HT201250 Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?

Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?
I have one 1T Western Digital backup drive that works well with Time Machine and my MacBook Pro. I now want to back up my wife's MacBook Air using Time Machine on her Mac and want to know if I can use the same WD external drive or if I need to get a 2nd back up drive? If I can use one external drive for the two Macs do I need to do something special on the drive or will Time Machine do it automatically?

Yes. You will need to configure Time Machine preferences on each computer to backup to the same drive. Note that you cannot connect the backup drive to both machines at the same time.

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Can I use Time Machine on two different Hard Drives?

Hi, I have a Time Capsule on which I make my Time Machine back up every time, but I also want to back up all my data on another external HD using Time Machine as well... how can I do that? Thx

Alfonso, let me give you a warning. What you want to do should work, but does not work well for me. Here's my story:
I have Time Machine (TM) backing up a MacBook Pro to a Time Capsule (TC) on my home wired network. First backup (BU) took 24 hours. Subsequent incremental backups were very fast and convenient. All was working well.
About 6 weeks setting up TM/TC, I had to take my MacBook in for repairs. Being paranoid, I wanted a second backup, so I connected the computer to an external LaCie drive via FW800. Second BU also took 24 hours, even over the MUCH faster firewire connection. That really hacked me off, so I got CarbonCloner and made a bootable image on another external LaCie drive over FW800. That took only 2 hours.
I got the computer back from Apple after repairs and directed TM to start backing up to the original TC drive (no changes to the drive during repair). The TM software decided it had to do another initial backup! As I write this, it's been running 36 hours and has completed only 19 of 76 GB. This is MUCH MUCH worse than the first initial backup.
I want to like this TM software because of the convenience, but it is really crap and unusable in my opinion. With my setup, I simply cannot switch to a second backup drive without triggering another lousy initial LONG BU process. Frankly, I really regret buying TC and trying TM.
I used to use Retrospect with great success with the two external LaCie drives, but they went into the toilet when EMC bought them and spun them out. The quality of the software has really suffered and it is very buggy now.
So, unfortunately, it looks like my best strategy is to use CarbonCloner and the two LaCie drives.

HT201250 Can I use Time Machine to backup a LaCie Hard Drive connected to an Airport Extreme onto a My Book that is connected directly to a Mac Mini?

I have a LaCie 2TB hard drive connected to a Airport Extreme Base Station. I also have a 1TB MyBook connected to a Mac Mini. My question is can you backup selected files (photos) from the LaCie drive to the MyBook drive using Time Machine, or any other software? If it will cost a fortune, I guess I can always just copy the newer files over.

Thank you for such a lightning-fast response Niel :-) Can I just double check with you the following ...?
The external drive where my iPhoto library is located has three partitions - Time Machine Backup, Pictures (where the iPhoto library is located) and SuperDuper Bootable Clone.
When you say 'Remove the external drive from the list of items set to be excluded from the backup, and then add everything else on it' - am I correct in thinking that I should remove Pictures partition from the items to be excluded but leave the Time Machine Backup and SuperDuper Bootable Clone as excluded items?
On my 2TB external drive (the one I'm backing up to) there are 5 partitions - Time Machine Backup, SuperDuper Clone, Pictures, Photo Archive and Document Archive. The Time Machine Backup is 700GB of which I still have 473GB available - when I include the Pictures folder that contains the iPhoto library that will use up another 148GB but I think there's still plenty of room to use it.
When you say if the partition contain the iPhoto library isn't dedicated to it it may be easier to create one which is, the only item I have on the Pictures volume is the iPhoto library so I think that it's dedicated to it. I was going to add images from the Pictures folder on my MacBook Pro but haven't done so at this stage so I won't do so. It wouldn't matter though, would it, if I copied the images from the Pictures folder on my MBP to the 'Photo Archive' partition of the EHD?
Thank you once more for your reply.
Tricia

I have not used Time Machine before, but now need to back up to my external hard drive. How do I do this?

Need to back up hard drive due to needed replacement. Time machine is available to back up to external hard drive. Not clear how to do this and then to restore once the hard drive is replaced.

I would not use Time Machine for this task. Rather I suggest you clone to the external drive. You can then boot from the external drive to restore your clone. First, purchase Carbon Copy Cloner.
Clone using Carbon Copy Cloner
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the right side dropdown menu.
4. Click on the Clone button.
5. When completed select Disk Center from the Window menu.
6. Click on the Recovery HD tab then select the backup drive from the list.
7. Click on the button labeled "Create a Recovery partition for this volume."
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
You now have a fully bootable copy of your iMac's hard drive. When you receive your iMac back after the drive replacement you can boot it from this backup and use Carbon Copy Cloner to restore the backup from the external drive to the internal drive. The process is identical except you will switch the Source and Destination volumes - Source will be the external drive; Destination will be the internal drive.
Because the newly installed drive will most likely have OS X installed you can skip Steps 5-7. You can now continue to use your external backup drive by setting up scheduled backups with CCC. No need to use Time Machine.

HT201250 Can I use Time Machine on more than one computer?

I have a new Mac Air and would like to back up to my existing Time Machine which I also use for my older Macbook. Can I use back up both on time machine?
thanks

General rule of thumb is you need a drive about 2-4 times the size of the total amount of data being backed up. See #1.
Time Machine FAQ
I backup 2 computers to the same drive and have never had any problems.

Can I use time machine to get rid of Lion?

Lion has been a total disaster for my iMac. After installation, everything went very buggy very quickly. Now it is freezing every few minutes. I just want rid of it. Can I use time machine to restore the old system? If so, how? Will my files be OK? thanks.

I point you to Pondini's TimeMachine restore page however you should also printout my instructions as something may go wrong and you need to do it the hard way.
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/14.html
Back to Snow Leopard from Lion install method
Read and print out these instructions, your computer is going to be offline and you wil be cutoff from help until your machine is restored.
Clear the Desktop, Downloads and Trash of anything you wish to keep by placing their files in the respective Documents, Music, Pictures, Movie folders.
Disconnect other drives except the sole backup drive.
Backup ALL your Users folders (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music etc) manually (drag and drop methods) to a (not TimeMachine) external powered drive (HFS+ journaled formatted in Disk Utility) and disconnect, your going to be wiping the entire boot disk of ALL DATA.
(warning, everything will be gone and not recovered, OS, programs, files, Windows etc all gone.)
Note: You might want to hold c and boot off the 10.6 installer disk and use Disk Utility to format the new blank external drive instead of using OS X Lion if that's hosed. Then reboot into Lion and copy files, may be safer that way.
Here we go!
Hold c and boot off the 10.6 installer disk that comes with your computer and second screen in just STOP there, don't install OS X yet.
Look at the Utilities Menu for Disk Utility.
On the left is the name of your hard drive maker, click it and Erase (format HFS+ Journaled), give it the same drive name as before, and click Erase...
(note: if you want to "scrub" the drive of old files that haven't been overwritten yet, then use the Security Option > Zero Erase, takes a lot longer)
This should wipe the drive of ALL partitions (GUID, OS X and 10.7 Recovery, Windows if present)
When it's done, quit and install OS X 10.6. Then install all your programs from fresh sources and validate/update.
When you setup a first account, use the same user name as before, this way you can simply drag and drop the content of your previous Users folders from the external drive right back into the new Users folders and everything should work peachy. Links in iTunes to music, playlists and iPhoto links especially.
Update OS X to 10.6.8 using the Combo Update for best results.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
(Note: If your original machine had 10.5 and you want the free iLife that comes with the disks with the computer, then you'll have to install 10.5 first using the same c boot/erase/format methods as above, then update to 10.6 via the disk, then Combo Update 10.6.8)
Final step optional but highly recommended.
A lot of people use a Carbon Copy Clone of their boot drive to a new HFS+Journaled external drive (used only for this purpose) as a "hold the option key" bootable backup in case something goes wrong with their boot drive or need to restore to a previous OS X version.. (in addition to TimeMachine drive for more immediate backups.)
It's not advised to have a Bootable Clone and a TimeMachine partition on the same external drive, as two drives gives hardware protection in case one fails.

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.

Can't use time machine due to corruptness even after reinstalling snow lepoard how to fix?

Yes, someone stole my original apple id in 2009. Now i bought another iphone in late 2012 , Created another apple id due to Apple not being able to help me access my original apple id. Which now since 2 months ago someone or company, or bank stole my second apple id. My iphone 4s with Sprint has no celluar connection supossedly due to no internet that is what sprint said but I looked it up on apple and it stated that there is a cellluar block on my iphone4s.
So I guess I will have to go in person to Sprint so they can explain that to me and why I was lied to on the phone earlier. Back to my 2nd stolen apple id that I registered my macbook,airport express router, and iphone4s and apple TV. So who ever stole this apple id obviously took over all my mac products I had registered to it. Enough about that back to trying to use time machine....Everytime i do, my macbook just starts acting all screwed up. I bought a WD external drive for Mac but I believe someone must have claimed it too. Since there is 75gb on it that I can't access. Kind of like my Macbook stating I can't save or have access to the Root . That is another thing after reinstalling snow lepoard which works great until I update it. Which is a problem because everytime I update it to 10.6.8 All the permissions are changed the graphics look horrible and I get redirected so bad its not funny. The email account is a joke. Also I notice my stationary for email is in Spanish not sure why and on Iworks the document samples are also in spanish. Now I dont speak any other language except ENGLISH AND HAVE LIVED IN UNITEDSTATES MY ENTIRE LIFE. But my internet provider Fibrant which swears they are local shows it is in the UK also when i try to access my email for that account it states it is not safe , certificate is expired and someone might be trying to impersonate my server. Needless to say it is getting old. I had this same problem with Timewarner and Att except att would just remove my ethernet driver then laugh when i would call and ask what the problem was. Then later I find out when I had DSL that somehow the phone number they had listed was change to being a digit off from my DSL account which again they laughed and thought it was funny. Enough about that. I need to know how to get access to my Apple id. I gave up on the first one but the second one I did have access to until I registered all my apple products. What is up with every thing I have with a usb port being corrupt. I have also notice anywhere in town where I live my phone is English until I come home it is arabic,hebrew , spanish any language except English. Shouldn't I be safer in my home??????????????? But I am not I am safer in town or anywhere but my home. EVerything states international in my home and this has been going on since 2009.....No one can tell me why. My power from Duke reads that OTHER Is costing me the most $$ every month what ????? This is a joke. But yet no one can tell me why or how to fix the problem. Going on 5 years , I have been cut off from everyone I know. Can't keep contacts on a phone or email accts. They all disappear. All so I am in Eastern time zone but all my computers and tv seems to think I am in pacific timezone. No one can fix this problem either. So if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix at least one of my 5 year problems I would be grateful. I try to create a new email account but either I am locked out right after or someone turns it into an alias account which doesn't help me. When I was layed off in 2009-2010 I went back to school/college. Needless to say they took my School email acct too.
Back to my iphone 4s problem. My icloud email account gets alot of spam starting about 2 months ago and I can't stop it. I try to foward it to Spam @ me but it hasn't helped.My iphone can only connect to the internet with wifi. Sprint swears that there is not a block but according to apple there is.
About my macbook and apple ID how can I upgrade my Macbook from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 with out all the permissions being changed and corrupt?? I have tried several times and it is always the same. I won't to connect my iphone to itunes to try to restore it but it states I have to update it to 10.6.8. When I do that my computer is alot worse off. Also how can I use TimeMachine with out my Macbook getting messed up? Something in my house has taken over anything with a usb port actually years ago and probably now something kept turning all my computers and phones or any electronic I owned it to a printer. I actually can't even use a printer in my home thats the funny thing. When I try to connect one when I used windows it stated I had no rights to it and couldn't use it. Since I switch to Mac not much better. When I try to print a test page it is all crooked and too small of half off the page. So it is upsetting that I can't use a printer but something keeps turning all my electronics into printers. If anyone knows how to fix this problem that would be great or to stop all this international stuff going on in my home that would be wonderful. I try to buy brand new pcs but soon as I start them up something had already taken over. This is with nothing electronic in my home on. Turn everything that a power switch off or unplugged it. Still I lost rights and access to anything in my home. Now if I am away from my home and try to use one of my laptops they look completely different and almost usable. Unfortunately I can't afford to move. I thought about it but I am still in bankruptcy and don't have the money. In the last 4 years I have not been able to reinstall in backups that I have created. Not sure why oh wait it states I have no rights to do that. My macbook I lost access to a week after I bought it and connected my iphone too. You don't know how many times I wish I had never backed my iphone 4s to my Macbook. Right after I could not log into it. Even used the disk to reset the password nope still couldn't log into it. Try to type the formula for resetting the password and nope it didn't work either.
Any suggestions would be appreciated---Need to gain access to my apple Id that would be a great start
Thanks, Suzanne
UnitedSTates
Eastern timezone

Didn't really read much at all of your post. Much, much too long, irrelevant details and & no paragraphs.
Can't use time machine due to corruptness
Post over here -> Mac OS X v10.6 - Snow Leopard forum
About my macbook and apple ID how can I upgrade my Macbook from 10.6.3 to 10.6.8 with out all the permissions being changed and corrupt??
Same as above. Post in the correct forum.
Need to gain access to my apple Id that would be a great start
-> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5625

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.
Those pages still exist on the Apple hosting server but iWeb doesn't not reverse publication. Cyberduck would bring back the files and bits and peices but again not the pages as a total entity. I'm preparing for the end of Apple website hosting (next month?) and am republishing my old site. I decided to use a new domain name. So my entire original site is still totally intact on the web under the original domain name, on my mobile me site, I guess it will be there till sometime in June?
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.

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.

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.

I am going to buy a bigger hard drive. i am operating on Lion. how do i install my os on the new disk? i can't use time machine.

i am going to buy a bigger hard drive. i am operating on Lion. how do i install my os on the new disk? i can't use time machine.

Plug this new drive as an external drive, boot from lion recovery "command-R" more info here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/
Open disk utility, format and partition the disk at your will (allways Mac OS plus...) and go ahead with the install, don't care if it tells you to whait thousands of hours, I did get installed in 2 hours and a half last week.
If you can't plug the disk as an external one, you'll have first to do an USB disk recovery utility, as easy as download the recovery utility and install it in an USB disk, you can find anything from the link above, plug the disk as a single master, and boot from the USB you created before.
Tell me how it went!!!

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.

Can I use Time Machine to retrieve mail that was in Trash on my MacBook Air, after I emptied Trash?

Can I use Time Machine to retrieve mail that was in Trash on my MacBook Air OS X Yosemite, after I Emptied that Trash?

Interesting question. I don't think you can because Time Machine would have deleted the data in subsequent backups because it was removed from the computer. But you never know about these things until you actually try it, which I've never done. So, why don't you give it a try. Worst that can happen is it's not there and you're no worse off than now.
If you need help with restoring mail from Time Machine: Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine. Also open Mail and select Mail Help from Mail's help menu. Search for 'restore mail' and see if you don't find some instructions there, too.

I am trying to get an answer to whether or not I can successfully use Time Machine with an external HDD connected to an airport extreme? Some forums say yes, some say no.

I am trying to get an answer to whether or not I can successfuly use Time Machine with an external HDD connected to an airport extreme. Some forums say yes, some say no. I'm also curious about formatting the hard drive to work both on my wife's MacBook Pro and my PC. Any help would definitely be appreciated.

You may be going on a recollection, that I share, that at one time Apple stated this would be possible:
In fact, Apple’s Time Machine Web page touted this very capability as recently as last Tuesday, as you can see from Google’s October 16 cache of the page
Effortless meets wireless. With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine.
But if you look at the current Time Machine page on Apple’s Web site, that text is nowhere to be found.
That was a long time ago, it has never been officially implemented, and at present they specifically say it cannot be done.
In summary, it may work, but probably won't, and even if it does it may not be reliable.
Reference:
Disks that can be used with Time Machine
Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk connected to an AirPort Extreme, or...
and
Mac OS X v10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks

HT201250 Can I use Time Machine on two different Macs to back up to one external drive?

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