09-02-2009, 02:54 PM

I have an apple extreme attached to a drobo set up as a NAS. One partition of the drobo has my time machine backups on it.

I have my iphoto library on my mac mini, saved in a sparseimage which is permanently mounted, to allow me to access it from different computers. The sparse image is huge, something like 50 GB. I am noticing that when time machine starts a backup, every time the mac mini is backing up the full sparse image, i.e. 50 GB.
a. this almost never completes, as the library is huge
b. it is hopelessly inefficient
c. it will fill up my 1 TB drobo partition in no time at all

is there a way to get round this so that only the files added or modified within the sparse image are backed up?

Thanks for any help,

Kurios

09-04-2009, 02:10 AM

can anyone help?

09-08-2009, 01:07 PM

anyone?

09-19-2009, 11:57 AM

I doubt it, is the short answer.

The way time machine works (i think) is to create incremental backups based on what's changed... Now, as far as time machine is concerned, the image is one big file, as opposed to lots of smaller ones. So every time you modify something in the image, the archive bit for the full image is set, so the next time you backup, time machine will plough through the image, taking all this time as you have described...

What I dont get is why don't you just share your iphoto library using iphoto. That way, you keep Iphoto running in the background and access your photos from other computers running iphoto.

Failing that, why not share the folder your iphoto file is sitting in using file sharing. That way multiple computers can connect to it and when one file changes, only that files archive bit will change and only that file will be backed up incrementally, saving time and space in the long run....

07-31-2010, 07:41 PM

wow, that sounds so simple. thanks. I will give it a try.