[keriah]

I run a weekly copy that uses a script to restrict the copy to a single folder on the source disk, updating a sparsebundle file. The source folder is now significantly smaller, having had many of its files removed. (It used to be over 300gb. The source folder is now just over 18gb.)

The sparsebundle file, however, is taking over 500gb on the backup drive.

The copy seems to think it is only copying the 18gb folder -- here are 2 lines from today's log:
--------------------
Copied 192 items totaling 18.32 GB (33 directories, 159 files, 0 symlinks)
Cloned 18.96 GB of data in 1150 seconds at an effective transfer rate of 16.49 MB/s
----------------------

When I mount the sparsebundle I see that it only contains the one folder, with the expected contents.

How can I reclaim the space so that the sparsebundle is taking closer to the size of the folder of the source? Yes, I suppose I could delete the bundle file and recreate the scheduled copy, but I'd like to know, in general, if there is a proper way to reclaim space.