combining time machine backups

[SPNarwhal]

long situation, kindof.
i'll try to keep it short.

pretty much, i have gotten about 4 different laptops since I've had my time capsule. Now, when I try to back up, or look at my backups, they're in 4 different names and sections.
Now I have this new laptop and when I try to backup, it says there's no more room on my Time Capsule, I'm sure it's because it's probably trying to make a brand new file or something like that, again- but when I switch computers it asks if I want to continue using the same backup and I say yes, so I don't know why this is happening.

Is there any way I can thread all of these Time Machine backups together somehow and have it where I continue from the last one?
It seems really confusing, and I don't know why it has made 4 different back-up sections.

 

[Brian33]

Is there any way I can thread all of these Time Machine backups together somehow and have it where I continue from the last one?

I'm no expert, but I don't know of any way to do this.

Do you really need to save all those old backups? Time Machine (the backup software) makes a new .sparsebundle file for each computer that has been backed up. The filename is related to the computer name. That's why you have 4 .sparsebundle files -- one for each laptop you had backed up.

If these were all brand-new machines, I can't think of anything you'd want to keep from those backups. However, if one (or more?) have files from a previous computer that you haven't yet? copied to your new laptop, I could see why you want to save them. Is that the case?

The easiest way to proceed would be to make sure you have all the files on your (latest) laptop that you want to keep, and then erasing the Time Capsule disk and starting over with one fresh backup. If you need files from the old backups, copy them to the laptop first. I think you can do this with Finder.