(2011-06-11) Time Capsule Getting Full

My Time Capsule is getting full.

I need to try and figure out why it's getting so full, since it's only backing up 2 machines. My old MacBook only has a 150GB drive, and The Wife's IMac has a bigger drive but shouldn't have that much stuff on it (update: roughly 150MB used out of 300MB). But it could be backing up The Boys' games, and maybe I don't feel like wasting space for that...

But aside from that, I'm about to have all our Negative Scanning done. Then we might have our old Video Camera archives scanned too, though I'm not sure whether I want to fill up Hard Drive space with those, vs just keeping them on DVD....

use with a ReadyNAS? http://www.readynas.com/ Drobo?

I'm buying the Take Control of Mac OS X Back Up-s EBook for $15. A couple things this prompted me to do:

• I set a couple folders (/Downloads and /Apps/WoW) to not be backed up
  • oh yeah, Drop Box folder was getting backed up - turned that off.
• I'm trying to delete backups of these folders. So I go into Time Machine, select the folder, hit "Delete all backups of..." in the Action menu, it warns me about not being able to undo, then brings up prompt for Admin password, but won't actually let me type anything!
  • Posted support question.
  • Update: after rebooting various machines it all worked.

Hmm, might it make sense to just add a big USB drive to the Time Capsule?

• Sounds like:
  • Time Machine won't just treat the 2 drives a 1 combined logical drive.
  • I could possibly backup 1 Mac to the Time Capsule drive and the other Mac to the USB drive.
  • Another idea is to just replace the drive unit inside the Time Capsule. I've read that you can put as big as the newer 3TB drives in... If you have the newer Time Capsule, then this won't work. The new ones won't recognize all the space on a 3 TB drive. (Mine is older.)
• Here's confirmation of having to handle the 2 drives separately, with a specific model of going back and forth between the 2 drives (where you throw away the oldest set of backups).

Another approach might be to

• use the Time Capsule for "most" uses for all the machines
• but use a separate external Hard Drive connected directly to The Wife's IMac for photos/videos. Then I can make copies of that drive, take a copy offsite, etc.

Probable plan

• buy a 2TB USB drive to connect to the Time Capsule, have some machines backup to that drive while others use the internal drive.
• buy a 2TB FireWire drive to connect to the IMac just to hold IPhoto, for when the internal drive fills up.
• I guess I should buy a 2nd 2TB FireWire drive to back up that previous drive.
• I probably only need to buy the first drive now, unless I want to make sure the multiple drives look the same. :)

Checking Deal Mac.

• no FireWire deals!
• a number of USB deals.

I wonder if there's a cheap little shelf-rack to put 4 non-matching horizontal drives on, so they all get decent airflow....

• La Cie has a nice little rack, but wouldn't work with other stuff
• I'm leaning toward stacking IOmega Mini Max units, and then considering some sort of office-supply stacker or other hack for the future.
  • local Apple Store has it for $200, vs $155 at Amazon.
    • I had to go to that mall anyway, so picked it up.

Found some instructions for setting up the new drive.

• Connected IOmega drive directly to IMac (with USB). Used Disk Utility to rename and format (journaled/case-sensitive); just took a minute.
  • 2016 update: If you're using an external drive connected to your Mac, use Disk Utility to make sure that your backup drive is formatted as HFS+ Extended (Journaled) and that the partition type is GUID Partition Table (GPT).
• Connected drive to Time Capsule with USB.
• Tonight I will connect MacBookPro to Time Capsule with EtherNet cable and kick off initial backup to the IOmega.
• Update: connected. Setting up Time Machine. But it's not recognizing the external drive, I only see the internal drive available.
• Tried cycling the power on the new drive. That didn't help.
• Use Airport Utility to restart the Time Capsule. That did it!
• Jul08'2011 update: but never seemed to take advantage of the EtherNet cable, only wanted to work over WiFi. So it took a week to get a good Back Up done. Then I started deleting redundant stuff from the old MacBook, and from its Time Capsule archives.

Oct'2011 sidebar: for Online Back Up, a number of techie friends are fans of Crash Plan and Back Blaze. (Not all services with a NAS, etc.)