01-30 18:30:08 +0000, aroojequ <what...@mac.com> said:
>
>>
>> I use this terminal command:
>>
>> hdiutil compact /Volumes/MyTimeCapsule/MyTMBackup.sparsebundle
>>
>> MyTimeCapsule=Name of your Time Capsule
>> MyTMBackup =Name of your TM Image
>>
>> It does what it's supposed to - tutn off TM backups while you're running it.
>
>different TM backups on that Time Capsule, and it clawed back some
>space from all of them *except* the one in which I had deleted its
>backups. When I try I get the error message: "hdiutil: compact failed -
>Resource temporarily unavailable". Is there a command to make it
>available?
Disable TM for the duration, and check that you don't have the
sparsebundle mounted (might be invisibly mounted as root, so check
from the terminal with `mount`).
> Actually, I don't need this backup at all now. Can I just
>delete it as if it were a normal folder tree?
Yes you can.
> And if I
>delete ellis_0016cbaf878a.sparsebundle should I delete the
>corresponding .0016cbaf878a file (see listing above)?
If you like, but it's not necessary. It's tiny and it'll get recreated
when you point the machine's TM at the share again anyway - it's the
MAC address of the primary network interface on that hardware.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
My swerver room, my patch panels. By the time they figure out why none of the
ports on their floor box work anymore I'll be done, dusted and down the pub
with a pint of something brewed with yeast that was smarter than they are.
-- Matt S Trout, asr
aroojequ
> On 2009-01-30 18:30:08 +0000, aroojequ <what...@mac.com> said:
>
>> On 2009-01-30 15:39:58 +0000, Ian Piper <ianp...@mac.com> said:
>>
>>> On 2009-01-30 09:34:02 +0000, Chris Ridd <chri...@mac.com> said:
>>>
>>>> On 2009-01-30 08:35:25 +0000, Ian Piper <ianp...@mac.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> <snip>
I assume the image isn't mounted? Or locked in some other way?
Yes, just delete the sparsebundles you're finished with including the
hidden file.
--
--
Ian Piper
GB of space on my Time Capsule. Shame Apple don't make it easier for
the poor benighted user to do this kind of housekeeping, or better yet
to have Time Machine automatically compact the database when you delete
all backups. I wonder how many people end up just adding on a new disk
when this happens?
Ian.
--