Crashed OS MacBook Lion Time Machine Question

I have an older back up of my MacBook in Time Machine on a external hardrive.
Is is possible to add to the backup in target mode? The computer will not boot right now, but I can get to the volumes via target. I can access the revovery HD when I hold down the option key starting up.
The MacBook has some sort of infixable sibling error, which is getting pregressivly worse. Additionally I've up graded to Lion since the Origional back up and partioned the drive, so it wouldn't really match the origional Time Machine back-up.

I really appreciate both your efforts but let me clarify a few things here before you continue posting incorrect information.
#1 - I have not done anything in the Finder that will hurt anything. Opening a folder in finder is like going to the terminal and running a "ls" command.
#2 - The reason for my original post is becaue this is def. a bug or undocumented feature. Time Machine backups should be backwards compatible.
There is no reason for me to open Time Machine and not be able to open an older backup done in Snow Leopard, UNLESS, it is an expected issue. If this is the expected behavior, the first time one connects the drive, the system should provide some type of warning.
Time Machine displays my older backup dates in Time Machine, but I can't select them to read, restore or anything. Then I went to the finder to open the connected USB drive to confirm if the files were there or not, as my hard drive space is still occupied.
You CAN manually copy files from a Time Machine backup drive. This causes NO ISSUES, unless you start messing with the files that Time Machine uses to organize the data being displayed on the app.
I am a systems engineer, web developer, and systems analyst. I work on multiple operating systems (Unix, Windows, Solaris, Linux all flavors, and Mac OS). I have been working with operating systems since the MS-DOS no-Windows era. There is a very slim chance that I will mess up any operating system, especially OS X.
So, let me re-phrase my question: Is OS X Lion Time Machine backwards compatible or can it not ready Snow Leopard Time Machine generated backup files?
Thank you for any well informed replies.

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Mountain Lion-Time Machine Questions

Hi all,
Recently I bought a new Macbook Pro and upgraded to Mountain Lion. This laptop comes with one internal hard drive ~ 750GB. I have two questions regarding Time Machine:
1. Can I partition my disk into two partitions so I can use one partition for Time Machine backups?
2. Can the partition for Time Machine backups have less space than the other one?
I know the disavantages to do so, but I just want to know if it is possible. Does Time Machine allow it?

Post in the OS X Mountain Lion community in the "Time Machine" section.

Using Lion time machine to recover files to MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion

In order to partition my "vintage" MacBook Pro to run Bootcamp, I've had to go back to the previous OS (Mountain Lion), and before erasing my hard drive I did a full backup to Time Machine. Once I connected the external HD to the "mountain lion" laptop and I went to the Time machine, and was prompted to start it up. After a backup process I looked at my time machine disks and see the backup, but the times prior to this last backup are greyed out. If I go to each prior backup session I can see the files and even copy them to my laptop, but they won't open. I receive a prompt to install them from the original disks.
I don't seem to be able to recover files from the Lion Time Machine backup to the Mountain Lion.
Is there a "trick" or workaround.
Thanks

I'm a little confused. You say the previous OS was Mountain Lion, but Mountain Lion is the most recent there is.
Then you say you're unable to recover files from the Lion backup.
Please clarify exactly what you have, and what you're trying to do.
If you want to restore your entire OSX partition, including OSX, apps, user accounts, settings, and data, you can do that from any backup, but not via the Time Machine browser (the "Star Wars" display). Instead, you do a full system restore, per Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14.

Lion time machine - external drive spin up causing apps to crash

I have a 1TB external drive set up for time machine backups on my 27" iMac running Lion 10.7.3 that seems to be causing my Adobe CS 5.5 suite of apps (photoshop in partiucular) to crash as the drive spins up. If an adobe application or lion/time machine is asking the drive to spin up I have no idea, but it seems random, and when it does, the adobe app(s) freeze and the beach ball from **** just spins. All other applications remain uneffected which leads me to believe it's related to a scratch disk function of some sort. I've googled high and low to find an scrap on insight into this issue and have found nothing...
Few questions:
• Why does the time machine external drive randomly spin up even though there are no backup processes running?
• Why would an adobe app would need to access an external drive?
Before anyone says it, I know I can always just eject the drives, but I'd rather keep my backups running for obvious reasons. If a complete wipe and install is the only solution recommended by the doctor, I will. It's just maddening to regularly loose work. Any help is greatly appreciated!
iMac: Mid 2010 27"
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50)
Adobe CS 5.5
Photoshop CS5 / v12.1 x64
Illustrator CS5 / v15.1.0
InDesign CS5.5 / v7.5.2
External Drives
Firewire800: 2TB Hitachi G-Drive: http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm
USB: 1TB Western Digital MyPassport 0730

Set the TM drive not to spin down, I think there is a setting in the system preferences.
Could be the G drive feature,
consider making option key bootable clone drives
Most commonly used backup methods explained

Time Machine question.

Hello. Im not sure exactly where to post this, i couldnt find a Time Machine section. Ill make this as short as possible.
I have a 2011 mac mini with snow leopard 10.6.8 and my wife just bought quick books accounting software which requires 10.8 mountain lion, so i just bought it, although i havent installed it yet and here is why. I started another thread the other day about weather or not i HAD to update to Yosemite, all the reviews are making me nervous so im opting for Mountain Lion. So, in my thread a member asked me how i back up my mac mini, well i dont and never have. But i recently got a 1TB external hard drive which im going to return for a 2TB. This member was talking to me about mountain lion and suggested that i install it on my external hard drive so that i could keep my nicely working Snow Leopard as well as having Mountain Lion for my wifes quick book program. As we spoke, the member said he wasnt sure id be able to back up my mac mini with Time Machine onto the 1TB as well as install Mountain Lion onto it and i also plan on putting a few thousand pictures on it. Can someone tell me if this is possible? I know ZERO about time machine and backing up for that matter. Ive never done it. So another question, if i was to back up using Time Machine and a 2TB external hard drive, would that also back up all my photos in iphoto, my photoshop program and Toast editing? Would all of that be backed up? Am i making any sense? LOL.
Thanks.

zowenso wrote:
So, are you saying that I should have a totally different external hard drive to use for time machine back ups?
Would it be safe to store all my pictures and the installation Mountain lion back up on one external hard drive or am I going to have to get a separate one for each?
Also, what if I just did the standard update to mountain lion and didn't save it to an external hard drive? Could I then use one external hard drive for my pictures and the time machine back ups?
Yes. Use a different drive for your Time Machine back ups.
You could use a 2TB external USB drive, partition it into 2-1TB partitions, install OS X Mountain Lion on one and point your Time Machine back ups to the 2nd 1TB partition. I think you should be able to use this 1TB partition for both your Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion Time Machine back ups. Just point each to that 1TB partition. All of your data (photos, music, documents, Quickbooks data, etc.) would be backed up by Time Machine as it backs up the entire drive (OS/Apps/Data). So, if you use that 1TB partition for both back ups, both drives (SL on your Mac Mini and ML on the external 1TB partition) will be backed up.

Can I use a mountain lion time machine back up on new mavericks macs?

My macbook retina was stolen at my school. I was wondering because I used time machine having mountain lion, does it affect anything when if i purchase a mavericks macbook pro? the just announced one. I have all my pictures (iphoto) in that last back up. Can i use a mountain lion time machine back up on new mavericks macs? My macbook retina was stolen on August 16? So I don't know if there was an update on my mac that might affect it in any way...

It's ok you can use your ML TM to transfer your account. iPhoto library and other things will be upgraded when you open the apps.
At the end of the Apple article it says:
Migrating a Time Machine backup to a new Mac
When you get a new Mac, you can transfer all of your applications, files, settings, and other information from a Time Machine backup you've already made. When you start up your new Mac for the first time, the Setup Assistant asks you if you would like to restore from backup. If you've already set up your new Mac, you can use theMigration Assistant (located in Applications/Utilities) to do the same thing.
After Migration Assistant completes the transfer and you select your existing Time Machine backup drive, you will be prompted with "Inherit Backup History". Once selected you will be able to continue to use your existing Time Machine backup on your new Mac.

Mail from Lion Time Machine Backup to Mountain Lion

Hello,
My Lion iMac is crashed and now I want to put my Mail database from Lion Time Machine Backup to my Mountain Lion Mac Mini.
In Migration-assistent under Users there is no topic for Address Book, Calendar and Mail. Also the helpdesk told me not to use the migration-assistent but doing it manually.
How can I add extra accounts from the Lion Time Machine Backup ?
I have already <emailaccount1> working on my Mac Mini. It is just merging <emailaccount2> upto <emailaccount7>.
Is it just copying Library/Mail/V2/POP-<emailaccount2> to ~/Library/Mail/V2/POP-<emailaccount2> or do I have to change something under Preferences ?
Thanks,
Hubert

Hello Sig,
This helped but the original mail data is deleted completely. I tried it on a dummy account and discovered that the original data of <emailaccount1> is deleted by copying the Mail folder onto the original one.
So I made a copy of the Mail folder before overwriting it. Then I copied the deleted mbox files back to the Mailboxes folder and started Mail.app.
Thanks,
Hubert

Moutain Lion Time Machine Backup To WHS 2011 Via Disk Utility Image On Windows Share?

I read that with Lion you could do a Time Machine backup to a network share on Windows Home Server 2011. I read you could create a image file via Disk Utility that would be placed on the network share, but mounted as a regular disk in Mac. I think I read this method no longer works on Moutain Lion though. Has anyone tried it? I'm setting up a new Mac Mini and would like to do time machine backups to my WHS 2011 drivepool. If it is possible great, any way to use the backup for bare metal restores as well? (ether across the network, or putting that image file on a usb drive first etc) I use bootcamp to go back and forth on my Mac Mini, but I'd like to keep things backed up on the Mac side via standard time machine.

I re-googled and found something I read about a few days ago that shows how it was done in Lion:
http://basilsalad.com/how-to/create-time-machine-backup-network-drive-lion/
I think maybe I found someone that tells how to do it:
http://www.jamesbadger.ca/2012/09/12/mountain-lion-time-machine-over-afp-auto-mo unt-edition/
The question is, how do I use this backup for a baremetal restore then? I'm assuming I would do a generic Mountain Lion restore, and then just restore over the network after I manually re-mount the image again first.
Does this sound like a real option/solution? Looks like maybe I answered my own question, but I'd like to hear anyone else confirm it works and is worth trying.
So my goal is to do a time machine backup over the network to a windows machine.
If it's not possible, I guess I'll have to break down and plug in an external USB drive, but I'd still like to know if it's possible for another friend as well.

IWeb v3.0.4 (601) + Lion + Time Machine

Mac Book Pro, Lion Time Machine, wireless, iWeb
My Time machine won't unmount after a successful backup. (The desktop icon remains though the icon on the top bar says the backup was successfully finished.
Console has this message:
7/30/11 8:57:13.959 AM mdworker: (Error) ImportPluginLoading: Couldn't load plugin '/Library/Spotlight/iWeb.mdimporter/'
The fan runs hard after a while, the icon remains on the desktop.
What's up with the error message? How can this be corrected?
Thanks!

Sounds like a question for the Lion/Time Machine community rather than the iWeb community.
OT

Can SL restore from a Lion Time Machine backup?

I want to downgrade from Lion to SL. If I do a fresh install of SL will it be able to read my Lion Time Machine backup to restore my applications and data?

To clarify any perceived inconsistency between my advice and that of sig's, my presumption was that you were going to do a complete restore from Time Machine. If that's not the case, sig's advice is important.

I try to backup my Macbook with Time machine, it goes fine and at the end it says that it could not be completed because "/Volumes/Data-2/ MacBook.sparsebundle is already in use".. What is that?!

I try to backup my Macbook with Time machine, it goes fine and at the end it says that it could not be completed because "/Volumes/Data-2/ MacBook.sparsebundle is already in use".. What is that?!

See #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

After restoring backup new macbook with time machine Firefox will not start. says missing profile

after restoring backup on new macbook with time machine Firefox will n to start. It says it is missing profile although profile exists and profile manager will not start. Also reinstalling does not help. Direct after starting Firefox it says profile is missing and then quits Firefox. Please help edit

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
* https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See:
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

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 have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

i have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

Look in the Utility folder which is located inside the Applications folder.
You don't want to do anything with the disk on a PC if you want it to work on the Mac. They both use different formats.
Allan

Where to Post Time Machine Question?

My question title says it all. How do I find the area in which to post a Time Machine question? Or do I just do it here? Thanks.

There is no place to post a question on Time Machine

Crashed OS MacBook Lion Time Machine Question

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