Backing up Desktop Folders with Time Machine

Does Time Machine automatically back-up folders that I have added to my desktop (ie folders containing Movies and pictures) >>>

Time Machine backs up everything unless you tell it otherwise.
Keeping files on the desktop may not be the best place for them--you're better off putting them in your documents folder and creating a shortcut to them under "Places" in the Finder sidebar.
~Lyssa

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HT1338 I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine on my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. It was going fine when my 2 yo knocked the hard drive. Now TM said "failed" and the Mac refuses to recognize the external hard drive. Help please?

I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine and using my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. All was going well when my 2 yo knocked the disk leading to a "failure" by time machine (Latest Backup: Failed). Now the MacBook will not even recognize the hard drive. I have rebooted, tried all I can think of, but no acknowledgement of the drive. The drive itself makes noise and vibrates as if working, but nothing from the Mac. Please help or $100 down the drain... Thank you.

You may have already done these resets in the "tried all I can think of " portion of your post.....if not then here they are.....
PRAM
support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
SMC
support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
.....hopefully that is all that is required.....

HT201250 I've just used an external drive to back up my Mac with Time Machine. I have Lion, but didn't click and check the "Encrypt Backup Disc". What should I do? Can I delete the external drive and start again, or can I encrypt later?

I've just used an external drive to back up my Mac with Time Machine. I have Lion, but didn't click and check the "Encrypt Backup Disc". What should I do? Can I delete the external drive and start again, or can I encrypt later?

I guess if stolen or lost it would protect my "stuff", and if I'm travelling would protect my privacy.
You must understand the purpose and implications of encryption before deciding whether to use it.
Encryption locks your data with a password. If you forget that password, the data is lost beyond any chance of recovery. Neither Apple nor anyone else will be able to help you recover that data if you don't know the password.
By the same token, the password must be strong enough to provide the security you want. For example, if you're the potential target of industrial espionage by a government or large corporation, you need the strongest possible password. To create and manage such a password safely is a task in itself, not to be undertaken lightly.
If you're only concerned about casual snooping by someone with no special skill, a weak, easily-remembered password is appropriate.
But regardless of the strength of the password, if you lose it, the data is gone forever.
Another point to remember is that if you encrypt your data on one storage device, you must also encrypt it on all other storage devices that would be accessible to the same attacker. Otherwise the data isn't protected. For example, if you keep your computer and your backup drive in the same room, and the internal drive of the computer is not encrypted, then there's no point in encrypting the backup drive.

Backing up an MBA with Time Machine?

How does one back up a new MBA with Time Machine?
I just bought a drive with the new Firewire 800 connections for my iMac.
Do I have to buy another one with a USB connection or can I do it wireless?

Don't underestimate how amazing Time machine is --
After the initial backup, it will wirelessly backup your system every hour -- it only takes a few minutes and basically you are unaware of it even happening except for the sync icon turning in your menu bar.
Acccidently erase an e-mail?...Go back a day, and viola it's back.
Throw out a bunch of photos from a disc and then empty the trash? Go back a few days and there it is.
I find I use it far more than I ever thought I would -- and ironically, because Macs basically just plain old work, I've never in 8 years had to go look for a backup of files or anything that accidently disappeared the way things do on Windows based computers.

Trouble backing up external drive with time machine

I have a small USB stick that I use to store important documents but documents that I don't access very often. I have an additional 500 GB hard drive that I use for backing up with Time Machine. I want Time Machine to backup both my internal hard drive (Macbook Air 2011 Lion) as well as the small USB stick. I've searched the forum and discovered that I needed to reformat the USB stick, which I did (it is now Mac OS Extended). The USB now appears in the list of excluded drives in Time Machine preferences, which I removed. Thinking that Time Machine would be backing up my USB stick now, I backed up and then turned the computer off. The next day, I looked at the external drive, and it didn't seem to have a backup of the USB. I entered Time Machine and the USB is "greyed out" which means it wasn't backed up. I've retried backing up several times by including the USB in Time Machien preferences, but it seems that when I click "save" it doesn't actually save because when I open Preferences up again, the USB stick is in the list of excluded items again. Have I done something wrong? Any imput would be greatly appreciated.

I don't use Time Machine but my view is that it is too dangerous for sticks which may be removed - I understand that it may delete previous backups if it discovers that the stick no longer exists.
You could:
manually copy the stick to your main drive from time to time
use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the stick
use a utility to mirror the stick to your main drive

Can i use air port express to back up my mac with time machine

I was wondering if i can use airport express to work with time machine to back up my mac

What is it, because this is the setup I have and it works great for manual back ups.

Backing up Desktop items in Time Machine

Time Machine has been ignoring and not backing up my desktop items since last November. Can anyone explain why and how I can get it to back my desktop. Thanks

J G B wrote:
I just don't seem to have the "com.apple.TimeMachine.plist " file anywhere. is that possible?
Are you trying to search for it, or navigating via the Finder? (It's a system file, so won't show up with the default search.)
Open a Finder window. Select your hard drive name (probably +Macintosh HD+ ). There should be several folders at the "top" level, including Applications, Library, System, etc.
You want Library. Inside it is a Preferences folder containing com.apple.TimeMachine.plist

How to downgrade from Mountain Lion back to snow leopard with Time Machine

The final straw was the horrible mouse sideways page wiggle while trying to scroll down and read safari pages. Even after turning the feature off, tech support said it will still wiggle a little. That and the HORRIBLE grey icons everywhere was enough to send me back to my beloved iMac I loved when I bought it. I'll give up the iMessage and the few new items ML gave me. But as many others said, what I got new was far less than what was taken away.
So what tech support had me do was this. Even though the apple engineers said it would not work, apple tech support had me try it and it worked for me so good luck. Engineers said that after you install mountain Lion, it messes with ALL your time machine back ups and won't revert back to snow leopard even if you select a snow leopard date back in time. That didn't happen to me. I have a 2010 27 inch iMac
This worked for me but PROCEED AT YOU OWN RISK
Export individually any email folders or photos or data you will lose between now and the date you are reverting back to.
1. Insert Snow Leopard DVD that came with computer. The install disk not the applications. Make sure time machine external drive IS connected.
2. Restart computer and when you hear The Mac chime, hold down the C key and then it will take several minutes to boot up from the DVD.
3. Select the little blue triangle to continue in English.
4. When it gets to the screen that says "continue" stop. There might be a screen or two before this one I can't remember but either way stop at the word continue.
5. Go up to the top left and find the UTILITIES pull down menu and select disk utility.
6. In the window that opens up, Select the Apple drive which should be the very top one in the window.
7. Select erase.. it should be Mac OS extended journaled
8 select erase and maybe a password. It only takes a few seconds
9 go back up to UTILITIES in upper left and then select restore from time machine or backup or whatever it says. It's the last choice.
10. Select the external time machine drive and navigate to the date you last had Snow Leopard running and that will be the date it restores to. You will lose any data between now and then but you can export your mail, export photos, and other items separately. I only stayed on ML For a few days before hating it enough to go back so I had no loss of data except a few emails.
11. Hit RESTORE. And then it will take several hours. When you restart it, it should come right back to that day you selected as if ML was just a bad thought on someone's drawing board.   If for some reason it still comes up ML, Then they said to erase HD Again (steps 1-8) and then manually drags back USER folder or individual folders with Mail, photos etc.   if this way doesn't work, have another plan printed out so that you are not stuck by this one.
Good luck. Proceed at your own risk..

The ultimate solution:
You need an USB of at least 5 GB and the Snow Leopard Install DVD.
1. make a bootable USB with Disk Utility in it:
     a. download the Mountain Lion Installer from the App Store
     b. quit the installer after download
     c. find the installer in the Applications folder
     d. option+click in it and select "Show Pakage Contents"
     e. go to Contents>SharedSupport to find there the InstallESD.dmg file and mount it by double-clicking it
     f. with the Disk Utility, restore its contents into your USB
2. boot from the USB:
     a. restart the computer and hold-down the option key while booting
     b. select the USB and boot
3. run the Disk Utility and format in ONE partition the HD of your computer
REMEMBER: BACKUP YOUR HARD DISK BEFORE DOING ALL THESE, YOUR DISK WILL BE EREASED AND DATA BECOME UNRECOVERABLE OTHERWISE
4. insert the Snow Leopard DVD and reboot from it
5. follow the on-screen instructions to install OS X 10.6
After this, you can, if you will, upgrade to Lion or stay in Snow... Good Luck!!

I am using a WD external hard drive for backing up my laptop with Time Machine, but I have to do it manually. How do I know when it has finished the back up? How long should it take?

I am using an external WD hard drive for backing up my laptop. I have to do it manually, so I can't set Time Machine to just do it for me. How do I know when it is done backing up? How long should this take?

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Best inexpensive back up to use with time machine

I have not used time machine since getting my macbook pro about a year ago. What would be an inexpensive way to back up using time machine?
Bruce

Do a google search for "external enclosures". I recommend you try to use firewire800 over usb2 since it's the faster of the two although neither are speed daemons.
A reliable souce for external enclosures is OWC but you can get them most anywhere (see that google search). You can get enclosures with drives already installed or empty so you can add a drive of your choice (generally a little more expensive). Some come with their own software and some don't. Alternatives to TM are to do backups with a backup utility. Popular backup utilities include Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper.

How do I back up my files with Time Machine?

I have read the "frequently asked questions" regarding setting up my TM, but none address my specific problems which all began when I could no longer launch iPhoto.
Issues:
1. iPhoto. When I launch it there is a gray screen with a spinning white windmill in the middle. I have let it launch for over a half hour and there was zero change. I have tried several things suggested on this site, but nothing seems to help. I read that I should first back up my iPhoto files before I created a new photo library.
2. When I open Time Machine and slide it to ON, my only option is to CREATE A TIME CAPSULE and I have no idea how to do that???
All I want to do was upload some pictures from my camera!
I am a very new Mac user and would appreciate any help with these issues.

First off, in order to answer your question about how to set up Time Machine, you'll need to follow these steps:
1) Get some sort of backup drive to back your stuff up onto. Preferably you'll want it to be mac formatted already, however it is possible to erase a PC formatted drive to work on the mac.
2) Plug the drive into your Mac, and it will ask if you want to use it as a time machine volume, choose yes. If this message doesn't come up, go to time machine and choose to select drive, then choose your backup hard drive.
You'll want to get a external drive that can store more information than your computer can store. Portable USB drives are the most convenient since they don't need extra cables and are light and small. I would recommend a 320GB or 500GB+ external hard drive.
Your first time machine backup will occur within about 2 minutes of agreeing to use the drive as a time machine volume.
As for your major issue, please make sure you've done the time machine backup before continuing on to the next steps.
iPhoto issue troubleshooting:
1) Hold down command, option and click on iPhoto to launch it. It should give you some options to rebuild the iPhoto library. Begin by trying a few of those before continuing on to more serious solutions.
2) Hold down option and click on iPhoto to launch it, then choose to create a new iPhoto library. See if iPhoto launches okay from there.
To recover your old photos, you'll want to go to your Pictures folder (in your home folder), find the iPhoto Library -- the old one you originally used, not the new one you just created. Right click (or hold control and click) on the iPhoto Library file and choose "Show Package contents". Inside the new folder you'll want to look for a folder called Masters. You can drag that folder onto iPhoto and it will begin importing all your old photos.
Alternatively, a software called iPhoto Library Manager has a repair option that you can try:
http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/

Back up Mac Server with Time Machine Server installed on the same Time Machine Server

I want to back up several Workstations (“Workstations 1-4” in diagram below) and a Mac OS X Server (“MacMini Server” in diagram below) that runs “Time Machine Server” on that same “Time Machine Server.”
Is this possible?
The MacMini server doesn’t seem to find the “Time Machine Server” for backups. I read that this is due to the fact that Time Machine backups via network are organized in another way than “normal” Time Machine backups are.
MacOS server is running MacOS 10.8.5 with server app v2.2.1(169)-
workstations are running 10.10.1, 10.9.5 and 10.8.4

The Time Capsule and Time Machine will automatically keep backups for each Mac separate.
A user on one Mac will not be able to "see" the backups of the other Mac.
You can add a few more Macs if you wish. 4 or 5 Macs would probably be a practical limit, depending on the size of the hard drive in the Time Capsule.

How to restore files from system(hidden) folders with time machine?

How can I restore files that cannot be seen from 'Finder' using time machine?
i.e.
'HD/var/log/system.log'

try revealing all hidden files in Finder before using TM
run this in terminal
*defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles True*
*killall Finder*
to revert back, run
*defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE*
*killall Finder*

Backing Up Shared Drive with Time Machine

I have an Airport Extreme with a shared hard drive connected to its USB port. I have TM running on an iBook connected wirelessly and would like to include the shared drive in the TM backup of the iBook. The shared drive is mounted on the iBook when I start TM so everything appears ok. I use a Firewire hard drive connected directly to the iBook as the TM backup drive.
However, as a test of the backup , when I start the TM application on the iBook and try to access the network drive in the Finder window, the Airport Extreme appears under Shared devices but it not clickable. I therefore assume the shared drive is not being backed up.
What's up here?

Barney-15E wrote:
I'm pretty sure TM only backs up direct connected drives.
That is correct.

Backing up complete drive with time machine now that I'm on Snow Leopard?

Just upgraded to snow leaopard and now I'm doing a backup. Usually takes 5 minutes or less. No TM is telling me I don't have enough space on my drive because it needs to do an entire backup of my HD. What gives? So now i need to keep two complete backups and buy a new external HD or is there some way to continue incrementals from Leopard to Snow Leopard?

this may help:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C4.html
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D3.html.
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

Backing up Desktop Folders with Time Machine

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