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sansumbrella/query-sparsebundle-band-size.sh

Created November 4, 2012 17:10
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Query band size of a sparsebundle (also accessible in Info.plist of bundle)
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query-sparsebundle-band-size.sh
# find out how big the sparse-band-size is in a mounted volume
hdiutil info -verbose | grep band-size
# default Time Machine sparsbundle virtual-band-size = 16384 (8MB)
# create-sparsebundle's virtual-band-size = 262144 (128MB)
@sansumbrella
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Alternatively, look at the Info.plist in the .sparsebundle. This band-size is 512x the virtual-band-size returned by hdiutil.
Time Machine default band-size:
8388608
create-sparsebundles' band-size:
134217728

@cognivator
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cognivator commented Jan 29, 2023 •
edited

For anyone finding this 10 years on (2023...)

My short investigation into my NAS Timemachine volume (Synology DSM 7.x) shows a band size of 256MB. I believe this must reflect Timemachine picking a much better default than in the past, probably based on some combination of OS Version (Monterey), drive location (NAS v local), and volume size (mine is 11TB).

@billzhong
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Creating a new Time Machine backup in macOS Sonoma, the band size is now 8GB.

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