How can I use time machine to back up and play media?

I just bought an external hard drive that I wanted to back up some media files onto (music and photos).  I also want to stove videos/movies on the hard drive and play them from there.  A few questions:
1. Is that the same as backing up with time machine or is it referred to as something else?
2.  Can I use time machine to add new files, or should I do that manually?
3. Once the files are on my hard drive, can I remove them from my computer or should I keep them there?
I know that these questions may seem obvious, but I'm concerned about losing files because I don't understand what time machine actually does.  Please feel free to ask me questions if you need to understand my question better.  Thanks!

Time Machine makes a backup of your hard drive, which you can restore from, but not use as a repository of data.
Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups as you change things on the Mac HD.
Time Machine is not an archive, meaning if you make a backup, and then delete the originals from your Mac, Time Machine will eventually delete the copies it has made.
However, if you copy the files directly to the external, then you can remove them from the computer. But, those will be your only copies. If that disk dies, they'll be gone. So, that's really not a backup. It's the only source.
You can back up to Time Machine and also store other files on the same disk.

Similar Messages

  • Can we use Time Machine to back up data on Time Capsule from the outside of network?

    I have Time Capsule at home.  Can I use Time Machine to back up data of portable nootebook when I am working at office?

    If you mean over the internet, you can but it will be so slow and more than likely so unreliable it is a poor method to use. Remember all internet is limited to upload speed.
    Lion does a temporary backup onto local hard disk.. which is useless of course if the hard drive is damaged.. but helps if you delete an important file. Then when you go back home and it discovers the TC is available it will then backup again from where it left off.
    I think it is only a major issue if you are away from home for major lengths of time, weeks or months.

  • How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

    How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

    Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
    Click Time Machine
    Click Options
    Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
    The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
    Everything above assumes that the hard drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Time Machine will only backup drives in that format.

  • Can I use time machine to back up via a hard drive connected by USB to a HomeHub router?

    Can I use time machine to back up via a hard drive connected by USB to a BT HomeHub router? Is there a better way to back up and store files than via the USB port on my new MacBook Pro? I'd like storage to be accessible from my earlier version MacBook too.

    I think you want to make backups without connecting a hard disk via USB. In other words, you want to have the data storage be shared in your home wirelessly.
    If this is the case, I recommend using a Time Capsule.
    Time Capsule works great with Time Machine. You can set up all your devices to automatically make backups on the Time Capsule wirelessly and effortlessly.

  • Before downloading lion, i want to backup my computer with time machine and a G-DRIVE Slim.  But how can i use time machine to only backup my system once?

    Just wondering, how can i use time machine to only backup my system once? Just this once and not on a weekly basis?

    Upgrade. My three year old Mac Pro and year old MacBook Pro have no problem. Both seem faster.
    And there's your problem reading entirely subjective views on forums, from people that might or might not have decently maintained systems, good operating practices, or whatever.... 
    Strangely, when most companies issue new software, it is because they believe (and believe they have checked) that it is better than the previous version.

  • My Macbook won't start, and I must reinstall the disk. I haven't used time machine to back up, and I want to use an external drive to back up now. How can i do this from the utilities page?

    I am currently in Zambia on missions work and my computer is constantly exposed to heat. I have just been trying to avoid using it during the hottest part of the day. Today though, I started it up and it was stuck on the grey page with the rotating circle for over an hour, then once the circle left, it remained frozen on the gray page. I used command + r at startup to go to the utilities page to analyze the disk. It found that there were problems with the disk, but then it could not fix those problems and told me to backup as much information as I could and reinstall or redo it all. I haven't ever used time machine to back up any of my information, but i have an external drive that I can use right now to backup my files. I can't get into my computer though to backup the files. How can I use this external drive to backup my files while the computer is currently messed up? Please help.

    Emergency Backups (Data Recovery)
    A)          Format an external disk:
              (This will erase all data on the external disk.)
              Boot in recovery mode (power then Command-R).
                        Alternative: Network recovery boot (power then Command-Option-R keys)
              To format (and erase) the destination recovery disk:
              Plug in the drive you are about to erase.
              Select the volume that is NOT your system disk.
              Click on Partition.
              Pull down under Partition Layout to 1 Partition.
              Click on Options…
              Select GUID Partition Table.
              Name: Emergency Backup (or whatever you prefer)
              Format: Select Mac OS Extended (journaled)
              Click Apply.
              Click Partition.
    B)          Try to boot in Safe Mode (power then Shift key).
              (This will be a slow boot.  Be patient.)
              If it won’t boot in Safe Mode, jump to C.
              If it boots in Safe Mode, try to boot in normal mode.
                        If that fixed your problem then start a Time Machine backup.
                        http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
                        https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4055
              If not, boot in Safe Mode again.
              Go > Computer.
              Double click on the system disk.
              Drag the Users folder to the recovery disk.
    C)          To clone the disk:
              Boot in recovery mode.
              Select Disk Utility.
              Try to repair the system disk twice.
              Whether or not the repair succeeds:
              Drag and drop the system disk to Source:
              Drag an drop Emergency Backup to Destination:
              (Take care not to reverse this order.)
              Click Restore (the lower Restore button).
    Once your system is healthy, maintain two reasonably current backups.  (Time machine restores can fail.)
    Create either two Time Machine backups (good) or one or more Time Machine backup(s) and one or more bootable-clone backup(s) (better).
              Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to create bootable-clone recovery disks.
              See https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
              and https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

  • How can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files?

    I read that iWeb stores one's website pages in the domain folder which can be located at ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb. Can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files? If so, how? -I tried. I entered my Time Machine back up, and went back in time and brought the domain file forward but it opened only my current site pages, not the ones I am trying to recover. And it says the Domain file was last modified in October 2007 which is crazy because I've been using iWeb a lot and have published many pages. It seems like the uncorrupted pages, which I am trying to recover, existed somewhere on my computer at one point in time and space, less than a week ago, becuse I just published my site to a new hosting service since Apple will soon stop web hosting. So why can I not find them using time machine?

    I continued searching and read another person's advise to down load an app named "Find File," then search for .sites. She said spotlight doesn't always find all files. So I did and sure enough, when I searched for .sites I found another Domain package, which I have no idea how it was created but which, it ends up, was the one actually being used by iWeb. So I went to that package then did the time machine and went back to before my web pages became corrupted. I had to delete corrupt blog pages out of my website menu to get iWeb to upload the other page changes even to a local folder.
    So I went to that newly found Domain, went back in time, then brought that forward and as you pointed out the domain package had the parts of the pages, the files and jpegs, but not the structure/layout of the pages. So, I guess I gave up on finding the old pages.
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    My problems started when I tried to publish my website to the new server. It just would not publish the whole website in one session. So I decided to do it a few pages at a time. Some pages went up, but as I added more, for some unknown reason the, blog pages, (about 70 subpages),  which had aleardy uploaded just fine to the new server, became corrupt and locked up iWeb. Of course once I deleted the corrupt pages I didn't want to continue publishing the site to the host until I found and reinserted uncorrupted pages, knowing publishing changes would delete the already published pages.
    At first I thought it was the hosting server's fault, but when I discovered that it wouldn't publish even to a local fold I was able to locate the cause within iWeb, deleted those pages then tested by publishing to a local folder. iWeb worked locally, so I knew I had found the problem pages. Well this is way more than you wanted to know. Thanks for your advise but I'll just start the blogging pages over.

  • HOW CAN I USE TIME MACHINE TO BACKUP ONLY PART OF MY FILES ON EXTERNAL D?

    Hi, I am using time machine to back up all my files at the moment. but I want to get rid of video and photo material from my laptop and keep it on the external hard drive to which the time machine backs up my stuff.
    how can i do this without losing the video and photo files permamnently?
    thank a lot!

    nefsi wrote:
    doesn't time machine back up my files on the External hard disk?
    By default, Time Machine backs-up almost everything on your internal HD to your External HD. It can also back up things on an external HD, if you want it to.
    What I would like is, to find a way so that I could back up everything, but not have all the videos and photos I do not use often, on my laptop. instead I want to put them on the external hard drive and have time machine update all the other files.
    Yes, you can do that, but there are two considerations:
    You should partition the external HD so the TM backups are in one partition, and the other files are in the other partition. A partition (also called a volume), is treated like a separate disk for most purposes. See #3 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
    You should find another way to back-up the videos and photos in that other partition, such as archiving them to CDs/DVDs.
    In other words, can Time machine back up only some of my files?
    Yes. You can exclude things from Time Machine. See #10 in the FAQ Tip. If you partition your TM drive, the other partition on it should be excluded automatically; but if it isn't, you can easily add it to the +Do not back up+ list in TM Preferences > Options.
    For detailed instructions on making another partition on your external HD, see #6 in the FAQ Tip. It shows how to add a TM partition to a drive that already has other data on it, but the procedure is the same.

  • How can i use time machine with a network drive

    I have a Western Digital Net N900 wireless router with a 2TB internal H/D. How can I get Time Machine to reconize it?

    Relying only on TM to me is iffy but I would bet you have clones in addition to TM like I do.  I agree with everything you said but to the OP question, it is possible.  A time capsule or AEBS+HD are pretty similar but one is officially supported while the later is not.
    Since I'm rambling a bit I will add this.  I only use TM for the times I delete something and then wish I had it back.  All my restores or migrations are done from my clones.  One clone is made weekly and is a snap shot of my system.  One clone I keep remotely located and is updated monthly.
    My system:
    Internal 1TB
    Ext HD1 2TB (1TB data, 1TB clone)
    Ext HD2 2TB time machine backup (internal + HD1 data, not the clone)
    Remote 1TB clone
    I'm fully redudant with my method and it has saved me before.

  • Can I use Time Machine to back files on an External Hard Drive

    My MacBook Pro hard drive filled up with movies, pictures, and music, so I bought a 2TB Time Capsule.  I have a external hard drive that is about the same capacity as my MacBook hard drive. Sine the Time Capsule is by far the largest drive I have, I moved all my movies, music, and pictures to the Time Capsule and am using it as an external hard drive.  I attached a 500GB external hard drive to the Time Capsule and I use that as the backup drive for Time Machine. However, the problem I am encountering is that I can't seem to direct Time Machine to include all of my files on my Time Capsule in the back up on to the other external hard drive. 
    Can I use Time Machine to backup data that I store on my Time Capsule to a external hard drive?  If not, what is hte best method for backing up my files that are on my Time Capsule?
    Thanks,
    David

    You need to use a different utility .. eg CCC or Chronosync to backup from the TC to yet another drive.. the problem is, that drive should be connected to the computer.. if you use a USB drive on the TC.. the file copying will be slow as slow as you will not believe.. all files are copied to the computer, then back to the TC.. it cannot copy directly to the TC..
    As Neil said.. one way or another you need to use an external drive on the computer, even if you don't use it all the time.. the danger of course is not doing regular backups.. and forgetting their importance.
    A true NAS will have automated backup incrementally of the files stored.. The TC is not a NAS in that sense.. it is a backup target for TM above and beyond anything else.

  • How do I use Time Machine w/ Imac/MacBook and AirportExtreme w/ Ext.HD?

    I have an iMac and a Macbook w a LaCie 1TB HD and Airport Extreme Base Station. I want to use Time Machine to back up both computers. I was told I should connect the HD to each one separately w USB first to speed up the initial copy and then plug it into Airport and it should automatically continue to back up each computer. Is this the best/fastest way to do it? Do I need to install any software for the ext. HD on each computer first?

    N8 Curry wrote:
    I have an iMac and a Macbook w a LaCie 1TB HD and Airport Extreme Base Station. I want to use Time Machine to back up both computers. I was told I should connect the HD to each one separately w USB first to speed up the initial copy and then plug it into Airport and it should automatically continue to back up each computer.
    no, this won't work actually, because directly attached backups are stored differently. you should START the backups when the drive is attached to EABS. once it's started you can interrupt the backup by control-clicking on TM in the dock->stop backup. THEN move the drive to be directly attached and resume the backup. this way it will continue the backup started remotely. once the first backup is finished you can move the drive back to AEBS.
    repeat for the second computer.
    Is this the best/fastest way to do it? Do I need to install any software for the ext. HD on each computer first?
    no, no extra software is needed. but you do need to make sure that you have installed all the updates for AEBS.

  • How do I Use Time Machine to back up external HD

    I have an iMac running Snow Leopard (10.6.7). I have a 1 TB USB external hard drive directly connected to the iMac that I use to store about 300 GB of pictures and videos (I will call this one AUX). I have another 1 TB USB external hard drive (I will call this one BACKUP) that is also directly connected to the iMac. I am using this one with Time Machine to back up my iMac hard drive. All connections are direct USB, no WiFi. Both external drives are formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Time Machine works fine with the iMac hard drive but will not back up the AUX external drive. The Time Machine system preferences window has an "Exclude these items from backups" display that shows only the BACKUP external drive (grey so not selectable). It does not seem to see the AUX hard drive. How can I get it to back up AUX???

    Uhh, well, I guess I have to qualify my question above. Upon using a third party file search program, I find that the contents of my AUX external drive are being backed up by Time Machine. But, when I use Spotlight to search my Time Machine backup HD, I get nothing, which is why I thought it was not working right.
    So, why is Spotlight not giving me results on my Time Machine BACKUP external drive???

  • Can you use time machine to back up an external hard drive?

    I haven't used Time Machine so far and setting it up now.
    Because my retina MBP has the limited hard drive size of 500GB, I'll be using a 2TB G-Tech hard drive as external hard drive.
    I'll be partitioning it, 500 GB for the MBP as a time machine back-up, the rest as a hard drive for photography RAW files.
    Can I set up time machine to back up the larger partition (the one with the RAW files) to a second external hard drive? Or does Time Machine only handle back-up from the main computer hard drive?
    thanks!

    Try reviewing this information.
    Time Machine FAQ
    You will definitely need more than 500 GB to use Time Machine - see question 1.
    Time Machine works with the main hard drive and any locally attached storage, but I don't know of any way to make it backup the second partition without resetting the Time Machine Preferences. You can do that with a cloning program.
    Clone  - Carbon Copy Cloner
    Clone – Data Backup
    Clone – Deja Vu
    Clone  - SuperDuper
    Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
    Two backups are better than one. Drives do fail.

  • Can I Use Time Machine To Back Up a FAT32 Disk Containing Image Files?

    New iMac User Here.  I just bought a brand new but mid-2010 27" i7 iMac.  Although I've used recent MacBooks when traveling I've got no experience with Time Machine or other similar third party back up software.
    I moved to the iMac from a desktop PC running Windows XP Pro SP3.  I use the computer(s) mainly for photo image storage and processing.  My workflow is based upon Adobe Lightroom (now v3.4.1) and I plan to stick with it.  In the PC I had three internal hard drives, 2 of which were dedicated to image files.  They were formatted as Windows NTFS.  In preparation for the switch I formatted an external drive as FAT32 and copied all the image files to it.  Now with the iMac I have Lightroom installed on its internal hard drive but keep the image files on the external hard drive and access them as needed.  So far, so good.
    The problem arose when I tried to set up Time Machine to back up both the internal hard drive and the external external drive.  It will back up the former but not the latter.  It tells me it does not interact with FAT32 disks.
    Any thoughts, explanations and/or solutions for establishing a simple, single back up routine for both internal and external drives will be most appreciated.

    Thanks very much for the quick response.  You confirm my intial suspicion, but your suggestion relies on my memory to accomplish on a regular basis (not the best of solutions) and further would be an extended disk run every night because it would not just be backing up new additions but the whole large disk, right?

  • Can I use time machine to back up computer hard drive AND contents of an external HD (contains only photos) onto another external hard drive (standalone HD for backups only)? PLEASE HELP!!

    I keep my photo files on a separate external hard drive, separate from my laptop hard drive. And I want to be able to use time machine as the back-up system to back up BOTH the computer's hard drive AND the external hard drive.... and i want all of the "back-up" information contained on a separate standalone external HD.  So in the end, I have a 250GB computer hardrive, a 1TB external hardrive, and I want to have a 2nd external hard drive that will be the location to store the "back-ups" (using time machine) which will be either a 2TB or 3TB harddrive.
    I am in dire need of help....

    Yes, just make sure that they are not excluded in Time Machine.

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