Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?
Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?
As john noted, eventually that external is probably not going to be big enough, but it certainly is for now. The HD just needs enough capacity to cover the amount of data on your internal HD, not the internal HD's total capacity.
Format/partition the external as follows and you should be set to go:
1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.
2. Open Disk Utility on the MBP.
3. Select the external HD in the left pane.
4. Click on the Erase tab.
5. Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (which I always think is a good idea, but does take time), click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.
6. Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.
7. Click the Partition tab.
8. Click on Volume Scheme: and choose the number of partitions (just one in this situation).
9. Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.
10. Click Apply.
11. Quit Disk Utility.
Backup your internal to the external. What application are you using to backup with? I highly recommend both SuperDuper! and CarbonCopyCloner.
Similar Messages
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Need some help with backing up external hard drive using Time Machine
Hi all, I'm trying to work out the best way to back up multiple iPhoto libraries using Time Machine.
At the moment I have got an iMac and Macbook Pro, both of which have an iPhoto library (with different content). Currently these are not backed up at all. So what I want to do is back both up to an NAS drive, which I know is straightforward.
What I also want to do is create one iPhoto library on an external hard drive that I can use with my MBP, and then delete the iPhoto library on my MBP to free up some hard drive space (it's running slower and slower and I'm hoping that this might help it run quicker).
So, as I want to have the library on two seperate drives in case one fails, what I want to know is whether I could use Time Machine to back up my external hard drive as well as the internal drive of my MBP? Also, would I need to have the external drive connected at all times for Time Machine to "see" it?
I hope that makes sense, all I seem to be doing currently is going round and round and can't work out whether what I want to do is possible or not.
Thanks in advanceIf I understand your goal correctly, you're considering using Time Machine as external storage, and it doesn't work that way. Time Machine keeps around what it can, and older stuff gets flushed as the storage available to Time Machine reaches its lower threshold due to the addition of newer stuff. When the older stuff gets flushed is not predictable.
It is possible to have several Time Machine backups aimed at the same target (this can be done with Apple Time Capsule, for instance), though you might want to partition the disks to ensure that the intended amount of storage is available. Different NAS drives have different features here.
NAS is only as fast as your network connection, and that's almost always much slower than the in-box I/O connections; a local disk will be far faster than a NAS disk, just because of the bottleneck that is wired gigabit Ethernet, and most WiFi is slower and sometimes far slower than wired gigabit Ethernet. FWIW.
If your MacBook Pro is old enough and you have $$ but aren't in a position to spend $$$$$ on a newer model, then consider an in-place drive upgrade.
If your network connection is fast enough to transfer the amount of data you're dealing with in a reasonable time, there are also hosted storage options.
You can use a NAS drive as storage independent of Time Machine, and relocate stuff there. (You'll still want to have backups of that data, as NAS drives — even NAS with RAID — can still lose files, become corrupted or otherwise ruin your data day.
As for your performance, keeping about 10% or so free on the disks is the local preference, but it's worth reviewing the performance of the whole system — Performance Monitor, Console.app, etc — to see if there's something else going on, or if your system load and personal performance expectations are exceeding what your MacBook Pro can provide. -
Haven't used this forum for several years, all looks new. Am going to install 750 GB scorpio black hard drive, while I'm at it, will upgrade to 10.6. Any step by step info available beside the manual? Did upgrades with my old G4 and it wasn't that difficult. Have not worked on my macbook pro. any info would be appreciated.
If you value your sanity, don't upgrade both things at once. Buy a new hard drive, format it, clone your existing drive to it, boot from it externally to make sure it's bootable, and then install it in your MBP. Use it long enough to make sure all is well. Then and only then, upgrade your OS on it. If anything goes wrong with your installation/upgrade, you have the original hard drive that you can clone onto the new drive to get back to where you were before the aborted upgrade.
If you do major hardware and software upgrades at the same time (i.e., without careful testing in between) and anything goes amiss, you may not have any idea which upgrade is responsible for the problem or even when the problem began. When making big changes, make them one at a time. -
I have backed my Mac Book pro up to my external hard drive using time machine. My iPhoto now does not show any images, even when I upload from my iPhone
Mac 101: File Sharing
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Transfer files between two Mac computers
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Set up a Windows computer to share files with Mac users
Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Use iDisk to share files
Mac OS X: Sharing your files with non-Apple computers
How to share a Mac's files with a PC and vice versa. -
Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there. -
I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.sydababy wrote:
and then deleting them off of my computer.
BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous. One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
follow here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret. -
I did a software update to 10.6.8. and I've been unable to back up my files to my external hard-drive on Time Machine. The error message it gives says "he backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk."
It recommends using Disk Utility to repair the backup disk and i've tried that but it finds nothing wrong with the disk!
I even tried copying files off it so i could re-format the drive but it apparently can't do that and the error message is that there's a wrong case sensitive file. Please help, I really need a solution.
Thanks,
Regards,
Chi.If you mean you're getting the same message:
see #C3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.
If that's not the message you're getting, please clarify. -
hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?
When you boot the new machine for the first time, you'll be prompted to import your data from a Time Machine backup.
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I am backing up my computer to an external hard drive using Time Machine. It has been at 288.91 "used" for a while... should I just let it ride? It's been going for about 7 hours now
It does not immediately delete the files that are missing.. it merely tries to backup the new files it has discovered on the external drive. Since you moved the files there, the backup at least for a while will contain both copies.. and that is why it doesn't have enough space to backup.
Fixing the problem.. hmm pondini is the expert.. you should be able to delete the backup of the photos in existing backup.. there are instructions to do it.. but it is a very poor way to do things.
Much better. .archive off the existing backup.. this is long and slow but worth it. you need a usb drive of the same size as the TC drive. Then erase the TC and start a fresh set of backups.
The alternative is to use the USB drive as a new target.. but it is much slower than the TC internal drive.
http://pondini.org/TM/12.html -
I back up with an external hard drive using time machine. I am trying to reload my iphoto library but it won't let me get back to a date that I need to. How do I do this?
Try Pondini's articles;
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html - scroll down to the pink box for iPhoto restoation.
Also http://pondini.org/TM/15A.html to clarify how to use the timeline. -
Restoring an external hard drive with time machine
I'm having a problem restoring an external hard drive using time machine. I'm on a macbook Air Running 10.7.5.
The external hard drive where I store all my photos crashed a few days ago. Not a total disaster, because it's backed up, but I can't figure out how to restore the drive onto a new hard drive. When I go into time machine without the corrupted drive attached, it does not show up in the time machine browser as an option for restore. (The files are definitely there, though, because I can see them when I look at the time machine files in Finder. I'm afraid if I just transfer the files by dragging, though, I'll mess something up.) I tried using the migration assistant, but I'm having the same problem there.
Anyone know how to do this? I'm a little frantic to get my photos back.
Thanks!I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them. -
How do I access my encrypted User Account files from my Back Up hard drive? Time Machine was used to create the back up disk; File Vault was used to encrypt the files.
Thanks. I will try going through TM. Since my Simpletech is on the way out, I'll be plugging in a new external hard drive (other than the back-up drive) and trying to restore the library to the new drive. Any advice or warning if this is NOT the right thing to do?
Meanwhile, that is a great tip to do an alternate back-up using a different means. It's been tough to figure out how to "preserve access" to digital images and files for posterity, knowing the hardware will always fail/obsolesce sooner or later, and that "clouds" are only as good as their consistent and reliable accessibility. Upping the odds with redundancy will help dull the edge of my "access anxiety", though logically, it can never relieve it. Will look into
Carbon Copy Cloner. -
How to backup external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ?
Hello,
i have an external hard drive which i store all my drum samples and sound library on and files are contantly changing, adding new sounds, deleting old ones etc ..
So my method of back up as of now is to just copy all the edited files and click and drag to the back up disk.
Now, my question is, how do i back up my external hard drive to another external hard drive using time machine ? I read somewhere that you can do this, i cant find the post however. It would be nice to automate the back up process rather than manually finding the files to copy over.
Thanks in advance !The question you pose is conditional, in that you should have more than an exact
capacity replacement for a clone, if the drive you are going from (or one going to)
has insufficient free space and that has a bootable clone on the drive; any space
tied up in a partition for Time Machine backup, takes away from the running space
if you should need to run the computer from a clone on the external HDD's other
partition.... Better to have a good capacity of additional reserve unused free space.
Be sure any clone copy that you hope to use as a re-close, that each in turn is tested
after a clone operation. Also consider using each running system's Disk utility and
have First Aid 'repair disk permissions'. Preparation of a new drive or even an old
drive that may have questionable artifacts or errors on it, should be reformatted. To
even go as far as Secure Erase (overwrite) at least one-pass before reformatting it
again, could help.
However, I'm not sure if the drives and situation you are looking at would necessarily
be a good match. It could work, but you'd need a reasonable size partition or hard
disk drive for a system. Snow Leopard and all its associated applications, can do
OK in a 100GB HDD. (My computers have more storage capacity than is used; so
for mine to have 60% free space, is good.) Virtual Memory is drive space used by
OS X, that can be a substantial amount for swap and temp files. Some applications
make duplicates of works-in-progress, for each change in an open file; that adds up.
{This question (& my reply) should've been in their own thread & not at the end
of one that is nearly three months old, + marked 'solved' by the original poster.}
So I guess I don't have a direct answer to your question; having just returned from
a few hundred miles and automobile issues, too. I'm not really thinking on-topic...
The clone should be on its own separate drive, and up to 3TB drive dedicated to
Time Machine may be overkill, however that software will consume old backups first
when it uses up all the space. Or usually that is what happens in TM backups. If
that isn't happening, there may an issue in how Time Machine is set up.
Good luck & happy computing! -
I recently formatted the hard drive to do a fresh install of Mavericks on my Macbook Pro Retina. I then formatted my Western Digital 2 TB External Hard Drive for Time Machine. I then began storing others files and folders on the external hard drive along side the TIme Machine Backup folder. Everytime I added a folder or changed a foler name it asked for my password.
This has never happened to me before using any other OSX.
I apologize if this has been resolved before, I'm new to the communities and have yet to find a solution.It is not a good idea to be storing other Stuff on your Time Machine drive. You may need an additional separate hard drive for those things.
Once you tell Time Machine to use a Drive, Time Machine owns the Drive. You (as a User) do not have permission to put things there. If you insist, it will do it, but wants your Admin password to do it. -
HT201250 new external hard drive for Time Machine backup suggestions?
Ok, I have 3 external hard drives; unfortunately I've used them on my PC and they are read only on my iMac. So, I need to buy a new external hard drive for Time Machine backup. I'm a little confused; can I buy any EHD and them format it so Mac can use it or are there special EHD's I need to purchase?
Anyone have a particular EHD that is working well for you? Thanks, BlueBluehowler wrote:
Ok, I have 3 external hard drives; unfortunately I've used them on my PC and they are read only on my iMac. So, I need to buy a new external hard drive for Time Machine backup. I'm a little confused; can I buy any EHD and them format it so Mac can use it or are there special EHD's I need to purchase?
Anyone have a particular EHD that is working well for you? Thanks, Blue
Unless you need all three external drives for your PC, you can reformat in one of them in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for use with Time Machine. However, since Time Machine backs up hourly, you'd need the external drive to be running constantly. That means ventilation of the drive becomes an issue since some, such as Seagate, can get very hot in their sealed enclosures. Some drive manufacturers try to get around this by spinning down the drive when not in use, but I've read complaints that that doesn't play well with a Mac. So whether you reuse one of your current externals or get a new one, it's a good idea to keep the drive's ventilation in mind.
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