How do I fix Time Machine from crashing in mountain lion

Hi,
I recently had to wipe my SSD on my rMBP as I couldn't partition the drive in order to install Bootcamp. I managed to eventually erase the drive and setup a new partition for Windows. I then reinstalled Mountain Lion via the internet and hooked the computer up to my Time Capsual to do the restore. Restore did not restore to my latest backup and when I go to time machine to do a restore I am getting 2 things happen:
1) Dates of retre points are all listed in Purple.
2) Unable to select any of these dates as the software appears to freeze.
Anyone know why this is happening?
Thanks

Another option to check your backups is through the Finder window.
Connect the external HD to Mac - or connect to the IP address where the HD is connected to (GO-Connect to Server).
-In the HD you will find the backups.backups folder - folder of your Mac - folders of each back up.

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How to stop time machine from backing up encrypted lion partition

I am using 10.6.8 but I created a Lion partition on the same disk. I am trying out Lion and I do not want Time Machine to back it up. I was able to exclude the Lion volume until I encrypted the Lion partition using Filevault 2. Now when I'm using Snow Leopard, there doesn't seem to be a way of preventing Time Machine from backing up the Lion partition. Am I missing something?

The FAQ says Snow Leopard can't read the Filevault 2 disk which seems to imply I won't be able to keep Time Machine from backing up the Lion partition. That seems wrong. How can Snow Leopard's Time Machine see the disk to back it up, but can't see it to exclude from backup?

Can I use time machine to revert to Mountain Lion from Maverick?

In spite of everyone saying how great Maverick is, I have poblems with slow operation, hard to use mail addresses, problems with iPhoto, etc. So I want to go back to Mountain Lion. Can I use Time Machine to restore back before Maverick was installed?

Only if you have a full backup of Mountain Lion on your Time Machine backup drive. Then you can boot to the Recovery HD that is on the Time Machine backup drive, erase your drive, then do a full Mountain Lion restore. But if you have already used Time Machine to backup your Mountain Lion system, then this won't work. You will need to erase the drive and reinstall Mountain Lion separately. Then you can restore your Home folder from the Time Machine backup.
Or you can avoid all the above by trying to fix the problems with your Mavericks system. You will need to upgrade iPhoto.
Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:
1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
    b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:
     Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the
     COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the
     computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager
     screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
     Reinstall the 10.9.3 update: OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 Update (Combo).
4. Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Reinstall the 10.9.3 update: OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 Update (Combo).

How do I make a back up on Time Machine before upgrading to Mountain Lion?

A detailed process would be greatly appreciated. I've heard I should use time machine before upgrading to Mountain Lion for reasons I cannot remember.
Thanks!

Connect an external drive to your Mac. Open Disk Utility, it is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder, and see if the external is formated Mac Extended (Journaled) and if it is not you can either use the Partition tab to Re-partition it as one partition and format it Mac Extended (Journaled) or you can use the Erase tab to Erase the drive and format it the Mac format. Name it anything you like.
Once that is done close Disk Utility and open System Preferences and go to the Time Machine Applet. Once that is open, If OS X doesn't ask you if you want to use that external as a TM backup disk, select "SelectBackup Disk" and select that external as a place to store backups. Then move the slider from Off to On and then TM will start the process of making a backup of your system. Once it is finished I suggest you turn it back off.

How do I stop Time Machine from backing up Aperture thumbnails?

Hi,
My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups, and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
However, if I run "xattr" on the Aperture files, the attribute does exist!
During my next time machine backup, the iPhoto files were skipped as I wanted them to be, but the Aperture thumbnails were backed up again
I thought that maybe time machine was looking at the aperture package as an atomic unit, but iPhoto is stored as a package as well, and the attributes worked there on files inside the package.
Does anyone have any idea why time machine is still backing up these files? Is there any way I can get around this?
It seems to me to be an incredible oversight on Apple's part since both tools are Apple. The thumbnails files are very expensive to backup, and they are not necessary for backup since the are easy to rebuild from the original photos which are also backed up.
Thanks,
Ron

Shadow99999 wrote:
Hi,
My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups,
No need to write your own script for that. there are a couple of already made nice GUI tools for this - TimeTracker http://www.charlessoft.com/ and BackupLoupe http://soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
I don't have aperture but I think most people exclude the whole thing from TM backups and back it up separately. but if you want to exclude a subfolder in a package that's easy too. just select the package in finder, control-click on it and select "show package contents". in the resulting finder window drill to the folder you want to exclude and drag it to the TM exclusion list in TM system preferences->options.
I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
I was not aware of this method for excluding stuff from TM backups. could you provide a link to where you found this?
I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
that's because Spotlight never looks inside packages unless you start a search inside a package directly. iphoto seems to be the only exception. I don't know how it's done.

Can't back up Time Machine since upgrade to Mountain Lion

When auto back up would be starting, I get an error message "Can't access the backup disk...TIme Capsul" (OSSStatus error 89.)
None of the usual "go to settings" etc. are leading me anywhere useful.
Do I need a patch to make Time Machine/Time Capsule compatible with Mountain Lion?
Di I need to use iCloud as my back up method? (Have not been using iCloud for anything so far).

Time Machine and the Time Capsule is compatible with Mountain Lion. Look in Time Machine Troubleshooting for a solution.

How can I get my addresses from OS X (Mountain lion) on my iPod 3G

My iPod 3G refuse to overtake my Adresses from my iMac (Mountain lion) via iTunes. When I click in iTunes this side (Infos) and click an Contats, a window appear that says: No contacts availeble, but there are many contacts on my iMac.
The same procedere with Calenders. The strange thing is, that all my calenders appaeared on my iPod.
Who can help?

My iPod is working in German.
Normally he can show "ä" or "ö"......
I Think the problem happens in the export process on the iMac. I tried different letter codes like "Windows latin" or others, but the result is always the same: The special german letters are replaced by other characters.
I hoped, you could tell me which is the right letter code to export my addresses cerrectly to the vCards, so that my iPod can read it correctly.
I Know this is a special german Problem with our special letters, but I will not believe, that there is no solution for this problem.

How do I access time machine from different user account

Hi there.
Last week I had to take my comupter into the local Apple Store because I was having problems with Boot Camp. The genius at the store had to delete everything from my hard drive and reinstall it from my external hard drive. As part of the process she created a "Apple" user account. I now want to restore some files (unrelated to this Boot Camp story) from my time machine archive. However, all the files prior to this Apple Store encounter are red -- and it says I do not have permission to view them. When I click "get info" it says that the "Apple" account has the read/write access to them and the option to unlock them is greyed out. How can I get these files from the archive and get them onto my main user account where they belong? The "Apple" account does not have a password so I think I can easily log on as that account, but I don't know where to go from there.
PS The files in question are iTunes libraries.
Thanks for your help.

Ok, I fixed it. Here's what I did.
I logged into my computer under the Apple account. Then I went into Time Machine. I found my old files under Users-->"my main account". I was able to restore those files to Users-->Shared. Then I was able to log back into "my main account" and retrieve the files from the shared folder. It worked! Hope this helps someone else some time!

How do I view Time Machine from a different Mac?

Using Pondini's excellent tutorial, I navigated to the Time Machine backups from an earlier Mac (on the same "Time Machine" partition of an external HDD.)
First, I was at the level of Macintosh HD/Users, and I could see my earlier Mac's users, but they had the usual red 'No Entry' circle against most of the Home folders so I couldn't see what was in them.
Next, I quit TM and went to the folder I actually wanted (Mail Downloads) in Finder and tried again. This time, though I had option-clicked for other TM backups, it showed me the folder for my current Mac's backup (there's only been one or two so far). When I used the TM timeline slider to go back to that same folder on my other Mac, TM refused to budge. It stayed on my current Mac's window.
Basically, because of the permissions issue, I cannot view the data on my older Mac's TM backup using my current Mac, even though in theory I can option-click and get the window showing the earlier TM, and then select it and go into TM. I should point out that on the other Mac, I had a different account name and password - would this be the reason?

Pondini wrote:
There may be a way to get access to the backups, but it will take some finagling.
It sounds like you got a new Mac, right? And set it up from the old one, or its backups, and didn't use Setup Assistant when it first started up, but created that new user account first, then used MIgration Assistant. If so, the pink box does explain exactly why you're in a pickle.
Post back with details of how you got where you are, how many accounts are where, whether you've done new backups, etc.
It's a bit more complicated than that. I had a new Mac which I set up in the usual way (via a previous Time Machine). Then I let the new Mac go out of my possession for far longer than I'd intended, and meanwhile used an older Mac, where I made many changes to things like iTunes, iPhoto, documents, games, videos, etc. For reasons of space - a HD half the size - and knowing I'd get my new Mac back again, I slimmed down that older Mac with fewer Users, trimming out a lot of older stuff, and a different main account.
When I got the new Mac back, I obviously couldn't use TM to update it due to my 'slimming down' operation on the older Mac (I'd have updated many things but also lost a lot too). In the event, iTunes was updated with little difficulty, iPhoto was updated over the network, likewise all my documents and stuff. The main problem was getting my emails and downloads updated which wasn't at all straightforward. That's where TM backups on the recent (older) Mac came in - I'd use TM to fetch over the bits and pieces that were still missing on my less recent (but newer) Mac.
On my old Mac I've been using for months, I only had 3 users, one of them Shared. On my new Mac I have 7 Users, but it was only my main (admin) account that mattered. I've actually found that I can access my old/recent Mac on the network using File Sharing rather than TM and have got what I want that way. Now I want to get the old Mac off my desk and get some space back. Once it's in a cupboard, I don't want to have to heave it out again in case I find I've forgotten an essential item. That's why I wanted to make sure I could access it via TM.
The main account on my old Mac will be either 501 or 502. On my new Mac, those numbers belong to 1) what was once my main account on a G5 which I had to abandon due to logic board problems, and 2) a deleted account that doesn't exist anymore.

How Do I Stop Time Machine From Filling Up My External Hard Drive?

Hi all -
I have a 750GB OWC external hard drive on which I back up about 100GB of data from my MacBook using Time Machine, and also store a bunch of media files for work. Currently about 650GB of that is full, and that is mostly because of two Time Machine-related files: The "Backups.backupdb" folder, which is 135.15GB, and "MacBook_001b63336000.sparsebundle," which is 233.71 GB. That means that in the nine months since I bought the drive, about 370GB, or half its available space, has been eaten by Time Machine backups.
I only back up so I have a bootable copy of all my current (not past) MacBook data if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged. I am now very concerned that, if left unchecked, Time Machine will eat into the remaining 100GB of empty space. And my old external hard drive died precisely because it ran out of empty space. Some of my critical files were lost forever, and others I got back in pieces after several weeks of anguish and quite a bit of cash.
Apple's support page addresses this concern (incredibly) by instructing me to buy another external hard drive. That solution is expensive for me, and what's the point, when Time Machine will eventually fill that one up too?
So, my questions are:
1. Is there any point at which Time Machine recognizes it's nearly out of hard drive space, and either stops backing up, or deletes old backups, or sends me a warning, or something?
2. If not, is there a way I could designate a maximum size for Time Machine backups to take, such as 150 GB, that it cannot exceed?
3. Partitioning has been suggested, but I don't know how. Any instructions?
4. The OWC hard drive came with its own backup software. Should I just use that and shut up?
It would be mighty ironic if the software I use to save all my data got so fat, it sacrificed all my data....
Thanks in advance -

Andrew Saks wrote:
Hi all -
I have a 750GB OWC external hard drive on which I back up about 100GB of data from my MacBook using Time Machine, and also store a bunch of media files for work. Currently about 650GB of that is full, and that is mostly because of two Time Machine-related files: The "Backups.backupdb" folder, which is 135.15GB, and "MacBook_001b63336000.sparsebundle," which is 233.71 GB. That means that in the nine months since I bought the drive, about 370GB, or half its available space, has been eaten by Time Machine backups.
this is pretty confusing. have you been using it for both wireless and wired backups? the sparse bundle would only be created if you've used it for network backups. directly attached TM drives don't use a sparse bundle so it looks like you've got two separate backup lines. you should get rid of one as using both is very space inefficient.
I only back up so I have a bootable copy of all my current (not past) MacBook data if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged.
FYI, TM backups are not bootable themselves. You can use the "full system restore from TM" utility on the leopard install DVd to restore your system from backups. That restored system will, of course be bootable.
I am now very concerned that, if left unchecked, Time Machine will eat into the remaining 100GB of empty space. And my old external hard drive died precisely because it ran out of empty space. Some of my critical files were lost forever, and others I got back in pieces after several weeks of anguish and quite a bit of cash.
Apple's support page addresses this concern (incredibly) by instructing me to buy another external hard drive. That solution is expensive for me, and what's the point, when Time Machine will eventually fill that one up too?
So, my questions are:
1. Is there any point at which Time Machine recognizes it's nearly out of hard drive space, and either stops backing up, or deletes old backups, or sends me a warning, or something?
I'm not sure of the precise point (TM need some free space on the backup drive to operate) but yes, this will eventually happen. when it does, TM will inform you of this and will give you an option of either stopping TM backups and changing the TM drive or starting to delete old backups. If you choose the latter it will start deleting old backups to create space for new ones. this is done automatically.
2. If not, is there a way I could designate a maximum size for Time Machine backups to take, such as 150 GB, that it cannot exceed?
not unless you partition the drive.
3. Partitioning has been suggested, but I don't know how.
it's an option but not right now. you have too little free space left for a successful partitioning process. If you try, the process is sure to fail due to disk fragmentation.
You need to get rid of A LOT of data if you want to try partitioning. also, fort the future, it's a very good idea to keep one partition entirely for TM and another for data. You'll avoid some of the problems you are having now.
Any instructions?
type "creating new volumes" in disk utility help.
4. The OWC hard drive came with its own backup software. Should I just use that and shut up?
don't. besides TM there are much better options out there. CCCloner and Superduper! are better than anything that OWC software has to offer.
It would be mighty ironic if the software I use to save all my data got so fat, it sacrificed all my data....
Thanks in advance -

How can I keep Time Machine from Automatically backing up any external drive connected

Problem: Whenever I have an external drive attached and TimeMachine starts, it tries to back-up the drive. Usually, this causes Time Machine to gut my TimeMachine back-ups to try and make room before saying, not enough space to complete the back-up. NOT Helpful! I maintain offline/offsite clones of my drives but I also receive drives with large amounts of data which I will want backed up AFTER I have copied it to my drives. Yes, I can go into TimeMachine and exclude the drive(s). If I forget to do that, then BYE BYE back-ups.
Ideally, I would like a prompt asking if I want to include the drive in theTimeMachine back-up after I connect it. Anyone know how to set this?
or
I would be fine with simply having TimeMachine treat all drives unknown to the backup as drives to be ignored.
Thoughts?

perranegra wrote:
It worked beautifully before and would update only when I plugged the firewire drive in and also if I left it over 10 days it would remind me to back up the computer.
Right, the behavior hasn't changed between SL and Lion.
I would have liked the option to set times / days when I wanted.
SL didn't have this, any more than Lion does.
Also now I have a greyed out icon with a warning sign and clicking on the preferences it helpfully tells me the last back up has failed.
Because it DID.
I am usually happy with the updates and tweaks but this is one I am not happy and would appreciate a solution or at least a work around.... and no I don't like having the default to Time Machine as off!
Time Machine hasn't significantly changed between SL and Lion. Well, other than the local HD backup sets when a portable device is away from the actual backup destination, which really seem to freak people out for some reason.

How can I prevent Time Machine from deleting a backup?

I just want to make one particular backup immune to Time Machine's auto-delete function. It's the one I used to migrate from my old computer to my current one. I tried to just drag-copy it on to a different drive, but apparently I don't have permission to copy my own computer's backups... weird.
Anyway, there's got to be a way to lock this particular backup. I going to have to keep Time Machine off until I can find out how.

Explodey wrote:
There's always a way, with a little ingenuity. I just went to Get Info for that backup and changed the system privilege to "read only." And if that doesn't work, I'm sure something else will.
I am sure of one thing that you are going to end up breaking Time Machine which in all likelihood you will not discover until you need to recovery data from it.
Agreat source of information on Time Machine can be found at http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

How do I fix Time Machine error code 43?

When I try to open Time Machine in my applications folder, it won't open and i get a message with Error Code 43.
I've never set up Time Machine before on my G5. I did add a new internal hard drive about 6 months ago but other than that, there are no other drives connected to it.
I recently bought a MBP and a time capsule. i would like to back up my G5 to the Time Capsule before I start moving data/info from my G5 to my MBP. I've already set up the Time Capsule to work with my MBP. Now I just need to set up my G5.
I've read in another forum that I may need to re-set my preferences in Time Machine (on the G5) to get it to work again. They recommended "right clicking" or "control" click to open time machine. When I do that, I don't get a menu item for preferences. So I don't know how to find the preferences.
Maybe there is something else I need to do or know, that is why I'm looking for help.
Thanks,
Ehren

Hello Ehren,
1. Start System Preferences
2. Select your Time Machine Preferences
3. Select a new target for your Backups, or uncheck recheck it.
4. Begin backing up

How do I remove Time Machine from an external disk

After trying it once, I decided that I do not want to use Time Machine. I only want to backup user directories, and use the disk to hold other things. Problem is that I can't reformat the disk and remove the Time Machine stuff. Right clicking only gives me limited options. Is there any way to remove the Time Machine stuff from this disk?

TM data is just that, data.
First, be sure you disconnect the TM engine from the drive in the TM preferences by turning the switch to Off.
There is no right-clicking involved.
Run the disk utility, select the drive and erase/format/partition or whatever. Nothing to it.

Restoring files from time machine backup made using Mountain Lion

Hi Guys
I have trawled through the Internet and found many sources of help for some of my headaches but still can't help the problem. So here I am.....
I have an early MacBook Pro 13" that came with snow leopard. I immediately updated to lion which was a disaster being so slow etc. Then I upgraded to mountain lion which was pretty good. I always upgraded and never clean installed.
I have been running time machine on a Qnap nas (model 212) which I must add has been a headache to get going in itself.
Anyways I recently upgraded to mavericks which made my MacBook grind to a halt. I mean even the beachball was struggling. To the point after 2 weeks I couldn't get anything done on it!
So I decided to do a clean install. Did that and then tried to do restore files using migration assistant at first log in. Turns out my back is corrupted!
Now I know I have a good complete backup of my mountain lion system just 2 weeks old on my nas. Only problem is that mavericks won't let me get to that when I try to upgrade from that drive as it just says no OSX backup available.
Now I am trying to install snow leopard cleanly and the try and upgrade to mountain lion hoping that it would recognise the mountain lion backup on my nas.
Can you please let me know if I am going in the right direction?
Any help appreciated guys.
Thanks

Everything since the fresh install, has to be done manually from my Backup drive. Wasn't, or isn't TM supposed to do that automatically (for example restoring iTunes, is it supposed to restore just the application or all the folders with it as well?). Why, when I select a folder with many subfolders in it (and eventually the files I want within) does it say that the original whatever doesn't exist anymore at that location, then I have the option to choose a new location or to recreate the enclosing folders? I Click on recreate but when I do, just the top level shows (the first folder, for example, garageband). No more folders are shown inside, despite there being plenty of files in my backup version. Am I misunderstanding TM's powers/capabilities here? Is it supposed to be this frustrating and difficult?
Everything that I want has to be done manually it seems. I don't understand it. The other thing is that it denies me access (I don't have the privileges or whatever it says) to move the files directly via the mounted disk on the desktop rather than entering TM. So, I can't go into TM and click restore, I can't manually open the mounted drive and drag files (denies me permission). The only way I've been able to do anything successfully is to archive the **** folder/s or files.
Any help or direction, or a manual on how to use or tutorial on Time machine would be great. Someone point me in the right direction please, this is highly annoying and I am debating switching back to Leopard (having issues with iChat in Snow Leopard).
Thanks

How do I fix Time Machine from crashing in mountain lion

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