Can I backup with Time machine and continue to use my mac?

Hi I backed up my complete system with time machine and left the system alone. My question is when I do future backups can I continue to use the computer whilst the backup is happening or should I leave it alone whilst the backup is happening?
Thanks!

The automatic backups aren't nearly as noticeable as the initial backup. Time Machine is designed to do its thing politely in the background while you use your computer. I rarely even notice it. However, if you are using resource intensive apps you might want to turn off Time Machine in System Preferences until your are finished so your apps have access to all available horsepower.

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HT3275 can't backup with time machine

I can't backup with time machine and I do not receive any errors, time machine just stays in the 'looking for backup disk' mode and will not go any further. I went as far as buying a new usb backup disk to replace the old one and still the same issue occurs. I've tried using different usb ports on my mb pro and that doesn't work. No amount of restarting, ejecting discs or checking preferences helps. Disk utility states the drive is fine (even the new one), the permissions or sharing haven't changed.
My system is up to date with the latest updates, and this all just happened out of the blue one day. I suppose I could do a system restore but I'm afraid of losing my data; and I'm not 100% sure how to do that.
I'm running OSX 10.8.2, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB memory

There is good advice available about Time Machine. Go to Pondini's paper(s) before you do anything so drastic as a system restore.
Time Machine - Troubleshooting
Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions

My external hard drive (1TB WD My Book Essential) suddenly has no room to backup with Time Machine! I am using Maverick OS and wondered if it is because of a bug in the system software.

My external hard drive (1TB WD My Book Essential) suddenly has no room to backup with Time Machine! I am using Maverick OS and wondered if it is because of a bug in the system software. I purchased a new external drive with 3 TB and wonder if I will run into a problem installing it. I don't know how to transfer my files from the previous HD to the New one. I was told to use a cable, but how do I do it? Do I connect them both to the computer and drag the old into the new? How is it done? Why did this happen, the overloading of the Time Machine?

Why has the TimeMachine drive run out of space?
With the limited amount of information you've provided it is hard to answer this question. TimeMachine should continue making backups until the drive is full and then it should erase the oldest backup(s) to retrieve enough space for the next backup. Unless your computer's hard drive has close to 1TB of space on it, you shouldn't see a message saying TM cannot backup because it is full. However if you do have more than 500GB (1/2 a TB) then I can see how that message might occur. Also, if you are using the TM drive for double duty (backing up more than one computer or storing data other than TM) you could get that message.
Will you have this problem with a 3TB drive?
I always recommend that people look at how much they'll be backing up in total, add a bit extra for the future, and then multiply that by at least 1.5 and even better to double it. That indicates how large the TM backup drive should be. The TM drive should only be used for TM backups. It is ok to use one drive to back up more than one computer but if doing so, add up the contents of all the computer drives, adjust for the future and then double it.
Moving Forward
Disconnect the old TM drive for now. Connect the new drive and let TM do its job. I don't recommend that you try to transfer the TM backup from the old drive to the new one. Keep the old drive around for a couple months just in case you find you need it and then after a few months, if you like, you can erase it and use it for something else.

Can't backup with Time Machine: "sparsebundle is already in use"

Can't backup with Time Machine suddenly. Message says "back up disk image ...'/Volume/... /myMacname.sparsebundle' is already in use".
I have no idea what this means. Can someone please help? Please note that I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion.
Thanks.

Been having the same problem on mountain lion
Most forums say you must disconnect the users in AirPort Utility, but v6.1 no longer has this feature
So simply open “Finder” on the left under “Devices” you should see your “Time Capsule”. If not then it should be under “Shared”. Click on it and then select “Disconnect”. Then simply reconnect and that should be it
You can also restart the Time Capsule just by using Airport Utility.
Open Airport Utility and select the Time Capsule. Then up on the top bar select Base Station and click on Restart
Mine is now all working again

Can't Backup with Time Machine under Mac OS X 10.6.6

Ever since I updated my Late 2009 Core i5 iMac with the 10.6.6 Combined Update, I can't backup my computer with Time Machine, either the Automatic Backup or the Backup Now command.
After backing up 20 MB or so, I get a message that the backup was interrupted because of disk problems, presumably the Time Machine external disk. I get the message to retry later and, if difficulties persist, to use the Apple Disk Utility to correct the problem. I followed the advice to no avail, retrying later, erasing the Time Machine hard disk and, the last time, erasing the Time Machine hard disk followed by a new partition creation.
As I filed a bug report for the Time Machine Back up command when Apple was developping Mac OS X 10.6.5, I am inclined to believe that the previous beta software bug was re-introduced by the 10.6.6 update.
I will use the Disk Utility on the Macintosh HD to check whether it would solve anything. Repairing the permissions and checking for disk problems. If the problem isn't corrected, I will submit a bug report.

Update:
It was the Macintosh HD which was corrupt, reporting 1 fewer folder and 1 more file than it should have. The solution was to start the iMac with the Mac OS X Install DVD, use Disk Utility to repair the Macintosh HD, and back up the computer with Time Machine.
The Macintosh HD became corrupt while installing the Mac OS X 10.6.6 Combined Update, a not so infrequent problem I am told.
In this instance, Time Machine realized the corruption problem, warned me, and stopped the back up before the records were falsified. Great!
Time Machine performed as expected, but its warning should have identified which hard disk was corrupt, saving me the confusion with the Time Machine external hard drive. Had Time Machine warning clearly identified the corrupt drive, I wouldn't have erased my Time Machine backup.
That's one point to improve with Lion.

Backup with Time Machine and freezes

I am trying to back up my computer with Time Machine to my Time Capsule. I have about 102 GB of data to backup. When it gets to about 8 mb it stops backing up and won't go any further. I restarted my computer, then erased the Time capsule and tried it again. No difference?
Anyone know what the problem is here?
Same thing happened after I installed Snow Leopard.

When it "stopped" how long did you wait to know that it was really "stopped"?
It may be that it was copying over a large file. The initial backup is going to take a long time.

Can I use the same drive to backup with Time Machine and Windows Backup?

I've got a 1TB external hard drive that I'm currently using for Time Machine backups and also it stores about 300GBs of music. Can I partition the drive to add an NTFS formatted partition and use that partition with Vista's Backup/Restore feature? If so, how do I partition the drive? Forgive me, I'm a neophyte when it comes to Windows. Also, I don't want to lose the music files already saved on the Time Machine partition.

While you can add HFS+ volumes to an existing drive, adding NTFS requires taking chances: change to FAT and then convert to NTFS.
I'd invest in another backup. I don't even rely 100% on any one backup method; drive; let alone TimeMachine. A bootable backup should also be part of your strategy for OS X. So I would create a smallish 40GB emergency boot volume - for OS X use only.
For Vista, I use the built-in features of Ultimate/Business AND Prosoft Engineering DataBackup PC. Norton Ghost started out okay but gradually deteriorated, though their 2009 360 2.0 or something....
I would not want to use WinClone except as one-time 'snap shot' or emergency; useful when moving to a new larger hard drive, and if your Vista partition is small and not 100GB of files.
I'd look at 500GB+ drive to use solely for Vista backup and media files.
MacSales has $79-89 FW800/400 case for SATA drives, and just throw a good 640GB WD Caviar in for $78 and good to go.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW934AL1KS/
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Cannot see backups with Time Machine and Aiport Extreme

My MacBook Pro is backing up to to an Airport Extreme with a USB drive attached to it. The backing up seems to be working. ie time machine say's it backed up my machine.. eg at 1.57.pm today.
When I enter time machine to try and get a backup, it's not there... it has one finder window for "Now" (1st April) and then the next one in the list is 23rd of March. SO I cannot see any of today, yesterday or another other recent backups.
BTW, I had originally made a backup directly to the USB drive. I am not sure of the date but it could have been 23rd of March.
Any ideas?

Hey
I have the exact same problem. I have just switched from direct firewire-based Time Machine backup to an external drive, to said drive now connected to my Airport Extreme. I knew that it wouldn't accept the old TM backups, so I started up: Started the initial backup wirelessly, the unplugged it, and finished it via firewire. All worked fine, and the sparseimage was recognized and so on. After it was done, I attached the drive to the AE again, and it backup up as it was supposed to 3-4 times a day.
That was 3 days ago. But when I checked my TM yesterday, there was just the "today" window, and I couldn't browse anything. Today it's the same story. What gives?
Now, I opened the sparseimage on the TM drive to see if the incremental backups were there, and they were all there, but somehow TM doesn't read them. Can anybody who has a working TM wireless backup tell me if TM mounts the sparseimage to when launched and unmounts it afterwards?
TM worked great before when connected directly – never had a problem before and something tells me it's a problem with the sparseimage...Nevertheless, if it can't be fixed, I am back to friewire-based TM backup ;-<
Message was edited by: Hedemann

How do I connect both iMac (2011) hard drives to backup with Time Machine and Airport Time capsule?

Hi - my iMac has 2 hard drives, 250 Gb solid state and a 2 Tb drive. I'm backing up using time Machine to an Airport time Capsule but only the 250 Gb drive comes up in hte list? All my photos are on the 2 Tb drive (about 120GB worth) and I want a back up for these. I'm running under OS X 10.9.1 Maverick
Any help would be greatly appreaciated!

Ok.. I am surprised..
What did you format the 2TB drive.. I find it hard to imagine you formatted an internal drive anything but Mac OS extended journaled (HFS+) .. but you could have.
Time Machine can only backup HFS+ format drives.
Of course this Mavericks.. and in Mavericks the bugs rein supreme in Time Machine.
Reset TM setup.. See A4 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Make sure the 2TB drive is mounted when you redo the TM setup.
To be honest.. I would also buy CCC and do a full clone of the drive..
TM is great for the occasional file loss.. but it is lousy to restore a drive. CCC at the moment is $40 or so and IMHO money well spent.
http://www.bombich.com/
I use it but just to say I have no connection to them..

Can't backup with Time Machine

So I have been trying to backup to a WD My Passport Edge 500 GB drive. Never used Time Machine before, but since the OS needs to be updated, I figured now would be the perfect time to start backing up. Have the install disk ready for Snow Leopard, but want to be sure everything is backed up in case of failure.
I set the drive to backup to. It made it to almost 2 GB of almost 250 GB and it stopped, gave an error of Time Machine Error: Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Backup requested by user
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Starting standard backup
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Backing up to: /Volumes/My Passport Edge for Mac/Backups.backupdb
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: "
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 267.46 GB requested (including padding), 300.60 GB available
Sep 11 18:18:10 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Waiting for index to be ready (-911 < 0)
Sep 11 18:18:15: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Sep 11 18:18:15 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Indexing a file failed. Returned -1134 for: /Applications/.DS_Store, /Volumes/My Passport Edge for Mac/Backups.backupdb/S MacBook Pro/2013-09-11-160132.inProgress/FB60D196-818C-4ED9-8E64-42B5D82319AD/"/Applica tions/.DS_Store
Sep 11 18:18:15 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Aborting backup because indexing a file failed.
Sep 11 18:18:15 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Stopping backup.
Sep 11 18:18:13 s-macbook-pro-2 com.apple.launchd[76] (com.akamai.client.plist[978]): Bug: launchd_core_logic.c:3082 (23923):13: setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS, 0, j->nice) != -1
Sep 11 18:18:13 s-macbook-pro-2 com.apple.launchd[76] (com.akamai.client.plist): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
Sep 11 18:18:15 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Copied 0 files (15 KB) from volume ".
Sep 11 18:18:15 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Copy stage failed with error:11
Sep 11 18:18:18 s-macbook-pro-2 GoBoingo[141]: Controller::CheckSoftwareUpdate
Sep 11 18:18:20 s-macbook-pro-2 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[960]: Backup failed with error: 11
Sep 11 18:18:23 s-macbook-pro-2 com.apple.launchd[76] (com.akamai.client.plist[980]): Bug: launchd_core_logic.c:3082 (23923):13: setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS, 0, j->nice) != -1
Sep 11 18:18:23 s-macbook-pro-2 com.apple.launchd[76] (com.akamai.client.plist): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
I deleted the database once and did it again. It hung up and errored out again. Any ideas?

Hello,
http://pondini.org/TM/C3.html

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

I have just upgraded to Mavericks and have been using Time Machine on an external disk with Snow Leopard. Can I continue to backup with Time Machine on the same external disk or do I need a new disk since the operating system has changed?

Hi there,
I found that Time Machine in Mavericks will sort it all out for you. You shouldn't need to buy another backup drive, unless you have insufficient space left and can't afford to delete whats on there. It should just work fine.

Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can't see a symbol for address book.

Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can;t see a symbol for address book.

Where are addresses kept on MAIL? I don;t like the new format at all. Frances
Begin forwarded message:
From: Frances Topping <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: - Old computer I had is OSX Snow Leopard with Entourage. New one is OSX Mavericks. Using Mail where are my addresses and old address book. Transferred old computer backup by Time Machine and other things work? Can't see a symbol for address book.
Date: August 25, 2014 at 9:46:01 AM EDT
To: discussions-replies <[email protected]>
Old Entourage is POP and new Mavericks MAIL is IMAP I believe. I don;t know how to export in the forms you mention. Frances

I have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard and foolishly upgraded to Yosemite. Is it possible to go back in time with Time Machine and reinstall Snow Leopard. Then upgrade to Lion or Mavericks? Any other ideas on how I can exit Yosemite?

I have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard and foolishly upgraded to Yosemite. Now have numerous problems. Is it possible to go back in time with Time Machine and reinstall Snow Leopard? Then upgrade to Lion or Mavericks? Any other ideas on how I can exit Yosemite?

Once you get yourself back to Snow Leopard, if you still want to upgrade somewhat, I would suggest the following:
1. Get an external hard drive that you can use for experiments with new OS versions. You could partition it into 2 or 3 partitions. You could then clone your existing Snow Leopard system to one partition using Carbon Copy Cloner (well worth $40) or SuperDuper ($25).
2. Buy OS X Mountain Lion for $20, through the Apple online store (I don't think it's available through the App Store). Apple has decided to make it very difficult for anyone to get Mavericks unless they have already downloaded it.
You will receive two e-mails from Apple, one containing a PDF with a redemption code, and one with the password you will need to unlock the PDF. Using the code, you will download Mountain Lion from the App Store, where it will appear among your Purchased items.
After ML finishes downloading, its installer app will launch itself. When you see this launch screen, QUIT the install app immediately! Go to your applications folder, find the Install OS X Mountain Lion app, and copy it to a safe location outside of your Applications folder. Keeping one or more copies will allow you to reinstall without unnecessary aggravation if you later need or want to do that. At this point, you can re-launch the Installer in the Applications folder and let it run. You can install it on a clean partition on your external HD, or you can allow it to upgrade the Snow Leopard clone you created on your external drive, or you can do both. This should allow you to test how everything works for as long as you like.
3. If you left yourself a free partition on your test drive, try a clean install of Yosemite and set everything up from scratch (do not migrate anything). This will allow you to see whether your problems with it were related to something in your Snow Leopard system.

TS3423 Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not s

Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not start?

sonjadg,
you can purchase a replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for your MacBook Pro from either Apple or iFixit. If Startup Manager is only showing an OS X Installer volume, then it sounds like the Mavericks installer had a problem midway through its installation process. To fix this, you’re going to need to erase your internal disk and reïnstall your original version of OS X from the grey Mac OS X Install DVD, use Software Update to get it back to 10.6.8 (presuming that your MacBook Pro originally came with Snow Leopard), and then restore from Time Machine.

I have a Sony PC with M/E. Can I useit as backup with Time Machine?

I have a Sony PC with Windows m/e. Can I use it as backup with Time Machine?

Time Machine will only work on Macs running the Leopard or Snow Leopard operating sysem.

Can I backup with Time machine and continue to use my mac?

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