Hi Peter, 1. I would definitely recommend you purchase a 3TB Time Capsule for Time Machine to backup 5 MacBooks. I use a 3TB Time Capsule 802.11n (4th Generation) to backup ONE (1) MacBook Pro. Time Machine needs a lot of free space to work efficiently. Problems occur when there is not enough free space on the disk. <http://store.apple.com/au/product/ME182X/A/airport-time-capsule-3tb>
2. Re: your wife's doubling the size of her TM backup "Sparsebundle" would have happened by NOT selecting "Reuse Backup" when setting up for the first backup of new machine. I would delete your wife's "sparsebundle" from the Time Capsule Disk. I seem to remember sending you details some time back how to delete sparsebundle from Time Capsule. 3. Re: Macbook 4.1 model is (13-inch, late 2008) 2.4GHz and 2GB memory I would suggest you install more memory... It can take 6.0 GB. If this is the MB you have (or going to have) its Maximum OS is Mac OS X 10.7.5 Cheers, Ronni Sent from Ronni's iPad > On 13 Dec 2013, at 4:51 pm, Peter Crisp <petercr...@westnet.com.au> wrote: > > Hi Muggers, I have a 1TB Time Capsule which has the backup Sparsebundle files > of the 4 Macbooks (my Wife's plus 3 kids) currently in my house. I have > bought a MacBook Pro for middle child for school next year and as a result I > can have his hand-me-down (hand-me-up??) Black Macbook (not such a bad thing > as it has a 120GB SSD). Anyway, the TC is nearing it's 1TB capacity limit as > it is, but once I set up the 5th Macbook for me and associated TC backup, it > will exceed the capacity of the TC. > > My question is, if I attach an external drive to the TC USB port, can I > select that external drive as the destination of my 'hand-me-down' Macbook > backup OR should I be replacing my TC with a 2TB or 3TB unit? Maybe the > external drive needs to be dedicated to Time Machine Backups instead of other > data as well, which would be fine. > > Compounding the above problem, my wife's recent (earlier this year) upgrade > to a 13" MBP resulted somehow in a peculiar doubling of the size of the > sparsebundle file for her MBP - not sure how it happened. In any case, I am > inclined to make a clone of the MBP, then blow away the sparesebundle file, > and set up a new TM backup and so reduce it back to the ~230GB of her current > data instead of the current 533GB sparesebundle file for a 500GB MBP!! Is > this intended action the best way to fix the oversize sparsebundle issue I > have for my wife's MBP? I'm not worried about any "lost" data as the cloning > in it's current state will be good enough given the data content. > > I am also interested in knowing what OSX I can get the hand-me-down black > Macbook upgraded to. It is a Macbook 4.1 model, currently using OSX 10.6.8, > 2.4GHz and 2GB memory. If I have to stay with Snow Leopard, thats fine, for > my purposes it will be ok till I get a 13" Retina MBP early next year. Is > Mavericks or ML beyond this machines capability? > > Apologies for containing a number of questions in this but for context, these > issues are not able to be completely separated into discrete subjects. > > Regards > > > Pete > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
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