Which External Drives are compatible with Time Machine. I plan to utilize it for backups and to connect to an Airport Extreme.

MBP Retina, 15 inch, Late 2013. Intel Core i7. OSX 10.9.4
Which External Hard Drives are compatible with Time Machine.
I plan to use one drive for automatic backups connected to an Airport Extreme.
The connection can be USB or Ethernet and should be expandable.
OR
should I just buy the Time capsule and avoid the compatibility, connection and interference issues.
Thanks

Hi Kappy,
I just saw that on the Apple Support site that "Time Machine is not supported with USB hard drives that are connected to an AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme device", just as you have suggested.
Why is the newest model of the Airport Extreme, which is the model I have, an exception to the Time Machine compatibility?
The following information is from Apple website:
Time Machine works with:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard drive (any model)
External USB hard drive connected to AirPort Time Capsule (any model)
An external hard drive connected to your Mac
Use the Time Machine pane of System Preferences to choose your backup disk(s).
Additional Information
Time Machine is not supported with USB hard drives that are connected to an AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme device.

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What sort of external drive to use with Time Machine

Hi all,
I was wondering if there are requirements to the sort of external drive Time Machine can use: does it have to be a FireWire drive or will an USB drive suffice? Additionally, what would be the best type?
Wil Dieteren

Time machine will per default do incremental backups on an hourly, daily weekly and monthly basis. Therefore you need an external harddrive that is larger than the harddrive you are backing up. Depending on how many changes and large files you work with, the requirements for the right size may vary.
I'd suggest getting an external HD that is at least 150% of your HD. 200% would be more generous.
I just bought an Iomega MiniMax 500GB and it works great with Time Machine (my iMac's HD is 320GB).

HT2477 what is the best external drive to use with time machine?

I already have an external hard drive that I use to backup anything I want to then delete from my macbook air. I also use Carbonite to back up everything on my mac. I am looking to switch to Carbonite to Time Machine because it's free. Can you recommend a drive? How do most people use TM? Do you manually back up once a day or do you set it to constantly back up your files?
Thanks,
Jan

I back up every day, I also have 2 back up drives, which you should also have, if your data is imporant to you.
A Time Machine back up, and a clone (which is bootable)
I use a OWC Elite,and a IOmega.
Use Time Machine on OWC:
ttp://eshop.macsales.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adwords& gclid=COCM8O3uuLsCFSUOOgodVBEAOwuuLsCFSUOOgodVBEAOw
IOMEGA:
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=iomega+portable+hard+drives&tag=googhy dr-20&index=electronics&hvadid=3927029335&hvpos=1t2&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2132 262008473015365&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_2k8gsvyzks_b
These are but a few that are available for affordable prices, I have had very good performance from both, there is going to be many other opinions, and all are valid, I just sat stay away from WD as they have been problematic.
Do a web search you will find tons of drives, at different prices, and capacities, choose one or better still two and back uo to 3 different systems.
I use Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner:
http://www.bombich.com/
Also check into SuperDuper:
http://download.cnet.com/SuperDuper/3000-2242_4-46651.html
Hope this helps

How can i backup external drive iphoto files with Time Machine?

I just can't figure out how to be sure my external drive is being backed up to Time Machine external Seagate HD, the most important files being some 24,000 family photos. Help! The forums I have tried seem to keep missing the point with the question.

The Pondini website is a definitive source for Time Machine information. Perhaps this extract will give you the information that you are looking for:
http://pondini.org/TM/32.html
Ciao.

Seagate drives not compatible with Time Machine causing OS lag/hangs?

Setup-
Intel iMac (Early 2006)
Mac OS X 10.5.1
Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB External Drive
Reproducible Issues
MacOS X lags at start up with the Seagate drive connected via Firewire and Time Machine enabled.
MacOS X hangs at shutdown with the Seagate drive connected via Firewire and Time Machine enabled. The only way to turn off the iMac is to hold the power button down.
I have contacted both Apple Support and Seagate Support. The outcome with Apple resulted in finding no issues with my iMac. The same can not be said of my 35 minute call with Seagate this morning.
The Seagate rep took me through basic troubleshooting steps and then proclaimed that it was Apple's issue and that Apple had issued a patch for this problem. However, the rep was unable to even provide the name of the patch. The problem with this declaration was the fact that it was based on disabling Time Machine and restarting the iMac once. On the second, fifth and seventh reboot after getting off the phone, the iMac hung on shutdown and lagged on reboot.
To add insult to injury the Seagate rep told me not to use the touch sensitive power button on the Seagate drive, since "it doesn't always work properly." Quoted word for word.
A co-worker of mine uses Time Machine with a LaCie drive on his PowerMac G5 and has had zero issues from day one. At this point in time I'm probably going to wipe the drive and return it to Costco unless someone can suggest an alternative.

Hmmm...bought at costco
I bet it is formated with the Master Boot Record Format. it will mount and OS X will read it, but Time Machine will not be able to use it.
You need to be in finder, under go menu, choose utilities. in folder that opens, double click disk utility. This will open a window that shows all your connected drives. Highlight the seagate drive ( the top choice, thats give the drives storage size). in the top group of buttons in the right side of the application window click the partition button. The Volume scheme will show current. Highlight this and choose 1. to the right of that is a place where you can name the drive. Use only normal letters and numbers here. On the bottom of that window, click the options button, and select GUID. click OK and give it a few minutes. close the disk utility application when it is finished
After it is formatted, the drive should show up on your desktop and Time machine should recognize it.

Partition NTFS External Drive to work with Time Machine

Hello Apple Support Community,
I use a 1TB External NTFS hard drive to backup the contents of my Desktop Windows computer. I was wondering if I could use Disk Utility (or another tool) to partition the external hard drive so I could use TIme Machine on it. That way, not only would I have my desktop backed up, but also my laptop.
I'd delegate around 700GB for my Windows Desktop and 300GB for my MacBook Pro.
Is this possible? Or do I need to erase the entire external harddrive and backup everything all over again?
Thanks,
David

Requirements to use Time Machine
Time Machine is only available with Leopard or later.
External FireWire or USB 2.0 drive
Time Capsule
Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 or later using File Sharing
Drive shared by a Mac running 10.5 Server
SAN volume managed by Apple's Xsan file system
A TM drive must be partitioned with either APM (PPC) or GUID (Intel) and formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
Clearly you cannot use Time Machine with an NTFS formatted backup drive. Furthermore, Disk Utility cannot partition an NTFS formatted drive. In my opinion you should use separate drives for separate backups.

Type of External Drive to use with Time Machine

I just upgraded to Leopard & want to use Time Machine to back up my data. Is it better (i.e. faster) to use a FireWire or USB external drive, or doesn't it make a difference?
TIA!

Hi-
It's better, and faster, to use firewire.

Which hard drives are compatible with the Ultrabase Series 3?

Hello,
I recently purchases a ThinkPad X220 Laptop. I'm looking at picking up an Ultrabase Series 3 dock, but I'm a bit confused about which hard drives can fit into the dock. Can any 2.5" SATA drive work? Does the dock come with an adapter for the drive to fit in the bay?
Thank you for your help.

Sorry I pushed the wrong button by mistake.
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=96835

What external drives are compatible with mac g5 osx 10.5.8?

Hello, I have a Mac g5 osx 10.5.8 and I am trying to copy the DVDs for motu's Mach Five2 to an external harddrive. I had everything copied to a La Cie external harddrive, but it seems not to be working any more, so I got a Toshiba Canvio 3.0, version 1 tb and then version 1.5 tb, but the DVDs I mentioned won't copy to it. I get error messages of either 0 or -36, which seems to mean that there is not enough space on the Toshiba external harddrive. The Toshiba has a 500 GB capacity, and the DVD I am trying to copy is 83.3 GB, so I don't see what the problem might be. I have gotten replacement dvds from motu, tried and exchanged the Toshiba, used disk utilities from the Mac, and checked all cables and connections, talked to motu technical support and the people who sold me the Toshiba, but nothing seems to work. Does anyone have any suggestions? They would be much appreciated. Thanks, OJ

These are my #1 choice for desktop Macs regardless of processor type. One with FireWire is great for PPC Macs:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
Too many "on sale every day" name-brand externals at the local office stuporstore are so Windows-centric that they are often ill-behaved on Macs. I even had a WD external marketed as "Mac Edition" that was nothing but trouble. I tore open the WD enclosure, rescued the decent drive inside, and put it in an enclosure with USB2 and FW800 from the family of units I linked above. Works perfectly now.

I'm having some difficulty with Time Machine. It appears to be deleting backups from random dates on my external hard drive. I am not deleting them. Are they hidden and how do I prevent this from happening? Can I retrieve them?

I'm having some difficulty with Time Machine. It appears to be deleting backups from random dates on my external hard drive. I am not deleting them. Are they hidden and how do I prevent this from happening? Can I retrieve them?

... I didn't know that Time Machine was more a last resort back up instead of main back up.
Don't rely upon Time Machine to the exclusion of all else. I compliment Time Machine with a periodic "clone". TM is much better than nothing, but it's a safety net, not a hammock
Here is my understanding of Time Machine's file deletion algorithm, distilled from Pondini's FAQ, Apple's KB articles, and my own observations.
Time Machine deletes ("thins") files from the backup disk as follows:
Hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first backup of the day
Daily backups over 30 days old, except the first backup of the week
Older backups get deleted when Time Machine requires space and you deleted them from the source disk.
Therefore, assuming TM has been performing at least one backup per day, backup files will remain available:
at least thirty days, if they existed on your Mac for at least a day
until you run out of space, if they existed on your Mac for at least a week
In addition to the above, Time Machine always keeps one complete copy of your source disk so that the entire volume could be restored if necessary. Any files that remain on your source volume will be present on the TM backup, no matter how old they are.
If you are using 250 GB of space on your source disk, its Time Machine backups are likely to require at least twice that much. A good estimate of the minimum required backup volume size would be about three times the size of your source disk - 1.5 TB in your case.
A more thorough explanation would require Pondini since he has plumbed Time Machine's mysteries far more than I have.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

When I plug a LaCie external hard drive into my new Mac mini, [os 10.9.1], to use with Time Machine it effects the performance of my internet and email. Turn off Time Machine and unplug the hard drive and the internet and email are working normally again

When I plug a LaCie external hard drive to work with Time Machine into my new Mac mini, [OS 10.9.1] it drastically effects the performance of the internet and email, turn off Time Machine, unplug the hard drive, internet and email go back to normal. Why?

Maybe:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/usb-3.0-hard-drives-can-cause-wi-fi-inter ference

What external hard drives work best with time machine

What is the best external drive that is compatible with time machine?

I see a lot of people on the Apple Discussion boards mention Time Capsule. The experience I've heard from folks with the First gen units was terrible. Poorly designed, poorly manufactured (sorry Apple!). They suffered all kinds of heat stress failures etc. The follow up devices are supposed to better, but I don't think it's mandatory you buy Apple product to run Time Machine. In fact choose based on price/capacity, then possibly on Manufacturers reputation. I use a external USB dock that has a Serial ATA connector on it. That way I can swap drives out when/if they fail or get full. That way I KNOW who manufactured the actual drive itself. Often times if you get a Time Capsule the drive manufacturer is the "flavor of the month" so to speak. There's a number of outfits that make these bare SATA style docks, and you can connect them through USB (which I have) or higher speed connectors like FireWire 800 (for faster reads/writes/backups). My best recommendation is to buy one of those SATA dock devices, then buy a bare hard drive from a reputable manufacturer. Then setup Time Machine and use the left over space that it doesn't use for your growing iPhoto collection? Use your best judgement, as there's no real right/wrong way.

What brand external hard drive is best with time machine

what brand of external hard drive works best with time machine?

Contrary to the other two replies, I will relate what I've read here: WD drives are fine, but their (cheap?) enclosures are subject to failure. Some buy a bare WD drive and install it in an Oxford Chip external enclosure (OWC / macsales.com would be one source). And, I have two LaCie Quadras and one OWC Mercury Pro - both are generally recommended here. If you want it bootable, most WD drives do not support it:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1787/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvd GltZS8xMzUxNTIzMzIwL3NpZC9ueUFYc1g5bA%3D%3D
Please note: it's good to have an external hard drive which has its own power supply and, as mentioned, FW 800 or USB 3). You also do not need any software that comes on the external - you will most likely need to format it anyway because most come formatted for Windows, but that is easy using Disk Utility.

Which USB 64GB flash drives are compatible with Mac Mini?

I need to use a USB 64GB flash drive, formatted for both PC and Apple, with my Mac Mini. The largest USB flash that Apple sells is 32GB. Which USB 64GB flash drives are compatible with Mac Mini. If most are, are there any that I should avoid? Thanks.

I'm assuming that when I connect the USB to the Mac it gets formatted for Mac. Then I follow your directions and it gets formatted for Windows, in addition to Mac. I'd choose ExFAT since it is a 64GB USB.
No no. A brand new drive will be formatted as "something", most likely something for Windows, and that could be FAT (which a Mac can also read and write to) or NTFS (which a Mac can read but not write to).
So, you'll need to make sure it's formatted as ExFAT, instead of what it is. A medium can be in always only one format.
About the expense: Fry's is advertising a 64GB Patriot USB Flash Drive for $22.99. Is that considered expensive for a USB flash drive?
That'd be dirt-cheap, I'd say. Expect it to be very slow.
I've read answers that are somewhat related to my question, and some warn that USB's are slow. Maybe I should consider another option?
USB is not that slow (though there are faster buses). And USB flash drives come in different speeds, where especially the "write" speed can vary hugely.
The advantage of USB is that it's widely spread, and lots of media is on the market, making it very affordable. The only other affordable alternative is an external HDD, I'd say, where you get much bigger drives for less money than a small 64GB USB flash drive...
My main objective is that, in switching from Windows to Mac, I want to be able to access Windows files that I've backed up to a Seagate Free Agent. I bought a LaCie with the Mac Mini, but will still want to use the Free Agent. I need to reformat the Free Agent for the Mac (hopefully for Mac and Windows; while learning to use the Mac and Numbers and Pages I may have emergency jobs that I'll need to do with Excel and Word on the PC), so my plan is to move the files on the Free Agent to the 64GB flash drive, reformat the Free Agent so that, hopefully, the Mac will read the files on it after I move them back to the Free Agent from the USB.
Why don't you copy the content of the Free Agent meanwhile to the Mac's HDD? Then copy it back after re-formatting the Free Agent? Why would you need an extra USB drive?
Any ideas you have about how to achieve this objective will be appreciated. Maybe I should buy a third, small, external hard drive? Maybe there is a way to move the Windows files from the Seagate to the LaCie?
Exactly... you seem to have already extra space on the LaCie drive...
My understanding is that the Apple Store does not want to move files from an external hard drive to the Mac.
I don't know where this could origin, but that's as wrong as it is funny. What has the App Store to do with you moving some files from one drive to another?
I should add that I don't have enough remaining free space on the PC hard drive to hold the files on the Free Agent, so that is not an option.
No, but you have a Mac with a built-in HDD, and you got the LaCie drive. Again, the Mac should have neither a problem to read from the Free Agent, nor to write to the LaCie.
From what you're telling here, you have lots of space already with what you have, I can't see the need for the USB flash drive, at least not for the purpose you mention here.
It seems that your understanding is that (a) a drive comes in a particular format for, or not for Mac, and you can't change it, and (b) that for some reason (App Store?!) Macs aren't allowed to copy files from external files. Well, both is wrong...

Lacie USB 3.0 - do I have to erase it to be compatible with time machine?

Just bought a LaCie USb 3.0 external hardrive. Do I have to erase it to be compatible with time machine?

I would do this:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
It's now ready for use on your Mac.
If for some reason Disk Utility will not repartition or format the drive it means the drive has been preformatted with NTFS to which OS X cannot write. You will need to repartition and format the drive using the MBR partition scheme and formatting FAT (MSDOS.) When you succeed with that, then open Disk Utility again and do the above process that now should work.

Which External Drives are compatible with Time Machine. I plan to utilize it for backups and to connect to an Airport Extreme.

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