Finder not recognizing "Time Machine" partition of my external HD.

My Seagate 2TB External HD (the one that says it works especially for Mac Time Machine!) is partitioned in 2 - half for my music and other half for Time Machine. Finder is now only recognizing the "music" partition and will not run Time Machine. I noticed this evening it hasn't run TM in a week. I barely even use my computer, though it is basicallly on all the time. I have a 2012 MacBook Air running OSX 10.9.2. Help!!

Or do I just need to get a 2nd external HD with less memory and dedicate it to Time Machine?
Well, OP is considering this option, and it one way to go TM-dedicated TM external. Really their options depend on how much free space is present on their Mac internal and current external. Disk Utility erase/ partition options will reformat, quite obviously, but even if they have just one external available it is usually possible to backup video and other stored files to say DVD media while they reorganize/ reformat their backup drive.
Another choice is to turn TM off.
Due to the magic of shareware there are now third-party utilities that allow you to alter the frequency of Time Machine Back up.
http://www.klieme.com/TimeMachineScheduler.html

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Time Machine Partition Corrupted on External Hard drive

I have a external hard drive partitioned into 2 sections, one for storage and the other for time machine back up of my macbook original hard drive. One day the time machine partition stopped being recognized so I tried verifying and it told me it needed to be repaired. Now it says the disk cannot be repaired and to reformat my disk. I do not want to do this because I don't want to lose whats on the other partition and I have no where else to put the data. It won't allow me to just remove the time machine partition, when I try it comes back with "disk cannot be opened". I'm lost here, is there anything that I can do without reformating the whole external hard drive?
Oh and I'm fine with losing whatevers on my time machine back up

Erasing one partition should not affect another one; however, the drive has had at least one major malfunction already, and should be expected to have more. You should immediately back up all data to another drive, including the data on the non-backup partition of the problem drive. Then, and only then, you can try fixing the unmountable partition. If the drive ever malfunctions again, replace it.

Mac not recognizing Time Machine after Mavericks Clean Install

Hello,
I just did a clean install of OSX Mavericks and I can't access any of my Time Machine backups and am very worried about having lost all my data.
Before I did the clean install, I backed up data using my Toshiba 1TB External hard drive using Time Machine. It backed up successfully and has been doing so for about a year.
After the successful clean install of Mavericks, I plugged my external hard drive in, to which I was prompted with "would you like to use this hard drive for Time Machine Backups?" I clicked yes, and it said "Decrypting Time Machine Backups." I got worried and quickly cancelled the decryption process.
Now, whenever I plug in the external hard drive, nothing comes up. I can't access any of its files. Whenever I open the Disk Utility application, it does recognize that its plugged in, but its grayed out, and I can't do anything with the drive.
I'm very worried about losing all my data and info and would greatly appreciate any insight about this.
Thanks
MacBook Pro
15inch Late 2011
OSX 10.9.1

Solved. Right click on the hard drive in Disk Utility, click "unlock."
So simple, yet so obscure.

Recognizing Time machine files after moving external drive to time capsule

I have a LaCie external hard drive that contains my time machine backups, and would like to attach it to my time capsule (in the basement) to free up desk and usb space. When I attach it to the capsule the drive is recognized, but it does not recognize the backup files. As it stands if I select the drive from time machine it will start to back up all over again using only the remaining space on the drive.
My options are to reformat the drive and start over, losing my previous backups, or I can find a way for time machine to recognize the existing files on that drive. Does anybody know a way to do this?
Any advice would be appreciated:)

Network backups are in a different format than local backups. The network backups are contained in a disk image. Although it's theoretically possible to copy the existing backup folder to that image, I wouldn't give much for your chances of success.
A much better plan would be to keep the drive as it is, continuing to use it for local backups at least intermittently, and start a new backup on another drive. You need more than one backup to be safe anyway.

My Time Machine partition on an external HD won't mount in OSX, but loads and reads fine in Bootcamp

I've been using windows 7 a lot recently for school, and when i do, i can have my external HD mounted to access files (read only) if needed. Last night, after restarting to OSX 10.7, my data partition(not time machine) loads fine, but the other partition of the same HD that i use for time machine refuses to mount.
It shows up in Disk Utility as a greyed out name 'disk1s3' but i origionally named the partition 'Story Time Machine'. The greyed out partition shows up as 500gb, which is correct, but it says its formatted as FAT32. In windows, it says its formatted HFS.
I've tried running Disk Repair both in OSX and in recovery mode. I ran a checksum on the drive and it came back fine.
Any suggestions?

It could be a problem with enclosure, but it also could be a problem with the drive itself or the drive is possibly corrupted. I would start by contacting WD tech support.
It may be possible to recover files from the drive using file recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Otherwise, unless the drive fixes itself like before you should try repartitioning and reformatting to determine if the drive has failed or is now working properly.

External HD Time Machine partition shows in Desktop but not in Finder

I have a External HardDisk with two partitions, one for Time Machine and other for Data.
Until now when I power on the disk two icons appear on my MacBook, one Orange with a USB logo for the Data partition and other Green with Time MAchine logo for the Time MAchine partition.
Suddenly when I power on in FInder I can see only the Data Partition. while in Desktop I can see both, but now the Time Machine Partition is orange with the USB logo (just like the Data partition).
On the other hand everytinhg seems to be workning, I can acces both partitions and Time Machine apparently works Ok, but don't know if something is happening in the background, and I have all my data in that Disk!!!!!

David Casillas wrote:
I can see and use both partitions, but in Finder under DEVICES only DATA partiton shows.
If a navigate in Finder to MacBook for example I can now see both partitions.
Excuse me if my explanation of the subject is not clear. Here is a screenshoot of what happens. In the left you can see the Finder window with just Data Partition, on the right Desktop with both.
If you haven't yet, from a Finder window's menubar, select +Finder > Preferences > Sidebar.+ Un-check the +External Disks+ checkbox, wait a moment, then check it again.
Try going to TM Preferences, de-selecting the drive (select "none"), waiting a moment, then re-selecting it.
Try deleting the file <your home folder>/Library/com.apple.Finder.plist and either relaunch the Finder (from the +Force Quit+ menu) or Restart.

Hello, my mail is gone and I can't find it anywhere. Its not in library and I have not configured Time Machine yet. Help please?!

Hello, my mail is gone and I can't find it anywhere. Its not in library and I have not configured Time Machine yet. Help please?!

Use Find Any File, if the old messages might have been in a specific mailbox, to look for a file by the name of the mailbox to see if there are any larger versions of that mailbox.
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
If your Mail is indeed gone, you may be able to recover it with one of the data recovery tools here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689
But act quickly. Every action while the computer is turned on weakens its chances of recovery. There is a slim chance also your email provider may have tape backup from before you checked your messages and after it arrived at their server for certain messages. You may want to ask them if that might have happened.

HT201250 I accidentally deleted an important note on my iPhone. Can I find it in Time Machine?

I accidently deleted an important note on my iphone. Can I find it on Time Machine?

If you have Time Machine connected you should be able to.
VK replied to a similar question here ...
Start Mail and open the Notes mailbox. click on TM in the dock, scroll back in time in the Mail window, select the note you deleted and hit 'restore".

Find out what time machine is backing up

Ok so i was using my mbp today and have my external drive plugged in. it is a 250GB western digital passport usb drive. i have 2 partitions one time machine (80gb) and one just for other files, mainly photographs. I needed an extra temporary partition so i went to shrink the partition that was just normal stuff and i kept telling me that it wouldn't complete with the error the disk had no free space. it shouldn't be a problem because its only changing a partition and it does have free space. this continued so i decided to shrink my time machine partition by about 1gb just to see if it would work. it didnt and it jammed so i unmounted and tried again. no joy. so i left it and the drive was working fine. however time machine has suddenly found 25gb of data it would like to back up. i have excluded some folders already from it and i excluded one or two other new things i thought might have been causing a bit of an issue, mind you none were that big. still no joy.
is there any way of seeing what it is backing up so i can exclude them or otherwise fix them?

alex.lyons wrote:
Ok so i was using my mbp today and have my external drive plugged in. it is a 250GB western digital passport usb drive. i have 2 partitions one time machine (80gb) and one just for other files, mainly photographs. I needed an extra temporary partition so i went to shrink the partition that was just normal stuff and i kept telling me that it wouldn't complete with the error the disk had no free space. it shouldn't be a problem because its only changing a partition and it does have free space.
this can actually be a problem depending on a situation. when you shrink a partition it looks for a contiguous piece of free space on that partition to remove it. if it can't find such piece due to disk fragmentation the process will fail. you should run repair disk on the external after a failed partitioning process to see if there was any file system damage.
this continued so i decided to shrink my time machine partition by about 1gb just to see if it would work. it didnt and it jammed so i unmounted and tried again. no joy. so i left it and the drive was working fine. however time machine has suddenly found 25gb of data it would like to back up. i have excluded some folders already from it and i excluded one or two other new things i thought might have been causing a bit of an issue, mind you none were that big. still no joy.
is there any way of seeing what it is backing up so i can exclude them or otherwise fix them?
No. the best you can do is to see what was backed up during the last backup.
use this [mac os x hint for this|http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080714124323976]. if you are not terminal savvy, read my instructions in the last comment in that link.

Time Machine partition doesn't mount

Hi,
I partitioned from windows (BOOTCAMP) a hard drive that have a Time Machine partition along with a NTFS partition, so I could have three partitions on the disk. The surprise was that when I tried to back up the data from TIme Machine to my Mac, it doesn't appear anymore. I've installed Mavericks on another drive to see if OS X recognized the TIme Machine back up, but it doesn't, it only shows the NTFS partition. The other one (I supose is the time machine one, because the third partition is empty) appears unmounted on Disk Utilities. In windows I can see the Time Machine partition, so I think that partitioning on windows have caused some kind of damage to the partition table or something
I've googled a lot and this problem is quite similar to mine: http://superuser.com/questions/342876/adding-ntfs-partition-to-disk-in-windows-m akes-hfs-partition-on-same-disk-invis
When I run gdisk it says:
and disk util list:
I think the partition scheme shoudn't be fdisk.
Well, I don't know what to do from here, the drive where I have my personal data broke and this Time Machine backup could save me from losing my photos from the last two years.
Thank you, ask if you want more information, I think my explanation has not been very accurate but I'm not a native English speaker, sorry.
PS: Mac Mini mid 2011

And this is what I see on Windows:
It says HFS, although in OSX says ExFAT, and as you can see the size is different.
This is what I have...
Explaining a little more, the hard drive at the beggining (when everything works) had three partitions, I did four. Then I wanted to make another one and did a logic one accidentally (didn't know the maximum was four primary partitions). After realising that, I erased the logic one and the other two and kept "TimeMachine" and "2TB".

I can not get Time Machine to back up an external WD Passport 2 TB drive! Has anyone else had this problem? The drive is new and I was running Snow Leopard and upgraded to Lion and it still won't do it. Time Machine backs up the internal drive fine.

I bought 2 2TB WD Passport Drives with the intention of housing my iTunes/iPhoto libraries off my older MacBook. I have successfully transferred the Libraries to one and am using the other one for Time Machine. In Snow Leopard I could back up my computer to Time Machine no problem but when I did not exclude the iTunes/iPhoto drive the back up fails. Both drives have been reformatted, permissions repaired and checked in Disk Utility and one was replaced. I have been to the Genius Bar now 5 times. I have tried using USB drive and FireWire. Both drives are recognized and are working properly otherwise regardless how they are connected. Finally yesterday the Apple store installed Lion to see if that fixed the issue and it did not. Time Machine successfully backed up a USB Flash drive, and today I will try an older external drive. Any ideas on what else to try??? Do I have to resort to third party software like Carbon Copy Cloned to get this done? Any ideas why this wont work? I am using a FireWire converter but as I said, both drives are working normally otherwise (libraries working, time machine working for the computer's hard drive. Any ideas would be appreciated!!?

Thanks so much but none of that helped. It was driving me crazy because it would back up another external drive. I just changed the name of the drive from iPhoto/iTunes Library to Media Libraries and IT WORKED!! I guess for some reason it didn't like the drive being called iPhoto or iTunes ???? I don't understand but I have tried so many solutions and exchanging things out but the name change did it????!!!
Thank you for your help and replying to this. Guess I made my own issue!

How to restore a deleted iCloud note from time machine backup?

The short of it... one of my kids decided they didn't need certain notes, therefore deleted them!!!!
(my fault i did not have notes/synced/off on new device!),
but they are important and iCloud is synced across all devices and those notes are gone.
Wasn't sure if a device/ restore from back up would work - didn't.
Tried some of the Apple Communities/ going to lib/ turn off wifi/ move the 3 files to desktop/ move back to lib file, nothing.
Could I get some 'really specific' step by steps? seems others have had success, and maybe i'm in TM when I should be on my Mac or vice versa?! or in the wrong library?
My TM backups just does not let me get anywhere to restore those deleted notes.
Any help would be wonderful!
Thanks
Thinking Apple should have given us an iCloud safety net or at least allow TM/ iCloud to be userfriendly.

I used this to restore my deleted notes from Time Machine, hope this helps others
closed Notes,
turned WiFi off,
entered finder/go+option/ to 'get to library': /Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/
entered TM and selected the 3 files/ hit restore/ keep both (just to make sure, then I deleted the newer file, not the 'restored' file when this worked out)
opened notes and my deleted notes were back so I copied my notes into pages as a backup,
turned on WiFi and the notes disappeared!
replaced my restored notes by copy/pasting my backups into notes/iCloud....
notes/mac would not show across iCloud.... don't remeber this being an issue prior to Mavericks when 'all' notes were selected?
Apple needs to hear from us so they can fix glitches like this. TM was created for instances like this, hopefully this is just an oversite. Pass this along to Apple Feedback/iCloud/bug. If enough of us flag such issues, hopfully it's addressed on the next update.
Dear Apple, this should be much easier than it is. We should be able to open Notes, go into Time Machine, and restore anything regardless if it's on my Mac or on the cloud.

How to remove a encrypted Time Machine partition from external hard drive?

I encrypted my Time Machine partition and i want to delete it and make a whole new Time Machine partition that isn't encrypted, please help.

Launch disk utility
Click on the name of the disk (not the partition) in the left hand pane
Click on the partition tab (top center)
Click on the partition to delete
Click the - sign under the partition layout pane

Can I encrypt a USB hard drive that's not for time machine?

can I encrypt a USB hard drive that's not for time machine?

Yes, if it has the GUID Partition Map Scheme, but only by erasing it and choosing a new format.
See #2 in Using Disk Utility.

Cannot resize Time Machine partition

Hello all,
I currently have a hard drive split into 2 partitions (both Mac OS Extended (Journaled)). One of the Time Machine partitions is far too big (for the backups it contains) and I want to reclaim some space as a regular data partition (for my windows PC). Unfortunately I can find no way to resize the existing partitions. There is no "corner to drag" in my disk utility. 617GB are free in the 697GB partition.

Time Machine likes to be the first partition, otherwise it will continually ask you where?
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-resize-a-live-pa rtition-in-snow-leopard-and-lion/#.
http://osxdaily.com/2009/11/20/resize-partitions-in-mac-os-x-with-disk-utility/

Finder not recognizing "Time Machine" partition of my external HD.

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