Has Anyone Used the WD My Book External Drives for Time Machine?

I'm thinking of getting the Western Digitial 1 or 2 TB My Book (Pro Edition 2 or Studio Edition) External Drives for use with 2 MacPros. Has anyone used these and could I use them with Time Machine? Would I have to reformat them for Time Machine?
Thanks!
Ashley

You may, and probably want to format them, even if not TM use, I would anyway. Not everyone is happy with MyBook Pro and TM.
I buy bare FW devices and add disk drive of choice, or just use OWC
http://www.macsales.com/firewire and works well.
FW800 is also better on the new Mac Pro
http://www.barefeats.com

Similar Messages

I've used an external drive for time machine which has important files on it. After trying to back up my computer, it suddenly needed to be "repaired" by utilities. Now it's not being "seen" at all! How do I recover my important files off the drive?

I've used an external drive for time machine which has important files on it. After trying to back up my computer, it suddenly needed to be "repaired" by utilities. Now it's not being "seen" at all! How do I recover my important files off the drive?

If the external drive can be seen at all in Disk Utility, follow the instructions for repair here.

My 320GB external drive for Time Machine now only has enough capacity to keep a backup of one day. All my other backups are gone. What can I do to fix this situation?

I've been using a 320GB external drive for time machine for the last several years. The backups always worked fine and when necessary I was able to look at & restore older data from the time capsule. Recently, I keep getting the message that a backup cannot be completed and an older backup will be deleted. Usually this wasn't an issue because I still had several months of information on disk. Now a one-time backup takes up 315GB and therefore I only have a backup of the previous day. I don't understand this because I thought that the backup only saves information that has changed and doesn't copy everything everytime. What do I need to do to get my backups to a reasonable size so that I can keep at least 1 month data stored on it.? Please don't tell me I need a larger drive ... that would be too easy.

Get a larger drive for your TM backups.
The recommended size is 3 times what you are backup. So if 315 GB is a backup then you need a 1 TB drive.
Allan

Adding a Dedicated External Drive for Time Machine

Hello,
I want to use a dedicated external drive for Time Machine backup and another drive for a SuperDuper backup. Before even adding another drive, I'm already pulling and replacing usb connections from the back of my computer.
Can anyone tell me if a splitter is a workable solution? Something like this:
7-Port USB High-speed Hub with Splitter Cable -- http://www.shop4tech.com/user.htm?go=view_item&id=8997&r=183 -- or perhaps other recommendations ..
Thanks.

...I recall reading that USB 2 was faster ... but I think they said faster than FW 400, but the drive I have is FW 800.
USB2 is 480mbps and Firewire400 is 400mbps. On paper, this would appear that USB2 is faster than Firewire400. But USB2 cannot handle large data transfers very effectively. I can't explain the technicals, but suffice to say that the figures I gave of 40min-versus-2-hours-for-25GB is typical of Firewire400 versus USB2.
Firewire800 is 800mbps, so would potentially be even faster. However the physical hard drive that's installed in the Firewire enclosure would be the bottleneck as a normal "platter" hard drive is much slower than Firewire400 or 800. If it were an SSD drive, then you'd likely see a very significant difference.
But regardless, USB2 cannot keep up with a large data stream like Firewire can. Potentially USB3, which is up to 5Gbps, would be faster than either Firewire 400 or 800, although I suspect would be on par with Firewire3200 in the real world. However since there are no adapters for either USB3 or Firewire3200 for the Mac, it's a moot point for now. (Your drive is not USB3, there are only a few USB3 drives available, and you'd need a Mac Pro to add the adapter in anyway, if they existed.)
So are you saying that FW 800 is faster than USB 2.0 -- and that I should be using the FW connection to get better throughput? And that I can resume daisy-chaining multiple external drives through the one port?
Definitely Firewire would be faster than USB. And I have 5 external hard drives daisy-chained through a single Firewire800 port on my Mac. So daisy-chained Firewire is the way to go.
Like I said, for the small, incremental, hourly Time Machine backups, the speed difference is insignificant. But when the day comes that you have to restore your hard drive, (i.e.: hard drive dead so you buy new blank hard drive. Or you just want to replace with a larger drive,) if say your Time Machine backup is 80GB, that restore would probably take several hours over USB2. On my Firewire400 drive, my 100GB Time Machine restore of my Macbook Pro took about an hour and a half. (The data transfer was about an hour, but OSX took awhile after that to finish up the restore.) YMMV, of course, but IMHO, use Firewire over USB2 as much as possible. If you're lucky enough to have a Mac Pro or iMac and can use multiple internal hard drives or eSATA, then that would be even faster than Firewire800. Only owners of a Macbook Air or non-Firewire Macbook should resign themselves to USB2.

HT3275 New macbook, old external drive for time machine

I got a new macbook pro a few weeks ago and set it up using my last backup from time machine. I want to use the same external drive for backups but there is no room. Can I delete all of the old files from the old computer or do I need to keep them?

kat.hayes wrote:
I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
As long as they're formatted HFS+, yes. Be sure there's enough room, though -- Time Machine needs considerably more room than the data it's backing-up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

External drive for Time Machine

I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
2. What is a good external hard drive to handles these types of files?
Thanks.

kat.hayes wrote:
I want to use a 3 TB external drive for Time Machine to backup multiple 500GB hard drives in my Macpro. I have lots of large video files from HD cameras.
1. Will Time Machine backup all of the hard drives in the Macpro?
As long as they're formatted HFS+, yes. Be sure there's enough room, though -- Time Machine needs considerably more room than the data it's backing-up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Partitioned external drive for Time Machine and Daily storage

Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive....need to have space available on the original drive on the MacBook....How do I move existing stored data and point ongoining saved music..files...etc to the new drive...???
Thank you...Bob

Yogabob wrote:
Now that I've partitioned my I Terabyte external drive to two partitions using the disk utility with one partition for Time Machine and one partition as my new "hard drive"...my internal drive on the MacBook almost filled....I wanted to move...pix, movies, music..etc to the new drive
You could use an application like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to copy them to the new partition, but it's probably just as easy to drag the files/folders to the new partition, then delete the originals.
and have all future storage pointed to that drive not the internal drive
You probably don't really want to do that. Files you're using will be accessed much faster if they're on your internal HD.
Another consideration is, you really should have backups of the moved files somewhere, in case you have a problem with the new drive. Although TM will back them up unless you exclude that partition, if the drive fails, you'll lose both copies.

Brand new iMac 23.GHz Intel Core i5. Mounts external drive for time machine, then dismounts after backup is complete.

brand new iMac 23.GHz Intel Core i5. Mounts external drive for time machine, then dismounts after backup is complete.

The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.
If you bought the product in the U.S. directly from Apple (not from a reseller), you have 14 days from the date of delivery in which to exchange or return it for a refund. In other countries, the return policy may be different. If you bought from a reseller, its return policy applies.

Can I use another computer as a external harddrive for time machine?

I have a mac mini from a few years ago and it is never used. I was wonder if it could be used as an external hard drive for time machine. If this can be done how do I go about setting it up for this type of useage?

Thanks for your reply. I looked at the Troubleshooting, but can't find my exact problem. It is as follows:
I use a new iMac running Snow Leopard with a 500 GB external WD drive.
-I looked the other day to find that time machine had failed, and when I looked at the backups, there had not been a successful backup since September 2009. I think this is when I installed Snow Leopard...
-I went to run a backup, and it failed, saying I did not have room (I have about 220 GB to backup)
-I decided to format the external hard drive and try again from scratch.
-I began getting an error 11, and specifically -8062 and -36 (as examples) which specifically list files that it could not copy.
-I reinstalled snow leopard from disk.
-I excluded time machine from spotlight as recommended in some forums
-I started ommitting some of the files that were listed as not being bale to copy, but now its into my music, and that's half the reason I back up.
I am now backing up to laptop as above post, and if that works, I will conclude that the External HD has seen its day.
If I get the same errors, I will conclude (nervously) that my computer has issues.
Here is an example of an error message:
Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Users/Shared/Music/Compilations/(album name)/(song name).mp3 to /Volumes/Time Machine 20100504/Backups.backupdb/Riskin's Computer/2010-05-04-222232.inprogress/F9243DA..(many letters and numbers)...D19/Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/Music/Compilations/(album name)/(song name)
then below in another message says:
Copy stage failed with error: 11
Backup failed with error: 11
I get this same original error with different files, and with different error numbers.
Apple support told me that by formatting external drive, and reinstalling snow leopard, they were 99.9% sure it would be fixed, but it is not.
Frustrated,

Recommendation for Large (4Tb) External Drive for Time Machine

I have a large library that I'd like to backup from my Mac Pro - 2T drives are not large enough - any recommendations on 4T drives for Time Machine?
Thanks
GJM

People have said to wait for version 8.2 of Retrospect which appears to be here.
http://www.retrospect.com/
Maybe time to move to RAID6 controller. I've seen folks on MacGurus talk about large, massive storage arrays and backups.
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/BurlyRAID.php
People have said that they backup RAID A to B. Or mirror two arrays.
Did you not like SynchronizePro? From March '09:
After months of trying and testing we have settled on Areca cards.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9218286#9218286
I have not heard of problems (very many) with SuperDuper and their support is always helpful.
A linux NAS server running linux backup or even Windows Home Server. People even use Windows to run Retrospect (runs better). Anything you find will likely take some time to setup and configure in the beginning, this isn't your proconsumer type of need.

Has anybody used the microsoft JDBC 2.0 driver for sql server 2000?

Hi,
Has anybody used the JDBC 2.0 driver for sql server 2000 downloadable from the
microsoft website?When I try using it with WL 6.1 sp1 it says it can't load the
driver.I try viewing the class file from the jar file using the jar utility it
gives an unknown Zip format error.Anybody has any solution for this ?If anybody
has managed to work with this microsoft driver i will be grateful if they provide
me with a solution.
Thanks
Thomas

Hello Thomas,
You may want to download the driver again and install it again.
heres a sample xml tag in the config.xml:
<JDBCConnectionPool
DriverName="com.microsoft.jdbc.sqlserver.SQLServerDriver"
InitialCapacity="3" MaxCapacity="12" Name="MSpool"
Password="{3DES}fUz1bxR0zDg=" Properties="user=uid"
Targets="myserver"
URL="jdbc:microsoft:sqlserver://mydbserver:1433"/>
ensure that you follow the instructions from Microsoft. For using 2000
driver you will need to have
Install_dir/lib/msbase.jar and Install_dir/lib/msutil.jar in addition to
Install_dir/lib/mssqlserver.jar in the CLASSPATH.
hth
sree
"Thomas" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:3c91ec0e$[email protected]..
Hi,
Has anybody used the JDBC 2.0 driver for sql server 2000 downloadable from
the
microsoft website?When I try using it with WL 6.1 sp1 it says it can't load
the
driver.I try viewing the class file from the jar file using the jar utility
it
gives an unknown Zip format error.Anybody has any solution for this ?If
anybody
has managed to work with this microsoft driver i will be grateful if they
provide
me with a solution.
Thanks
Thomas

Cannot install Mountain Lion as the installer provides message that my target drive is using Time Machine. My target drive is my internal drive and I use an external drive for Time Machine. When I check the Time Macine set up under system prefereces it sh

Cannot install Mountain Lion as installer sys the target drive I have selected is using Time Machine. The target drive I selected is my internal drive. I have an external drive that I use for Time Machine backup. When I go to System Preferences and look at the Time Machine set up it shows my target disk is the external drive. What to do?

Yes, you’ll be able to do that.
(116841)

Using an External Drive for Time Machine and Other Things

I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?

rgraves wrote:
I have a 2TB external drive which I use for Time Machine Backups on my 2 macs. The macs have HDs of 500GB and 160GB so the external drive has ample space for backups.
Maybe. See #1 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Is it okay to use the external drive for other things that I don't care if they aren't backed up (like digital copies of DVDs)? i.e. Will Time Machine cause any issues if a drive is used for more than just Time Machine backups?
It's best to put such things in their own partition. See #3 in the FAQ.
You may also want to make separate partitions for each Mac's backups, if you're backing-up either one directly (ie, not over your network). See #4 in the FAQ.

Can I use an external drive for Time Machine and storing other data?

At the moment I have one external drive, a 500gb LaCie. My internal drive is 160gb. I don't think I'll be using all 500 of those gigabytes for a while, so I want to put them to good use. Can I make a partition on this drive and use that for Time Machine, leaving the rest of the drive for my documents and other files? If so, how would I partition the drive? I'm not fluent in Disk Utility and even though I'm pretty sure I know how to do it, I don't want to screw up. Also, how big a partition would you recommend?
While we're here, I have a second question, somewhat relevant to the first. Could I move my Time Machine backups to a second drive if I wanted to? Also, if I used a big drive (say 1tb) could I use Time Machine to backup my current LaCie to a partition on that drive? Thanks in advance.

videoCWK wrote:
Does that also mean that I could back them both up on a very big drive?
Yes. Time Machine will, by default, back up all of your external drives unless you specifically exclude them.
Also, will Time Machine backups eat all my space after a lot of usage?
It depends on what you do on your Mac. If you work often with very large files (video editing, heavy photo editing, big disk images, Microsoft Entourage data file, Parallels disk image file, etc) then your backup drive could fill up very quickly.
I use my Mac mostly for e-mail, web browsing, iTunes, iPhoto, and the occasional iMovie project. I have 92 GB on my main hard drive (60 GB of which are my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, and one iMovie project.) My Time Machine backups consume 155GB on my backup drive, and that's after using Time Machine for a full year.

External drive for Time Machine and Firewire Hub

Just got a new iMac. My old iMac G5 was running 10.4.11 so no Time Machine. On the new iMac I am running 10.5.6 I find I have questions about how to go about making best use of this new facility available to me. Since my new iMac has only one firewire port (FW 800) I also need an additional port here.
My thoughts are to use an external drive connected with FW 800 as a Time Machine backup and use the (usually) extra FW 800 port to extend the FW 800 and I find I can get a dual interface drive with both FW 800 and FW 400, so I could use the FW 400 for FW 400 devices like other FW 400 drives and my video camera.
Currently I use SuperDuper to make clone backups of my HD on a weekly basis (I use 2 drives for this on a rotating basis). I plan to continue that in addition to the facility offered by Time Machine (on a separate drive).
My questions are...
Is it a good idea to use the extra FW 800 or 400 port on an external to connect other drives to use for clone BUs?
If that is a good idea...
What brand and size of drive to use for the Time Machine BU (FW 400/800 sharing)
A. Maxtor?
(I have several OneTouch II and OneTouch III that I use for clones, I have been using them for a few years without problem. I seem to remember reading about some problems with Maxtor, have I just been lucky?)
B. Newertech MiniStack v3 from OWC MacSales?
C. OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro™?
If the OWC Mercury Eltite is a good choice...
Is a 750 GB large enough?
Is it worth it to get the 1TB Enterprise 7200RPM?
Any other suggestions?
Andy

i needed 3 drives in total so went with my 2nd choice of buying external enclosures and then hard drives,
at the end it cost me much much less so i endded up buy another as a spare,
so currently using 4 NexStart combo enclosure each one fitted with a 500gb hard drive,
i got one connected to my G5 and 3 connected by FW400 to my imac through a daisy chain,
for time machines it doesnt matter about speed so you dont need to use up the FW800 Port,
FW400 will be fine,
before this i had a USB2 WD Book and was using that with time machine and never had a problem through USB,
i always connect to a port i hardly use as i wont ever need to keep taking it off if i had to connect my camera to it for example....

Has Anyone Used the WD My Book External Drives for Time Machine?

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