External Drive Stolen with Time Machine Back Ups

Hello,
Sorry if this has been posted before. I scanned through a few pages of posts and didn't see anything.
My home was burglarized and they took my G5, Cinema Display and my 500GB external drive with my Time Machine backup data. My question is: How secure is the data on the external drive? Can the theif just plug in the drive and see all of the files or does TM password protected? My G5 was password protected to log in to it. Does that log in transfer to the TM files?
Thanks!
DH

As Donald says, the data can be accessed.
Your backups are as secure (or insecure) as your Mac -- if someone steals either, they can get at your data fairly easily, if they know what they're doing, unless it's encrypted.
It is harder to get at Time Machine backups on an external drive, because Windoze can't read it; you'd have to use a Mac (running Leopard or Snow Leopard) to access it.
But most theft is not for your data; it's to resell the hardware.

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Complicated corrupted main drive and lost Time Machine back-ups question

Here's tough one I can't pin down answers to: I have an iMac Early 2008 running Lion. The main hard drive system (probably) corrupted over the course of 2-3 months until it became unusable. I had Sophos on it, but removed it about a month ago and reliability improved but only for about a week. Finally the hard drive crashed. I used the Recovery partition while able to have Disk Utility add a second partition to my back-up drive, which contains Time Machine back-ups, my iPhoto folder and a few other files but no system. I installed Snow Leopard from disk to the new partition, checked the first partition, which seemed fine, then upgraded the Snow Leopard partition to Lion and updated and ran under a temporary user. Next I explored the main drive, which Disk Utility said was fine, but doesn't always show up. While in Disk Utility, I noticed that the first partition on the back-up drive showed up as empty! After some panicking, I've a second back-up drive on the way, but how do I access the TIme Machine back-ups, get my original user back and get access to over 15 years of files that are locked into that user?
My (2nd) back-up drive arrives tomorrow, so I'll able to get to work soon.
Thanks for any help.

Ok so wahat you mean is I need to name a partition "Time machine" in order for TM to back up any volumes and TM will always start with the volume titled Timemachine ?
so as I stated
A. All my OS applications _________Rename this to time machine or can I ues the volume name it is now?
B. All my files for those applications ---------Once that is done TM will back this up?
C. All My Itunes / Music etc---------Once that is done TM will back this u last?
Also I did a test run and I geet the error msg that the backup disk of my OS needs 1.36 TB but only 1.34 exists. The orignal OS disk has only 232GB of data why is tome machine asking for all that space?
I set the partition at 1.34 so there would be way more than enough space to copy.
R

Can I use One Hard Drive for 2x Time Machine Back Ups and another partition for all my data?

Hi Forum,
I am planning to but a RAID disc set up, but if i get a 2 disc set up, on one disc, can i have:
Time Machine back up for one Mac
Time Machine back up for 2nd Mac
Anothe partition for all my data.
then have that RAID'd to second disc?

no one?
and if this set up was on one disc, and one partition for one TM was for the Mini that has this drive attached, would TM back up this whole drive 2x TM Partitions and 1x partitions with data on, ok? it wouldn't get confused by trying to back itself up

I want to use a nas drive for my time machine back ups.

Hi,
I'm pretty new to macs. I've set up time machine on my kids macs using a time capsule without problems.
Ive now bought my own mac and want to use time machine to back it up but only have a network hard drive to do it on. When I go to choose disk, I'm not given the option of the drive. I can see it in finder ok.
Is this possible?
Thanks
Roy

There's more to it than a "party line." Many folks who have started this, and thought it was going well, found it wasn't as reliable as they thought.
From a post in another forum (found by V.K.):
*The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can't guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.*
*If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.*
*To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.*
That only addresses Leopard, of course. Snow Leopard seems to have some additional requirements, that don't work with some NAS solutions that did work, to a degree, with Leopard.

Weird external drive behavior with Time Machine....

I have a 500 GB WD My Essentials USB hard drive. I've been using on Lion for 6+ months. I have the drive in 2 partitions, 400 GB for Time Machine and 100 GB for storage. Everything has been working fine for 6+ months. As of yeterday when I plug in my WD drive, the storage partition will mount on the desktop but the 400 GB Time Machine partition will not. The TM partion does show in the disk utility but cannot be repaired. I'm wondering why the problem is only with the Time Machine partition.
Any ideas?

Oh, the drive will not "eject" properly either. When I try to eject it the storage partion turns light in color but it still shows on the desktop and is still listed in the Finder side menu (but you can't access or see the actual drive).

I have 2 macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only loged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk

I have 2 Macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only logged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk. Is it possible to update her account on my macbook using her external disk without overwriting my stuff on the same Macbook and vice versa?

Time Machine does not do individual accounts. It records the complete drive. So if you were to use her TM backup on your Mac it would make your Mac just like hers. Both yours and her account on your MAC.
Just copy the missing files over from her Mac to yours. If there are differennt programs on each then they would need to be installed on both.

HT201250 I have thousands of pictures on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac I don't want them lost. I do time machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough for making sure my pictures don't ever get lost?

I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?

tgs6164 wrote:
I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?
Purchase a couple of these when they go on sale.
Start burning all the photos onto DVDs.
At least you'll have all your photos if your computer, time machine or any other backup you use goes bonkers.

I had to reformat my OSX 10.5.8 and i can't restore my emails from my time machine backup from an external hard drive - only the latest (post backup) time machine back ups are available to restore. Please can any help

I had to reformat my OSX 10.5.8 and I can't restore my emails from my time machine backup from an external hard drive - only the latest (post backup) time machine back ups are available to restore. Please can any help? I can find the mail folder in my libraries, but the Restore Button is grayed out

OSX treats the reformatted drive as a different one; it's the same as replacing it, and the old one is no longer connected.
See #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting to see and restore from the "old" drive.
And, you may not want to restore via the Finder; see the blue box in #15 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

I use an external hard drive as a Time Machine back up, but I want to use another external hard drive to save movies, photos on it, but it won't give me the option to save anything on the new external hard drive. Nothing is wrong with the external hard.

Hi Clarkett99,
To use an external hard drive for your iTunes library, see the steps in this article -
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
iPhoto can be used in a similar way, follow the steps in this previous discussion -
how do I save photos and their albums...: Apple Support Communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3744259
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

External hard drive for time machine back-ups

Can anyone please suggest the best external hard drive to use for time machine back-ups on my iMac?
I also use a 1TB external hard drive for my iTunes library, but I've noticed that it can be slower to access the music than if I used the iMac hard drive......any suggestions? My iTunes library is currently sitting at around 200GB.
Thanks.
Brian

i'd recommend a firewire 800 drive. many folks here speak highly of drives supplied by [OWC|http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire> and [LaCie|http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156].
JGG

I am trying to move previous Time Machine back ups off an external drive to my new Time Capsule. How do I do that?

I have my previous time machine back ups on an external drive and I want to move those to my new 2tb Time Capsule. How can I make this happen?

You probably cannot do it..
The backup is very different from a local drive to a network drive.
Look through the Pondini KB.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
You can move the backup from a local to another local disk or network to another network.. but there are issues even doing that.
IMHO.. don't... just start a new backup and keep what you already have saved up.. if you don't need it in 6months time.. or a year.. then you can wipe it.

Can I use my time capsule for time machine back ups and as an external storage device?

I have a time capsule and have set it up so that my time machine back ups are saved on it, but I would also like to use it as an external hard drive. Is this possible?
I know nothing about computers so please tell me in very basic terms. thankyou!

By external hard disk we usually mean one plugged into the computer by USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt.
None of those works on the TC.. it is plugged in by ethernet or use wireless connection.. that means it is a network drive.. not an external drive. The difference might not mean much to you.. but it is totally different to the computer. In the former case the computer has full control of the disk. In the case of the network drive, the disk is controlled by the TC firmware and the files are stored and accessed by network. This has large implications.
So here is my standard response.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Merge 2 time machine back ups on 1 back up drive?

I was running low on space on the USB drive I use to back up my Air, OS 10.6.5 with TIme Machine, and I had a new USB drive handy, so I just used the new drive. Now I have 2 USB drives and each has a time machine back up file, "Backups.backupdb"
I'd like to free up the first USB drive, and have the use of all of those old TIme Machine backups on the new drive.
It's clean up time, trying to reorganize my back ups and drives... is there any way to save the old Time Machine back ups from the old drive in usable format?
Thank you for any help
(btw, I do not want to upgrade to the latest versions of Mac OS's)

Funny you should mention... it was Pondini's TM FAQs that sent me here
If they answered this question, I missed it.
I have also read up on http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5096
But neither could tell me how to manage the back up files when I had already started another external drive as backup disk.
I am currently copying all the files from the original back up drive to the new drive under another folder, it's taken about 10 hours so far, estimates 6 hours more to go.
And on the apple bulletin, it said I should uncheck "ignore ownership on this volume", which I failed to note.
Thanks for the link though, its a great one. If I missed it there, (and I checked Troubleshooting too) please let me know?

HT201250 how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up

how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up so that I may view the files independently on apple tv please?

To elaborate on above. I am looking to add about 300gig of photos on an external hard drive to TC.
Once I do this I believe I can then have itunes source its photos from TC without having them stored directly on my iMac?
Then I am assuming once I keep itunes on with home sharing I can stream these photos through Apple TV?
My inital problem is getting the photos onto TC in an individual folder not just a backup folder....is that possible or what would you suggest please?

Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

See E-10 in the first link.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

External Drive Stolen with Time Machine Back Ups

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