Freaky backup ghost in my Mac!

Something is backing up my files on a regular basis. That's great ... except I don't know what it is.
Welcome to the highly amusing mystery!
I was about to wipe my drive and install Tiger tonight. To do so, I was going to make a full copy of my home directory onto my backup drive ... a spare 180GB drive I keep in the tower for tasks like this. (It also has an emergency install of OS X 10.2 on it so I have something to boot to when crashes happen).
Anyhow, in theory I use that drive to back up my user dir every night, except that I haven't bothered to set that up since my last OS upgrade a year ago. Or at least so I thought. When I went to clean up some room on that drive to make room for a copy of my current user dir, I started seeing copies of recent files on that drive ... like files from three days ago. Hey, that's cool. Except I don't know how they got there.
In the past I ran some rsync commands in cron to make backups. But on my current install, "crontab -l" produces "no crontab for <user>". Apple's "Backup" program is not even installed on either drive. Retrospect, silver lining, Deja Vu, Carbon Copy Cloner, etc. .... none of these is installed.
I did have a crontab with a backup script on my old drive, before I installed the current one and upgraded to 10.3 over a year ago. And I did boot to that drive recently a week ago. But, i checked the script on that drive and it only backs up that drive's contents to a network server ... it couldn't possibly have backed up my new drive to itself; the new drive didn't even exist when that script was written. Besides, I was only booted to that drive for ~15 minutes; it couldn't possibly have backed up 18 months of data in that time.
So, I must have *something* I set up a year ago and asked it to schedule backups, and then forgot about. And I can't find it. Anyone have any ideas of what I should look for?
I'm highly amused by all this...

No trouble with my old Epson 750 printer, and I will look at the Vuescan solution - thanks, lamarche.
However, before I try that, I now have another problem to sort. I fear my problems may be back: I worked late into the night, following all advice upon these boards for an erase and reinstallation to the letter. I repaired permissions before and after the reinstall, cleaned caches and disconnected all third-party hardware. This morning, on startup, everything seemed OK. Internet connections: no problem. Suddenly, the ol' colour wheel was back during a quick spin with Safari. Then I got a kernel crash screen. I restarted. I hoped it was an aberration and continued.
When I came to install my just-bought upgrade of Photsohop CS2, however, I was told by a message that there was a problem during "installation", that no prior version of Photoshop could be found (I was using Photoshop 7.0 - of course, this was erased during the reinstallation). So I reinstalled 7.0 from the original installation CD, thinking I could now upgrade using the CS2 DVD. But now, the CS2 installer refuses to work at all - when I click on it, the installer sparks inside the dock, then vanishes again.
Is this an issue with the Adobe installer, or is it to do with my system? Am I doing something wrong? Without Photoshop, I can't work and I can't run 7.0 as Classic has now vanished, too. Is it the mac itself (all "passed" hardware tests notwithstanding), the system ... what?
Can anyone help shed some light on what I should do next? I am at my wit's end!

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How EFI shell can help you backup a non-bootable Mac

I hope this post will help someone in my situation who need an emergency method to backup a non-bootable Mac.
Last week, I have to deal with a MacMini (Mid 2010 with Snow Leopard installed) which worked only 5 months until it froze and gave the following error at startup:
panic (cpu 0 caller0x55a1eb): Unable to find driver for this platform: “ACPI”
“You need to restart your computer…”
The same black screen with “You need to restart your computer…” text appeared when I tried to boot from the Snow Leopard DVD holding the C key. Also, error appeared when I tried to boot by holding the Shift key for Safe Boot mode or Cmd+S for Single-User mode.
So I decided to extract all valuable data and send it to an Apple service. Since, I was unable to boot even from a DVD, I tried r-Studio Emergency CD Demo, which worked fine, but the demo allows only files less than 64K to be recovered.
Then I found rEFIt site and created a bootable CD. It started fine and by using the shell I found that there is a copy command that may help me save some data on an USB flash memory. Unfortunately, rEFIt site lacks any information how to use EFI shell, but finally on other sites related to Intel EFI, I found that this shell is just a DOS box. So here are some useful commands that you may use in order to backup your data from a non-bootable Mac:
1. You have to create a bootable rEFIt CD. Follow the instructions here:
http://refit.sourceforge.net/
2. Insert the CD and boot you Mac by holding the C key.
3. When the rEFIt boot menu appears select EFI Shell icon.
4. In the shell:
Use "map" command to list all devices. I didn't find how to list them page by page, so you will see only the end of the listing:
map
Use "map -r" to remap all devices and assign them a letter. For example if you want to connect a USB flash drive:
map -r
Now, you are ready to backup your files. Begin by typing "fs0:" to enter in the first drive:
fs0:
Then "ls -b" to list files page pay page:
ls -b
fs0 is most probably your CD. Try with "fs1:", "fs2:" until you see your internal drive as well as USB drive. You will recognize internal drive by existence of folders like "Library", "System", "Users", etc. Finally, you are ready to copy your valuable data by "cp" or "cp -r" (for folders) command. Let's suppose your internal drive is fs1 and USB drive is fs3:
fs1:cd Userscd <your user>cd Desktopmkdir fs3:\Backupls -bcp somefile.zip fs3:\Backup\
This is DOS, so use "\" for paths. Of course, you will lose Mac OS X attributes such as owner, user rights, attached system information (such as Spotlight comment) and resource forks. But unless your files use resource forks (used mostly in Mac OS 9) you can safely backup using the cp command. If you need full list of EFI shell commands you can type "help" in the shell or "help cp", "help map", etc. or search for "EFI Shell commands" in Google.
Don't copy anything from your internal drive back to it. It may be damaged. Always copy from the internal drive to your external USB drive.

Thanks for posting this, I've used rEFIt in the past for my multi-boot Mac (4 operating systems) however never explored the EFI enviroment.
So Mac's are running DOS? Who would have guessed that?
Too bad rEFIt hasn't seen any updates of as late, don't know how well it's going to agree with the new Lion and firmware updates.

Copy Time machine backup using a different Mac

A friend has a Time Machine backup from an iMac that he sold some time ago. He's concerned that the drive might fail so wants to make a copy of the backup, but doesn't have a Mac at the moment. So he'd like to use my MacBook to copy his backup drive. The backup is about 400GB, my HD is 256GB and he'd like to copy it to a new 1TB drive.
All the answers that I can find to similar questions assume that the Time Machine backup belongs to the Mac making the copy, in this case it doesn't. So is there a way to copy a Time Machine backup using a Mac that wasn't used to create the backup?

Hi ozRob,
If you would like to copy an existing Time Machine backup from one drive to another, you may find the following article helpful:
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5096
Regards,
- Brenden

I cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac wit

i cannot able able to start my macbook and then i started my mac in a recovery mode now mac os X utility window opens with 4 options 1. Restore From Time Machine Backup 2. Reinstall Mac OSX 3. Get Help Online 4. Disk Utility if i try to restore my mac with time machine no option appears if i reinstall from Mac OSX error comes and cannot able to recover from disk utility please help how can i reinstall mac OSX

Guitar21,
your MacBook Pro has booted into its Recovery mode. From the OS X Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it get to the login screen now?

If I no longer have the old application Backup installed on my Mac (part of the .Mac subscription), do I still need the folder called Backup, that is in my Library in the Application Support folder?

If I no longer have the old application Backup installed on my Mac (for performing scheduled backups of data on the computer), do I need the folder called Backup, that is in my Hard Drive, to Library, to the Application Support folder? (There is no Backup folder in my Home Folder, to Library, to the Application Support folder.)
Backup was part of the .Mac subscription I used to have, and I have not used it since I gave up being a .Mac subscriber many years ago. In fact I recall Apple saying at one point that they no longer supported the Backup Application. I assume the Backup folder is just remnants from when I used to have that application, however I could be wrong, and don't want to trash the folder unwisely.
As I looked through the various items in the Backup folder, nothing appears to be modified since 2007, which further confirms that this folder is from long ago when I used to have that application. I did notice that the main Backup folder itself was the only thing that had a more current modification date on it. That date coincides with the date that I installed Snow Leopard on my Mac earlier this year. But I'm assuming that any operating system software installation will place a modification date on all the various folders of one's computer, with the date the new OS was installed.
Any insight will be appreciated! Thank you!

Since it has always been very basic to backup your computer and all it's data, Apple provides no way for you to transfer music from your iPhone back to your computer. As you know, you can re-download all iTunes purchases, but music that you ripped yourself you'll have to just re-rip again.
You can try and find 3rd party applications that might help you. I'm sure you'll pay, however.
Let this be a very important lesson learned.
Best.

Backup itouch on another mac and not lose whats on itouch when sync

backup itouch on another mac and not lose whats on itouch when sync

Make sure your new Mac is authorized in iTunes. Disable autosync in itunes, connect your ipod, right click on it in the device list and choose backup.
This will save data, pictures and settings to itunes. See what's included in this backup here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
Transfer your purchases the same way to copy all apps and bought media from the Store to your computer.
Set up at least one contact and event on your new Mac, to be able the merge your calendars and contacts after your ipod got wiped during the first sync.
The rest of the data can be restored from the backup you made.
Restoring: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414
Music is one way only, from the computer to your device, unless you bought the songs in itunes and transferred your purchases.
There is 3rd party software out there, but not supported by Apple, see this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2013615&tstart=0
You can save other data following this article: How to back up your data and set up as a new device

Can I load photos stored on a pc backup hardrive onto my Mac IPhoto?

Can I load photos stored on a pc backup hardrive onto my Mac IPhoto?

You can indeed. Simply drag the folder containing the images (or the images themselves) from the hard drive to the iPhoto icon in the dock (same one you click on to open iPhoto. This will cause iPhoto to start importing whatever you drag in.
Two suggestions:
Have a backup of your current library before you do the import just in case iPhoto encounters a corrupt file during import which might damage your existing library of images: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
Import the images in small batches if there are many of them. That way if there is an error with one of the images during import you can easily identify where the bad image is coming from.
Cheers.

Can I backup iPhoto pics on .Mac?

I have a trial version of .Mac. Can I backup m iPhotos using .Mac?

The Backup application will back items up to your iDisk when you have a trial .Mac account, and you can also drag the entire iPhoto library from the Pictures item in the Finder's sidebar to the iDisk unless the library is too large to fit on the iDisk.
(28297)

Can anyone help please with my Time Machine, I have been getting the following message The backup disk image "/Volumes/Mac Backup/Stephen Smith's iMac.sparsebundle" is already in use.

Can anyone help please with my Time Machine, I have been getting the following message The backup disk image “/Volumes/Mac Backup/Stephen Smith’s iMac.sparsebundle” is already in use.

See > http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html

HT201250 Is their a way to only backup my photos on my Backup Plus Drive for MAC?

Can anyone tell me if and how to only backup my photos on my "Backup Plus Drive for Mac" by Seagate, through Time Machine?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We're all users here.
In my opinion, Time Machine is a general program to back up 'everything', on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis, not really intended to back up only specific files or folders. In fact, Time Machine preferences are designed to help you EXCLUDE certain files and folders, rather than specify which ones to INCLUDE.
There are many alternatives. These are two I've used successfully:
Though not specifically designed for backup, iPhoto Library Manager from Fat Cat Software can duplicate, move, and also rebuild your iPhoto library file. It is available for US$29.95 from fatcatsoftware.com
For backup, I use an older free version of a program called Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich Software that will permit you to back up files, folders, and and even create a bootable 'clone' of an entire hard drive. The current program release is no longer free, and is available for US$39.95 directly from Bombich Software Store. http://www.bombich.com/

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

Does every backup require lots of indexing? If so, the index may be damaged.
Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't help, see the pink box in #D2 of the same link.

HT201250 existing Time Machine backups to a new Mac

how do i migrate existing time machine backups to a new mac from my time capsule?

It took a little more research, but that link in the end solved my problem. After mounting the Time Capsule and the previous backup sparsebundle, I ran these commands to inherit the old backup (with <capsule> and <machine> representing the names of the Time Capsule and machine/hard drive respectively:
          sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/<capsule>/<machine>.sparsebundle
          sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/<machine>/2012-12-09-114511/<machine>
          sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/<capsule>/
"2012-12-09-114511" was the latest snapshot that was there. According to the documentation, you can pick any snapshot, since the "-a" in that command will update all of the associated snapshots.

Can I open a Secure File PDA Backup disk on my MAC?

I have (had) a Tunsgten E which died, taking with it all of the data on it. Fortunately, I have the data backed up on a Secure File PDA Backup disk. Question: Is there software that I can download onto my MAC (system OX 4+) so that I can open the Secure File PDA Backup disk on my MAC? Thank you very much for your answer.
Post relates to: Tungsten E

Hello!
The contents in that backup card is for PalmOS devices only so no your Mac or any other computing platform would not be able to open those contents. You could use that card on another Tungsten E device to restore its contents though.
Post relates to: Treo 650 (Unlocked GSM)

Transferring iPhone backup from PC to Mac - will this work?

Hi,
I recently purchased a MacBook Pro and am almost done with transferring everything from my PC to my Mac after a long full day and a half of backing up, reformatting external hard drives etc.
I have read to transfer an iPhone backup from PC to Mac you need to do the following:
If you are a Windows user, open the Start menu, click on "Computer" and then navigate to the "C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" directory.
And then:
Click on the "Finder" icon and navigate to the "Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" folder on the Mac.
I did the first step just fine, but when I tried to find the folder on the Mac by both manual navigation and then a spotlight search, it wasn't found, so I went into the Library/Application Support and then created a new folder with the name MobileSync and a subfolder 'Backup' within that. Will this work?
If not, could someone please help me on how to get my iPhone backup onto the Mac.
Thankyou!

Hi this username has already been taken,
If you are looking to migrate all of your files from your Windows machine to your Mac prior to resyncing your iPhone, you may find the steps outlined in the following article helpful:
Switch Basics: Migrate your Windows files to your Mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2518
About Windows Migration Assistant
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4796
If you would like to separately copy or back up your iPhone's iTunes backup file for safe keeping prior to the transfer, you may also find the information in this article useful (under the section Where are iTunes backups stored on your computer):
iTunes: About iOS backups
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4946
Regards,
- Brenden

THIS IS HOW TO USE TIMEMACHINE BACKUPS ON A NEW MAC/MACBOOK !

When you get a new Mac/MacBook & DO NOT get the dialog box WITH THE OPTION TO RE-USE BACKUPS,
This is all I had to do ?
Put in the OSX install disk & ERASE the hardrive using Disk Utillty,Then re-install Snow Leopard & after it's installed ,& gone through all the processes ,(DO NOT USE YOUR MAC WHILST DOING THIS),
YOU WILL THEN GET THE BOX WITH THE 3 OPTIONS & THE LAST ONE ON THE END SAYS RE-USE BACKUPS,CLICK ON THAT & IT WILL THEN VERIFY FOR A WHILE IN THE TIMEMACHINES SYSTEM PREFERENCES WINDOW, THEN IT WILL PREPARE FOR A WHILE ,THEN IT WILL ADD YOUR PREVIOUS BACKUPS ONTO YOUR NEW MAC &THEN CONTINUE FROM WHERE YOU LEFT OFF.
I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT THIS WAS NOT POSSIBLE UNLESS YOU SEE THAT DIALOG BOX WITH THE RE-USE BACKUPS PROMPT,SO AFTER A LOT OF TRYING ,I FINALLY MANAGED TO RESOLVE THIS & THIS IS THE ONLY WAY YOU WILL GET THAT PROMPT BACK, I HOPE THIS HELPS MANY PEOPLE OUT,I'VE SPENT A WEEK TRYING TO SORT THIS & FINALLY CAME UP WITH THIS SOLUTION ,JUST REMEMBER TO ERASE THE MACINTOSH HD HARDRIVE BEFORE YOU RE-INSTALL IT AGAINOH HAPPY DAYS. !!

TOOK ME SOME THINKING & TINKERING ABOUT BUT THIS IS HOW YOU GET THAT DIALOG BOX PROMPT BACK IF YOU DON'T SEE OR GET THE PROMPT. I HAD PREVIOUS BACKUPS ON MY TIMECAPSULE & I WANTED THEM IN MY TIMELINE & THIS IS HOW TO GET THE RE-USE BACKUPS BOX/OPTION IF YOU DON'T GET THE PROMPT,I NEW THERE HAD TO BE A WAY !

Freaky backup ghost in my Mac!

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