Encrypted Time Machine Backups on a shared drive

Hello community,
the following situation:
I have an iMac and a MacBook Air, both running Mountain Lion.
Both use FileVault 2 encryption of the whole MacOS partition.
The iMac is connected to an external USB hard drive, which I use as Time Machine volume. I've set up Time Machine to encrypt the backups on the external volume (it took abou 2 days until the whole drive was encrypted).
So far no problems. No let's get to the tricky part.
I want to the MacBook to use the same USB drive for its Time Machine backups. However I don't want to connect the volume directly via USB. Instead I have shared the USB volume on the iMac. And now I want to use this shared drive as my backup drive in the MacBook. (Hint: I want to use the same partition both for the iMac backups as well as for the MacBook backups.)
I can mount and select the drive on the MacBook. However Time Machine on the MacBook asks me, if I want to envrypt the backups. Which of course I want to do. But the USB drive and therefore the entire mounted volume is already encrypted (from the iMac).
Now I'm scared to opt in for encryption on the MacBook because I'm afraid the MacBook will again encypt the whole volume. Will that be the case? If so, what will happen on the iMac afterwards? Or will Time Machine recognize, that the volume is already encrypted (encryption passwords are the same of course)?
Or is it not necessary to activate backup encryption on the MacBook since the drive is already encryted? Or will the MacBook somehow manage to write unencrypted backups on an encrypted volume?
I would really appreciate any help to get the backups up and running. In short: I want both Macs to backup to the same drive. And I want both to encrypt the backups (with the same password).
Regards

meistermilchreis wrote:
(Hint: I want to use the same partition both for the iMac backups as well as for the MacBook backups.)
That's usually not a good idea; for best results, they should be in separate partitions.  See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #4 for an explanation, and #22 for setup instructions. 
I can mount and select the drive on the MacBook. However Time Machine on the MacBook asks me, if I want to envrypt the backups. Which of course I want to do. But the USB drive and therefore the entire mounted volume is already encrypted (from the iMac).
Backups made over a network are placed in a sparse bundle disk image, separate from the backups made directly.  The disk image is like a disk-within-a-disk; it has it's own partition map scheme and format.  So it will not be encrypted unless you tell TM to do so.
In short: I want both Macs to backup to the same drive. And I want both to encrypt the backups (with the same password).
Since the backups are separate, they must be encrypted separately.  You may use the same password for both if you want.

Similar Messages

  • Time Machine Backup to network shared drive.

    Hi All,
    I'm a relatively new Mac user (only had my MacBook Air (2010) since about Oct/Nov. I've been trying to get Time machine up and running so that it backs up to a shared 2TB drive on my wife's Windows Desktop Computer, but have only been partially successful.
    Theese are the instructions I used: http://safalra.com/other/time-machine-network-drive/
    Everything went super smooth and I was rewarded with a Time Machine Backup of about 94GB in progress when I went to sleep last night. However, when I woke up this morning I saw the error that something went wrong (same error I always see) and that I should try again later.
    I restarted the backup on the Time Machine to see a backup progress of "43K of 32GB". It seems to be staying right there though. This seems to happen every time I try this. Has anyone had any success doing a Time Machine backup to a Windows Network drive?

    The most recent error was along the lines of C3: ". . . an error occurred while copying files to the backup volume".
    "The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. if the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.:
    Also, here's the 4 most recent log entries I have from Time Machine Buddy. They go newest (top) to oldest (bottom).
    Starting standard backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/500GB-Time Miachine/Backups.backupdb
    Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 42.93 GB requested (including padding), 384.42 GB available
    Stopping backup.
    Error: (-41) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11/677910B9A6CE02EF-8FE79D8543C93BC0.it c2 to /Volumes/500GB-Time Miachine/Backups.backupdb/EricsMBA/2011-02-05-081809.inProgress/960F3178-23CD-4 B54-A669-4630937E75B9/Macbook Air/Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11
    Copied 1202 files (5.2 GB) from volume Macbook Air.
    Copy stage failed with error:11
    Backup failed with error: 11
    Starting standard backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/500GB-Time Miachine/Backups.backupdb
    Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 42.93 GB requested (including padding), 384.42 GB available
    Starting standard backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/500GB-Time Miachine/Backups.backupdb
    Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 42.93 GB requested (including padding), 399.92 GB available
    Stopping backup.
    Error: (-41) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11/677910B9A6CE02EF-8FE79D8543C93BC0.it c2 to /Volumes/500GB-Time Miachine/Backups.backupdb/EricsMBA/2011-02-05-081809.inProgress/48A5220A-4A96-4 8A2-A847-39C28D38F253/Macbook Air/Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11
    Copied 263 files (5.2 GB) from volume Macbook Air.
    Starting standard backup
    Attempting to mount network destination using URL: smb://Liz@liz-desktoppc/EricsBackup
    Mounted network destination using URL: smb://Liz@liz-desktoppc/EricsBackup
    QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
    Disk image /Volumes/EricsBackup/EricsMBA_5855caf7dafb.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine
    Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb
    Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 36.19 GB requested (including padding), 1.48 TB available
    Stopping backup.
    Error: (-41) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11/677910B9A6CE02EF-8FE79D8543C93BC0.it c2 to /Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/EricsMBA/2011-02-04-195508.inProgress/F3C62C97-D053-4C D5-8D47-DF87184DF59C/Macbook Air/Users/ericmontgomery/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Album Artwork/Download/677910B9A6CE02EF/00/12/11
    Copied 298519 files (1.7 GB) from volume Macbook Air.
    Copy stage failed with error:11
    Backup failed with error: 11
    Ejected Time Machine disk image.
    Ejected Time Machine network volume.
    Message was edited by: EricMontgomery

  • Encrypted Time Machine Backup on  a Network Drive?

    Hi
    I have a server (Mac Mini) in my LAN that I'd like the various Macs to be able to use it as the backup location, but I'd like the backups to be stored in an encrypted state.
    Any way I can do that?
    If not with the standard OS X options, perhaps with some clever combination of other tools? (e.g. use encfs to trick OS X into thinking that the TM destination is normal whereas it's actually encrypted)
    I tried a few things but no luck so far - would love to hear from someone how actually figured this out and has such a setup actually working.
    Thanks!

    meistermilchreis wrote:
    (Hint: I want to use the same partition both for the iMac backups as well as for the MacBook backups.)
    That's usually not a good idea; for best results, they should be in separate partitions.  See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #4 for an explanation, and #22 for setup instructions. 
    I can mount and select the drive on the MacBook. However Time Machine on the MacBook asks me, if I want to envrypt the backups. Which of course I want to do. But the USB drive and therefore the entire mounted volume is already encrypted (from the iMac).
    Backups made over a network are placed in a sparse bundle disk image, separate from the backups made directly.  The disk image is like a disk-within-a-disk; it has it's own partition map scheme and format.  So it will not be encrypted unless you tell TM to do so.
    In short: I want both Macs to backup to the same drive. And I want both to encrypt the backups (with the same password).
    Since the backups are separate, they must be encrypted separately.  You may use the same password for both if you want.

  • Encrypted time machine backup freezes OS X

    Been having fairly regular problems with Time Machine backup to a LaCie 5Big 10TB Thunderbolt drive where OS X 10.8.5 will completely freeze during a backup.
    I've formatted 2 of the 5 drives as 2TB Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) in order to perform alternate encrypted Time Machine backups. The other 3 are part of a striped 6TB logical drive. I connect the backup drives about once a week for the past few months and have encountered a freeze during backup a few times.  I currently have a situation where merely attempting to mount one of the Time Machine volumes causes OS X to freeze. Initially the mouse cursor starts to stutter as it is moved around the screen and then it completely freezes. No mouse cursor, no clock, nothing. Have left for a couple of hours and still nothing so have to reboot. There are absolutely no messages in the console for the time of the hang e.g. time of most recent hang 12:55 PM which is when I attempted to mount the drive. Most recent message before the restart 12:49:16 PM.
    The thing is, sometimes the backups work fine for weeks at a time, other times I get these freezes with the same symptoms as above and the only thing that seems to work is reformatting the volume and starting again, although this can take a few attempts to work. I've run a verify disk and currently everything currently seems OK (although can't run for the backup volume as it won't mount, and I've previously had to restore the boot disk due to Disk Verify failing on the boot disk).
    Has anyone got suggestions as to what could be causing this? Options are faulty LaCie 5Big, Time Machine encrypted option, OS X bugs or file corruptions.

    Unfortunately the 5Big only has Thunderbolt connections and I only have the cable it came with as it is my only Thunderbolt device.
    The secure erase single pass of the disk failed with the following error:
    Secure Disk Erase failed with the error: Securely erasing data to prevent recovery failed.
    In the console logs there was the message: Kernel: disk5s2: data underrun
    I ran another erase but without the secure option and immediately got the error:
    Disk Erase failed with the error:
    Unable to write to the last block of the device
    and in console:
    Kernel: disk5: data underrun
    Going to give it another go as I'm not sure if this is as symptom or a cause as I've recently had similar errors on the boot disk (internal SSD) and "Disk0s2 I/O error" occurring in the console. I had to restore the system from backup to resolve that particular issue.

  • Can I turn off Macbook while Time Capsule is archiving Time Machine backup to a USB drive?

    My Time Capsule is archiving my Time Machine backup to a USB drive attached to it. I have initiated this process on my macbook (on the same lan with the Time Capsule), on which I am monitoring the archiving progress on the Airport Utility. Still almost a couple of days to go... Can I turn off my Macbook, or will that interrupt the process of archiving?

    If LaPastenague is willing to do a "test", then we will all know more.
    Opened my big mouth.
    The archive is happening.. I turned off the computer it was setup from.. running Mavericks and latest utility once I got it started. I have been checking from v6 utility on Mountain Lion.. and it is excruciatingly slow. But is running.
    I can check the progress but v6 utility is utterly and completely useless.. it continually shows the same numbers.
    v5 utility does show it is crawling along.
    v6
    20min later..
    Look, look, there is a tiny blue fleck in the progress bar!!
    v5 utility shows the actual progress. Actually tells you total and amount backed up so far.
    Amazing how advanced v5 utility is over v6.
    The estimate of 10hours is probably correct at the present rate of progress. I suppose for 500GB, around 50GB/hr is about what we expect from TM backups etc.
    I will post another picture in an hour and probably kill it then before I die of watching paint dry.

  • Transfer Time Machine backup from one external drive to another

    Surely this has been covered, but I can't find it.
    If you have your time machine backup on an external drive and get a new (larger) external drive, what is the best way to transfer the backup from one drive to the other (and define the new drive as the backup drive)? Straight copy ? Then to define the new drive, rename old drive to something else and name new drive the backup name?

    I haven't tried this yet but a few other methods are described at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071128055047339

  • Errors when transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive.

    Hello,
    I need some help transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive. Let me explain what happened.
    I have a Mac OSX Mountain Lion that was upgraded to Mavericks when the upgrade came out. Prior to upgrading, I've been backing up  WD Passport Mac with the proprietary software "WD Unlocker on it". It worked flawlessly but after upgrading to Mavericks, I decided to backup and noticed that once i inserted the WD Passport, my screen will flicker, windows will close and reappear.
    I decided to read up on this and discovered that Mavericks is not compatible with the "WD Unlocker " program on the Passport drive. Since I already have a backup in place, i decided to restore my computer to factory settings and when I attached the Passport drive with my backup on it, My device will see the backup but it will keep spinning for hours without restoring my backup. I decided to read further on this and I got the same Mavericks compatibility conclusion.
    I then copied my entire backups.backupdb folder to my Mac desktop and formatted my WD Passport external drive and got rid of the proprietary software "WD Unlocker".. Once this was completed, I then tried to copy my backups.backupdb folder to my external drive within finder. Each time i tried, i get error messages and permission messages. Even when i changed the permission on the backups.backupdb folder to read & write for everyone, i still get the permissions error.
    Please helppppp. I have over 500gb of vital data in my backup.
    Thank you.

    Since you don't really have a question, I will give you a very broad information source for the next time you have a Time Machine question.
    Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Oh, you cannot use a computer whose only disk drive is the target of a an OS X cloning operation regardless of what software is used for the clone. You can, however, use the source drive except if you try to clone using Disk Utility.

  • Transfer Time Machine backups to a new drive

    Is there an automated or an easy way to transfer my current Time Machine back ups to the new Time Capsule (I am sure I will inevitably buy it]. Looks like a great system for notebook users but I wouldn't like to start again with time Machine I like having the security of back ups I have already accrued. My current drive is certainly not full and won't be for a while.

    So far not very many people have had much success in copying their Time Machine backups to a new drive although the Restore option in Disk Utility ought to be able to do this. However, SuperDuper will support that capability when their new Leopard compatible version is released which should be in a week or so.
    http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
    http://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/

  • Can Time Machine Backup to Two Different Drives?

    I have many Apple Computers, and I was wondering if it were possible to have time machine backup to two different drives.
    I want it to back up My documents, Mail, and other files/folders that I access often to a partition of my internal drive every minute.
    And
    I want it to back up Everything on my Mac to my external each night upon connecting it to my mac.
    I take my MacBook everywhere with me and I need to make sure that the files I work on the most stay Perfectly Accessible no matter what, and I don't want to sacrifice too much space for that procedure. I would rather just be able to do constant backups of my most used files and folders, and then do a system backup each night to make sure I always have what is needed.

    Let me add some more observations. I use two disks, one at home (its a mounted volume on another Mac at home) and the other is a portable disk that I attach to my MBP at work. This works fine.
    About your details - TM backs up every hour. If you look around you'll find some posts that give instructions on changing the frequency (I haven't paid attention to these, so I can't help you). However, backing up to another partition on the same drive is not what I'd recommend. If the drive dies, you may lose both partitions.
    As for doing constant backups of the most used files and at night doing a system backup - it seems to me you aren't "getting" TM. This sounds like the type of backup strategy one uses with "regular" backup software. I don't think I'd recommend backups every minute, but for short intervals, why not just do a default backup of everything. It doesn't really back up everything, just things that have changed. The only time it does a complete backup is the first time you use it with a specific drive. After that it no longer does complete backups, unless you reformat the drive and start from scratch.

  • 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.

  • Can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?

    can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?

    can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?
    No. Use third-party software such as WinClone to do that.
    Time Machine can backup a Windows image file used by an emulator such as Parallels Desktop.
    (50538)

  • Do encrypted Time Machine backups work across a network?

    I see that Lion offers the option of encrypting TIme Machine backup volumes, which seems like a Good Thing.  After reading up a bit on this, it seems clear that it will handle the situation where the backup volume is physically attached to the machine being backed up.  However, I've gotten mixed signals about whether this will work with networked clients.  I have a server with a TM volume, and a number of machines on my network use that server and its disk for TM backups.  Can I encrypt the TM volume in this situation, and will Time Machine be able to back up from those clients to the server?  I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't work, but, like I said, the overall story isn't completely clear.  Thanks for any advice!

    There's nothing in the Help or other documentation I can find.
    Just that OSX can't do it from the Mac that's doing the backup. 
    There was a similar post the other day; I asked the poster to let us know whether it worked, but haven't gotten an answer yet.  So if you try it, please post back with your results.
    I do agree with coocoo, though -- if you want to do this, keep "secondary" backups, not encrypted, just in case.  See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for some suggestions.

  • Is it possible to have two encrypted time machines on one partitioned hard drive?

    I am trying to use encrypted time machines for two macbooks (15" and 11") with only one USB hard drive. The problem is that after creating one encrypted time machine for my 15" in a separate partition, the hard drive does not work when plugging it into my 11".
    What happens is that I am prompted to enter in my encryption password for the 15" time machine on my 11". I enter in the correct password but it does not work (i.e., password fail). The interesting part is that when I plug the hard drive into my 15", I am asked the same thing, but the password entry works.
    This is my current setup for my 1tb usb hard drive:
    1) 400gb for data
    2) 400gb newly encrypted time machine for my 15"
    3) 200gb unencrypted time machine (with old 11" time machine backups) for my 11"
    The hard drive is formated/partitioned in RAID format.
    All I want is to be able to have two encrypted time machines for each macbook on one single hard drive. Previously I was able to maintain two separate time machines (unencrypted) on this hard drive. I decided to try and encrypt both but seems like I am getting something wrong.

    I am prompted to enter in my encryption password for the 15" time machine on my 11".
    If I understand correctly, you want to mount the other partition. Are you prompted to do that? Does the password include any characters other than plain letters and digits? Are you using the same keyboard layout on both machines?

  • Restore encrypted Time Machine backup: password failure

    hi,
    I upgraded my mid 09 MBP with an SDD and created a Fusion Drive maintaining my HDD in the optical bay. After rebooting and wanting to restore from a Time Machine Backup, I'm prompted with a password request of the disk image, being the password I used to encrypt the TM when creating it.
    No matter how I enter the password, it says it's not correct and I can't proceed.
    Finally I created in a fresh setup of Mavericks. Once I'm in my Mac, When going to Time Machine, I see my Time Capsule drive on the network, and entering the encryption password, I can indeed access my Sparse Bundle.
    I have to say that my password contains a space at the end of the password (it slipped in by copying the password by accident) and I think it might be the reason it's not accepting it as the valid password when in recovery/setup mode.. Either way, I've tried the password with and without the space so...
    In Disk Utility, I've had the disk listed but the change password feature is disabled..
    I've looked thru different forums, but no luck so far.
    Anyone who has had the same issue or has a clue on how to either change the encryption password or how to install the full backup I have in my sparse bundle, it would be highly appreciated!
    Thanks in advance.

    Hello:
    This thread seems to answer your question:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/12949561#12949561
    Barry

  • Entering password for an encrypted time machine backup

    During a recent hard disk failure. I have had to restore my system from a time machine backup.
    I keep this backup on an encrytped external drive.
    I booted into recovery mode,  erased the drive to fix the hard disk errors (it wasn't repairable).
    Then I tried to mount the encrypted drive for recovery.
    Everytime I entered the password, a 50 character string with all character types it failed to unlock.
    I tried the disk on another mac and it unlocked fine.
    Then I noticed that the recovery mode defaults to US Input Source and I have a UK macbook (2007).
    So I changed the input source to British.
    Still the password doesn't work.
    Then I noticed that once you click unlock the password entry box defaults to US again and doesn't let you change it.
    Fortunately UK keyboard isn't very different to US and I figured out that the only difference was to use Shift 3 for # rather than option 3 that we normally use on the UK keyboard.
    Is there a work around this?  Is it a known issue. 
    Glad I don't have an arabic or russian keyboard :-)

    File a bug report with Apple.

Maybe you are looking for