Can I back up macbook to external time machine drive attached to my imac?

I have an external hard disk attached to my iMac, which it uses for Time Machine backups. Can I configure Time Machine on my Macbook to use that same drive, and to connect to it over my network? Thanks.

yes. mount the drive remotely on the macbook and choose it as the designated TM drive in TM system preferences.

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Can I back up macbook to external time machine drive attached to my Samba?

I'm already backing up my macbook with a WD MAc Formatted drive. I want to connect it to a NAS (Samba Server).
I know that time machine will not work with NAS. Will my existing time machine drive work if I connect it wirelessly to a Samba based NAS device?

yes. mount the drive remotely on the macbook and choose it as the designated TM drive in TM system preferences.

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you think it is? It won't recognize any hard drive I put in the machine, so might it be the sata cable?

Boot the Recvoery USB, use Disk Utility to select the internal drive makers namea and size on the left.
Now select erase and select the midde option and click erase, it will take a bit to complete but it's best for the drive.
Now select Partiton tab, click the big box and Options: GUID and then Format: OS X Extended journaled and click apply.
Quit and you should be able to install OS X now with your Apple ID and password.
see
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/

I have an external Time Machine drive that I want to reformat. I can't remember the password. How can I do this. Disk Utility won't let me. Thanks.

I have an iMac that had drive problems last winter. Took the iMac to the Apple Store and they reinstalled everything and now it works again. Only thing is that my external Time Machine drive is screwed up now. Its 1.5 TB.
I had the Time Machine drive partioned into two parts. One partion was for an emergency bootup using carbon copy cloner. That partion I can open and mounts on my desktop. The other partion was Time Machine. It once upon a time opened and mounted without a password.
It requests a password to unlock even though I never had it password protected before the iMac drive problems. And so now it won't mount the drive.
I can go to Disk Utilities and I can see Time Machine with both partions. The Carbon Copy partion is mounted. The Time Machine partion is not mounted. For this reason I can't select it and erase it.
What the heck am I supposed ot do now to erase it and start over. Any help would be appreciated. I really don't want to go and buy another drive.
Kevin

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
{ diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list; } | open -f -a TextEdit
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).
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Post the contents of that window, if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Lion can't find my external Time Machine Drive

Anyone having a problem with Lion identifying the external Time Machine drive? When I go to Time Machine set up all I get is "Set Up other Time Capsule". Connections seem OK and drive is on and worked fine previous to the upgrade.
Any ideas?

Is the drive a USB or FireWire external HD, or a network drive (NAS)?
If it's a NAS, it needs an update. See #C16 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If it's an external HD, try repairing it, per #A5 in that same link.

External time machine drive no longer being automatically recognized

Recently my RMBP has stopped recognizing my external time machine drive. When ever I connect my 1 TB WD drive to my mac, it shows up on my desktop as usually but will not get recognized by time machine. I used to be able to connect the drive, have it show up on my desk with the orange USB logo, and then it would be auto recognized and the time machine logo would appear on it and it would start backing up. Now, I connect it and it just stays at the orange USB logo. I have to go to the time machine menu bar icon and open time machine's preferences and manually select the drive to get it to back up. This happens both on battery power and while I'm charging. I have already verified the disk in disk utility and have repaired as well. I don't recall when this started happening. I was running the 10.9.4 beta before its public release, but it hadn't been working before I upgraded to that either.

This simple procedure will clear your Time Machine settings, including exclusions. The backups won't be affected. If you have a long exclusion list that can't be recreated easily, you may prefer a more complicated procedure that preserves the exclusion list. In that case, ask for instructions. Otherwise, do as follows.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a file selected. Copy the file to the Desktop. Then move it (the original, not the copy) to the Trash. You'll be prompted for your administrator password. Restart the computer and recreate your settings in the Time Machine preference pane. It will show that you have no backups. Don't worry; your backups haven't been touched. Run a backup to test. The backup may take much longer than usual. If TM now performs as expected, delete the file you copied to the Desktop.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combinationcommand-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

What do I do when I suspect a virus? Is it safe to do a back up on my external time machine?

What do I do when I suspect a virus? Is it safe to do a backup on my external time machine?

It is not a virus.
Please explain exactly what makes you think you might have a virus.
Yes. It is safe to backup to an external Time Capsule using Time Machine as the software to do that on your Mac.

HT201250 Can I back up multiple volumes using Time Machine on Snow Leopard?

I have a fault with my time machine software where it is no longer able to perform incremental back ups of the volumes (partitions) I have created on my internal hard drive - every attempt results in a full back up. However incremental back up of the Mac HD is working. I have had it working perfectly in the past. I'm backing up to a dedicated external hard drive.
I have just been told by an apple support manager that Time machine on OS 10.6.8 is not designed to back up multiple volumes (partitions) on my internal hard drive, only the current Mac HD drive - is this correct? He said it shouldn't be backing up the other volumes and the reason it is doing so and has done so in the past is because of bug!
Surely this is not the case?

I would read and try this. Pondini is very knowledgeable about Time Machine:
http://pondini.org/TM/32.html
Ciao.

Restore from back up does not recognize time machine drive

My wife's hard drive in her 2010 MB Pro decided to give up the ghost a few days ago, so I purchased a new hard drive for her, booted from the Snow Leopard Install disc that came with the computer. However, after the installation is complete, when it gives the option to "Restore from backup", it will not locate the drive with the Time Machine Backups. The drive with the time machine backups is a dedicated 500 Gig Seagate External, that is set up on the network through our Airport Extreme. When I plug the drive directly into the computer, the drive doesn't even show up on the list. When I plug it back into the router it will recognize it as the Time Machine Disk, but will say "Connection Failed" when I try to connect with it. I have watched several youtube videos and read several blogs, and it looks so easy, simply click on "Restore From Backup" and bang! You're in business, but my drive and its backups won't even show up!
After going through with the intitial set up, I can click on the Time Machine Icon, and choose to view other Time Machine disks, and it shows up there, and I can see about two (2) years worth of back ups; however, each time I boot from the install disks, it still doesn't show up in the "Restore from Backup" mode. Migration assistant shows the files, but when I migrated them, it says that I do not have permission to view the files. Also, when I enter the Time Machine it only shows a blue folder with "Macintosh HD" on it, and when I try to simply "Restore" that folder, it will start transfering files for about an hour (Maybe get up to 10-15 Gigs, and then it will say that it cannot replace or over right "Systems", and then stop the transfer.
Thinking that some of the drives were from when we upgraded to Lion, I redownloaded Lion, and it is more of the same.
I am in a really tight spot here, because I have been faithfully using Time Machine Backups, and was told that if a situation like this ever occurred I would be good to go with a new hard drive, or even a new computer. We have about 80 Gigs (not kidding) of family photos on the computer, and those are precious to my wife, so if nothing else I would just like to get those off of the drive.
If anyone could provide me with any tips as to
1) How to make Restore from Backup recognize the drive; or
2) Migrate the files, but actually have permission to view them; or
3) Any other way to Restore from Time Machine that I may be overlooking,
I would greatly appreciate it.

Well the first thing you should do is have a local professional image the TimeMachine drive to another drive, then you can install Data Rescue on your computer and use that to read the 1's and 0's of the imaged drive directly and recover any files out of the morrase that is TimeMachine.
TimeMachine is a freaking eyecandy abortion, when it screws up, it screws up royally. However it's easy and better than nothing for computer newbies who tend to delete stuff by accident.
Computer professionals prefer "imaging" or "cloning" which makes a exact duplicate of a drive in every detail and accessability. Carbon Copy Cloner is the choice software for that.
If you not comptuer savvy or want to take a risk, then I'd advise you to get a local PC/Mac data recovery expert to recover your files, they are still on the drive and somewhat accessible, but if you fool around too much TM can delete them as it "copies" your present new boot drive. Then data recovery could cost thousands for platter dissection if the TM drive is overwritten/updated by TM software.
So to be safe, get profesisonal data recovery help, and not the clueless types at the Genius bar.
FYI, once a TM drive has been infected with Lion, you can't use it with SL.
So it's best to stop and get a image, then decide to play with the image or allow the pro's to recover your files before they are really gone forever.

Can't stop OS X indexing the Time Machine drive

I have a dedicated drive for time machine connected via FW800.
I've gone to spotlight preferences and made sure it is excluded from the spotlight search.
But the drive spends hours each day thrashing, even when TimeMachine is not actually backing anything up. Seems wasteful, and (as it is a noisy drive) a bit of a distraction.
So I looked in Activity Monitor, and saw that there is a process running called buildhdindex when the thrashing is occuring, and it is using loads of processor power. Here is a clip from my Activity Monitor display:
1108 buildhdindex root 40.5 1 529.96 MB 1.20 GB
Should I be concerned?
Is there any way to stop this?
Any advice / help / suggestions most welcome.

I think it is a leftover from Panther days... If you find that preference in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent.plist you can trash it and restart.
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack

10.9.3 won't recognize my Seagate external Time Machine drive...

I've already used Disk Utility. The hard drive shows up, but the volume itself is greyed out. When I repair the hard drive, this is the message I get:
Verifying and repairing partition map for “Seagate FA GoFlex Desk Media”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Adjusting partition map to fit whole disk as required
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking booter partitionsReviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Updating Windows boot.ini files as required
The partition map appears to be OK
When I repair the volume ("Armand"), this is the response:
Verifying volume “Armand”
Checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume “Armand”
Checking file systemVolume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
So...help? The hard drive hasn't been dropped, jostled, or anything like that. I'm using a MacBook Pro, Retina, 13-inch, Early 2013. This is really annoying, as I'd normally have just migrated my information from the last backup, done this morning!

The issue with WD drives started with Mavericks. WD does have a fix. You need to remove the WD software and update.
WD Drive Manager needs to be updated on Mac OSX 10.9.X (Mavericks)
Dear WD Registered Customer,
On October 30th, 2013 Western Digital informed registered customers of affected products via E-mail regarding reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9). Our investigation to date has found that for a small percentage of customers that have the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and/or WD SmartWare software applications installed on their Mac, there can be cases of a repartition and reformat of their Direct Attached Storage (DAS) devices without customer acknowledgement which can result in data loss.
WD has been tracking this issue closely through our WD Forum and through our Technical Support hotline and the occurrence rate of this event has been very low. A specific set of conditions and timing sequences between the OS and the WD software utilities has to occur to cause this issue. SHOULD THIS EVENT OCCUR, THE DATA ON THE PRODUCT CAN LIKELY BE RECOVERED WITH A THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE UTILITY IF THE CUSTOMER STOPS USING THE DEVICE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE OS X MAVERICKS (10.9) UPGRADE. WD will be issuing updated versions of these software applications that resolve this issue.
WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading until we provide an update to the applications. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks and are experiencing difficulty in accessing your external hard drive, please do not save anything to the drive, disconnect the drive from your computer, and contact Western Digital Customer Service at http://support.wd.com/country/ .

Can I install Aperture on an Iomega hard drive attached to my IMac and use it from there with iPhoto pix on the IMaac

Can I install Aperture on an external Ilmega hard drive attached to my IMac and run Aperture from there to use it with photos on my IMac iPhoto library?

It's usually best to have applications on the boot drive, so I'd turn your idea around: run Aperture from the internal disk and park iPhoto and maybe iTunes libraries on an external - which would free up space on the internal.

Can I use a TIme Machine drive of my Macbook to transfer data to a new IMac

Hi everyone
I currently have a 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro as my main machine, using System 10.6.4.
I'm keen add a second computer which will allow me to run both systems at the same time.
My day job is a music producer, so I have plenty of audio programmes and plug ins, that are all intel spec and up to date, so I'm aware of tranferring new password codes etc to a new hard drive however I wondered if there were any potential issues transferring the data from my Macbook Pro and or it's Time Machine Drive to a new iMac ? I'm guessing not as they are both Intel Machines and will be running the same operating system, but any guidance to re-assure me would be greatfully received.
Many thanks in advance to any replies.
Robert

I wouldn't use Migration Assistant for anything but to transfer your Home folder assuming you wanted to operate out of the same account on both machines. That's certainly the easiest approach. It's what i do between my Mac Pro and my MBP.
But Migration Assistant is not a tool for maintaining synchronization between two computers. For that you can either have the two computers on the same local network and sync them over the network with third-party software. Or you can maintain an external "common" backup that is used to keep the two computers up to date using third-party software.
My choice is the common backup on an external hard drive. I use a notebook sized drive because it's easy to take with me when I travel. I backup the most recently changed computer to the external drive. Then connect it to the other computer and do an incremental update. This keeps both computers in sync. You just need to remember which was the most recently changed computer.
If you have a local network, then when both computers are connected to the network you can enable File Sharing on one of the computers, then sync the two with third-party software.
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)
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.

Can I backup two macs onto one external time machine?

Can I backup two macs onto one external time machine drive? I am trying to do this over Wi-Fi.

Yes, the external drive has to be formatted correctly to HFS+ and shared to the network.
It doesn't matter how the second machine logs into the network but wireless back will be extremely slow as it will involve double hop wireless, I presume to a wifi router somewhere. For incremental backups this is no biggie but do the initial backup with the drive plugged into that particular computer or over ethernet.. gigabit for preference.
Pondini has some instructions as he has for most things.
http://pondini.org/TM/4.html
Also look at Q33 where he lists using a shared drive on another Mac.
If you are planning using something other than wifi router give clear information about the network layout you have and hope to use.

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!!

Can I back up macbook to external time machine drive attached to my imac?

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