Backing up iPhoto library from an external drive using time machine

I have a rMBP that is rapidly running out of storage. I purchased an external USB drive to store my iphoto library on. I have a time capsule that backs up my rMBP. If i include the external drive in the time machine set up, what happens when it backs up and the USB drive is not connected?
Any one have a similar setup that can give some advise i would appreciate it.

If i include the external drive in the time machine set up, what happens when it backs up and the USB drive is not connected?
Well, since the drive is not connected, any changes since the last backup will not be backed up.
When you reconnect the USB hard drive, Time Machine will backup your Mac and the USB drive.

Similar Messages

Moving back my iPhoto library from an external drive to my computers drive

Hi!
I moved my iPhoto library file to my external NAS but when I then opened the file I couldn't see previews of the photos, they were just empty with "frames" around them.
I had to click each picture to see what they looked like, I guess there isn't enough bandwidth to preview all pics? It's gigabit (1000MBit) LAN but it does not seem to suffice.
Anyway, I tried to move my iPhoto library back to my computer but I keep getting this error message (this is freely translated from swedish so it might not by word-by-word but I guess you get the message anyway)
"Could not complete the transfer since there already is an object with the name "iPhoto Library""
I tried to rename the iPhoto Library file on my NAS but regardless what I rename it to (test, library, 123 etc.) I keeps saying ".......object with the name "insert name here""
I tried to create a new library on my computers HDD and drag an drop the iPhoto library file in iPhoto but I don't get all the metadata then and I don't get all my pictures.
Please help!

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, saving edits and sharing the photos.
My guess is that the format of the NAS has damaged the Library and that's giving rise to these messages.
Try restart the NAS and the Mac, see if that makes a difference.
To move Photos/ Albums /Events between plus associated metadata between Libraries use iPhoto Library Manager.
Regards
TD

Can you restore an external drive using Time Machine

I have my media libraries (iphoto, imovie, itunes) on a separate external drive connected to my mac. They are being backed up to another HD through my time machine backups. However, should my media external drive fail, is it even possible to restore the files to a replacement external HD using time machine? Would it be better to partition my time machine external drive and use half for time machine and the other half to manually copy/backup my external medial HD?

Cumby
Would it be better to partition my time machine external drive and use half for time machine and the other half to manually copy/backup my external medial HD?
Bad idea, thats putting everything in once place. Worst premise for data protection
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Everything is about 1. redundancy, 2. redundancy and 3. multiple storage platforms (DVD, multiple HD, online server archives ala a personal website etc.)
The first realization is that your data on your computer is highly vulnerable
The second realization is that you need a HD backup of your OS and data
The third realization is that you need at the very least a secondary HD backup
The fourth and final realization is understanding the fragility of any and all HD & ferromagnetic storage, and that vital data needs to be “frozen” on unassailable redundancies across multiple storage platforms including multiple HD, online backup, archival DVD burns comprising at the very minimum triple platform redundancy of data you have been working on for years or decades that cannot be replaced.
The B.A.R. “rule” (backup-archive-redundancy)
Backup: Active data emergency restore. Backups are moved from backups to archives; or from backups to the computer for restore or data retrieval.
Archive: Active and static data protection with the highest level of redundancy. Archives are only moved from itself to itself (archived copies). Generally a “long-term retention” nexus.
Redundancy: A fail-safe off-site or protected and “frozen” copy of your vital data and foolproof protection against magnetic degradation and HD mechanical failure. A likewise failsafe from theft, house fire, etc.
Redundancy has two points of premise:
A: redundancy (copies) of data archives.
B: redundancy of data on different platforms (optical, online, magneto-optical, HD).
Send your backups to your archives (as often as possible), and your archives to self-same redundancies.
*When referring to backups and archives here, this is in reference to your data saved/ created/ working on,... not your OS, your applications, and your system information / settings,...which is the idealized premise for use of Time Machine as a system-backup after internal data corruption or HD-failure.
Here we are referring to data backups and archives, not system-backups for restoring your OS-system.
If your data on your hard drive is the cash in your wallet, a backup is your bank account/debit card, and an archive is a locked safety deposit box.
Its easy to get your wallet emptied (corrupted) or stolen, your backup checking account is somewhat easy to get corrupted/drained or damaged, but your bunker security is in the lockbox inside the vault, where your vital data and archives reside. In the premise of preventing data loss, you want as often and as much as possible one-way transfers from your “wallet” to your safety deposit box archives; and further still a minimum of two copies of those archives.
Highest priority (archives) requires highest redundancy. In the premise of often copying data from backups to archives, backup redundancy plays a minor role.
Long-term active file backups (a book, a major time-involved video creation etc.) requires double-active redundancies, preferably a minimum of Time Machine and an autonomous external formatted HD, so there are at least three copies of this data: internal drive, Time Machine, and secondary non-TM HD backup.

If I store files in the TimeCapsule's own HD, will i be able to use time machine to back those files up also? (specifically can i store/run my iPhoto library from TC and then have Time machine also make/include a backup up of the iPhoto library?)

I curretly use my iphoto library from an large external HD (2 tb) and then have time machine back it up to my airport extreme (which has an external HD attached, 500gb ) Long story short... I am running out of storage space on the 'large external hd 2tb'. however, I still have space on the HD (500gb) that is attached to my airport extreme.
My question is,
1. If i move my iphoto library over to the HD attached to my airport extreme, Is there a way for Time Machine to also back this up.
2. same question only applied differentliy = If i purchase a Time Capsule. and store files on its HD. (specifically an iPhoto library) would time machine create backups of this 'locally' stored data on its own TC HD?
TC = time Capsule
HD = hard drive
TM = Time machien

1. If i move my iphoto library over to the HD attached to my airport extreme, Is there a way for Time Machine to also back this up.
Sorry, but no. Time Machine cannot backup from network drives.
1. If i move my iphoto library over to the HD attached to my airport extreme, Is there a way for Time Machine to also back this up.
2. same question only applied differentliy = If i purchase a Time Capsule. and store files on its HD. (specifically an iPhoto library) would time machine create backups of this 'locally' stored data on its own TC HD?
Again, sorry, but no. Same reason. The TC's internal HDD is treated as a network drive.

If i move my iPhoto library to an external hdd, will Time Machine backup these photos as well?

I've moved my iPhoto library to an external HDD, I was wondering if now it has been moved outside of my iMac whether Timemachine will still back up my photos, or do I have to change any timemachine preferences to accomodate such a change, any responses will be welcomed-thankyou!

Thanks, Linc, you are the greatest!
So I moved my iTunes library to my external disk. When I checked Time Machine's Excluded list it was not there. Then I entered TM and saw that the library had been backed up from the external disk. So all is well and apparently the OS guys stopped adding external drives to the Excluded list.

Backing up an external drive using Time Machine

I am trying to back up an external hard drive with Time Machine, but in Options, the drive is greyed out and cannot be removed from exclusions.
I read that it cannot back up Fat32, if that is true, how do I work around that? My Aperture library is on this drive.

If the drive is formatted FAT32 then there is no way around it. Time Machine will not be able to backup the drive. You would have to repartition and reformat the drive for OS X, but that will make it unusable on a PC. You should try using a third-party backup utility if you cannot reformat the drive:
Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
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.
If you backup to the same drive used for your Time Machine backup, then you should create a separate partition on the drive for these backups.

Re-Creating Entire System on New Mac From External Drive Using Time Machine

Hi all -
Sorry if this question has been posted, I've look extensively and haven't seen it in this exact form, and I'm paranoid about this stuff. I also can't get a straight answer from Apple store employees.
I travel extensively with my MacBook, and when I'm home, I use Time Machine to back up all data from my MacBook onto an OWC external hard drive.
My question is, if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged, and its internal hard drive is no longer accessible, and I have to buy a new MacBook, can I use Time Machine to access the backup data on my external drive and transfer it to my new MacBook's internal drive, thus re-creating my entire system on my new MacBook, including all settings, preferences, files, absolutely everything exactly as it was on my old MacBook?
This is by far the most likely need I'll ever have for this backup data, so if Time Machine doesn't help me to re-create my system exactly as it was on a new laptop, it's not of much use, and I'll switch backup software.
Related question - I read somewhere that Time Machine keeps making backups on your external hard drive until it runs out of space. Does that mean it literally uses up every bit of space on the external drive? Because overstuffing my old external drive is what killed it, and cost me a huge chunk of change and several weeks to get the recoverable data off the drive. Or does Time Machine know enough to stop backing up when there is only "X" amount of space left on the drive, and if so, at what amount of remaining free space does it stop?
Thanks for your help!

If you need to restore everything to a new Mac, you simply have your TM drive connected when you start up the new Mac and during the Welcome routine that runs when you start up a new Mac for the first time you will be presented with the option of migrating your user info, settings, files, applications, etc., from a Time Machine backup. You just click "Yes" and all your backed-up info will be transferred to your new Mac.
Time Machine continuous "cleans up" backups so you do not need to worry about TM pushing a drive to its capacity limits, or even close to that.

AirPort Time Capsule back up of external drive using Time Machine

I have a Mac mini and back it up using time machine onto the AirPort Time Capsule- that works fine. I need to back up an external USB drive containing my iTunes to the AirPort using time machine. How can I do this?

Connect the drive to the Mac mini, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, and remove it from the list of drives set to be excluded. It needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(102795)

HT201250 How to backup the Time Capsule to an external drive using Time Machine?

Most of my data is on my Time Capsule since the hard drive on my iMac is too small for my music/movies/pictures and also so multiple devices can wirelessly access the data. I want to back up the files from my iMac and the Time Capsule on an external hard drive using the Time Machine. However, it seems that the Time Machine ignores the Time Capsule as a data source. How can I get this to work?

No, I don't believe this solves your problem.
TIme Machine can be used with a Time Capsule as a backup solution from connected macs and their drives but not from network drives, NAS or Time Capsules.
Thus, if you store files for LAN access on a TC internal drive, and want to back them to the USB/external drive attached to that TC, you cannot use Time Machine to do so.
Time Machine has not way of backing up ANY Time Capsule or NAS or WInPC or other networked drive, as far as I can tell. You will have to use some other backup software.
This is exactly what I bought the TC for myself (tried to use the internal drive on the TC as a NAS for my LAN, storing my music and photos and documents and bought a LaCie 2TB USB3 extneral drive to connect to the TC and hoped to be able to use Time Machine to backup the internal drive to the LaCie drive....but this does not work, as TM cannot backup from a network drive or TC device.

How I do recover iPhoto Library from an external drive?

I stored user files on my Mac Mini on an external harddrive. The Mac Mini is now not functioning so I am trying to recover files from the external harddrive. Specifically I'm trying to recover pictures from iPhoto.
I can plug the external drive into another Mac and see its contents in Finder. I can see the "iPhoto Library" on this disk. It shows up in the Finder as a single 41 GB file instead of a file system. I want to be able to extract the photos from this library and back them up online.
I tried running Import from iPhoto on my functioning machine, but iPhoto won't let me click on the "iPhoto Library" file. I don't know if I need to reset my iPhoto library location, or if this is a application version issue. (I'm running iPhoto 6.0.6 on the working machine, but the library I'm trying to get into was created by a later version, I think from iLife '09.)
How do I read the photos in this iPhoto Library?
Thanks.

If you want to preserve that Library you'll need to upgrade from iPhoto 6 to iPhoto 09 on this other machine. The v6 version cannot read the 09 library.
Doing anything else will destroy the library - you'll lose Albums, Slideshows, keywords, Faces, Places, books, calendars etc etc erc and basically have to start over from scratch.
How to do it? Go to the external diks and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.
Your Photos are in the Originals Folder.
The Edited versions are in the Modified Folders.
If you import both you'll have duplicates.
Regards
TD

How to move a large iphoto library from one external drive to another

Hi all (my first ever post to a forum!)
I have a large iphoto library (379 GB) on an external drive (Lacie 1TB w/usb 2.0) and want to move it to a another ethernet connected external drive (LaCie Network Space 2) so I will be able to access it from other computers.
Moving it with drag and drop or copying is calculated to take 66 day's!
Wander if that could be explaned with the fact that these are around 70.000 individual pictures/files, and if it could be speed up by first compressing the library.
Wander if anyone can shere their experience on that? (what software to use or?)
I have an 21.5 inch, mid 2010 iMac (3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 with 12 GB 1067 MHz DDR3).
I also have the new Macbook Air (1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz - with 3MB shared L3 cache).

iPhoto needs to be connected to the computer you are using it from via a sired connectin both for speed and also for data reliability
THe copy estimate is often way off - let it run and see - it will probably drop a lot quickly
Compressing would not help (assuming you shoot JPEG) since the JPEGs in the library are alread highly compressed
LN

Backing up data FROM a network drive using Time Machine

Okay. I'm willing - rather begrudgingly - to accept the fact that I can't use my 2x1TB LaCie network drives to store backup data from Time Machine. (I'm really hoping that Apple will enable this functionality in a future update.)
However, the internal drives on my iMac and MBP are quite full, and I have a lot of media, so my iTunes and iPhoto Libraries are stored on one of the LaCie NAS drives.
It appears as though Time Machine will not backup the data on this volume, even though mounted in Finder. (In a sense, I understand this not being enabled by default, but surely Apple could have envisaged users storing large proportions of their data on external devices and given us the option to 'opt in' volumes to include with Time Machine?)
Absent any official support from Apple, has anyone worked out a way of enabling Time Machine to backup the data from any mounted volume other than the internal HDD?
That is, I want Time Machine to backup data in the mounted network volumes on my iMac to the external FW drive that is directly connected to it.

Chris ~ Welcome to the discussions. See this _video tutorial_ and this article.
Unpublished sites: iWeb stores everything in a Domain file, normally located in the ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb folder (although it can be moved). That Domain file is the only file that can be opened in iWeb.
Published sites: In iWeb, publish your site(s) to a folder in a location you can remember. But note that you won't be able to open this folder in iWeb — it's only useful for re-uploading your site(s) to a server.

Restore iPhoto library from Mavericks to Yosemite, via Time Machine

Hi people.
I´m experiencing an unexpected problem: I can´t find the iPhoto library on Time Machine. The backup on TM is from an older MBP (Mavericks) and I´m trying to restore iPhoto on my new MBP (Yosemite)
I´ve found the library on my new Mac, then entered Time Machine but I cant scroll back in time to find the older library and restore it. I performed a complete restore from the TM first and everything looks fine. All my settings and apps are here but the old iPhoto isn´t available. I didn´t move the library on the old Mac.
Any tips?

What happens, if you go back in time, a year or so? Will your iPhoto Library then appear?
Try to retrieve the iPhoto Preferences file from your backup.
It is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist , the Library folder in your home folder.
Restore this file to your Desktop and try to open it with Xcode, if you have it installed or download Prefsetter (http://www.nightproductions.net).
Search with Prefsetter for "RecentRootDirectories" and click the disclosure triangle.
The items will tell you the locations of the last iPhoto Libraries you opened.

How to restore external drive using Time Machine?

My external drive quit working and it held my iTunes library and other important documents. Everything is backed up to Time Machine. Time Machine is another external drive. The external drives are Seagate Go Flex that sit on the removable bases.
Any tips going forward? I was thinking about Drobo? I need safe backups.
Should I stop everything, get another good drive and somehow restore? I can't just tell Time Machine to restore contents of lost drive - correct?
How much risk is there?
I have an iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Running 10.8.2 - everything is up to date
Thanks for helping. This is scary.

I can't just tell Time Machine to restore contents of lost drive - correct?
Sure you can. Follow the instructions linked below:
I can't see backups for a disk/partition that's no longer connected

Sorry folks, I did something bad, I was looking how to save my current iphoto library to my external drive and I hit a wrong button, lost my current iphoto and now have only the backed up version from 2007, Woops I never was the quick witted one... PLEASE

I switched my current iphoto library out for the saved one on my external drive by mistake. It said, Switch Libraries.... Do you want to switch the current iphoto library from AAA iphoto library (what I called the old one I guess - in my OWC) toOWC Mercury on-the-go and relaunch iphoto? cancel or relaunch
Sorry, I was looking for a way to save my current iphoto images to my hard drive. Yeah, I guess just drag something over right? Anyway, now I cannot retrieve my last 2 or 3 years of photos, Can You HELP me?
Mac os X version 10.6.8
2.66 GHz Intel core 2 Duo
etc

Depress the option key and launch iPhoto = use teh select library option and select the correct one
yes to move your library to an external drive
Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Backing up iPhoto library from an external drive using time machine

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