Time Machine Backup to Tar File

Using the following command tar -cvpzf dec2014macprobackup.tar.gz /Volumes/Seagate_Backup/ I attempted to backup & compress a time machine backup. I just installed a new seagate internal harddrive. I performed a single backup to it and then turned off time machine. The Seagate drive is 3TB and the tar file command was performed on a 2TB drive. As a result, the 2TB disk ran out of space before the tar command completed. Questions:
1) Can time machine restore this backup? I could untar the file to the 3TB drive and try it. I want to know if technically this will work
2) Any other suggestions technical suggestions?
3) Time Machine will not complete a backup on my 2TB drive anymore. Hence the reason I bought a 3TB drive.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Nick

Archie Cobbs wrote:
Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
No. For possible destinations, see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

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What happens if you Time-Machine backup an encrypted file-vault HD?

This is related to my previous post - but deserves special mention for those people who are using time-vault AND Time-Machine.
My question is this: If the backup of my Hard-drive is encrypted, and I then reinstall from backup, what will this situation likely produce?
This is what I have done. I also Archived and installed my Mac prior to installing from my Time-Machine backup.
I now have an error message that displays the following message at the login screen:
"Unable to log into the file-vault account "......." at this time. An error has occurred."
My password IS CORRECT. I have not changed it, and the log in window does accept my password, but it doesn't progress any further than the error message I gave above.
I'm wondering if the encryption process of file-vault is linked directly with the original installation I had of Mac OS-X before I Archived and installed.
Any thoughts/knowledge/Insight?? I want my old Mac back! (I don't recommend using file-vault). Any body else had this problem or can see what is happening to me here?
Thank you
Greg

I just did a backup, moved a folder with 600mb of images into a different folder, and did another backup. The free space on the backup drive dropped by the size of the folder's contents. The backup copied the files as I watched in System Preferences, and it looked like it was really copying the files to the external drive again. It looks like Time Machine isn't as smart as I hoped in this regard.
Still - I'd think the wasted space is only in the every-hour-for-the-last-24-hours bucket of Time Machine. I'm guessing the every hour backups are like a sliding window, where a backup that's 24 hours old drops out every hour rather than all the hourly backups getting wiped at midnight and starting over.
Regardless, only one version of the moved folder will eventually be stored as the daily backup for that day. I don't have proof, but that's what I think.
So, if you've moved a bunch of folders around or renamed them, the extra copies of the same exact files should drop off within 24 hours.
That's my interpretation, but I'm in no way positive!! The lengthy Ars review didn't offer an answer to this question.

Is it possible to reassemble a Time Machine backup from recovered files?

I have kind of a sad story that I'm sure some of you can relate to. My Macbook was briefly stolen but by the time I got it back, the partitions had been erased. I had an external backup... but the backup disk failed catastrophically a couple days before it was stolen. The external backup doesn't even mount anymore and makes grinding noises if it's plugged in...
The MacBook had two hard drives in it and one was rather large, so there was space for a partition that I used only for Time Machine. It was erased during the theft, but since nothing had been written to the disk yet, I figured that the chances of recovering data were pretty high. So I went online and looked around for utilities (I used StellarPhoenix... Not sure I'd recommend it to a friend) and managed to spend the next four days recovering the time machine backup to an external computer. I recovered a lot of directories with raw directory IDs attached to them and interesting recovered files inside.
I want to put these files back together as a Time Machine backup (haha, I know right?), because the alternative is around 60 gigabytes of data to sift through by hand.
Here's the top level structure:
MacBook:Root alleygator$ ls -a
.fseventsd
.journal
.DS_Store
.journal_info_block
.HFS+ Private Directory Data?
Lost Folder(s)
.Trashes
"HFS+ Private Directory Data?" and "Lost Folder(s)" directories contain about three hundred thousand directories altogether.
.journal is 33 megs of unicode-looking data that I have to believe is the HFS+ "Journal" part of a journaling file system.
.journal_info_block appears to be an empty file.
.fseventsd contains only a few tiny files that appear to be the the heads of .plists.
Anyway.
The HFS+ folder looks like this:
dir_2243617          dir_2255418          dir_2283556          dir_2383839          dir_880892
dir_2243619          dir_2255421          dir_2283558          dir_2383860          dir_880907
dir_2243621          dir_2255424          dir_2283560          dir_2383882          dir_880909
dir_2243623          dir_2255427          dir_2283562          dir_2383927          dir_880916
dir_2243626          dir_2255430          dir_2283564          dir_2383980
dir_2243628          dir_2255436          dir_2283566          dir_2383986
dir_2243630          dir_2255439          dir_2283571          dir_2383989
dir_2243632          dir_2255442          dir_2283574          dir_2383992
While Lost Folder(s) looks like this:
Folder 1919459          Folder 236881          Folder 346820          Folder 640530          Folder 999005
Folder 1919462          Folder 2368812          Folder 346824          Folder 640534          Folder 999016
Folder 1919465          Folder 2368813          Folder 346826          Folder 640591          Folder 999021
Folder 1919468          Folder 2368817          Folder 34683          Folder 640595          Folder 999024
Folder 1919471          Folder 2368820          Folder 346879          Folder 640599          Folder 999027
Folder 1919474          Folder 2368823          Folder 3468793          Folder 640603          Folder 999030
Folder 1919477          Folder 2368826          Folder 347019          Folder 640607          Folder 999035
Folder 19196          Folder 2368829          Folder 347083          Folder 640611          Folder 999044
Each of these directories seems to contain a few files that I'd want to keep, and Stellar Phoenix tells me that it recovered a couple million files total. A bit of "light reading" into the HFS+ file system suggests that HFS+ uses these integer file descriptors instead of file names, and that the file names are stored elsewhere?
I've looked around on the web for anybody who's had a similar problem and have yet to find anything. It'd be really neat if all you had to do was create a new .sparsebundle and throw all the files into it, but I somehow doubt that'd work...
I'm really concerned that I can't put humpty dumpty back together again at all.
If I can't, what would be the next best thing? I've considered copying the files back to the drive and letting Spotlight chew on them. Eventually, I would probably be able to find the most important files on the drive. But I would prefer something more user friendly than that.
Oh, and feel free to suggest your favorite online backup solution.
Thanks for reading,
Bill

Are you trying to bring all the stuff over? Use Migration Assistant in Applications / Utilities.

Time Machine Backups of Pages file cannot be opened by Pages

I just restird a backup of a Pages file from my Time Machine backup volume. It's not a Pages file! Finder jusy says it's a document and if I double click it, a folder is created with the same name as the file with a number appended. There are sevarla files in the folder - none of them can be opened by Pages.
I'm aware of the Preference to save a backup copy but that saves just one copy, not a tru backup.
Is there some way round this? I'm not inclined to use a product if I can't back up it's files safely.
Pete

It's what I assumed.
An iWork document created with the format introduced by iWork '09 is in fact a folder packed with a specific tool.
If we remove the name extension, the system can't guess that it's an iWork document.
According to the structure of the file, it recognize it as an archive and it unpack it.
It's a variant of what I do when I want to study the contents of the index.xml file describing a document.
In my scheme, I rename wxyz.pages as wxyz.pages.zip
When I unpack it, I get a document wxyz.pages which is a Pages document in the old structure.
When Time Machine give you a document entitled wxyz, it's important to add the extension name by yourself.
If you forget and expand the beast as a folder, nothing is lost. Just rename the folder waxy as waxy.pages and Pages will open it.
From my point of view, the fact that Time Machine return a document without its name extension is a bug in Time Machine.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 2 mai 2011 22:30:54
Please :
Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community
To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

Does Time Machine backup open applications/files?

I recently lost my calendars (in Entourage, Ical, Mobileme, etc.), and wanted to restore from a time machine backup.
I tried to restore the Entourage identity from a day or two before only to see that the date in Time Machine for the file was way old.
I suspected that because I leave the app open all the time, particularly all night when my backups run at 11 pm that the file never got backed up. Does this sound right?
Ical, on the other hand (which is synched to mobile me and entourage), even though I rarely open it and use it, seemed to have the updated data.
How does Time Machine deal with files that are in use?

Entourage needs some special handling. I don't use it, so can't tell you exactly how to do it, but if you search this forum for Entourage you should find a post or two (by Kappy and/or Baltwo, I think) with good advice.

Accidentally I have deleted my Time Machine Backup but deleted files are in the Trash !

Hi Folks,
Accidentally deleted my Time Machine backkups but all files are in the Trash. I am copying my files from Trash folder to another Portable Drive just incase I will not be able to restore my files as Put Back is not working because seems Time Machine backups is a part large database.
Is there anyway I can restore the files to Time Machine again? If there is, could you please tell me step by step ! If there is not any procedures, please advise me what should I do in this stage?
Thanks in advance.

The following excellent Support articles may help you with that:
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine backup fails linking files

I recently had a external disk fail that was still under warrenty, so I dually went to the Apple store and got a replacement. After plugging it in I went into Time Machine and performed a restore (I was backing up the external disk to another external time machine managed disk). All worked perfectly so far. However, come the next backup I got
"Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume"
Searching the forums I don't see any obvious solution. In the system log I also see 'Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: MyBigDisk' every time there is a backup.
Anyone got any ideas how to fix this?

Ok, I finally figured this out. The problem is that the old and new disks both had the same name (MyBigDisk) and time machine was getting consused. To fix
Complete the restoration of the drive via timemachine
Rename the drive (on Leopard in finder under devices ctrl-click / right-click on the name and rename)
Go into time machine preferences and remove the drive from the exclusion list
Perform a Time Machine backup
This will re-backup the freshly restored external drive but this isn't a big issue as older files will be deleted from Time Machine as necessary.
Restoring files on the external disk from before the failure: Now the drive is renamed the older backups seem to have disappeared. Actually, they are there, just tricky to find. To find an old file on the old named disk:
Go into finder and make sure show path bar is selected
Go to you home directory in finder
Enter Time Machine
Select the date you want to go back to
In the path bar find the directory with the name like 2011-11-12-202011, click on folder
The old drive will be in that directory - use the normal restore process
Why is it broken
My guess is that to avoid accidentally backing up the wrong disk (after all every WD My Book is called MyBook when plugged in) they use the UUID (Universally Unique ID) to identify the drive. But, we see the MyBook name in Finder and Time Machine so they need to link the UUID to the MyBook name. This is a one shot, once done, never undone.
So, now when it tries to check that link with the new disk it will have a different UUID (that's the UU bit!) and complains. Renaming that disk breaks the link (there's no MyBook now, so no link to check)

Time Machine backup to DMG file

Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
From my searching it doesn't seem possible. But why not??
Before you ask what the heck for, there are some perfectly legitimate use cases for this, for example, when the DMG file represents a network-backed resource. In my particular case I'd like to use s3backer ( http://code.google.com/p/s3backer/ ) to create a DMG file backed by Amazon S3 so I can do time machine backups to the "cloud". Voila, secure, encrypted & compressed backup over the network accessible from anywhere using free software.
If it's not currently possible, what can we do to get this fixed? Even if it were an "advanced" option that would be fine of course.
Thanks.

Archie Cobbs wrote:
Is it possible to configure Time Machine to backup to a DMG file?
No. For possible destinations, see #2 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Time Machine backups? What files?

Exactly what files get backed up with TM?
Does this backup and image the system as well as installed files?

You will find that all of your Time machine questions are answered here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Ciao.

HT201250 Finding Time Machine backups in a file mode not star look.

How do I look up by back-ups for time machine in a file format, not the star format?

It's what I assumed.
An iWork document created with the format introduced by iWork '09 is in fact a folder packed with a specific tool.
If we remove the name extension, the system can't guess that it's an iWork document.
According to the structure of the file, it recognize it as an archive and it unpack it.
It's a variant of what I do when I want to study the contents of the index.xml file describing a document.
In my scheme, I rename wxyz.pages as wxyz.pages.zip
When I unpack it, I get a document wxyz.pages which is a Pages document in the old structure.
When Time Machine give you a document entitled wxyz, it's important to add the extension name by yourself.
If you forget and expand the beast as a folder, nothing is lost. Just rename the folder waxy as waxy.pages and Pages will open it.
From my point of view, the fact that Time Machine return a document without its name extension is a bug in Time Machine.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 2 mai 2011 22:30:54
Please :
Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community
To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

HT201250 My macbook pro crashed and I had to install a new hard drive. I restored from Time Machine backup all the files from my old hard drive onto my new one.

Does it really back up the whole new drive or does it only back up what's been added? It seemed like it was doing the whole thing when I tried it. I stopped it. Don't want to use up all the space on my external. Is there something else I need to do or did I mess up by not doing the migrating thing? thanks!

If you installed a new hard drive, it has nothing on it and yes TimeMachine is going to take forever to restore everything back.
I guess you'll have to erase and start over again now.
Too bad, you should have made bootable clones in addition to TimeMachine, they can restore in a hour or two depending upon content, they are also option key bootable.
TimeMachine has to go through and calculate all the files it needs to bring forward, the files are strewn all over the drive. The read heads are moving all over the platters all the time from fast sectors to slow ones, not matching what's occuring on the internal drive.
With a clone the files are defragmented and optimized, the drive reads one file, moves the heads a tiny bit and reads the next all the while transferring exactly to the internal drive, they are more in step with one another, thus it's much faster restoring from a clone than TM.
Most commonly used backup methods

What is the correct procedure to follow after restoring a Mac from a Time Machine Backup?

Hi all,
I did a Time Machine backup of my entire system (Time Machine Backup 1) before bringing my Macbook Pro to the Apple Store to to have it tested. After the TM backup I wiped the laptop leaving only the OS (Mountain Lion) on it so that I could determine whether the problems with my system were hardware or software related. The computer passed all tests.
After bringing my Macbook home I did a fresh intall of all the software and everything worked fine. At this point I did another Time Machine backup (in the same location as the previous backup) so that if I ever had problems with my system I could revert to this working backup (Time Machine Backup 2.0). I used my laptop without issue and created a number of new documents. I did not transfer the documents from the previous time machine backup (Time Machine Backup 1). As time progressed I did regular Time Machine backups (backups 2.1 etc.) installed a few new pieces of software and started having system issues again.
At that point I did another Time Machine backup (in the same location as the previous backups) (Time Machine Backup 3) so that my new documents would be safe. At this point I could see all of my TM backups in finder. Then I used Command + R while booting up and restored my system from what I thought was the clean backup (Time Machine Backup 2). In fact it the TM backup I used was not the correct backup (It was one of the backups between 2.0 and 3 and I needed to go back further). I was concerned, at this point, because I did not (and still do not) know what type of effect restoring the system from an old Time Machine backup would have on the Time Machine structure going forward I was unsure whether doing so and having an "old" system backed up might break the structure so I stopped Time Machine from running a new backup.
When I attempted to look for one of the older versions of the Time Machine backups I discovered that there were no longer any listings for TM backups in their previous location. In fact, the only thing I could see was one line in the place where the multiple backups were previously. I took my laptop and NAS (where the TM backups were stored) to the Apple Store and the "genius" said something about the TM backup being "parsed"? He also described it as a "broken window" and he "sees the broken glass but has no idea how it broke". He also said "neither he nor anyone at Apple would be able to assist me" and that I'd have to go to a data recovery place.
Fortunately I did use a second drive to backup the original system (Backup 1) but I really don't want to lose the files created ater Backup 2 / prior to Backup 3.
Does anyone know what happened / how I can get my Time Machine backups back without forking out tons of cash?
thanks
John
OS ML 10.8.4, Macbook Pro Retina
Synology DS412 (time machine backup to a file folder)

I actually already checked Pondini's and didn't find the answer. Any other suggestions?
thanks

Time machine backup on harddrive (already has data) do i have to reformat? mac/windows

i want to backup my mackbook pro which has around 300gb
i have an external 2tb ard drive which already has around 1tb of data on it
and i have tried the time machine set up and it says it needs to wipe data...? is there any way around this
also is it worth partitioning the 2tb drive to 1tb each and have the time machine on one partition and any other files i need to save on the other partition?
i am trying to understanding the saving structure better
ideally i would want to access the 2tb harddrive on a windows machine too? is that possible? so it will have the the time machine backup and other files which i can access via a mac or a windows machine
please help

Make 2 partitions, one for Time Machine, formatted for Mac only (MacOS Extended (Journaled), the other should be formatted as Fat32 or ExFat for use with Macs and Windows. Fat32 is the more reliable choice but ... it has a filesize limit of 4GB, if that will be an issue for you choose ExFat.
Unless you have to I strongly suggest using Fat32 rather than ExFat.
Oh, all data currently on the drive will be erased, so move it somewhere else or back it up before you start.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
BTW, I did try a "restore from Time Machine" option the first thing I had my "new computer" (old hardware, 2009 iMac) up and running, using Migration Assistant, and it ran for many hours and then failed in the wee hours - what that has to do with anything I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

Accessing user's local Time Machine backup on client Mac?

I'm trying to configure a file server with backup for local Macs.
I've set up file sharing, users and groups in Server.app and it works as intended – after logging to the server, users see their home folders and other shared folders where they store their files.
The idea is to use Time Machine backups on the server Mac. I've enabled it on the server and used a separate hard drive. It works well, and I can enter the Time machine from the server.
Now, is it possible for users on client Macs connected to and working on the server volume to access Time Machine backups of their files?
Thanks!

Yes, I'm using OS X Mavericks Server. There's a shared volume "Design Work" where clients keep their files. It's backed up to a separate volume "Backup" via Time Machine. What I would like to do is to let clients access Time Machine backup of their files (stored on "Design Work" volume on the server) without the need to physically go to the server computer. Is that at all possible?
I've tried to follow this instruction but it doesn't seem to work. I can select the shared TM backup from a client via "browse other backup disks" option but I can't see the files on "Design Work" share, just local files.

Time Machine Backup to Tar File

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