Disparity between size of time machine backup and my Hard drive

The lap top is holding 53 gb on the disk, but time machine is only holding 44gb. Is that ok?
How can i be sure that the initial backup went ok. I had woken up this morning and got an error message that the backup could not be completed. However further backups today are progressing normally. there is a disparity between the disk sizes and i am not sure if i have a complete time machine back up or not.

I am sorry. Let me clarify. I have a new la cie hard drive. I hook it up for time machine to the ibook and after about 24 GB of the 53, i would get an error message saying that the backup could not be completed because of an error. (no other information) .
I installed time machine buddy and found out there was a file in the itunes acct that might be causing the problem and i had time machine ignore that file.
I then erased the Lacie drive to start again.
The next backup i made it to 44 gb but got the same error message. This time tm buddy did not identify anything. ( these are all night backups cause they take about 4 - 5 hrs on my machine) After getting the error message, Time Machine would still continue hourly backups and the Genius bar used that as evidence it was working.
I was wondering if the discussion community agrees with that. and if they dont ask if they had other suggestions.

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Does Time Machine backup other external hard drives?

I am using a Seagate 500 GB to backup my data. Will Time Machine backup another external hard drive on which I store my iMovie projects? If so, how do I access them in the Time Machine mode? Thanks in advance.

nachdenki wrote:
strange, my external HDs were added to the exception list automatically. maybe because they wouldn't fit on the time machine volume.
It seems to depend on when the drives were connected. When you first turn Time Machine on, it only excludes the TM drive itself, and any drives not formatted HFS+.
If you connect a drive later on, that drive will be excluded automatically.

Help with Restoring from Time Machine Backup with new Hard Drive

Hello. Recently, my hard drive died in my 24" Early 2008 Aluminum iMac. Luckily, I had a time machine backup, and I took it upon myself to replace the 320 GB Hard Drive with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda disk. The hardware replacement (although difficult) went fine. Now, I'm having a bit of trouble restoring the new drive from my time machine backup. The new disk shows up in Disk Utility with the correct capacity. I formatted the new drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using my installation disk. My only problem is that the drive isn't showing up when I am choosing which drive I want to restore my time machine backup onto. I can pick out the backup I want perfectly fine, but I can't find the new drive. Any help?

UPDATE: I restarted it (Classic IT Crowd "Have you tried turning it off and on" moment) and the drive shows up on screen. Right now, I'm waiting for it to "Calculate disk size needed for restore" and I'll keep you posted.
UPDATE 2: Currently restoring. Let's see if it's successful.
Message was edited by: funman895

Can I transfer Time Machine Backup from WD Hard Drive to Time Capsule?

I have a Western Digital 500 Gb. Hard drive and recently purchased a 500 Gb.Time Capsule which, at the moment, am using only for the AirPort feature. I would like to use Time Capsule for my Time Machine backups and use the Western Digital drive as my Aperture Vault. Is there a way to move the Time Machine file from the WD drive to the Time Capsule drive so that I don't lose the old files? My Time Capsule is connected to my iMac via an Ethernet cable.

Unfortunately, no. Time Machine will backup to a local drive (e.g. via USB or FW HDD) using a folder structure. When backing up to a NAS (e.g. Time Capsule or USB HDD connected to a TC or Extreme), TM utilizes a sparsebundle. You cannot easily convert a folder structure to a sparsebundle. The best plan is to start a NEW backup to TC. Connecting via ethernet is highly recommended for the initial backup.
P.S. You can still access the old TM backups until such time that you want to reclaim the use of the HDD.

Time Machine Backup of external hard drive connected to IMAC

I have an external hard drive connected to my IMAC. I also have a 2TB Time Capsule connected to my network. I store all of my video (both events and projects from imovie) to the external hard drive to save space on the IMAC. Does the Time Capsule backup this external hard drive? When I open Time Machine I don't see where the external hard drive is backed up? The drive is formatted MAC OS extended (journaled).

nujac,
Time Machine backs up all locally attached drives unless you specifically exclude them in System Prefenences > Time Machine > Options.. icon.
You should be able to see this in Finder, enter TM and highlight the external drive. Click back to a prior date. Sometimes it takes a little while to fully populate the display since it's reading across the network, give it a few minutes.
Regards,
Captfred

Time Machine backup smaller than hard drive

Hi,
My Time Machine external hard drive became full so I dediced to erase it and start from scratch. I set it all up and it was going to take 4 hours to backup 300GB of data, which is the amount of space taken up on my internal HD. When I came back to my Mac a couple of hours later it had finished the backup but it only seems to be 160GB in size?! Is this something to be concerned about, I assumed the Time Machine backup would be the same size as the data currently occupying my internal HD.
Thanks.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
tmutil compare | 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).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Imac won't restore from time machine backup after HD (hard drive) recall replacement

I have an imac bought in 2011, running Snow Leopard. It required an HD replacement due to the 1 TB Seagate recall - the replacement was done by a certified Apple repair station yesterday. Before the guy left he started a backup/restore from my latest time machine backup set. It failed. I attempted it two times and got error messages that it failed and the computer needed to be restarted to try it again. No luck. I called the guy back and he told me to call Apple Care. Not thrilled about that response since the guy had just left my house I did what he told me to do. (A quick sideline here: I recognize that a time machine backup should be no big deal and SHOULD work everytime, but it doesn't. It irks me that Apple is replacing my HD through no fault of mine and yet they don't allow the restore of data to be a "covered" expense in this process - this isn't just because this was an authorized repair guy - the Apple store would have done the same).
Back to the issue. When I called apple care they pretty much had me try the same thing again with an earlier back up set. To my knowledge, it didn't work. I say this because it looked like it was working and when I came back to the imac later, it had restarted and once again booted to the OSX install. (The boot disc is still in the imac). When I tried to boot from another location, one did not show up to boot from so I assumed that the data didn't transfer and it forced another restart. So, I tried something else. I tried to re-install the snow leopard OSX without using the restore function. That appeared to work and then when the machine restarted it asked if I had another mac and I chose the option to get the files/apps/etc. from my time machine backup. The computer chose what I can only assume is the most recent backup set (It chose what I know to be a subfolder that appears under the dated backup folder - Macintosh HD--which btw is confusing seeing as that's always the name of the HD on the imac). I again stepped away from the computer so it could do its thing for two hours. When I returned, I was back to the MAC OSX screen that asks you to choose a language. There were no more options to choose DISK UTILITY or RESTORE FROM BACKUP, etc. When I clicked on English it took me right back into the screen where you say whether you have another Apple that you want to transfer data from. I realized that the imac must have restarted and I assumed maybe it was because the boot disk was still in - except how do you get the disc to eject? I also initially assumed that the backup had somehow failed again and triggered a restart. I tried to choose the option to just set up the machine without transferring data and when I got to the choose a name for your HOME folder message I tried to enter the same name I had it as before and it wouldn't allow me to do so, saying that that name was already in use. I also tried a different name and that didn't work either - got the same message (I assume if it is not the same name that it won't sync up with the time machine data from the backup set). So, I almost tried the "select time machine backup" option again until I looked at my HD space. Clearly, there is space that has been used. HD space was 997 at the start and now it's 636. My initial thought is to somehow get back into the setup area where I can use disc utility and erase the whole thing and then start over but 1) I don't think it's going to work even if I could get back there 2) I have no idea how to get this thing to reboot into that mode 3) I can't get the boot CD out to even try to restart to see if this thing did what it was supposed to, SO NOW I AM TOTALLY STUCK! I have not called Apple Care back because quite frankly they were useless the first time. I have a call into the repair guy but who knows how much help he will be. In the mean time, I have a million things to do and a computer that isn't working - Whoever said Apples never have issues needs to be seriously censored!
A few other notes: I use Time Machine Editor to run my backups weekly. It was set up that way from the get go by an Apple rep who came to my house to get us up and running. Editor should not effect the way that time machine does its work, so I doubt there is relevance but thought it worth mentioning.
One other note is that the Apple Care agent tried to have me do something called a "Source" something or other from the disk utility screen but when she realized that my backup file (shown by date) contained many other sub files (11-27-12/MacintoshHD/MyNamesIMAC/etc.), it was not possible to run this operation - thus we aborted. Sorry I don't remember the name of the process and unfortunately now can't access that option to go find it.
If you can help me, I would be eternally grateful! I am open to having a phone conversation if you are willing to give me your email to mail you my number. I have so much work to do this week and this was the last thing I needed. Did I mention this was supposed to be EASY?
I used to be quite the geek with my PC - still on the learning curve with the mac but not enjoying it. I am fairly tech savvy and I can follow instructions for a step by step solution if you've got one.

I got a recall and had the drive replaced. I have retored 3 timesa dn even had apple do the job and it is still not right. I still can't get a simple ghost of the data from time machineback tot he new drive.
This is Apple's explaination as taken from their web page.:
Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
I even posted this information on the community and apple removed it... because they don't like the:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints
But here is my experieince:
Take in 27iMac running 10.6.8, 5-7 days, what a joke, my boss will be happy to pay for a week without working. Finally get, "if you have TM back up, 3 days." Get machine back with 10.6.3, hit the R recovery, click TM back up, runs for 2 hours, reboots, looks great. Box up take back to office... update to install - OH NO, still running 10.6.3. Updates crash with no specific error on install, BUG PROBELM, nothing runs.
Call Apple... after hours, tells me to boot using 10.6.2 disk, wipe, reinstall OS, udate to 10.6.8, THEN do the restore. GREAT! Only thing 10.6.2 DVD won't read... now back on phone... take back to the store, Genius says, he'll ix it just like it was. PROMISES it'll be fixed.
Pick up next day, supposedly, booted to disk, wiped drive, reinstalled, updated to 10.6.8 and THEN did the RIGHT restore... Looks GREAT... apps run and 10.6.8 OS. Back to the office... NOT RUNNING right!!!... fonts messed up, drop box app needs new install, cocktail needs upgrade, Fetch not working, memorized paths gone... back ups locked out of permissions... ***!!
4 hours on phone with apple and still no rsolution - to missing "settings". Seems there are THREE WAYS TO RESTORE (according to apply tech)... Running MIGRATE ASSISTANT and being able to choose your files, including settings, "R" RESTORE after they load a new OS... or NOW WAITING for them to send me a bootable 10.6.3 disk and then boot from disk, w/o installing OS and doing a restore from TM. I think this is done via the disk Utilties application.
So now can't back up without doing a full 400 GB back up since permissons are screwed and possibly destroying any good back ups... can't work, like having hands tied behind back. WAITING for solution! Very upset!!!
I did my first restore just like they said and now an 10 days without proper machine. Just FYI. I thnk I am going to make the store do the tech work so I have somthing to fall back on.

Time machine backup for external hard drive

Recently purchased an external hard drive to clear up space on my iMac, to store photos and videos. Have been using Time Machine on Time Capsule to back up iMac. Have found that Time Machine backups hang up when it appears to be backing up the external hard drive. What do I need to do to get Time Machine to back up external drive as well as iMac? FWIW, I am also backing up a second iMac to the same Time Capsule.

Can you verify that....
1) External drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2) The external drive has not been "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Options

Time machine backup done but hard drive activity continues

I backup infrequently my macbook pro to an external firewire hard drive. Prior to today's backup, I changed a setting in the control panel to exclude the system, applications and library. I happened to notice that the prior backup failed. So today, I initiate the backup and when it finishes (as seen in the control panel window and with a still icon at the top of the screen, the hard drive continues to have activity. It is still going at the same level of activity now for over 90 min. A second time machine backup has taken place as well.
Why is this happening. I am not using the drive for anything else. If I unmount the drive, will the backup fail? Is the backup still progressing, even though all other indications say it is finished? Could this activity be the computer indexing the drive? I am not using the drive for any other reason today. I am not looking at folders or moving any files. 214 of 465 GB are available as seen from the time machine preference window.
I am using Leopard with the latest software updates.

andrew70301 wrote:
I backup infrequently my macbook pro to an external firewire hard drive. Prior to today's backup, I changed a setting in the control panel to exclude the system, applications and library. I happened to notice that the prior backup failed. So today, I initiate the backup and when it finishes (as seen in the control panel window and with a still icon at the top of the screen, the hard drive continues to have activity. It is still going at the same level of activity now for over 90 min. A second time machine backup has taken place as well.
Time Machine will do a "second pass" backup if more changes have occurred while it was doing the first one. Ordinarily, that's very quick and most folks rarely notice it. But if there's trouble on either your internal or TM disk, it can take a while.
Could this activity be the computer indexing the drive?
Possibly. Spotlight and Time Machine both use the mds process, and on occasion the two conflict, especially on large backups, slowing or even hanging the backup. Exclude your TM drive from Spotlight indexing, at least temporarily, via System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy.
It could also be that your drive is beginning to fail.
Part of your problem may lie in the word "infrequently" -- TM usually works best if you let it do it's hourly backups. After several days, especially if there have been lots of changes, it may do a new, full backup.
Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Copy and post the messages here, along with details: how frequent is "infrequent;" how much data is on your internal HD; how big is your TM disk.
And please update your profile, so we know what kind of Mac you have, and which version of Leopard you're on (it now shows 10.4.11!)

Time Machine Backup to New Hard Drive

So, I bought a new 1TB hard drive. Now, I only need to backup SOME applications and some music and photos. Can I choose which applications I want to backup with Time Machine? And if so, how do I do it, do I just back it up, replace the hard drives and put the Mac OS X disk in and back up, right?

Scofield94941 wrote:
Thank you for your help. I understand. But my OS X started to be very slow after I installed Parallel Desktop and it remains slow even after I uninstalled it, that's why I wanted to restore my new hard drive like Parallel Desktop was never installed.
Then exclude only the Parallels file(s), which most users do anyway, and back them up separately.
See the pink box in #11 of [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 the +Time Machine+ forum) for the consequences of omitting system folders and/or apps.

Can't copy Time Machine backups to new hard drive

The external HD with the Time Machine files is unusable (it can't be written to). Disk Utilities reports missing/damaged nodes and recommends copying all files to a new volume and erasing the HD. I got a brand new HD and began copying the contents. I was able to transfer all the regular files but when I tried to copy the Time Machine files, I got this message: "The backup can't be copied because the backiup volume doesn't have ownership enabled."
I want to use the new HD as the TM volume and continue with the same sequence of backups. How can I enable the ownership soI can copy the files?
Thanks

Michael Brady wrote:
I want to use the new HD as the TM volume and continue with the same sequence of backups.
You can't.
Time Machine backups use a complex structure; everything is intricately linked together. If that structure is damaged, as yours is, they can't be copied successfully.
If you have a copy of +Disk Warrior+ or another heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app, it's possible it can repair the backups. DW is about $100, and probably a good investment for the future, but there's no guarantee it can fix the backups.
And it's not a good idea to mix other data with your backups. See #3 in [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).

Adding old Time Machine backups to new hard drive

Hi,
I've filled up two external hard drives with Time Machine backups. I just bought a 2 TB drive and was wondering if I can add the backups from other two drives to the new drive, consolidating all my Time Machine backups. If so, what is the best way to do this?
Thanks,
Ron

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
No, you can't.
What you can do is duplicate (not copy) one to the new drive, then use the new one as your TM drive, and the backups will just continue normally.
But you can't combine two that already have backups on them into one.
Use the Restore tab in Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
Now, let me ask a question: how old are your oldest backups, and why do you think you may still need them?
I do hope you're not deleting things from your internal HD, and depending on TM to keep it's copies indefinitely. If you are doing that, then your backups aren't really backups any more, they're your only copies. When (not if) your TM drive fails, you may lose them.
In this case, you need to "archive" the items, probably on an external disk, and back them up; with Time Machine, to another external disk, or to DVDs.

Restricting Size of Time Machine Backup on Firewire Connected Drive

I've got an external 1 TB drive connected via FW800. Time Machine works fine, but I am also using this as a shared drive and want to limit the size of my Time Machine (to 600G for now) without having to formally partition the drive.
I've read all the tips on how to do this for a network attached drive using terminal commands to adjust the size of the sparsebundle. However, as this is a directly attached drive, Time Machine did NOT create a sparsebundle, just a folder called Backups.backupsdb. I tried, using Disk Utility, creating a sparsebundle image on the external drive but Time Machine does not see this volume when you select Change Disk under System Preferences, all it recognizes is the main hard disk.
What am I missing? Ideas? Thanks!

The only solution for a directly attached drive is to partition the drive. Note that a TM backup volume should be at least twice the size of the volume it backs up. A 600 GB partition would be adequate for a 250 or 320 GB hard drive.
It is possible to partition a drive on the fly with Disk Utility. but doing so will possibly result in loss of data depending upon how much data are already stored on the drive. For what you've describe it would be necessary to have at least 600 GBs of free space after the end of the existing data stored on the drive. This free space would have to be contiguous. Otherwise you would need to use third-party partitioning software like iPartition that ma be able to partition the drive without any loss of data, but you would still need 600 GBs of available space in order to create a new 600 GB volume.
Frankly, it would probably be better to have one drive devoted to backup, then buy another drive to use for storage needs.

Time Machine backup on external hard drive

Dear Mac users
Some time ago I recieved a 2TB Western Digital My Passport hard drive. I split the hard drive (1.6TB/0.4TB) with Disc Utilities and called the 0.4TB part "TM-BACKUP". I then set Time Machine to use this external hard drive as backup hard drive. But yesterday I checked how much space I had available in my internal hard drive, I then discovered that Time Machine had also saved a backup on my internal hard drive. On one of the pictures I have added you can see the 111.81GB backup on my internal hard drive named "Sik.Kopier". The other is a picture of Time Machine where you can see that the chosen hard drive is my external 400GB hard drive.
My question is now: Where is the backup on my internal hard drive stored, and is it possible to delete that backup because I already have backups on my external 400GB hard drive.
I'm danish so please ask questions if you want something from the pictures translated.
Sincirely AsgerVL

Thank you for the answer. I have now switched off Time Machine så it ony backs up when i connects my external hard drive. But I still have the problem about the old snapshots on my internal hard drive. Now the backups/snapshots are just named "Andet = Other things" and it still takes up space. Can you tell me how i delete these backups/snapshots?

Can I restore from Time Machine backup after replacing hard drive

I'm planning on replacing the 250GB hard drive in my mid 2010 13 inch MBP with a larger one. My MBP comes with Snow Leopard, and I've installed Lion and recently Mountain Lion from App Store. Can I use my Snow Leopard disc to boot up the laptop after replacing the hard drive, and restore Mountain Lion and everything else from the latest backup in Time Machine without having to install Snow Leopard?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting and restore your backup. You shouldn't use 10.6 to restore the Mountain Lion backup

Disparity between size of time machine backup and my Hard drive

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