Question about Sparse Disk Images

[Tom Wolsky]

The sparse image will grow to a maximum specified size. If you make an 80G image and put 79.9G in it, there is very little room for it to grow.

Also space in a sparse image cannot be recovered. If you grow the sparse image to 80G and throw away 30G of media the space is not recovered. It does not go down to 50G, but remains at 80G and if that’s the limit, it will not grow further.

All the best,

Tom

“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2012 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand

[Jason Jenkins]

[Michael Garber] “Recently, I archived a project and event that was about 80GB. I created it as a Sparse Bundle and followed the directions as outlined on Ripple. I decided to go back into the project/event and do some messing around.

It was my understanding that a Sparse Bundle would grow in disk size if you added files to it. However, when I was rendering the footage, I got a disk space error. Then, FCP would lock up and I’d force quit. When restarting, I’d get a SAN disk error (I’m not using a SAN). Quitting again and unmounting the Sparse Bundle fixed it. I think there were some other errors, but I didn’t log it.

So, does anyone know off hand if I did something wrong or if, perhaps, I’m just wrong about my assumption with Sparse Images? I read about a terminal command for shrinking the images down, if necessary.”

Sparseimages will only take up as much space as you use up inside them. So, if you create an 80GB sparseimage and only have 10GB of content inside it, it is only taking up 10GB of space on your drive. You can add content up to the 80GB limit that you first set, at which point you hit a wall (as you discovered). However, you can resize the sparseimage in Disk Utility as follows:

1. Open Disk Utility
2. If the Sparseimage you want to resize does not show up in the pane on the left, then drag the sparseimage from the finder to the left pane in Disk Utility.
3. Select the sparseimage in Disk Utility and click on the “Resize Image” button on the upper right.
4. Type in the new size and hit “Resize”.
5. In the left pane, right-click on the sparseimage and select “Open Disk Image”. The “Partition” option will now become available on the right.
6. Hit the “Partition” button and you will see a graphical representation of your partition size. Click on the bottom right corner of the partition (representing the previous size) and drag it out to fill the new size of your sparseimage.
7. Hit “Apply”, then “Partion”.
8. Enjoy your resized sparseimage!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Michael Garber]

Thanks for the info! I’ll try this out today.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Michael Hadley]

That’s great to know that you can expand/resize a sparse disk image. Can you go in another direction? Let’s you created a sparse disk that was 150 GB but only used 100GB–can you shrink the sparse disk to save space once the project is complete?

Thanks.

[Jason Jenkins]

[Michael Hadley] “That’s great to know that you can expand/resize a sparse disk image. Can you go in another direction? Let’s you created a sparse disk that was 150 GB but only used 100GB–can you shrink the sparse disk to save space once the project is complete?”

That’s the handy thing; you don’t need to shrink them because they are only as big as the stuff you put in them.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Tom Wolsky]

Yes, but they do fill up, and simply trashing the stuff in the sparse image you don’t won’t will not release the space. Usually I just rebuild the spare image to get back the room.

All the best,

Tom

“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2012 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand

[Adrian Mora]

I got this from another thread, but if you don’t want to rebuild the image (and are not scared of using the terminal) you can run this command:

hdiutil compact MyFile.sparseimage

[Max Bilbow]

I found creating sparse-bundles was too technical for my interns (and most people) so I created this app with automator: https://www.rattlemedia.co.uk/store/rattle/software/item/182-fcpx-sparsebundle

I’d love to get some feedback.