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General discussion

Adding another backup user to Time Capsule once its full

Jun 21, 2008 1:58AM PDT

I am backing up one MBP to Time Capsule now. Over time, I will add more Macs to my network and backing them up to Time Capsule as well This leads me to a question:

Let's say that one day soon my 1GB Time Machine disk has no more free space, and is removing old files as it performs the new backups. That's fine. But what happens if I then add a new Mac to backup to the unit? Will it tell me there is no more room on the disk to add the new Mac to backup? Or will it remove old data from the other other Macs' backups in order to this new user?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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A good question
Jun 21, 2008 6:14AM PDT

It would seem logical that this might happen but as each machine has it's own folder inside the Backups.Backupdb folder, thanks MBF, it is not likely that this is the procedure.

I believe that you will be told that there is not enough room on that drive, and I hope it is a whole bunch larger than the 1Gb you say Wink , so that it would not be possible to add another machine.

I'll wait to see what others say regarding this.

P

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Hope that's not the case
Jun 21, 2008 9:34AM PDT

Thanks for the thoughts. I hope that's not the case. Maybe it leaves a little room on the disk in case it needs to create a new folder, and then when it starts to fill that folder it would do what it normally does and removes older versions from other folder backups.

Let's see what some others say.

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MBF?
Jun 21, 2008 1:36PM PDT
Grin If I changed my username, that would actually work too.

I do not have a Time Capsule myself, but it would seem that this situation would be akin to any other. If you try to make a folder on a regular, wired hard drive when it is full, it won't work, and it certainly won't delete other files to do it unless you specifically overwrite them. But you'd probably have to do that manually. So if the Capsule is full, it won't delete another Mac's data to add room for another one. Each individual Mac is set up to remove its own backups once they are outdated, but that does not mean another Mac can do the same. I'm sure Time Machine is scripted to prevent this from occurring.

But here's something I noticed: if you open up the first Time Machine folder, Backups as it is called, you'll find a separate folder for each Mac using the drive. I'm going to assume that Peter already went and opened those folders too, Wink. Anyway, in those folders, I believe you will find a file for each backup that each Mac has made. So technically, you could manually go in and remove some of those to provide more space, but whether or not this will disrupt the other Macs' Time Machine backups is beyond me.

I leave that alternative open to slobizman, but I cannot verify that it works. On a side note, I'm curious to see how fast a group of Macs will backup to a Time Capsule over a standard, broadband connection. I heard it was okay, but not too great.

-BMF
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BMF
Jun 21, 2008 11:36PM PDT

I have severely chastised the fingers on my right hand for the unforgivable typo.

Sad

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...
Jun 22, 2008 6:34AM PDT

I think that the member profile system here could use a few upgrades. I suppose I could use a change to my username. Anyway, typos happen. Grin

-BMF