Can Time Machine NOT backup USB exFAT drives?

Hi folks. So I partitioned my seagate freeagent drive using exFAT so I could swap it back and forth with Windows. I went to setup time machine and I see the drive is excluded and I cannot remove it from the exclude list. Can time machine not backup that partition type? If not, what can I use that will be usable with both windows and os x and allow me to back it up with Time Machine? Thanks.

For fat or ntfs, you have to use something like Winclone to clone those partitions as a backup, but I have not tested winclone in Lion to see if it still works

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Does Time Machine back up USB Flash Drive?

I have a 128GB USB Flash Drive. The contents of this flash drive was restored from a previous external SSD (used as storage and has died on me).
Now I would like my Time Machine to backup both my MacAir and my USB Flash Drive.
My First Concern is
So when I plug in my USB Flash Drive, it appears in the Exclude List.
However, after I remove the USB Flash Drive from the exclude list and click on Save.
I start to Back Up using Time Machine.
Does it mean that time machine will back up my USB Flash Drive for this One Time?
Because when I open up the Time Machine preference, the USB Flash Drive re-appears in the Exclude List again.
Second Concern
When I open the HDD I use for Time Machine, I noticed that the latest backup consist of both my MacAir
and the name of my Previous External SSD (instead of my current USB Flash Drive).
I am wondering if Time Machine recognise my current USB Flash Drive as my previous external SSD
since I restored my contents from there.
So is my USB Flash Drive really backed up (just that Time Machine recognise it as my previous external SSD)?
Hope someone can share their experience and advice on this.
(Please do not recommend other app like Carbon Copy Cloner, as I already plan to use the CCC Trial.)
Thank you to all.

What is the format of the volume on the flash drive? It's shown in the Finder Info window.

Time Machine restarts backup of external drive

I have two external hard-drives: a 4TBer I've been using for Time Machine, and a 1TBer I've been using to keep media. I'd like to be able to backup the 1TBer, as it has a about 500GB of data I don't have stored anywhere else, but I've found that if I disconnect it and a backup occurs while it is disconnected, the next backup will attempt to re-backup all 500GB. A similar problem was reported here: Time Machine restarts backup of removable drive and solved by a full reset procedure, but that doesn't seem to be helping in my case. Does anyone have suggestions to deal with this?

The problem can be caused by backing up a volume on a drive that doesn't have a GUID or CoreStorage partition table. Time Machine doesn't work reliably with other partition types.
To confirm, launch Disk Utility and select the icon of the drive in question—not any of the volume icons nested below it. At the bottom of the window, note the Type. If it's not GUID Partition Scheme or Logical Volume Group, see below.
This procedure will destroy all data on the drive. Afterwards, restore from a backup. To be safe, you must have at least two complete, independent, up-to-date backups. One is not enough.
Select the Partition tab. From the Partition Layout menu in the window, select
          One Partition
From the Format menu, select
          Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Click the Options button and select
          GUID Partition Table
in the sheet that appears.
Click the Apply button and confirm when prompted.
The next time you back up, you may be prompted to "inherit" the backup history. Confirm. Even so, TM may copy all or almost all the files. After that, only the files that have changed should be copied.

Time machine not copying to new drive

running 10.6.8. I have two new hard drives and have them connected one at a time via USB cable to my MBP intel core i5.
I am using time machine to Backup my system drive. Time machine stopped the back up and displays an error. Here is the eventual error "The backup was not performed because an erorr occurred while copying files to the backup disk. The probem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
I used disk utility repair drive and the drive passes. I am not able to continue forward with time machine and receive the same error again.
Both drives experience this same behavior. Are both drives just bad and need to be replaced? Open to any suggestions on how to cure this issu.
Here is the log from disk utility:
--- snip ---
Verify and Repair volume “Untitled 1”
Verify and Repair volume “Untitled 1”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking multi-linked directories.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Untitled 1 appears to be OK.
Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
--- snip ----

Did you verify your MBP's HD, or the external HD's?
IMHO, Time Machine is great when it works, but it's not the most reliable backup. You may want to consider CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line

can anyone help
time machine not seeing external hard drive in time line
before 2013
information say in 2009 is not accessable to view this
i must select external drive from finder
the time machine icon not recognising

thanks for reply
when i open time machine the time line on right side of page
has date ranging from 2014 back to 2010 but only highlight date from 2014 back to 2013
anything before 2013 is greyed out and cannot not be selected
when i touch the pages they only rush towards me a limited amount then stops
also why it shows date as 2014 is strange

Time Machine not backing up full drive

On my macboook pro late 2009 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 time machine will not back up my full drive. I have 56gb use out of 250gb and only 8gb gets backup . How can i get time machine to back up the full 56gb on the first time of setup time machine? I am useing a hard drive connected to my airport extreme. I have the hard drive setup for one big parition. The size of the usb hard drive is 2tb. I have two users on my airport extreme that can access my usb hard drive. One for my macbook pro and one for my mac mini. My mac mini late 2011 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 useing time machine it can back up the full drive. On my mac mini i have 2.5gb used out of 500gb and time machine can back up 2.5gb on the first time i started time machine. But this is not the case for my macbook pro it will not back up the full used space on the first time i setup time machine. How can i fix this so that time machine will backup the full used space?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Use time machine to backup external hard drive (not main one)

Hi all,
I've searched for information on this and getting nowhere. Not sure if it's possible, but I have two USB hard drives now as I've run out of space on my laptop. So therefore I really use one of the hard drives for my main storage and drag files across to the other one to back that up.
It would be easier if I could just use time machine to back up the one external hard drive to the other. I don't want to just replicate what's on my laptop hard drive.
Does anyone know if this is possible? Would appreciate any help.
Cheers
Paul

Thanks for your reply V.K. much appreciated.
I have gone into the options and I can see my external drives there, but for some reason I can't remove them from the exclusion list. I can add and remove the Laptop HD from this list, but for some reason the "-" button becomes disabled whenever I select the external Hard Drives.
Is there a reason for this? I've been using both drives for a while, so they are both Mac formatted.
Thanks again.

Time Machine corrupting external USB hard drives

In February I installed two Mac Minis running 10.8 Server. Each machine had an external hard drive connected to it.
Sometime over the Labor Day weekend, both drives stopped working. When I came in Tuesday, each machine had a message on the screen that the Time Machine drive had been improperly ejected. I powered down both drives and then powered them back up. Here's what is going on with each machine:
MACHINE #1:
Has a Western Digital 1TB drive formatted as OS X Extended Journaled.
Disk Utility is able to see the external drive; however, whenever I try to back up, I get the message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup... Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only."
In Disk Utility, if I select the partition and Verify Disk, I get the message "Disk Utility stopped verifying Backup. Couldn't unmount disk."
When I try to reformat the drive, I get the message "Disk Erase failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk."
The Time Machine System Preference pane shows "None" for both oldest and latest backup times; however, I am able to enter Time Machine and see files going back to April.
MACHINE #2
Has a Segate 2TB drive formatted as OX X Extended Journaled.
Initially Disk Utility would recognize this drive about 50% of the time. I would power it down and back up. Sometimes it would appear in Disk Utility, sometimes it wouldn't. Whenever I would try to verify or repair this disk, it would immediately unmount and I would get the message that the disk was not ejected properly. When I try to backup using Time Machine, TM acts like it is preparing to back up and then the disk disappears from Disk Utility and from the Desktop and I get the message that The disk was not ejected properly.
This machine showed it was last backed up on September 1.
After fiddling with it, I was able to format the drive. After formatting the drive, I started a Time Machine backup and the drive unmounted again.
It seems that some event over the weekend caused both drives to corrupt. There was no sign of a power-outtage. Can anyone suggest how I can track down what caused this? Would there have been a maintenance script that would have run on Sept 1 that could have messed both drives up? Some other system event? Losing the data isn't a big deal. I just want to make sure I prevent whatever caused this in the future. Any tips would be much appreciated.

Yeah, I don't know much about the logs. I flipped through some using Console but didn't really know what I was looking for. I was hopeing to see an event that was followed by a notice that the USB drives had been improperly ejected since that was a message I received on both machines.
Since both machines were affected at the same time it seems logical it would be a scheduled event or, as you suggested, some power issue.

Disk utility or time machine not discovering back up drives

Hi I'm new to Mac and before getting lost in all the benefits am looking to set up automatic back ups using my LaCie network space drives I previously used from my P/C. I have managed to discover the drive and copy required files in Finder. Next step was to re-format to Mac but Disk Utility does not discover the drive. Am using the same connection route as Finder. Have also tried finding via Time Machine without any luck. Your assistance appreciated

If I am correct on this, and I think I am, Disk Utility and Time Machine are all configured in OSX to find and communicate over only USB and Firewire, NOT ethernet. I talked to Apple Support once about employing a Buffalo Technology NAS over ethernet to backup my iMac using Time Machine and i was politely informed that this was NOT supported by Apple and likely not doable. So, we may not like it, but apparently those are the rules we must play by. As for Finder, it too primarily finds connections to devices using USB or Firewire. The exception to this is that you can connect using Finder over Wi-Fi or Ethernet to another computer, but this ability presumably involves Finder locating a device that has an IP address.
You just may be at the point where you need to consider obtaining a USB and/or Firewire based external drive. Keep us informed.
Hope this helps
Message was edited by: Radiation Mac

How do I use Time Machine to backup a network drive

Let me clarify up-front... I DON'T want to use my NAS as my Time Machine backup drive. I want to backup my NAS to another drive using Time Machine. Here is my current configuation:
iMac 27" with 2TB HD backed up to a Firewire Drive using TM. I swap out an exact duplicate of that drive once-a-month and keep one of these drives off-site for disaster recovery.
I want to add a 3TB NAS drive for all of my media. But I'd like to backup ALL of the media on that NAS the same way that I backup the iMac, with TM -- routinely swapping out 3TB backup drives and keeping one off-site for disaster recovery.
In a perfect world, I could do this in the cloud. But transfer speeds and cost preclude me from choosing that option.
Here are my questions:
1) Can TM work on the 3TB NAS, standalone, to allow it to backup to that set of new 3TB backup drives?
2) I currently have a brand-new Hitachi 3TB HD in an older PowerPC Mac Pro. Could I fire that up and share it on the network as an NAS? I know I could run TM off of that configuration. But, I think that I would be compromising speed and performance vs. the new NAS drives out there. Am I wrong? Also, I'm not sure if that configuration would allow me to stream reliably as a UPnP server.
I know it's a long-winded request, but I would really appreciate the insight of others who have possibly solved this problem. Thanks!

Time Machine will only back up internal and directly connected external drives. It will not back up a network attached storage device. You'll have to use some other software to back up the NAS.

How do I use time machine to backup to external drive on other machine on network

I have 2 x McPros, 2 x iMacs and 2 x MacBook Pro all integrated in the same home network. I have a DroboPro Network which can only be recognised as a Shared device by one MacPro only. There are 2 DroboPro 8 Bay RAID devices attached via Firewire to one MacPro.
With Mavericks how can I ensure that
a. The networked Drobo can be seen by all computers as a shared device (it is connected via Ethernet to central Gigabit switch)
b. That, failing the networked Drobo sharing, how can I ensure all computers on network will always have access for Time Machine backups using the DroboPro attached via Firewire to the one MacPro.
Many thanks, it's probably right under my nose.
Darrin

Time Machine will only back up internal and directly connected external drives. It will not back up a network attached storage device. You'll have to use some other software to back up the NAS.

Can Time Machine be used for extra drives?

I have a Mac Pro and currently have two drives in it, a system drive that's using as the startup disc and for most of my use. The 2nd drive is more like a server drive which is used on that system but also shared with all computers on my home network. i use it for things like clipart, backups of itunes from the laptops, media files, etc.
I just installed a 3rd hard drive and have been planning to set it up as a Time Machine drive for my Mac Pro. I have several questions though.
I assume when I do this it will just work as a Time Machine drive for my main system/startup drive, correct?
Is there a way I can use Time Machine for the 2nd drive in my system? In a sense setting up two Time Machine backups, one from the main drive to this new backup drive and the 2nd from the server drive to a 4th drive I can add in the future?
If the 2nd question is a No, is there a way I can set it up so that Time Machine simply backs up both the main drive and that 2nd, server drive, to the Time Machine drive? I really prefer not to use this option since both drives are 1TB and the hard drive I have just gotten as the time machine drive is 1.5TB. I think that should be okay for my main drive since it is only 30% used or so but with backing both onto it I don't think I have enough space to do it well.

Time Machine will back up all and any Mac-formatted drives connected to the system. You can tell it not to (in TM Preferences - Options), but by default it will back up all drives. You can't customise the destination for individual drive backups - they'll all go to one drive (so make sure your TM drive is large enough for all sources - 2 or 3 times as large as the total data usage, preferably).
If you don't want to use TM in this way, you can limit it to one source drive, and back up the other drive to a 4th HD another way - for example, using SuperDuper. This is a clone backup rather than a versioned solution, though.
Matt
Message was edited by: Matt Clifton

Using Time Machine to Backup an External Drive (RAID 1)

Is it possible to backup an external drive to another external drive using Time Machine in Mountain Lion?
The following diagram describes what I want to do. I am basically trying to use Time Machine as an external RAID 1 system. However, I don't want to buy a RAID 1 box. I want to have control of TWO OR MORE time machine setups. I don't want to backup my OS every time. I simply want to backup one external drive to another external drive. The drives are 2TB each, so the advice to buy a big hard drive to back everything up on won't work. Also, I am often swapping drives and would like to use this system for all of my projects and all of my drives. Any help would be great. Thanks for your time.
NOTE: I am on Lion and wanted to know if this was possible before upgrading.

To be clear, TM can back up your external drive perfectly well, provided it's in MacOS format. What it can't do is back up the external drive alone to one destination, and everything else to a different destination.
As for what you should use instead of TM, I don't really have an opinion. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are well regarded. You need to make some decisions about backup strategy before you choose a backup method. TM makes incremental backups, so you can revert to any of several earlier versions of a file. Those third-party products can do that too, though not as efficiently as TM. Also bear in my mind that a single backup is inadequate. You need more than one backup to be safe, and to be truly safe, at least one backup must be stored off-site at all times.

HT201250 Can time machine back up external hard drives too?

I'm new to Time Machine. Can I set it up to back up both my internal HD and an external HD?
Thanks,
Carol

Yes but it's poor advice by Apple for the reason hardware fails just as often as software, if you drop that drive, you have ruined all your backups at the same time.
If you get malware, you have just infected all your backups at the same time.
Apple created TimeMachine and didnt provide a Windows version, in my opinion it's to trap as much as your data as possible so you can't decide to later to switch to a Windows PC without a great deal of pain and effort.
So the more drives you backup with Apple's TimeMachine the more data is trapped in it when the hardware or software fails.
The best advice is to have a multiple backup system and match each piece of hardware with two of it's own seperate hardware backups.
So if you have a boot drive, you need two external backups of it.
If you have a storage drive for extra space, then you need two more drives as backup of that.
Drives are cheap, data is not.
If you drop the only backup, get a power surge, or a criminal breaks in or a fire and it's dead or gone, or get malware, you won't know until it's already infected the first backup restored that it's still on the loose and need ot take stronger measures, your going to wish you had the second backup safe and sound someplace.
Most commonly used backup methods

Time Machine not backup up anything, from the very start

Hello,
I have recently purchased a 1 TB external drive for use as a backup drive. I plugged it in, reformatted it as HFS+ and set up Time Machine to use it as a backup drive.
Time Machine has supposedly been running for almost a week now, but all of the backups are emtpy - they are simply backups of "Macintosh HD" as an empty folder. Clicking "Backup now" results in a half second backup, which is supposedly successful, but which is empty.
I've turned TM off, ejected the disk, deleted the Time Machine .plist and restarted the Mac Pro and then the process of setting up Time Machine, and yet the initial backup lasts mere moments and turns out to be empty.
I've verified the startup disk and the drive being used as a backup in Disk Utility. The disk is 1 TB, empty, verified, and working. Time Machine is for some reason not. Help?

Bizarre.
About the only other things I can think of are (loooong shots, of course):
Try the Terminal command in the yellow box of #11 [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If there's any extra space on your internal HD, make a very small partition on it temporarily, copy a handful of test files to it, and see if they get backed-up. If they do, then change some things and run a second backup. See #3 in [Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Using Snow Leopard+ forum) if by chance you don't know how to do that.
Something may be corrupted/damaged in your installation of OSX. I'd suggest downloading and installing the "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_8_ComboUpdate Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards

Can Time Machine NOT backup USB exFAT drives?

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