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Forum Discussion
"Virginizing" Time Machine
Hello fellow ReadyNAS users.
I've been playing around with Time Machine on my ReadyNAS Duo for a while trying to correct my mistakes from my first set up. I.e. I initially didn't use the correct TM share on the ReadyNAS and ended up having lots of problems with my sparesbundles.
I've fixed all that and have a new hard drive in my MacBook Pro.
But, when trying to make a new first TM backup of my new hard drive I get a new problem.
Although I've set the ReadyNAS TM limit to 505 GB, which is way higher than needed, TM stops after a couple of hours and says it needs more space. 300 something GBs in total.
In short:
- My MBP hard drive is 500 GB.
- ReadyNAS TM capacity is 505 GB.
- I've deleted my old sparsebundles.
- TM runs out of space at about 300 GB.
My questions:
1. Is there a way to "virginize" or reset the TM share to fix this quota problem?
2. Could a reinstall help?
Take a look at the screenshot of my SSH session.
3. Should there be two Time Machine folders (.timemachine and .Timemachine)?
4. Also take a look at the sizes. The .timemachine folder size I understand since it has my started sparsebundle in it. But why is the other one so large?
I run RAIDiator 4.1.8 [1.00a043] on a ReadyNAS duo.
MacOS X Lion.
Thanks in advance!
/P
I've been playing around with Time Machine on my ReadyNAS Duo for a while trying to correct my mistakes from my first set up. I.e. I initially didn't use the correct TM share on the ReadyNAS and ended up having lots of problems with my sparesbundles.
I've fixed all that and have a new hard drive in my MacBook Pro.
But, when trying to make a new first TM backup of my new hard drive I get a new problem.
Although I've set the ReadyNAS TM limit to 505 GB, which is way higher than needed, TM stops after a couple of hours and says it needs more space. 300 something GBs in total.
In short:
- My MBP hard drive is 500 GB.
- ReadyNAS TM capacity is 505 GB.
- I've deleted my old sparsebundles.
- TM runs out of space at about 300 GB.
My questions:
1. Is there a way to "virginize" or reset the TM share to fix this quota problem?
2. Could a reinstall help?
Take a look at the screenshot of my SSH session.
3. Should there be two Time Machine folders (.timemachine and .Timemachine)?
4. Also take a look at the sizes. The .timemachine folder size I understand since it has my started sparsebundle in it. But why is the other one so large?
I run RAIDiator 4.1.8 [1.00a043] on a ReadyNAS duo.
MacOS X Lion.
Thanks in advance!
/P
7 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Alright, so I removed the contents of the "bands" folder in .Timemachine (see screenshot above) as the files in it seemed to be from an old backup and were taking up much space.
This should have freed up 199 GB, which was also confirmed by frontview. (10% less space used). So far so good.
Did a reboot with a quota check.
I then tried to start TM again. But, it still stops just after "Preparing Backup" saying it needs more space.
What is wrong here? Is something still not compatible with Lion?
Would still appreciate any suggestions!
Thanks.
/P - There should not be 2 folders for timemachine - the ".Timemachine" folder seems very wrong as it contains the internal contents of a sparsebundle and also ReadyNAS have always used ".timemachine" for TM backups. I have no idea how that can have happened - looking at my 4.2.19 installation and I see no such additional folder.
As you have SSH access, I'd be inclined to get rid of the .Timemachine folder entirely
As for lack of space - my guess is that something has happened to cause TM to want to backup your entire HDD, but there is not enough space to do that without overwriting the existing TM backup contents. TM will not do this if you only have a single version of files in the backup, forcing you to manually archive the current backup and create a new one.
Moral is - TM really needs to be able to store 2 full copies of your HDD to work reliably, or at least without your manual intervention - Hi, thanks for the answer!
You're right about the .Timemachine folder. I compared it with the contents of the sparsebundle and they were very similar.
I'll remove it entirely as you recommend, since I've only emptied the "bulk" data in the bands folder.
I removed the Mother.sparesbundle, reinstalled the OS and have now successfully made an entire backup.
As I have a 500GB laptop disk, I figured that since I'll probably never fill that disk entirely, a TM quota of about 505GB would be enough.
What size of the ReadyNAS quota do you recommend in my case? Twice the size of the disk just seems too much, if that's what you mean by "2 full copies". Aren't the backups incremental?
Many thanks again!
/P - Personally I use the metric of 1.5x my max expected data.
Eg on a 500GB dsk that I'd probably never fill >400GB I'd allow 600GB - Haha, I actually set it to 600GB, just before you answered. Thanks for the confirmation! :)
BR/P - Well- I deleted .timemachine in an attempt to virginize. Seems like my DUO wont recreate it now... so obviously I cant do any backups. Any idea on what I should do
?
Thanks! - Hi, I didn't delete my .timemachine folder. I deleted the .Timemachine folder (capital T) that apparently had appeared out of nowhere and messed up my quota.
I've seen reccommendations in the forum to make a OS Re-install if you have deleted the .timemachine folder. I can't however verify that it works.
BR/P
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