How do I undo a Time Machine External Hard Drive?

Hello,
I have an old external that was the time machine for an iMac I no longer have. I am deleting all the data from the drive and would like it to be just a regular external once again. Everytime I plug it into my new mac it shows up as time machine. What can I do??

First Turn off Time Machine on your present Mac Then connect the drive and open Disk Utility. select the partition on that external and go to the Partition tab and select One Partition from the Partition Layout drop down. Type in a Name and select Mac Extended (Journaled) as the format and then click the Options button at the bottom of the partition layout area and make sure it is GUID. Close that options window and click Apply.

Similar Messages

I want to replace the hard drive on my IMac but want to know how to transfer from the time machine external hard drive to the replacement drive?

I have reached capacity on my IMac hard drive. It is a 250 GB drive. I have an external drive backing up using the time machine utility. My question is once I replace the HD on the IMac, how do I load the new drive with the back up from the external drive?

So many possibilities.
I am not an expert, but I have learned this much is doable:
Buy an external enclosure to re-use you old drive.
Buy a new external drive at least as large as as your intended new internal drive. Make it self-powered.
Download CarbonCopyClone (free download, relatively small).
Make a CCC clone of the original disk on the new external disk
Install the original disk in the external enclosure.
Install the new disk in the main system.
Boot from that new external drive that has the carbon copy clone. CCC will be installed on it and it will be bootable.
Use CCC on the external to directly clone back to new drive you install in the main system (the "bootable" flag will copy).
NOTE THAT AT NO TIME IS YOUR ORIGINAL DISK BEING OVERWRITTEN IN THIS PROCESS. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK AND REINSTALL IT.
Step 1 makes your old disk resuable as a spare copy for "anything".
Step 2 gives you something to use as CCC for after the recovery process.
Step 3 gets the software needed for cloning
Step 4 makes a bootable saved copy of your current system
Step 5 shifts your old disk to a usable place
Step 6 positions your new disk
Step 7 boots your existing install of OSX (just from a different drive)
Step 8 puts your original install on your new disk.
Now you have a bootable larger hard drive, and a bootable copy on a drive large enough to save all you can store on your new internal drive. And you have your old disk to use for "anything".
Now you have TM backup in one place, and CCC backup in another.
Two backups is better than one, and one of your backups is bootable in case of system failure.

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

Time machine external hard drive requires repair every time I turned the computer off or after I ejected the external hard drive?

What kind of repair?

How to stop my Time Machine external hard drive preventing iMac from sleeping?

I have a late 2012 iMac, and have discovered that sometimes (I haven't noticed a pattern of when it doesn/doesn't happen) the computer will immediately wake up after I set it to Sleep (Apple Menu>Sleep). Through elimination I have found that it is the the USB 3.0 external hard drive I use as a Time Machine back-up that is the culprit; unplugging it then allows the computer to sleep. If I unplug it, then plug it back in later on, this normally solves the problem for a while, but not forever. This same Hard Drive didn't cause the wake problem on my previous '08 iMac.
A big issue is that when the machine immediately wakes from sleep, the display stays off (until I move the mouse) - this is good from a power saving point of view, but means I don't know if/when the machine is immediately waking from sleep (I have to listen to the fan when setting it to Sleep mode to hear if it has actually woken back up).
I've searched the forums, but can't find another poster with the same problem as myself. Can anyone advise a course for me to pursue to prevent this from happening?
Thanks. Jamie

Hi Frank. Nope, I'm still having the same symptoms; the plugged in external drive (TIme Machine) will wake the machine up a couple of seconds after it winding down when put to into sleep mode. Ejecting the drive and then sleeping the machine works. After plugging it in again to do a Time machine backup, it will allow the computer to sleep soundly for the first few sessions (eg a few days of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking, etc), but then it will then suddenly start preventing it from sleeping again after a while.
It seems I'm fortunate in my case that the display stays dark (or off?) when the machine has been woken from sleep, but this was actually preventing me from knowing the machine wasn't in fact asleep for quite some time; I only eventually cottoned on because there wasn't any delay when 'waking' my machine (which there normally is). I would then have to carefully listen to the spinning fans to know if in fact it had gone to sleep or not.
So, to summarise, unfortunately no, I haven't solved this yet. If anyone else has a solution, please let us know?
Also, I've noticed occasionally after waking that there is a relatively quiet 'crackle' sound (kind of electrical sounding) from the bottom-right area of the machine. This goes on every so often for about 30mins. I see this is also an issue with other people's late 2012 iMacs, but I've not seen if anyone has a solution to it?

HT201250 How to use time machine external hard drive on other devices

I have an external hard drive which i usually use to back up my macbook pro via time machine but if i put pictures or songs on the external hard drive and connect it to a gaming concole or a pc nothing happens. The concole and pc doesn't recognize the device. Is there anything i can do to make it so i can access files from other devices while still using it for time machine?

The external drive is Mac formatted for Time Machine. Your gaming console and PC won't be able to read its format.
If you are determined to use it for both purposes, you can partition the drive in Disk Utility. Format the PC partition for MS-DOS or whatever is required for your gaming console. You may or may not have sufficient space for both partitions. If you do not you will have to erase your Time Machine backups.

How to create mirror backup of my Time Machine external hard drive

I am running Time Machine back ups for my MacPro with OS 10.8.5, purchased in 2008. I am saving the Time Machine back ups to an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 2TB external hard drive. I have a second 2TB external hard drive and would like to mirror what's backing up to the first 2TB external hard drive. I feel that it gives me better odds if I plug the hard drive in one day and it isn't recognized, or some calamity happens to my computer and everything goes downhill from there, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Currently I store the external hard drives in a safe in my home between uses. They don't spend 24/7 hooked to my computer.
I would like to know that I always have two copies of the same Time Machine back up on hand.
Thanks,

Drives fail. Often in the first six months, and after that, they may last 5-6 years. Or not. A weak (not just bad) sector block is usually the best indication. Having spare drives on hand should be a must, and rotate primary drives to backup or archive every two years maybe after giving them a long erase - to ease your fears and hopefully find the worst possible error.
RAID6 is useful for holding large video catalogues and projects - and then mirror your RAID6 to another RAID6.
SoftRAID 5 http://www.softraid.com will scan drives in the background for weak blocks, monitor I/O better for read/write errors (without impacting performance is important) and can be well worth its $140 ish price (worth it in tech support alone, too if ever you need it)
A couple programs will write the SMART status to the system log and show the numbers of used and remaining spare blocks. That is something a large study of disk storage revealed. And in today's world, storage needs and the need to "change the light blubs" on a basis before one fails is a must in massive data cloud and big data mining.
Apple's Mac Pro and the RAID card is not "hot swap" capable, though the motherboard in the Classic Mac Pro actually could as designed by Intel. And hot swapping is a handy feature - create a 3 drive mirror array, pull one, you still have two and let SoftRAID do a better rebuild in the background adding a new 3rd mirror drive.
Two drive mirrors are weak and not all that great, in my estimation.
TimeMachine is there to get people to at least have a automatic ish do it and forget it, hopefully, versus none at all. A good beginning. It also turns 8 this September and has slowly, gradually, hopefully, matured. I might buy Disk Warrior 5 if only to check the backup catalogue for integrity though at $99 a waste for most and better spent on another backup drive or something. But you never want to be in need of Data Rescue 4, another $99 product.

Time machine external hard drive in windows not working.

I recently bought a Western Digital external hard drive to use with time machine so that I would have my laptop backed up. When I set up the time machine, it had to format my hard drive, erasing the WD files that were on the drive. I was able to continue using it as an external storage device on the Mac side of my laptop, but when trying to use it on the windows side, it wont show up in My Computer. I'm starting to wonder if I will be unable to use this external drive on anything other than a Mac now that it is set up as my Time Machine.
If that is the case, is there a way that I can reset my drive to not show up as my Time Machine Disk.
Thanks,
JT

If you're going to use the drive on both platforms, does it need to be set up first on the PC, allocating 1/2? to Windows NTFS format, then disable/reset/delete Time Machine backups doing the Mac HFS format thing on remainder of External?
Setup on my Acomdata 7200rpm External is Mac 150GB HFS, Windows 150GB NTFS. On Windows side, is Vista, W7 (32 &64Bit) and recently my daughter's HP Laptop XP which posed a problem until I found that NtBackup.Msi was in VALUEADD folder on the Windows XP install CD. Also available from Microsoft if no install CD. NtBackup makes a .BKF string of the hard drive, runs maybe a little slower than Vista & Windows 7 Backup/Restore Maint. Long time since I restore a .BKF but think it requires an OS - unlike Vista + Windows 7 where the install Disk will retore from External in ~30 minutes.
I have not figured out how to get Leopard restored short of format, then complete (re)install with Time Machine restore kicking in at the end of that process. Takes a great deal of time and some things need fixing after completion. Wondering if Snow Leopard/Disk Utility has any improvements on this score. Refuse to pay for anything that I consider to be intrisically necessary to use of product.

I just had my hard drive replaced and restored everything from a Time Machine external hard drive backup and now my "note" widgets won't load. Any ideas ?

I just had my hard drive replaced. I restored it using a Time Machine backup on an external hard drive. When I open Dashboard none of my "note" widgets will load. The other widgets open, such as weather, weather radar, calculater, dictionary, stock... Even the iPhoto Mini widget works, just not the notes ( Sticky Notes and K-Notes ). Any ideas on how to fix this ?

I did some research and found the solution to my problem. So I hope it's okay to answer my own question.
When you reinstall the OS, your Preferences go back to their default settings. Apparently Preferences is where this widget information is stored. This Preferences folder is located in the user Library folder which is hidden by default. You can access it using "one, or the other" of the following actions.
Action 1:      (1) In the Finder, choose Go > Go To Folder
                     (2) In the Go To Folder dialog, type ~/Library
                     (3) Click Go
                                                      -- OR --
Action 2:     Hold down the option (alt) key when using the Go menu. The Library folder is listed just                            below the Home folder.
After opening the Preferences folder, the file that you want to locate for k-notes is named
widget-com.rakoth.lichlord.widget.k-notes.plist
After you locate it make note of the byte size of the file. Now, with the Preferences folder still open, open Time Machine and go back in time until you see a big jump in the file size. That will be your uncorrupted plist. Restore it and close Time Machine.
Then Restart your computer.
After following this procedure I brought up Dashboard and my blank k-notes were now refilled with the previous text and color that occupied them before I had to restore the OS.
This procedure also worked for Sticky notes, which in the Preference folder are named
widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist

Time Machine, external hard drive and more

Guys, I am very excited about the release of Leopard and in preparation, want to obtain separate external hards drive for use with Time Machine. I've got a Mac Pro 3Ghz with 3 Terabytes of hard disk space, 4Gig Ram. What would I need in terms of size for an external hard drive (I'm not sure if I will need all the extraneous stuff, maybe just want to back up most of the system files, etc and perhaps some other directories).
Questions:
1. What commercial external USB hard drive should I look at? (I'm not a build-your-own kind of guy.)
2. Should I obtain separate external hard drives for my 24" iMac as well as my C2D MacBook?
3. Should I have the external hard drive in place prior to the Leopard upgrade so Leopard finds it right off the bat?
4. Should I upgrade my RAM on the Mac Pro to 6 or 8 Gig? Is that necessary or needed?
5. When I receive Leopard (I bought the family pack because I have so many Macs) will it install over my current Tiger system leaving everything in place or do I have to start from scratch (I can't believe Apple would do that to us!).
Thanks. You guys are always the best Tech support!
John

Hi Adam Jackson, nice site you have and thank you for taking the time/effort to provide the information. It is very informative and valuable!
1. I notice that other people have good luck with LaCie products so I bought the 1Terabyte external. I see it on Google for $322 and not real concerned about the cost.
2. The 24" iMac is the C2D version as is the MacBook. I actually sold my earlier models on eBay to buy the C2D models because I wanted 802.11n. Both machines are pimped out to max, including the MacBook w/3Gig of RAM. Now my Mac Pro came with Airport Extreme built-in and I have it turned on so my other machines can share the connection via WiFi. That is very cool.
I was wondering if I would have to buy separate externals for Time Machine (TM) backups on those machines but you answer is great! I'll partition up the external hard drive. A new question about doing that is: do I move the external hard drive to each machine each time I want to backup? If so, I assume TM will allow me to backup manually and I could plug in the external HD on the iMac, and then move it to the MacBook and return the external to the Mac Pro as home base, backing up to the appropriate partition. Does that sound right? Or can I do it all via WiFi (THAT would be way cool!).
Another question. You recommend installing Leopard to a clean drive. I hesitate there because I have so many programs already installed under Tiger from Final Cut Pro, Aperature, and many that are either too hard to find or no longer available or it would be painful finding the reg or serial numbers. Is it possible to back up all of those programs and their associated preferences/library/passwords/reg codes/ and just add them back after I have Leopard installed?
My thought here is to make sure all of my apps are up-to-date then, back up all of the applications to the appropriate external hard drive partition, make a bootable Carbon Clone Copy as you suggest for safety purposes, wipe out the Mac Pro/iMac and MacBook hard drives and install Leopard on each machine. Once all machines have Leopard then copy back the working applications. I just don't know how to do that successfully, i.e., which user folders to backup.
And thanks again,
John

External hard drive no longer found after becoming full from time machine, External hard drive no longer found after becoming full from time machine

Hi, I have been using an external hard drive as a backup for my Mac using Time Machine. I was under the impression that once the backup drive became full, it would start to delete previous versions of the backup. However, instead of doing that, it has just stopped working and I now cannot access the hard drive via a Mac or a PC. On the PC, it does at least show up in that it will allow me to disconnect it safely but I cannot do anything else with it.
I am now looking to reformat it, and start again from scratch - but can't do this as it doesn't show up anywhere. Does anyone have any advice about how I can get this working again?
Thanks.

Can you see the drive in Disk Utility? If so, try selecting it and using the Mount button in the top menu. You can also run repair disk and repair permissions.

My Time Machine external hard drive is not recognised anymore under 10.9.1

Hi,
I am running 10.9.1 on my MBP13" mid 2010.
I plugged in my external hard drive (Western Digital Elements 500GB portable drive) and it is no longer recognised.
This has been going on for a couple of weeks.
TM says its not connected.
Icon not on desktop
not seen in disk utilities.
I have tried it on another machine (iMac 2006 10.6) and it is not recognised either.
Tried rebooting with the drive plugged in and without.
attempted to install WD Quick Formatter and this saw the drive but was unable to reformat as it said that it was 'in use'
I thought that this might be TM so I disassociated it from TM - Still No Go.
Any Ideas appreciated.

katlandsf wrote:
I have a 750gb hard drive that Time Machine backs up on. It's been for going strong for over 2 years now. My hard drive is filling up, I only have 35gb left. Is it okay for me to delete many of the old backups dated from 2 years ago? I really only need to keep the last 6-12 months. Not sure how to handle this.
You don't have to do anything.
When Time Machine is out of room, it will automatically delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones. If you have the +Notify after old backups are deleted+ box checked in Time Machine Preferences > Options, you'll see the message in the blue box in #C4 of [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If you do want to manually delete some backups, you can do that, but only via Time Machine. See #12 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).

Time machine external hard drive stalls start up

I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
I have been using a 1TB Iomega Select external hard drive which I use with Time Machine. All has been well for the first few weeks. However recently I have noticed when I switch on my iMac it freezes at the white screen. I also noticed that the hard drive was spinning so I disconnected the power (there is no on/off switch). Immediately the Apple logo appeared on the screen and the iMac started up as normal. However on reconnecting the power to the external hard drive, though the disc starts spinning the iMac does not recognise it. The only way to resolve the latter seems to be to disconnect and then reconnect the USB cable.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Any ideas how I can resolve this? On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Sorry for the long post
Chas

Chas F wrote:
I am relatively new to Apple hardware and this is my first post.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
You might want to upgrade to 10.6.4; there have been some fixes since 10.6.2 that might help. You can go directly to 10.6.4 via the "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
I "repaired" the Iomega drive using the disc utility, which went through the process but said it was OK anyway.
Good.
Any ideas how I can resolve this?
Are you shutting your Mac down daily? If so, it's probably better to let it sleep instead. See Sleeping your Mac vs. Powering it Down.
Does the same thing happen when your Mac wakes from sleep? If so, and if the upgrade doesn't help, try removing the check from the +Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...+ box in +System Preferences > Energy Saver.+ Some externals respond to that setting, some don't. See if yours does, and whether it still doesn't power up properly.
You might also want to check with Iomega, to see if you can disable or adjust it's internal settings, or if there are any firmware upgrades.
On a related issue are there good alternatives to Time Machine, I don't really need it to back up every hour?
Time Machine was designed and optimized to do that, and will protect you best that way. When your internal HD fails (they all do, sooner or later) or something else awful happens, you won't lose more than an hour's work. Plus, if you accidentally delete or change something, or a file gets corrupted, there's a much better chance of recovering a previous version.

Time Machine, External Hard Drive question

Hello,
I am formatting my OWC External at the moment and it asks me if I want to back up all my data with time machine on my external hard drive, do I need to do this? I plan on only using this external for recording my music directly to the external hard drive, and store my music library's?
Also how many partitiones would I need for my needs? just 1?

Say 'No" to the dialog box that asks you if you want to use the drive for time machine.
If you plan on using it as a record drive.
1 partition is fine

Time Machine- External Hard Drive Format

Hey, so today i got my first external hard drive. So to make sure it worked i plugged into my mac, and time machine popped up saying if i wanted to back up my machine onto it. I thought alright sounds good, and did a back up and made the External HD the time machine disk.
But then i plugged this HD into a windows machine, and it doesn't even acknowledge its there. So i looked at the format and realize its Mac OS Extended.
So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
Thanks for the help

So how do i change it so that both Mac and windows recognize it, and so I can use Time Machine to back up onto it?
You need to partition the drive into Mac OS Extended and FAT32 or NTFS partitions, or install a tool such as MacDrive or HFSExplorer into Windows. Time Machine will only back up to a Mac OS Extended disk.
(45751)

Time Machine - external hard drive "full" message

I have 300GB of memory on my laptop (which isn't all used by any means) so bought a 1TB external hard drive for my Time machine back ups. I back up infrequently and have done it about 5 or 6 times. The last time it said "full". How can I have filled it up? Do i have to delete a load of stuff from the external to be able to keep backing up?

See #C4 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

How do I undo a Time Machine External Hard Drive?

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