Does Time Machine work?

I see lots of posts from people with the same problem I have: TM worked correctly for a while, now I get "error creating backup directory" messages. The answers mention a lot of possible problems/solutions, but really: this software is painful to use.
I tried starting over, erased the backup disk, set up TM again, and, again, it backed up correctly for a few days and then started generating error messages.
So, I will ask the question again: what would suddenly cause this error to occur?
The disk is not out of space. I didn't make huge changes on the disk being backed up. There is no obvious change from when-it-backs-up-correctly to when it doesn't.

Maybe you should consider using something different for your backups:
Backup Software Recommendations
My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
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)
Apple's Backup (requires a .Mac/MobileMe account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

Similar Messages

Does time machine work with the trash folder?

Does time machine work with the trash folder? So if I have the entire aperture library backed up to the time machine. Is it safe to empty the trash folder in aperture? I am able to recover files from time machine later?

So make a top-level Project called "_Circular File". Put Images in there that you what to have out of your way but not discarded.
It really is good and proper to treat the Trash as trash. I instruct everyone to _empty_ the Aperture Trash at the end of _every_ session. The reason is this: it is the only time you will remember whether it is safe to delete the items in there. If you wait, you will then waste time trying to answer "Did I really mean to throw that out?" or, periodically, you'll give up trying to remember, and will empty the Trash without reviewing it. At the end of every session, examine the Trash, confirm that the items there are trash, and empty it.
Shocking, perhaps, but you should also empty your system trash every day. The real-life equivalents are good guides here. No-one in an office hoards their trash. If you mean to throw something out, throw it out. If you don't mean to throw it out, do not put it in the trash.
I don't know how TM handles the Aperture Trash. I do know, however, that I would not expect this behavior to remain consistent, and would absolutely recommend against a workflow based on it.

Does Time Machine work with a NAS?

Does Time Machine work with a network attached storage drive?
Thanks!
John

the only supported NAS for TM backups is Time Capsule. it also works with drives connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station. al other NASes are unsupported. there are hacks to make TM work with them but you are on your own if you use them
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137&query=time%2Bmach ine%2BNAS

How does time machine work when being used with a mac pro?

How does time machine work when backing up a mac pro?
Considering the fact that the mac pro can hold 8TB and a external (non NAS) hard drive can hold only 2TB does time machine only backup the OS disk.

macnewcomer22 wrote:
Considering the fact that the mac pro can hold 8TB and a external (non NAS) hard drive can hold only 2TB does time machine only backup the OS disk.
Time Machine will backup everything by default, on every disk in your Mac.
Choose System Preferences > Options to exclude items. You could exclude everything except your OS...but I'd think it is your data that's more important to you, if you have to make choices.
See...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018
While it's true you can store almost 8TB, how much do you think you'll actually store? If you have 1TB of data you want to store then a 2TB drive can do it. Also when your TM drive begins to get full it will begin deleting the oldest backups to make room.
You could also get a Drobo with 8 bays...
http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php
-mj

External disk attached to APE - does Time Machine work with it?

Hi everyone,
I'm interested in getting the AirPort Extreme (802.11n) for a few reasons, but notably to attach an external disk and use it with Time Machine.
I've heard mixed results, however, about whether this is possible or not. After some Google-ing I've discovered this feature was initially not available for the official release of Leopard, but was re-introduced in 2008 sometime as a software update. But after reviewing the product page, it makes no mention to Time Machine and it's ability to backup to external AirPort disks. Only the Time Capsule product page gets this kind of treatment.
So the question is... does Time Machine play nicely with AirPort disks or not? I was hoping you guys would be able to debunk the myths so I can get a straight-forward answer so I can make a decision on if I'll purchase it or not.
And while on the topic... can multiple people use the external AirPort disk at the same time? For example, I currently have a DIR-628 router (which I'll be taking back if Time Machine plays nicely with AirPort disks) and with the silly proprietary software from D-Link, it only lets one computer use it at one time, having each user remember to connect and disconnect each time they want to use it to share files or backup using Time Machine. Not a biggie, but kind of annoying.
Thanks for any help I receive, I really appreciate it!

Duane wrote:
As I said above, Apple does not officially support this operation. So if you have any problems or questions about using the disk with Time Machine, Apple will not provide support.
True and correct. This is likely because of their misguided SOX interpretation, which they seem to think precludes the addition of features not available at sale time through firmware updates.
Sort of like putting a diesel engine in a Toyota Prius. You may be able to do it but it is not officially supported.
It’s really nothing like that at all.
To answer the OP, yes, you can. I’ve been backing up my machine to a disk attached to my AEBS since the day the firmware supported it, and it works great for me.

HT1284 Does time machine work with Mountain Lion?

I had time machine set-up on my old iMac and had everything copied over to my new iMac. Time machine isn't working. I can't get it to recongize my external hard drive to back it up. Does time machine not work with mountain lion?

Have you plugged the external drive to a different USB port? Also, I would suggest you reset the PRAM. If you still have the issue after you have done all this, it may be an issue with your external drive. Try testing it on another computer.
HT1379 About NVRAM and PRAM - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379.

Does Time Machine work with Networked drives yet...?

Yes, I did search, and nothing recent came up.
I have a 500 GB lacie hard drive that is attached to my router, and it works great.
Without using any of those hacks, should Time Machine work properly with a networked drive?

No. At present on drives attached to a Time Capsule seem to work.
My AEBS has a 500GB USB drive attached - and Time Machine won't use it.
My Time Capsule has both the internal 1TB disk and a 1TB external Western Digital drive attached - and the Time Capsule drive and all of the partitions on the USB drive are available for use by Time Machine.
Time Capsule comes with a new version of the Airport Utility (5.3) - I don't see that this is available as a separate download right now.
Perhaps Airports will support Time Machine in the future - but that is by no means guaranteed. I don't think many people know what the hardware differences between an Airport Extreme and a Time Capsule really are.

HT201250 Does time machine work with iCloud?

I'm new to Apple - not sure if Time Machine can work with iCloud instead of an external HDD. It would seem that iCloud would be the best place to backup to since it is available - just get on the internet and its there.

TIme Machine doesn't work with iCloud.
OS X Mountain Lion: Disks you can use with Time Machine
The backup volume has to be large enough to hold at least one copy of all the data you want to back up. The more space it has, the longer your backup history will be. It does not have to be any particluar multiple of the size of the volume(s) you back up.

Does Time Machine work with FileVault?

OK
Just validating what I had been told and what I have seen searching here...
Can someone please confirm...
"Is my Macbook Pro with FileVault running fully backed up and restorable using Time Machine"
If not any recommendations?
Thanks

Busta999 wrote:
OK
Just validating what I had been told and what I have seen searching here...
Can someone please confirm...
"Is my Macbook Pro with FileVault running fully backed up and restorable using Time Machine"
If not any recommendations?
As Jolly Giant says, yes, it does work (sort of).
But I'd not recommend the combination. The minor downside is, if you're working all day, none of what you do in your home folder gets backed up until you log off. Thus there are no previous versions of things you might have deleted or changed in error, or somehow got corrupted. And, of course, if your hard drive fails, you've lost everything since the previous backup.
To me, the major downside is, you can't browse or restore individual items in your backups.
Do you really need to encrypt your entire home folder? Photos, videos, settings, preferences, music, etc., etc? Very few of us do. An alternative is to make an +encrypted disk image,+ probably a sparse bundle disk image, via Disk Utility. Put only your sensitive documents in it. Then the remainder of your home folder will be backed-up hourly, individually.

Does Time Machines works with WD My Cloud 2TB ???

Hi,
Does anyone has gotten Time Machine on Yosemite to work with Western Digital´s My Cloud 2TB on a network???
WD products says it can but that is apple´s support who should help because is Time Machine how is giving me the trouble...
Can anyone help???
I got the WD My cloud as a present and I cannot return it...
Thanks,
I.

You shouldn't use Time Machine on any network drive besides Time Capsule. despite hard drive manufacturer claims, Time Machine is not supported on those drives. Even if you get it to work, it will eventually fail, most likely when you need to restore.

Does time machine work with iphoto 6

Just connected an external drive and turned on time machine in Leopard. Doesn't seem to work with iphoto. Do I need to upgrade to 8?

jmcdow71
While TM should still back up the iPhoto Library Folder you cannot interact with TM from within iPhoto if you're using v6.
For best advice post on the TM forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
Regards
TD

How does Time Machine works?

Hey, I'm a new mac user and started to use time machine. There are some questions I don't understand. For the size of the external drive, what size do I need if my internal drive on my macbook pro is 500GB? I only used 100GB. And does the external drive have to be connected to the laptop all the time? Can I just plugged it in every night as I'm in college and it's quite annoying to have a hard drive hangging with your laptop. Any answers are appreciated.

For all things about Time Machine, see the Great Pondoni's webpage - http://www.pondini.org/OSX/Home.html.
The general 'rule of thimb" is that you need an external drive 2-3x the size of your internal drive - this will allow to to keep incremental backups going for months (I've a 512GB SSD and my Time Machine disks, two 2TB drives, will let me restore as far back as June 24, 2012).
You don't have to leave the drive plugged in all of the time - local backups will be made to your internal drive until you plug your external drive back in again. You can also disable backups when you're running on battery power.
I recommend having at least two backups - one a Time Machine backup and one clone. You can read more about this at Pondoni's site as well.
Good luck,
Clinton

How does time machine work, and what does it really do?

i just got my macbook pro, and just wiondered what time machine does, and how t works

Hi p,
Basically, it's an incremental, hourly backup application (you provide the HD). After the first backup, it only backs up new/revised data (plus some overhead), so it takes up much less space than all separate backups. Some reading for you:
Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/VI29
How to back up and restore your files: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Recovering Your Entire System
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html

How does Time Machine work with Boot Camp?

Hello, I'm going to install windows (I don't know if 7 or 8.1 yet) by bootcamp,
and I need to know if TIME CAPSULE work also in Windows mode, and if I have to configure it in a particular way.
I apologize for my poor english. Thank you at all. Andrea.

I have no really knowledge of how Parallels work other than it is a Virual Machine software program that create a Virtual Machine, Mimics REAL Hardware (Virtual Hardware), to run Windows under Mac OS X. So with that all the files are OS X files, Mac Format files, and Time Machine can and will back those up. But that will not backup what is on the Boot Camp partition. To do that you need either a Windows backup program or WinClone to do it when you are booting from OS X.
Google WinClone to find out what it is.

Does Time Machine work with eSATA drives?

Or does it only work with USB, FW, and Time Capsule?
TIA

yes, it works with eSATA. I've seen posts by people who do it.
Message was edited by: V.K.

Does Time Machine work with a partitioned external drive?

I just bought my first Mac this weekend (yay!) and would like to use the external Maxtor drive I used for backups with our Windows machines with Time Machine. The problem is we still have two Windows machines that were using this drive as a backup and I would like to continue to do so. Can I put two partitions on the drive, one for Mac and one NTFS for the Windows machines, hook the drive up to my iMac with the Firewire and have Time Machine use the Mac partition while I share the Windows partition for use by the Windows machines? Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks,
HD

Never mind. I found a post from April 8th where a similar question was asked and it appears as though the answer is yes.
Thanks all

Does Time Machine work?

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