LS: Why is Smart Update so large?

[MacCetera]

Originally Posted by dnanian

As I recall (and mentioned above), there's a spotlight index inside the TM backups.backupdb too.

There's only one Spotlight location on Time Machine volumes - and none were found within the Backups.backupdb directory...

root@jupiter
/Volumes/Amalthea $find /Volumes/Himalia -name .Spotlight-V100
/Volumes/Himalia/.Spotlight-V100

A more general search yields only spotlight-named things that should be in the backup...

root@jupiter
/Volumes/Amalthea $find /Volumes/Himalia -name *Spotlight*
/Volumes/Himalia/.Spotlight-V100
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 7/CenterStage-Chapters.theme/Contents/Resources/CenterStage-Main-Spotlights.qtz
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 7/CenterStage-Extras.theme/Contents/Resources/CenterStage-Main-Spotlights.qtz
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes/iDVD 7/CenterStage-Main.theme/Contents/Resources/CenterStage-Main-Spotlights.qtz
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Spotlight
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Spotlight/GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter
/Volumes/Himalia/Backups.backupdb/Jupiter/2008-09-22-001142/Europa/Library/Spotlight/GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/GBSpotlightImporter
... Backups.backupdb entries repeated for every TM session ...

Perhaps you're confusing this with a .Spotlight-V100 directory within each TM sparse bundle for networked backups. But there is ONLY one.

By the way - lest you think that I'm being critical or pedantic about this - I'm just VERY HAPPY that SuperDuper handles cloning TM disks at all... NOTHING else out there can even touch them except a block based cloner... and for that support I am EXTREMELY thankful...

-- Marc