Any way to back up FAT formatted external hard drive to Time Machine?
I'm a photographer, and right now my library of photos is a complete mess. I have about 20 GB of photos on one external hard drive and about 30 GB on my Mac's built in hard drive. I recently purchased a new external hard drive to use with Time Machine. I was under the impression that I could back up everything on my first external hard drive to my new external hard drive. Little did I know, because my first external hard drive is FAT formatted, I cannot back it up to the Time Machine hard drive.
So my main question is this: is there any way to back up this FAT hard drive to my Time Machine hard drive? If I can't use Time Machine, do you have any other recommendations for backing up my entire photo library?
Thank you for your help!
A TM backup drive should be used just for TM backups. Buy another drive to use for your photo library. You can then use other backup utilities to keep it current such as:
Backup Software Recommendations
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
12. SyncTwoFolders (Freeware)
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Message was edited by: Kappy
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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. -
Did my first back up today using external hard drive and time machine now i can't drag and drop
Hi, i did my first back up today using time machine it all went onto my external hard drive fine. Now i cant drag and drop anyhting. I assume ive cahnged some settings in time machine but cant figure it out what to do can some one help ?
thanksBrandbasher wrote:
Thanks Pondini but i have closed time machine, removed external hard drive.
Did you eject it first?
Now i cant drag and drop anything on my desk top, or mail or any other application. Ive tried moving folders, documents none of it works. Even moving around documents within a folder, it wont let me chnage the position of files.
That shouldn't be related to Time Machine (especially if the backups aren't mounted).
What happens when you try those things? Do you get any messages? Anything you can post a screenshot of?
Have you tried a Restart?
Does it happen in another user account? (If you don't have one, create one via System Prefs > Users & Groups.) -
How do I access photos that were backed up onto an external hard drive using Time Machine?
I used to own a PC. When my computer got too full, I would back up some of my photo albums onto an external hard drive (simply by copying and pasting what I wanted to save on the hard drive) and then delete them on my computer to free up space. Occassionally, I would still plug in my hard drive to access and use those photos when needed. I now own a Macbook Pro and after having issues with my old hard drive, I bought a hard drive compatiable with Macs. I plugged in the hard drive and backed up my entire computer using Time Machine. Now I would like to delete some of my photo albums to free up space on my computer. Before I do that, I would like to double check that they are indeed on the hard drive, but every time I try to open my iPhoto Library from the hard drive I get this error message: "The iPhoto library is a Time Machine backup, and so cannot be used as the main library. Reopen iPhoto with the Option key held down to choose another library." So I tried doing that, but the only option that comes up is my main iPhoto library on my computer. I can't seem to access what is on my hard drive.
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Can anyone help?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. -
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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.
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Format/partition the external as follows and you should be set to go:
1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.
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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).
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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. -
FAT formatted external hard drive is not 'readable by this computer'
Hello support community
The problem: when I insert my 'FAT' formatted external hard drive (Samsung M3) into my mac book pro it comes up with the error message that says "the inserted disk is not readable by this computer" and I therefore cannot access the files.
The story (potential further details):
1. I had a problem with my mac where it took hours to load each time I turned it on, would only work when power was plugged in etc. so I had to reformat my mac hard drive (when I tried to veriify it said repair, that wouldn't work). So i'm starting with a recently reformatted, clean mac.
2. Before doing this I reformatted my external hard drive (whilst on windows machine) to FAT32 (so I can use on both windows and mac) so that I could back up my files.
3. I then transferred files from mac onto external hard drive and then also put them on a windows machine.
4. After reformatting mac hard drive when I then tried to transfer files back onto the mac I get the 'not readable' error.
The technical details:
Thank you very much indeed anyone who can help or can try and help
Cheers
AndyErase the drive and reformat using your Mac (Disk Utility)
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Time Machine will not let me restore from backups after June, 2013. I can see the files on the external hard drive but Time Machine skips all of them and goes back to June, 2013. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?
rtilghman wrote:
telling me to buy a new router is NOT a solution.
And why not? Apple is selling these things like BigMacs. They can't make enough of them. You've been suffering since May because you refuse to get a decent router.
Can you imagine if a company that makes a refrigerator told me that I needed to upgrade my electrical system to rectify a problem with their device? What kind of response IS that?!?!
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Backing up photos on iMac using external hard drive and time machine
How do i back up photos from my imac using an external hard drive and time machine
Thanks in advanceApple explains how to use Time Machine in http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427.
Setting up and using TM is very simple to do, connect any external HD (format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility ) and your computer shoudl ask if you want to use that EHD for a Time Machine backup. If you have any questions visit your local Apple Store or reseller and they can answer how to setup and use TM and also should be able to offer suggestions on EHDs. My personal preference is OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro due to the build quality and OWC's level of support. -
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 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 -
Is there a way to backup my external hard drive with Time Machine?
Most of the memory used on my MBP is mainly used for applications and miscellaneous things for Logic and Final Cut. I have two external HD's. To save space on the internal HD, all of my music, pictures, and videos are one my external hard drive, while Time Machine set as the other. Is there a way I can back up my external HD using Time Machine? What would even be better is if I could only select specific files (My Music, Videos, Pictures) and not everything on my one external HD to be backed up in Time Machine.
TM can back up external HDs. If you have both of your external drives attached, go to the options in TM preferences. Be sure the data drive is not listed (this lists drives/folders to exclude from a backup). Then initiate a TM backup or wait for the hourly backup. That should back up the data drive.
You can only tell TM what to exclude from a backup, not what to include. -
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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