Hard drives and Time Machine

I purchased Super Duper and did a full backup on my Mac Pro (I have 3 hard drives, the main one and Two backup drives that are mounted on the desktop). Everything worked fine, I did the Super-Duper start-up/complete backup to one of the extra hard drives. The problem is when I run Time Machine it backs up everything including the extra copy of my computer that Super-Duper just created. This just filled up the extra hard drive that I use for Time Machine.
My question...
1) Is there a way to have the Super-Duper back-up copy of my computer but then not have it re-backed up by Time Machine? Do I need to remove the hard drive (the hard drive with the Super-Duper copy) from the desktop, and how do I do this... they are internal hard drives and not external hard drives.
2) What is the best way to undo what I have done and get the space back on my extra hard drive that I am using for time machine?
I know these are basic questions but I am new to Apple
Thanks for the help

There is a forum for Time Machine, and a library there of user contributed tips, FAQ, and more. There are 3rd party utilities to modify how and when, but you can always ignore a volume or folder from being watched by TimeMachine. By default it will backup any and all mounted volumes.
I think the best place for backups, maybe other than T/M, is external and off line.
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342

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Backing up photos on iMac using external hard drive and time machine

How do i back up photos from my imac using an external hard drive and time machine
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Apple explains how to use Time Machine in http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427.
Setting up and using TM is very simple to do, connect any external HD (format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility ) and your computer shoudl ask if you want to use that EHD for a Time Machine backup. If you have any questions visit your local Apple Store or reseller and they can answer how to setup and use TM and also should be able to offer suggestions on EHDs. My personal preference is OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro due to the build quality and OWC's level of support.

External Hard Drive and Time Machine questions

Hello, I am new here to the forums and I have looked all over for the answers to two questions that I have regarding external hard drives and the time machine feature.
For some background, I recently had a scare (water spill but luckily I had a keyboard cover on and the entire spill landed on the cover) with my Mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro (2.5Ghz) and due to almost losing all my data I've decided to invest in an external hard drive. However, rather than just purchasing a 500GB HDD to use as an external hard drive, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade my Macbook Pro as well by investing in the 480GB OCW Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. I'll be using the SSD as my internal drive so the original hard drive that came with my Macbook will serve as my backup external drive. Lastly, I plan to use the external drive solely for the purpose of backing up my MacBook in case something ever happens to my Macbook.
I am using this guide to help me with this whole process: http://circuitremix.com/?q=content/macbook-pro-solid-state-drive-upgrade-guide-a nd-performance-testing.
My two questions are:
1) When following the guide, it never mentions anything about the Partition Map Scheme. After being alerted to this and doing some additional research, is it better to go with the GUID Partition Table rather than the Master Boot Record?
2) After I have cloned everything onto my new SSD and replaced the HDD in my MacBook with it, should I erase everything on my HDD before setting it up with time machine? I was thinking about keeping the original data on the original hard drive (which would now be my external drive) just in case something goes wrong with time machine but I have read that people recommend solely dedicating the entire external hard drive for time machine backups.
Thanks in advance!

Format the new SSD in Disk Utility to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and that will solve question No. 1.
After formatting, clone the new SSD using Disk Utility>Restore or Carbon Copy Cloner (down load from the Internet). Test the new SSD and if it performs as expected, do the physical swap.
Question No. 2. Erase the Time Machine HDD using Disk Utility and then install Time Machine. See this excellent website regarding Time Machine.
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
If you want an external boot HHD, get another one and use Carbon Copy Cloner. This will give you redundancy in backups as well which is a good strategy. CCC also can update the contents in an incremental manner similar to Time Machine.
Ciao.

Slow external hard drive and time machine un able to back up

My Western Digital Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop external hard drive has become very slow to boot. I also use the same drive for time machine, which is now un able to back up. Is there anyway of increasing the speed, and fixing time machine without losing any data, as the drive is not backed up. Thanks.

If Disk Utility can't repair it, there are some expensive third party products that may be able to do so, strictly for the purpose of extracting whatever files remain intact. I have none in particular to recommend.
Some data is already certainly gone. The disk should be replaced regardless of any utility's ability to "repair" it.

Did my first back up today using external hard drive and time machine now i can't drag and drop

Hi, i did my first back up today using time machine it all went onto my external hard drive fine. Now i cant drag and drop anyhting. I assume ive cahnged some settings in time machine but cant figure it out what to do can some one help ?
thanks

Brandbasher wrote:
Thanks Pondini but i have closed time machine, removed external hard drive.
Did you eject it first?
Now i cant drag and drop anything on my desk top, or mail or any other application. Ive tried moving folders, documents none of it works. Even moving around documents within a folder, it wont let me chnage the position of files.
That shouldn't be related to Time Machine (especially if the backups aren't mounted).
What happens when you try those things? Do you get any messages? Anything you can post a screenshot of?
Have you tried a Restart?
Does it happen in another user account? (If you don't have one, create one via System Prefs > Users & Groups.)

External Hard Drive and Time Machine no longer recognized

I recently downloaded the latest software update and upon rebooting the system to install the security update and whatever other update was included, my external hard drive which contains time machine is no longer recognized. I tried to use disk utility to mount it, fix it, but nothing worked. I am led to think that it's gotta be something in the latest update because i haven't had any problems before this. Sometimes the drive shows up as a yellow image sometimes in disk utility, the rest of the time it is a sort of transparent gray. What's wrong with my machine??? Can i simply uninstall the latest update? would that even solve this issue? i NEED to get into this drive and recover these files

BUMP! Count me in on this one. The last Time Machine back-up was 12/6. I take my machine to the office during the week but am working from home this week. My other external drive (Archives) shows up, but Time Machine is MIA. Looking at System Profiler under USB, I can see the drive on the USB hub and the volume is labeled Time Machine, so the computer sees it, it just doesn't mount it to the desktop so Time Machine can't find its drive.
I've turned the drive off and on. I've swapped cables with the Archive drive. I've rebooted. Nothing works. Both are Western Digital MyBook Studio editions. Both are plugged in to the same hub. I also switched the cables on the hub, but if it's showing up in the Profiler, the problem isn't with the hub, the drive or the cable.
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Hard Drive and Time Machine backup Different Sizes

I had a lot of difficulty getting Time Machine to work with my new Time Capsule. It seems to work now but I noticed that on the initial backup the size of the backup data on Time Capsule was roughly 148 GB and my hard drive size is roughly 159 GB. If I were to do a backup would I discover that some of my data is missing? Or is it normal? I have not excluded anything from the backup. Thanks.

I sorted out the problem on my end, and perhaps the same thing will you help Gadifer. In my Aperture preferences, Library Location was incorrect - for some reason there are two. In my case it should be ~/Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary, whereas it had become ~/Pictures/My Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary (I don't recall changing in manually, and wasn't aware that there were two). When I check them in Finder, I see that the former is several GB, and therefore my actual library, while the latter is only 538 KB.

Two External Hard Drives and Time Machine

Hi All
Does anyone out there know if it is possible to use Time Machine to backup information from one external hard drive to a second external hard drive? I dont want to store this particular information on my internal hard drive (partly because the HD is not big enough. If Time Machine cannot do this, does anyone know of another way?
Thanks
Regards
Sonia

Hi Sonia
Yes you can do that. In Timemachine you just tell it to use the one external HD for Timemachine. In the same panel you can tell timemachine which drives to backup, and here you just specify the other external HD and leaves out your internal HD.

Two external hard drives and Time Machine Problem

I have two external hard drives I use with Time Machine. One is for constant backup and the other I keep off-site and back up weekly.
Problem: Each time I connect a different hard drive it wants to start from scratch and create another new backup file. What I want is called smart copy in Superduper! but can't figure out how to do it on Time Machine
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External Hard Drives and Time Machine

I have all my music stored on an external hard drive. The drive shows up on Time Machine Preferences as a "Do Not Back Up" and the minus button is grey so I don't seem to be able to take it off the list and back it up on Time Machine. Any suggestions as to why this might be? Might there be some reason why I can't back it up? It's a LaCie if that's relevant. Thanks.

OK, well out of my depth now! It says the Partition Map Scheme is Master Boot Record. Not sure about the format - could MS-DOS (FAT) be a format?? Do I need to change these to back on TM? Can I do that without losing my data?

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Hello, I currently have a macbook pro retina and have about 600 gig of content. I am tired of hauling around an external hard drive with him to hold it all. I was thinking of getting a Time Capsule but wanted to know if it can serve as both an external hard drive for my content as well as the destination disk for a time machine back up. If not, can I attach an external hard drive to the time machine to use as the backup drive. Oh one more thing, will I only be able to see the content if I connect to the same home internet network or will I be able to access it with any internet connection regardless of where I am??

Hello, I currently have a macbook pro retina and have about 600 gig of content. I am tired of hauling around an external hard drive with him to hold it all.
Who is him?? The MBPr.. interesting choice of pronoun if it is.
Do you really need 600GB of content.. ??
You can buy a 1TB 2.5" drive in a tiny holder now. In terms of the amount of lugging.. I doubt you will feel that much extra.
I was thinking of getting a Time Capsule but wanted to know if it can serve as both an external hard drive for my content as well as the destination disk for a time machine back up. If not, can I attach an external hard drive to the time machine to use as the backup drive. Oh one more thing, will I only be able to see the content if I connect to the same home internet network or will I be able to access it with any internet connection regardless of where I am??
We do not recommend the TC as an external hard disk to store your files. It has no.. repeat NO ability to back itself up.. it is a sealed unit without spare parts available.. If it dies.. apple will replace not recover. Say goodbye to all your files.. and frankly that are not that reliable.
TM cannot backup a network drive.. and you cannot backup without using a 3rd party software and another USB disk or NAS.. so.. to cut the long story short.. buy the right box.. a NAS.. QNAP and Synology make real NAS, with fully integrated backup that can do TM backups.
If you do decide on the TC for your files.. you can access it locally no problems.
From WAN over the net using BTMM and iCloud.. remember every file movement is restricted to the slowest speed in the network.. usually your upload speed at each end.. try doing anything at 800kbps which is all most people get. If you have high speed fibre then great.
A real NAS will be accessed by SFTP directly using dynamic dns or static public IP .. even better.. but the same limitation applies.. speed of the convoy is the speed of the slowest ship.
A dropbox in the cloud is often a better way although accessing 600GB is still not easy.. and getting it up there.. harder still. But download speed is a lot better than upload.

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Hello I am a college student at RIT with a problem
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You may find more help in the TM forum, here.
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227

Upgrade Internal Hard Drive and Time Machine runs first back up as new full

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William Beede wrote:
In my case I backed up my old internal hd to my new external 1 TB hd.
Surely you mean you used +Setup Assistant+ or +Migration Assistant+ to transfer the data? Or a "clone" via CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, or Disk Utility?
Now it appears TM wants to ADD the contents of my new internal hd to those already backed up(another 220 gb).
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Check Pondini's Time Machine Troubleshooting.
B6 seems to be the topic you are looking for.

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Hard drives and Time Machine

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