Time Machine Can't Do Math?

Time Machine was working okay until yesterday. Now, I get an error saying, "This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 673.9 MB but only 2.8 GB are available"
Huh? Beyond the obviously lacking math skills, I though TM was supposed to make room on the drive by removing old backups to make room for new?
I have two questions; the first is does anyone know what is wrong here and how to fix it? The second, since I see from reading here that TM is kind of a lame program anyway, is the another good program for Mac backups that some of you would recommend?
Thanks

ogman wrote:
Time Machine was working okay until yesterday. Now, I get an error saying, "This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 673.9 MB but only 2.8 GB are available"
Huh? Beyond the obviously lacking math skills, I though TM was supposed to make room on the drive by removing old backups to make room for new?
Any calculations on disk space are "fuzzy math" because there is a lot more going on underneath. Because you are almost full, you are getting strange behavior. I don't know why it isn't removing old backups for you. It isn't an exact science. You should probably archive a few of those Time Machine backups that look good and start over.
I have two questions; the first is does anyone know what is wrong here and how to fix it? The second, since I see from reading here that TM is kind of a lame program anyway, is the another good program for Mac backups that some of you would recommend?
If by "lame" you mean the best backup software that there has ever been, then you are correct. This isn't a good place to make good judgements regarding the quality of Apple products. The only time anyone posts here is when they are having trouble. You see 1000 identical posts about a problem and think "wow, that must be some bad stuff". In reality, that could mean that 99.9973% of all users have zero problems.
It is true that Time Machine may need some manual intervention when your hard drive fills up. I don't know any way to avoid that. I think Time Machine is doing the right thing by stopping and making you intervene instead of deleting files it had promised to save.

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Time Machine can no longer write to drive

I have been using Time Machine to back up my iMac G5 for over a year. About two weeks ago the computer started acting really strange so I actually restored the entire system from my Time Machine backup. Everything was working great until today. The external hard drive that I've been using all this time is suddenly "read only". How do I change it back to "read/write" so Time Machine can access the hard drive properly?

BobMeister wrote:
I have been using Time Machine to back up my iMac G5 for over a year. About two weeks ago the computer started acting really strange so I actually restored the entire system from my Time Machine backup. Everything was working great until today. The external hard drive that I've been using all this time is suddenly "read only".
It's very important to know exactly what you or the computer was doing just before this happened. Usually, things do not happen on their own.
How do I change it back to "read/write" so Time Machine can access the hard drive properly?
Changing it back when it's not clear why it changed in the first place is not always a good thing to do for several obvious reasons.
Right-click on the TM drive icon and select "Get Info"
Under Sharing & Permissions, you should see:
Your name (Me) Read & Write
(unknown) Read & Write
everyone Read only
Post back what you see and we can attempt to proceed.

I have reinstalled snow leopard 10.6.8 and want to restore my i photos from time machine. can not find iphoto libary in time machine, can"t not find home-pict. iphoto lib. in time machine

i have reinstalled snow leopard 10.6.8, and want to restore my i photos from time machine. Can not find i-photo libary in time machine, can't not find > home-pict. iphoto lib. in time machine. Please help.

On my HD it does not say ,restore, in yourname -pict. Iphoto lib.,
On the time machine, it , yourname etc, oes not show up at all.
Only right side of TM, your name etc. does not show.

I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries to an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the externa

I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives. Is this possible? Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?

I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive.
That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives.
Let me be clear.. you want to partition the one disk.. use it for TM and move your files to the external disk.. and then backup to the same disk.. You can do it.. but that is not a backup.. that is an experiment in how long you can get away with running files and backups on the same disk before you lose everything.. like Russian Roulette.. pull the trigger enough times and laws of probability will do you in.
You must have backups on a different disk .. otherwise it is pointless.
Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
No.. you can buy special USB and Thunderbolt external drives that support RAID..
BUT that is still not a backup.. let me show why.. you make a silly move and corrupt your file in aperture.. it is not that rare.
Raid will corrupt all copies of the files.. it is replicated across all disks.
Delete a photo it is deleted across all disks.. you have no recovery.
Alway, always consider RAID system one disk.. backup onto another disk.. and if the photos or movies are at all important to you.. ie your family .. make another copy and store in a relatives house.. There is no such thing as too much redundancy.

Time Machine can't copy my hard drive

Time Machine can't copy my hard drive, it says that it can't complete the safety copy because an error occured when files were copied to the safety copy. Does anyone recognise this problem? All I could find in System notifications about Time Machine is this: "localhost kernel[0]: Security policy loaded: Safety net for Time Machine (TMSafetyNet)"

John Galt wrote:
... Are you unable to select the external HD as a backup device?
pres92 wrote:
that's the problem -- my hard drive ("startup disk) is not listed, so I can't select it.
The reason is that the startup volume is not a valid selection for its own Time Machine backup.
The only drive listed is the Time Machine external drive. Obviously, I don't want to back up the time machine drive.
By default, a Time Machine backup volume is excluded from being backed up.
The appearance you describe is correct, otherwise I'm completely misunderstanding your problem.

HT201250 If time machine puts all of my photos onto my external hard drive using time machine, can I then delete the photos from my computer put view them again from the external hard drive? Basically, can I free up space on my mac but not lose years of p

If time machine puts all of my photos onto my external hard drive using time machine, can I then delete the photos from my computer but view them again from the external hard drive? Basically, can I free up space on my mac but not lose years of photos?

To add to Niel's comment bear in mind that if you have a backup copy on an external HD and later delete the orignals on your Mac HD you will then only have one copy - so no backup.
If the pictures are precious you should have at least two copies, and ideally another copy kept off site,

Back up with time machine can't finish, because volume with sparse bundle already seems to be in use

I have problems with time machine. The message I got (in Dutch) is "Het schijfkopiebestand '/Volumes/Back up schijf/iMac van Gerard.sparsebundle' dat voor de reservekopie wordt gebruikt, is al in gebruik." The sparsebundle seems to be in use so Time machine can't finsh back up process. Any idea what I should do to fix this? I'm using time machine over a wireless netwerk, backing up on a NAS form Lacie, connected to the netwerk via airport extreme. Ik normally works well.
regards,
Gerard

http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html

Time machine can not select my internal hard drive any more.

Hi all
Time machine can not select my internal hard drive any more. I only can back up external disks. Does anyone know how to fix this?
All answers are much appreciated

I don't know the answer but I have the same thing happen. I have two external drives I use for backup. Sometimes it can see one and sometimes another. Then sometimes it can't see either one. I will take one out for a while then plug it back in and then it may see it. Maybe it's a cable issue or something but I will be curious to hear what someone more knowledgeable says.

Installed GoFlex 1.5 TB external drive on my iMac running OS X 10.7.4 and error says Time Machine can't create a backup folder. Any solutions?

Installed GoFlex 1.5 TB external drive on my iMac running OS X 10.7.4 and error says Time Machine can't create a backup folder. Any solutions?

Well, to unmount the drive, you can use the Terminal application.
Start in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
When the Terminal window opens, type - without the quotes and with the space at the end - this:
"diskutil unmount "
Then drag the icon of the unmounted drive from the desktop into the Terminal window - the drive location will be added to the end of the command above. It should look something like this:
diskutil unmount /Volumes/volumename
Then press enter (return).
That should unmount the drive. Now you can try the Time Machine process again with perhaps a different interconnect cable for the GoFlex.

When I back up on my exertnal HD drive with time machine can I erase what on my computer HD for more space?

When I back up files on my exertnal HD drive with time machine can I erase what's on my Mac HD for space without losing what's on external HD?

If the data is valuable to you, redundant backups are essential. Time Machine is an excellent vehicle when you have to restore data that no longer exists on your internal HDD.
Mende1's suggestion of using Carbon Copy Cloner is excellent because it gives yous a HDD that is 'ready to go' should your internal HDD fail (as all HDDs eventually will).
For example, I have 5 copies of my iTunes folder, one each on three MBPs, on a HDD devoted strictly to iTunes and Time Machine (this does not include the iPod). One may view this as excessive but since I have over 100 GB in this application, I am very comfortable with this.
I advocate that the best backup strategy is Time machine combined with a boot HDD and a third HDD for the most important user data. If there is non essential data, the you may certainly compromise and use just Time Machine.
Ciao.

Time Machine Can Be Made to work with a Network Share

FYI I am just posting this here for the benefit of the community. The source of this info is: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=375047
As I write this, I am doing a Time Machine backup to a ReadyNAS NV+ afp mounted share. Here is a summary of what the thread above says you need to do. It worked for me.
Take any supported USB standalone drive and plug it in to an available USB port.
Use Disk Utility to format the drive (or partition on the drive) and name that partition to whatever you want your network share to be called. In my case, I called it "office-tm".
After you do this, open the Time Machine preference panel and select that new drive (in my case "office-tm") to be the Time Machine backup drive.
After Time Machine sets up the drive, it will start counting down before the next backup. Press the little X on the right side to cancel the backup.
Now open a terminal session and change directories to /Volumes/<drive> where in my case <drive> was office-tm (cd /Volumes/office-tm).
When you do a ls -a -l, you will see two important files. One starts with a period (.) and contains numbers after it. The other one is called .com.apple.timemachine.supported.
What you need to do is copy these two files to your network share. The trick is that you want your network share to have the same name as this drive you just prepared (again, in my case it was called office-tm). I first created a new share on my ReadyNAS+ called office-tm and set the quotas properly.
Then you need to copy the files. There are several ways to do this but the way I did it was that I temporarily mounted the network share at a different mount point in terminal just to get the files over. So for example, I did:
sudo mount -t afp afp://<ip.addr.of.share>/office-tm /Volumes/office-tm2
Then I copied the two files over (substitute your appropriate volume names):
cp /Volumes/office-tm/.00whateveryourfilenameis /Volumes/office-tm2/.
cp /Volumes/office-tm/.com.apple.timemachine.supported /Volumes/office-tm2/.
Turn off Time Machine so you can unmount.
Now you can unmount both the USB drive and the network share and then you remount the network share as the proper name. The same one that the USB drive was named so as far as Time Machine is concerned, the volume is still there. The two files are on the network share so all is fine and Time Machine can find the volume it expects.
Wait for Time Machine to start it's hourly backup and away you go.
PLEASE NOTE THIS DISCLAIMER - There is probably a good reason why Apple disabled this feature so you might want to think carefully before you rely on this hack published in the MacRumors forum to back up your Mac. I am using this for testing purposes only and I am still using traditional backup techniques for my "real" backup of my office machine. If you don't get good Time Machine backups and you have relied upon them for critical data, don't blame anyone but yourself.

Name: RAIDiator
Version: 3.01c1-p6
Date: Tue Dec 12 17:46:22 2006
Size: 46566912 bytes
Reason: Final 6.
We should probably start a new topic in networking on this. I am seeing some strangeness with afp shares as well.
I have most shares set up to allow access by both CIFS/SMB and AFP. If I use Sidebar and try to access the shares by AFP, it says it can't connect to the server. But the same shares via CIFS works fine. (I can click on the "Windows" server icon and connect.) But for any of these shares, I can manually connect with the normal Go > Connect to Server... method, specifying afp://<ip address> and that works fine.
In the case of the Time Machine share that is the subject of this post, I disabled CIFS and am only using AFP because I wanted to make sure I connected to the share only via AFP for Time Machine purposes.
BTW, I do not use USER or DOMAIN security mode in my case and my shares are set up as SHARE security mode.

Time Machine - can it act as a HD Clone?

Will doing a full recovery from Time Machine recover all of my applications and any associated authorisations and passwords?
If not, am I better using something like SuperDuper to clone my System HD.
I only ask as my System HD is starting to show signs of flakiness, and while I am fully "Time Machined", I have a horrible feeling I may have issues restoring and authorising some of my many music apps., should my HD turn it's toes up!
Thanks in advance everyone

Yes. Time Machine can do be used to do a full restore. You will have to boot from the install DVD and then start the TM Restore from there.
I have found doing the TM Restore to be slower then a restore from a bootable clone. I use SuperDuper to create the bootable clone. Then I replace the disk and boot from the clone. Once it is up and running from the clone I use SD to Restore the clone back to the new disk. I have found that method to be significant quicker then a full restore from TM.
Allan

The error that I am getting is this "Time Machine can't use the disk image because it can't be written to." Any ideas on the fix for this?

The error that I am getting is this "Time Machine can't use the disk image because it can't be written to." Any ideas on the fix for this? When I go to the Time Capsule my Macbook Pro shows that it is locked, I think I did something wrong, but can't figure how to unlock it to see if that fixes it.

As far as we know, Time Machine cannot write to a disk image. It needs to write directly to the Time Capsule disk.

When i enter time machine with mail open can see past mail . when i open iPhoto and enter time machine can not see past photos have i got a problem ????

when i enter time machine with mail open can see past mail . when i open iPhoto and enter time machine can not see past photos have i got a problem ????

iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)

Time Machine Can't find Drive connected to other networked Mac

I have a Drobo external drive array connected by firewire to my primary home computer - a Mac Pro.
For the last year I've backed up two Macbook Pros (mine and my wife's) to this Drobo using Time Machine (The Mac Pro is always on and the laptops backup through the home network, through the Map Pro, to the Drobo).
I recently did a fresh reinstall of Lion to all 3 computers. Now for some reason Time Machine can't kick the backup off. It gives me a "Can't backup - the backup drive us not available," or something like that.
A couple of key points:
* Through the primary computer, I have opened read/write file sharing permissions for all drives, including the FW connected Drobo
* From the laptops, I can see and read/write to the Drobo through Finder
* Through Time Machine preferences, I can select the Drobo as a backup destination - it's only when I kick off the backup that I run into the error.
* If I create a test admin account to try, I get the same problem when trying to back up.
* As a safegard, I have run a manual backup successfully to a separate external drive (mobile g-drive)
What am I missing? Seems like it's gotta be something straightforward - perhaps on the laptop?
Thank you,
-bh-

no - sadly not:)
Okay - I gave it a shot - no dice - here's a screenshot -
Couple of interesting things (at least to me and my limited knowledge...):
* the reset of Time Machine seemed to reset how my laptop connected to the primary computer - defaulted to connecting through AppleID rather than Administrator
* Perhaps I'm using wrong Admin credentials in my File Sharing preferences?
* When I connect to the main Mac Pro ("connect as...") with Admin credentials...though I see the drives and can read/write, it still shows a "connection failed" message above. sending one other screenshot to show you.
Thanks for all your help,
-bh-

Time Machine Can't Do Math?

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