How do I redirect time machine to current back up?

I just sent my Powerbook to Applecare for a repair (screen, fans, and keyboard), and I just received it yesterday. The first thing I did was click time machine to go back into time to retrieve some files that I didn't want to be somehow (purposely or more likely accidentally) affected by Apple's repair. Only the problem is, there is nothing there. Can't go back in time. Then an error pops up telling me that my disk has 1.99 GB's left to use and it needs 77 to create a new back up. The issue here is the fact that my partition has 200 GB's to back up on, and the reason that I only have 1.99 is because everything is already currently backed up to the backup bundle already created and used before sending it to Applecare. How do I make Time Machine recognize the current back up again (which has been in use since October) so that I can actually access all the files and continue to back up? I know the files are there, and I know the .sparsebundle still exists (I'm looking at), so how do I make Time Machine recognize and utilize it like nothing has happened?

Thanks a lot for responding, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I did check the computer name and it is the same. There are no new backups since I've received my computer back from Applecare so I'm not afraid to loose and current saves, all the ones I want are in that bundle. Once I saw that it tried to create whole new back up (sparsebundle) and couldn't because it didn't have enough space, I turned time machine off to make sure nothing changes from what was previously set. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make Time Machine recognize all the backups again so that I can access the them and continue to back up on it.
I'm not sure if I wrote this in already, but thought I would to see if it helps. My external hard drive is set up with the backups on it. When I access the external hard drive in finder, it shows a file that says "Kagan Buck's Powerbook G4's backups.sparsebundle" (not exact, but you get the drift). And it's trying to create a new one of those. So my basic question how do I make Time Machine access the current bundle again to utilize it like it always used too.
Sorry again if I'm being repetitious, but I feel like that's the first time I've actually correctly described the issue.
Thanks a lot.

Similar Messages

How can I tell what files Time Machine is currently backing up?

When I check the size of the current backup that Time Machine is performing, I frequently see a large number of GBs being backed up. I would like to stop Time Machine and see what is in the current backup list so I can have the option of deleting them from my Mac Pro running Lion which would save space in my TM backup drive. I assume I might have to consider to 3rd party software. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In fact, Linc, you answered my question. The problem was I did not word my question properly. What I meant to ask is can I stop a current backup of TM and look at a list of files that it is attempting to back up for this next backup?
Oh, and thanks for the heads up about BackupLoupe. I bought it.

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.

HT201250 How do I get Time Machine to resume backing up?

Time Machine is supposed to delete old backups automatically when it is full to make room for new back ups.
After years of use it suddenly is giving me the message that it can't complete a backup.
It lists the "Details" as follows"
"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine Backups"
The backup disk needs 114.76 GB for the backup but only 103.95 GB are available.
Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files."
I do not wish to select a larger disk or exclude files.
How do get it to resume deleting old backups to make room for new?

I've got the same issue as OP, but I haven't backed up more than one volume.
My last successful backup was from 2 weeks ago, before going on vacation (I didn't take my Time Machine drive with me). When I look in Time Machine, I can see a number of backups from the intervening days, when my TM drive wasn't connected, and I can't see any of my backups from before the last successful backup.
When I came home from vacation, I connected my TM drive and Time Machine ran on schedule.
I don't know why the system thinks it was making Time Machine backups when the drive wasn't connected, but it seems to have decided these backups were made using a new volume. I'm going to look for troubleshooting options that will allow me to delete this erroneous thread of backups and hopefully force Time Machine to recognize the original volume.
Any other bits of advice would be appreciated. This appears to be the (secondary) result of a bug.

How to revert a Time Machine backup storage?

I recently just used the WD Elements SE external storage device as my Time Machine backup. But when I did, I cannot get the WD to work on my Windows anymore. And can anyone show me how to revert a Time Machine backup storage back just to its default state so i use it on the Windows? It's a priority.
And if you can somehow show me how to get a Time Machine backup storage to work for the Windows as well then that would be even better.
Thank you.

Sorry, you can't get a TM backup to work with Windows.
To use the HD as storage for both Mac and Windows, you'll need to reformat the disc as FAT32, or FAT64 if both systems support it.
To reformat from Disk Utility on the Mac;
Turn off Time Machine.
In DU, highlight the WD drive in the sidebar (the actual drive, with the makers name and size)
Select the partition tab
Set the partition sceme to 1 partition
Under the options button, set the partition map to Master Boot Record (MBR)
Set the file system to MS-DOS and name the new volume.
Click 'apply'
The clean volume will now appear below the drive in the sidebar.
Be aware that there is a limit to file sizes on FAT32 volumes of a little over 4GB.

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. with the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see the work?

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. With the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see my page? Can I access Time Machine within an app like Pages? How do I enter Time Machine within the application? It always takes me to the Finder. I apolgise for the mumbo jumbo. I simply do not know how to use Time Machine. It makes sense when I follow the Tutorial but then I lose it.

OK. You've kind of skipped over the reason why you want to go back five hours, but my assumption would be that you've made changes to a Pages file that you want to revert.
There are two ways to tackle this. From Pages itself, open the current version of your document, and from the File menu, click Revert To, and Browse All Versions. You'll then be in the Time Machine interface for that file, and can browse back to the version you want.
Or, outside of Pages, you can select the file (or the folder it was originally in, if you've since deleted it) and enter Time Machine from the TM menu (it sounds like you've already tried this?)
best
Matt

How can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files?

I read that iWeb stores one's website pages in the domain folder which can be located at ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb. Can I use time machine to recover my iWeb09 files? If so, how? -I tried. I entered my Time Machine back up, and went back in time and brought the domain file forward but it opened only my current site pages, not the ones I am trying to recover. And it says the Domain file was last modified in October 2007 which is crazy because I've been using iWeb a lot and have published many pages. It seems like the uncorrupted pages, which I am trying to recover, existed somewhere on my computer at one point in time and space, less than a week ago, becuse I just published my site to a new hosting service since Apple will soon stop web hosting. So why can I not find them using time machine?

I continued searching and read another person's advise to down load an app named "Find File," then search for .sites. She said spotlight doesn't always find all files. So I did and sure enough, when I searched for .sites I found another Domain package, which I have no idea how it was created but which, it ends up, was the one actually being used by iWeb. So I went to that package then did the time machine and went back to before my web pages became corrupted. I had to delete corrupt blog pages out of my website menu to get iWeb to upload the other page changes even to a local folder.
So I went to that newly found Domain, went back in time, then brought that forward and as you pointed out the domain package had the parts of the pages, the files and jpegs, but not the structure/layout of the pages. So, I guess I gave up on finding the old pages.
Those pages still exist on the Apple hosting server but iWeb doesn't not reverse publication. Cyberduck would bring back the files and bits and peices but again not the pages as a total entity. I'm preparing for the end of Apple website hosting (next month?) and am republishing my old site. I decided to use a new domain name. So my entire original site is still totally intact on the web under the original domain name, on my mobile me site, I guess it will be there till sometime in June?
My problems started when I tried to publish my website to the new server. It just would not publish the whole website in one session. So I decided to do it a few pages at a time. Some pages went up, but as I added more, for some unknown reason the, blog pages, (about 70 subpages), which had aleardy uploaded just fine to the new server, became corrupt and locked up iWeb. Of course once I deleted the corrupt pages I didn't want to continue publishing the site to the host until I found and reinserted uncorrupted pages, knowing publishing changes would delete the already published pages.
At first I thought it was the hosting server's fault, but when I discovered that it wouldn't publish even to a local fold I was able to locate the cause within iWeb, deleted those pages then tested by publishing to a local folder. iWeb worked locally, so I knew I had found the problem pages. Well this is way more than you wanted to know. Thanks for your advise but I'll just start the blogging pages over.

HT1338 Purchased a used macbook pro with Mountain Lion. My old Mac runs Snow Leopard is backed up to Time machine. How do I register the operating system to me and how do I use Time Machine to move my files to the new used computer?

Purchased a used macbook pro with Mountain Lion. My old Mac runs Snow Leopard is backed up to Time machine. How do I register the operating system to me and how do I use Time Machine to move my files to the new used computer?

If you look at the User Tips tab, you will find a write up on just this subject:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4053
The subject of buying/selling a Mac is quite complicated. Here is a guide to the steps involved. It is from the Seller's point of view, but easily read the other way too:
SELLING A MAC A
Internet Recovery, and Transferability of OS & iLife Apps
Selling an Old Mac:
• When selling an old Mac, the only OS that is legally transferable is the one that came preinstalled when the Mac was new. Selling a Mac with an upgraded OS isn't doing the new owner any favors. Attempting to do so will only result in headaches since the upgraded OS can't be registered by the new owner. If a clean install becomes necessary, they won't be able to do so and will be forced to install the original OS via Internet Recovery. Best to simply erase the drive and revert back to the original OS prior to selling any Mac.
• Additionally, upgrading the OS on a Mac you intend to sell means that you are leaving personally identifiable information on the Mac since the only way to upgrade the OS involves using your own AppleID to download the upgrade from the App Store. So there will be traces of your info and user account left behind. Again, best to erase the drive and revert to the original OS via Internet Recovery.
Internet Recovery:
• In the event that the OS has been upgraded to a newer version (i.e. Lion to Mountain Lion), Internet Recovery will offer the version of the OS that originally came with the Mac. So while booting to the Recovery Disk will show Mountain Lion as available for reinstall since that is the current version running, Internet Recovery, on the other hand, will only show Lion available since that was the OS shipped with that particular Mac.
• Though the Mac came with a particular version of Mac OS X, it appears that, when Internet Recovery is invoked, the most recent update of that version may be applied. (i.e. if the Mac originally came with 10.7.3, Internet Recovery may install a more recent update like 10.7.5)
iLife Apps:
• When the App Store is launched for the first time it will report that the iLife apps are available for the user to Accept under the Purchases section. The user will be required to enter their AppleID during the Acceptance process. From that point on the iLife apps will be tied to the AppleID used to Accept them. The user will be allowed to download the apps to other Macs they own if they wish using the same AppleID used to Accept them.
• Once Accepted on the new Mac, the iLife apps can not be transferred to any future owner when the Mac is sold. Attempting to use an AppleID after the apps have already been accepted using a different AppleID will result in the App Store reporting "These apps were already assigned to another Apple ID".
• It appears, however, that the iLife Apps do not automatically go to the first owner of the Mac. It's quite possible that the original owner, either by choice or neglect, never Accepted the iLife apps in the App Store. As a result, a future owner of the Mac may be able to successfully Accept the apps and retain them for themselves using their own AppleID. Bottom Line: Whoever Accepts the iLife apps first gets to keep them.
SELLING A MAC B
Follow these instructions step by step to prepare a Mac for sale:
Step One - Back up your data:
A. If you have any Virtual PCs shut them down. They cannot be in their "fast saved" state. They must be shut down from inside Windows.
B. Clone to an external drive using using Carbon Copy Cloner.
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the Select a source drop down menu on the left side.
3. Select the Destination volume from the Select a destination drop down menu on the right
side.
4. Click on the Clone button. If you are prompted about creating a clone of the Recovery HD be
sure to opt for that.
Destination means a freshly erased external backup drive. Source means the internal
startup drive.
Step Two - Prepare the machine for the new buyer:
1. De-authorize the computer in iTunes! De-authorize both iTunes and Audible accounts.
2, Remove any Open Firmware passwords or Firmware passwords.
3. Turn the brightness full up and volume nearly so.
4. Turn off File Vault, if enabled.
5. Disable iCloud, if enabled: See.What to do with iCloud before selling your computer
Step Three - Install a fresh OS:
A. Snow Leopard and earlier versions of OS X
1. Insert the original OS X install CD/DVD that came with your computer.
2. Restart the computer while holding down the C key to boot from the CD/DVD.
3. Select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu; repartition and reformat the internal hard drive.
Optionally, click on the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.
4. Install OS X.
5. Upon completion DO NOT restart the computer.
6. Shutdown the computer.
B. Lion and Mountain Lion (if pre-installed on the computer at purchase*)
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because
it is three times faster than wireless.
1. Restart the computer while holding down the COMMAND and R keys until the Mac OS X
Utilities window appears.
2. Select Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Utilities window and click on the Continue button.
3. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the left side list. Click
on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
4. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on the Security button
and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.
5. Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
6. Quit DU and return to the Mac OS X Utilities window.
7. Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.
8. Upon completion shutdown the computer.
*If your computer came with Lion or Mountain Lion pre-installed then you are entitled to transfer your license once. If you purchased Lion or Mountain Lion from the App Store then you cannot transfer your license to another party. In the case of the latter you should install the original version of OS X that came with your computer. You need to repartition the hard drive as well as reformat it; this will assure that the Recovery HD partition is removed. See Step Three above. You may verify these requirements by reviewing your OS X Software License.

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch?

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch? I have a MacBook Air that was my wife's - now given to my daughter for school. My wife never used Time Machine to back up (she simply copied files to an external drive), so before clearing her files off the Mac HD, I tried using Time Machine for the first time with an external HD. However, the Time Machine back up repeatedly failed after about 2GB of 28GB of files. I manually copied my wife's 28GB of files to another external HD and deleted all the files off the Mac HD. I then reformatted the external Time Machine drive. But when I try to use Time Machine to back up the MacBook Air as it is now with my daughter's files on the Mac HD to the external TM drive, Time Machine acts as if the 28GB of my wife's deleted files are still on the Mac HD and fails back-up after counting to about 2GB, even though there aren't even 2GB of files on the Mac HD now and nothing on the external TM drive. I don't need to save any back-ups of how the MacBook used to be - I just need to start from scratch with how the computer is now. Can anyone please tell me how to get Time Machine to think the MacBook is a brand new computer and act as if it's a first time ever back up? I tried updating to Yosemite, and tried renaming the computer in System Preferences>Sharing, plus (as noted above) deleting all the old files off the Mac HD and reformatting the external Time Machine drive - none of that worked. All I can do at the moment is manually copy my daughter's files to an external HD - very frustrating.

Hmmm.. Office is not hard to restore.
You have something major wrong (Yosemite being the primary one).
Do a verify of the source drive.. to do that you will need to boot to the recovery.. and run the disk utility from there.. it sounds like your main disk is corrupted.
Once that is complete, delete the current setup of TM and try again.. use the widget to find out why it is failing..
See Troubleshooting.
A1, A4 and A5 for further info.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Good luck with it..
I would also download carbon copy cloner.. it is $40, but you can use it free for a time.. forget if a week or a month??.. to try out.. and make a proper backup before you start.. CCC is far more reliable than TM.. and in fact you might decide to simply forget about TM if it works and pays the $40.. because you can produce a bootable clone on the external drive which is a heck of a lot easier to use than TM.

Getting a new macbook to replace old one...how do i use time machine to res

my current mac book is acting strange
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9527774#9527774
i bought a new one i should get tomorrow
how do i use time machine to restore my email, safari book marks etc?
thx

ironknee wrote:
caroly do you ever sleep?
I thought i clicked on the link... this link no??
vk yes i bought a white macbook just like my old one with more stuff
i'm just a designer... i have no idea wht u are talking about
there are two ways to restore your data from a TM backup.
the first is the one I described. you don't need to do anything, just follow the instructions during the setup assistant when you first turn the computer on. it will ask you if you want to import your data from a TM backup. say yes and follow the instructions. this method only restores your user data and applications but does not touch any system files.
the second method is different and it was suggested by the other posters. it wipes the hard drive and restores the entire computer including system files and everything to the exact state it was in at the backup time. this should only be used when restoring on the same computer or on the same EXACT hardware model. the fact that your new computer is also a macbook is not enough. the processor and the graphics card may have been upgraded since you bought your old computer. this happens all the time. if they did then the old install will lack necessary drivers for the new hardware and it will not work if you restore the entire system from the old computer to the new one.
Bottom line is, unless you are absolutely sure that your new computer has exact same specs and exact same hardware as the old one, use method one outlined above.

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

How does one get Time Machine out of a "Preparing to Backup" loop to actually doing a backup? thanks, AR

Hi..
Thanks for the reply..
My original I Phone 5 was running IOS 6.12
My I phone 5S currently runs IOS 8..When I upgraded it, it had IOS 7 on it which made the I Photo app compatible with everything below IOS 8...( which the photo app is not compatible with ) so I just connected the I Phone 5S to my computer and thinking the new phone had IOS 7 on it that these was nothing to worry about..I thought all 900 + pictures in the photo stream would transfer but somewhere in the process, I Tunes decides to just go and install IOS 8 which requires that you run a " Photo Migration App" to transfer photos from IOS 7 & below. The problem was is that I didn't want IOS 8 on my new 5S so I thought I wouldn't have to do that part..
Anyway the phone emerged with IOS 8 on it and the only photos that remained were the ones that were actually on the phone..The 900 + I had in the stream didn't transfer because the Photos that works on IOS 7 and below isn't compatible with IOS 8..I guess you have to use the photo migration app that comes with IOS 8 & I phone 6..But I didn't ask to upgrade to IOS 8...It just did it on it's own!
I still have the I Phone 5 Back up that I did just before giving it back to Verizon but if I try to restore the I Phone 5S running IOS 8 those photos in the stream will not go back on the phone because IOS 8 isn't compatible with the I Photos" that ran on IOS 7 and below..
So I have an I Pad mini that runs IOS 7..should I try and erase it...and put that I Phone 5 backup on it and pray the photos that were in the stream come back on it so I can transfer them back to my computer...then erase the I pad mini again and restore it using it's original backup that I have on the computer and the in the cloud?
I know this sounds confusing but I'm at a loss as to what to do..This is what I found ...http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201386
but it doesn't help me..
Steve

How can I change time machine settings?

How can I change time machine settings? I only want Time Machine to backup my Home Folders and the items on the desktop. Currently, it's backing up more files which overwhelm my backup drive. How do I get it to back up Home/Desktop ONLY?
knarfrh60

Also, see selecting items to exclude from the backup here...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
You may also find this Link of interest...
Time Machine Tutorial

How do I use Time Machine to backup a network drive

Let me clarify up-front... I DON'T want to use my NAS as my Time Machine backup drive. I want to backup my NAS to another drive using Time Machine. Here is my current configuation:
iMac 27" with 2TB HD backed up to a Firewire Drive using TM. I swap out an exact duplicate of that drive once-a-month and keep one of these drives off-site for disaster recovery.
I want to add a 3TB NAS drive for all of my media. But I'd like to backup ALL of the media on that NAS the same way that I backup the iMac, with TM -- routinely swapping out 3TB backup drives and keeping one off-site for disaster recovery.
In a perfect world, I could do this in the cloud. But transfer speeds and cost preclude me from choosing that option.
Here are my questions:
1) Can TM work on the 3TB NAS, standalone, to allow it to backup to that set of new 3TB backup drives?
2) I currently have a brand-new Hitachi 3TB HD in an older PowerPC Mac Pro. Could I fire that up and share it on the network as an NAS? I know I could run TM off of that configuration. But, I think that I would be compromising speed and performance vs. the new NAS drives out there. Am I wrong? Also, I'm not sure if that configuration would allow me to stream reliably as a UPnP server.
I know it's a long-winded request, but I would really appreciate the insight of others who have possibly solved this problem. Thanks!

Time Machine will only back up internal and directly connected external drives. It will not back up a network attached storage device. You'll have to use some other software to back up the NAS.

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.

How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme

How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme? I used to be able to but now time machine will not recognize my hard drive to select as a backup when plugged into my airport extreme. I'm not sure what happened or changed. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

First thing to do is go to the Pondini tips page, then follow the link to his full TM site for all the details.

How do I redirect time machine to current back up?

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