How big is the first Time Machine backup?

[Gaelinic]

I purchased a late 2008 Macbook pro model in January. It was 2.5 ghz, 2 gigs ram, and 250 gb hard drive. And, it failed three weeks ago. After going back and forth Apple finally replaced it with a new higher end model; 2.66 ghz, 4gig ram, and 350 gb drive. I was quite satisfied with the upgrade. I used Migration Assistant to transfer data from the old Mac's Time Machine backup. Everything looks like it was uploaded to the new Mac. I'm a Mac newbie and just had a few questions.

1) The new Mac has Snow Leopard while the old one had Leopard. Using Migration Assistant, will everything work the same? Should I be worried about losing some information or some applications not working correctly?

2) I want to start a fresh time machine backup using my new computer. Can I erase the file titled "My Macbook.sparsebundle" on my time capsule? It contains the backup files from my old Mac. Now that they were transfered over, I don't believe I need them anymore. I'd rather start a fresh back up. What are your thoughts on that? If I erase this file, does it leave any ghost traces of files on my time capsule? I'd rather not format the disk since I also have a large amount of music and video files on the hard drive.

3) I noticed last night when it was doing a fresh back up that the Time machine backup file was 4 times larger than what I had on my hard drive. In other words, I have a bout 4 gigs on my Macintosh HD. But Time Machine was creating a backup file that was about 16 gigs. Is that normal for a first time backup or is something wrong with the way it is doing it?

Thank you.

Gaelinic

 

[BlueRevolution]

1) The new Mac has Snow Leopard while the old one had Leopard. Using Migration Assistant, will everything work the same?

Yes.

Should I be worried about losing some information

No.

or some applications not working correctly?

Yes. When a new OS is released, there are always a few applications that don't work properly. There's nothing you can do about that but find interim replacements or wait for updates.

2) I want to start a fresh time machine backup using my new computer. Can I erase the file titled "My Macbook.sparsebundle" on my time capsule?

Yes.

If I erase this file, does it leave any ghost traces of files on my time capsule?

Not as far as I know, no.

3) I noticed last night when it was doing a fresh back up that the Time machine backup file was 4 times larger than what I had on my hard drive. In other words, I have a bout 4 gigs on my Macintosh HD. But Time Machine was creating a backup file that was about 16 gigs. Is that normal for a first time backup or is something wrong with the way it is doing it?

No, that's a bit strange.

 

[Cboss]

When you say you only have 4 GB on your hard drive, do you mean 4GB used total, or 4GB of your stuff on it?

I'm guessing that 4GB is things that you've put on it and the other 12 or so GB are various system files from Snow Leopard itself. If not, you've got something seriously screwy going on... You might want to wait a while and see if it continues to backup more than seems to be needed, or if this was just a first time backup thing.

 

[devburke]

I would advise against erasing your old backups. It’s a BACKUP! You shouldn’t just wipe it out like that! Just keep it on your drive, and when it runs out of space, it’ll get rid of it on its own, hopefully by then you’ll be well into SL.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I would advise against erasing your old backups. It’s a BACKUP! You shouldn’t just wipe it out like that! Just keep it on your drive, and when it runs out of space, it’ll get rid of it on its own, hopefully by then you’ll be well into SL.

No it won't. Time Machine will discard old copies of the system it is backing up when it runs out of room, but it won't delete other backups/files on the drive.

 

[devburke]

No it won't. Time Machine will discard old copies of the system it is backing up when it runs out of room, but it won't delete other backups/files on the drive.

Touché. Well in that case I’d give it some time before deleting the old backups.

 

[devburke]

No it won't. Time Machine will discard old copies of the system it is backing up when it runs out of room, but it won't delete other backups/files on the drive.

Actually I clean installed SL and it’s been discarding my old Leopard copies, continuing as if I was still running the same machine (…well I mean I am, but it’s a fresh installation).

 

[devburke]

By the way, does everyone have .sparsebundles? Mine is Backups.backupdb, and everything inside there is just a plain folder without an extension.