How do Time Machine work? And how can I make it work?

I really want to know how it works because I just got the Leopard but I dont know how this application works...

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Start here: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
and here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

Similar Messages

Help Incomplete Time Machine Backup and I can't set ownership options

Two days ago my iMac HD stopped working and I decided it was time to upgrade my machine so I purchased a new iMac with Mavericks installed. I seem to only have a partial Time Machine Backup located on my NAS drive, so I read various threads about how to manually retrieve files from the .inprogress file. I was able to browse the package contents and when I navigated to Macintosh HD the folder was greyed out and when I attempt to open the folder it looks empty. When I select get info the Macintosh HD folder shows almost 80GB and over 160,000 files inside. I tried copying the folder onto the desktop which failed and also onto an external drive formatted the same way as the NAS - Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case Sensitive). Everytime I try it says something along the lines of me not having the ownership rights to copy the file over.
I tried going to the NAS drive and the mounted sparsefile and couldn't figure out how to get the ignore ownership on this volume option. When I go to Disk Utility it says Owners Enabled Yes, I can't figure out how to turn that off to let me copy the file over. I tried some recommendations about creating an Alias to Macintosh HD and also setting up Automator actions Get Selected Finder Items > Get Folder Contents > Open Finder Items > Copy Finder Items (to desktop or external drive) both of these failed.
I also don't understand why I can't view the files inside the greyed out Macintosh HD as get info shows many files inside. The sharing and permissions already says everyone can read. Is there anyway I can recover some of the files? It would be so great!
Thanks for helping me.

I solved the problem and I hope this solution can help others with incomplete Time Machine Backups.
1. I made sure hidden files were shown by pasting the following line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true ; killall Finder
2. On NAS drive I have a folder called Time Machine Backup and inside that folder it lists the different users with Time Machine Backups. I double clicked the user with the incomplete time machine backup to mount it.
3. Once mounted there should be a folder called backups.backupdb > machine name > dateandtime.inprogress. I right click that .inprogress file and selected show package contents. This lead to another folder randomly named with numbers and text. Inside that folder you should see a greyed out Macintosh HD folder. The date of the greyed out Macintosh HD folder might read something like January 24th, 1984. This appears to be the date that the Macintosh 128k was first introduced. I read on another thread that the creation date of the folder is incorrectly set after a crash resulting in the greyed out folder.
4. Due to the NAS having ownership issues I was not able to drag either the greyed out Macintosh HD or the folder above it to an external drive or the desktop of my new computer. Automator didn't work either. Here is what did work: I trashed the folder with the greyed out Macintosh HD inside from the NAS and dragged it from the trash onto my desktop. The move took a few hours to complete and the files were now all successfully on the new computer.
5. Once on the desktop the Macintosh HD folder was still greyed out. The solution was to select in the finder: View > Show Path Bar, then search for any file you remember inside your backup. For example I searched the word download and files inside the greyed out Macintosh HD folder showed up. Left clicking the file confirmed the path, that it was from the greyed out Macintosh HD folder. Now you can simply right click one of the folders in the Path Bar and open in new tab if you have Mavericks. I still couldn't directly open the Macintosh HD folder in a new tab, but I could open any of the subfolders inside in a new tab, including the users which lets you access all the backup files. I tested in Mountain Lion that you can also choose Open in Enclosing Folder by right clicking the file that you searched for or right clicking the folder in the bottom of the Path Bar.
6. Once I was done organizing backup files, I turned off hidden files by pasting this line into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean false ; killall Finder
This took me days to figure out how to make use of an .inprogress file and greyed out Macintosh HD folder.
Hope this helps!!!

Recover files with no Time Machine Backup and disk 'can't be repaired'

My Macbook Air (Mac OS X 10.7.4) was acting funny for a few days (crashing Safari, crashing Mozilla, crashing other third party software, requiring reboot, etc.). When I tried to reboot it, a loading bar and a rotating wheel came, but got switched off. It happened every time I tried. I got into Recovery mode (by pressing Command + R) to fix the disk. The disk could not be fixed. I tried reinstalling MacOSX, but it is not showing any disk to reinstall the OS in. I do not have Time Machine On.
I have some really important pictures and documents in the Mac. I want to save these files before I erase the whole disk. Any advice?
Thank you!
TL;DR
Mac dies while booting
Disk can not be fixed
Shows no disk to reinstall the MacOSX in
Never switched on the Time Machine
Want to save important files before deleting whole disk

One of the data recovery apps needs to be run on the disk. You have some options, none good:
• Take your Mac to an AppleStore (make a reservation at: http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/), or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (start here to find one: https://locate.apple.com/country). They won't run the recovery, but can tell if the drive is physically damaged. If so, and your Mac is under a year old, or covered by AppleCare, you won't have to pay for the replacement, but be sure to get the old drive back. It can then be put into an enclosure, making it an external HD for use with one of the other options:
• Take your Mac (or the drive) to a recovery service. They'll charge a large fee, and return an external HD with whavever data they can recover. You'd then need to erase the internal HD, install OSX, and try to reassembe your data from the external.
• Do it yourself. Buy an external HD (better, get two: one 3-4 times the size of the data on your Mac) and do it yourself. You'll install OSX on it and run from it to recover whatever data you can to the other external:
Start from the Recovery HD and format them both for a Mac (even if they say Mac Ready). See #1 in Using Disk Utility if you're not sure how to do that.
Then install OSX on one of them. When your Mac restarts, it will start from the external, and you'll set up a user account, etc, just as with a new Mac. When it starts again, you'll be running from a "bare-bones" system on the external HD.
Get one of the data recovery apps, install it on the external, and follow it's instructions to try to recover your stuff to the other external. As noted in the yellow box in the link above, you may get a lot of the orginal folder structure back, so you can just drag things to the proper location on the external you're running from. But you may find some or many files with partial names, perhaps numbers, etc. Some may have extensions you can identify (such as .png or .jpg), some may not. Try to open them and see what they are.
If you don't recover a lot, and are willing to spend yet more $$, you might try a different recovery app -- often one will recover things a different one can't.
When you've gotten everything you can off the internal HD, reformat it, then "clone" the external OSX drive to it and restart from the internal.
Then start making regular backups. If you want to use Time Machine, erase and use the one thats 3-4 times the size of the data it's backing up.
Also make periodic "secondary" backups to the other drive. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question
#27 for an explanation and some suggestions.

Time Machine Full and I Can't Navigate Time Machine

This gets presented all the time. So moderator if you can find me a solution please do so.
Here's the problem I'm having.
1) My Time Machine says the disk is full but my partition on my external is 360 GB and my internal hard drive is only 150 GB. I gave it 2x the amount of disk space but I'm still out of space.
2) Time Machine is supposedly programmed to delete old backups. Why are my old backups not being deleted.
3) When I enter time machine I cannot navigate to old backups. I click on the arrows and nothing happens. I click on the lines on the right hand side and nothing happens.
So those are my problems. Anyone have answers or solutions to these?

I have the same problem. I just set time machine up to back up my 1TB drive and 120GB system ssd and its been working fine all week. Made a 1.2TB partition on an external for time machine, which should be enough for the 1.12TB combined capacity of my drives, especially considering time machine is claiming to require only 954.1GB. I rearranged a lot of what was on my 1TB drive, pretty much moving everything to a different location as well as deleting a fair bit, and the next backup following this was still processing well after 42 hours when I finally decided to cancel it. After that it reports that the drive isn't big enough for the backup.
"Time Machine needs work space on the backup disk.."
I guess this is the issue. 80GB isn't enough extra work space? And its not deleting old backups to make room, which I thought it is supposed to do. So how much overhead is really necessary? How large do I need to make the backup partition? Yet, the backup will eventually expand to fill all of the available space.. so ***.I really would like to preserve the backups I have prior to making the changes, one of the key reasons to even use time machine, but it seems I'm going to have to delete the old backups and/or reformat the partition in order to continue using time machine without any more hassles in the future.
Any help is appreciated.

Time Machine restore and now can't open application

Sorry if this is long but I'm not sure how much is relevant to the current problem. It all started when I received an email with a small excel file. The email would not finish downloading and the color wheel of death was spinning on mail and Safari. Eventually Safari came back to life but mail never did. I could not force quit mail so holding down the power button was the next step. Upon re-booting the screens were blue alternating between three shades. Trying over and over gave the same results. Booted into a different hard drive, opened Windows XP on Boot Camp and brought the email in with no problem. Checked it with McAffee and found no problems.
Went back to OX on a hard drive that was fine, used Disk Utilities and attempted to repair disk with no luck. Tried to re-install both 10.5 & 10.6 and neither would install. Erased the hard drive and tried again with no luck. Got a replacement hard drive 1T from Seagate, put in 10.5 DVD and in utilities chose restore from time machine. Went to a restore point a couple of hours before the problem started just to be safe. When restore was complete, about a hour for 350G, I rebooted as directed. The gray screen with the apple logo appeared then darkened and a message appeared directing to shut down using the power button. Several tries produced the same results. I then went to a different hard drive and opened applications for the problem hard drive. It appears the restore brought back everything but almost all application icons are grayed out with a slash across them, not third party stuff either but iTunes, Safari, System Preferences, Mail etc. When clicking on them I get the pop up "You can't open the application ____ because it is not supported on this type of Mac"
Many of the steps described have been tried over and over again with hopes of a different result (Yes, I know that is the definition of insanity). I have even repeatedly switched the hard drives to different bays wondering if it could be a hardware problem. So far I have over 20 hours invested in this problem so any help would be greatly appreciated.

PCRinAZ wrote:
The gray screen with the apple logo appeared then darkened and a message appeared directing to shut down using the power button.
Is that the one in several languages? If so, that's a *kernel panic.* They're usually hardware, but not always. Disconnect everything, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, disconnect everything again and run the Apple Hardware Test, from the separate disc that came with your Mac. Instructions should be printed on it (in very tiny type).
If it passes that, you might want to download and run the Rember app, a free and much more extensive memory test: http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/
more kernel panic info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392
http://www.index-site.com/kernelpanic.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html
Several tries produced the same results. I then went to a different hard drive and opened applications for the problem hard drive.
You lost me there. What is the "different hard drive"? A clone? Of the same Mac?
Which is the "problem hard drive," the replaced internal?
It appears the restore brought back everything but almost all application icons are grayed out with a slash across them, not third party stuff either but iTunes, Safari, System Preferences, Mail etc. When clicking on them I get the pop up "You can't open the application ____ because it is not supported on this type of Mac"
This almost sounds like you got PPC stuff restored onto an Intel, or vice-versa.

I am trying to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard. When I insert the disk and install starts, it states "This disk is used for Time Machine backups" and Mac OSX can't be installed. Does anyone know how to correct this (since Tiger doesn't have Time Mach

I am trying to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard. When I insert the disk and install starts, it states "This disk is used for Time Machine backups" and Mac OSX can't be installed. Does anyone know how to correct this (since Tiger doesn't have Time Machine)?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2986

How does time machine work, and what does it really do?

i just got my macbook pro, and just wiondered what time machine does, and how t works

Hi p,
Basically, it's an incremental, hourly backup application (you provide the HD). After the first backup, it only backs up new/revised data (plus some overhead), so it takes up much less space than all separate backups. Some reading for you:
Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/VI29
How to back up and restore your files: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Recovering Your Entire System
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15638.html

How does Time MACHINE work with the Verizon Fios Router and External Harddrive??

Hello,
I just got a laptop MBP for my daughter who has got Verizon FIOS as her carrier. The Router has wireless capability and ethernet capable connections.
I want to set her up with an external hard drive for Time Machine Backups and to make it easier, I was wondering if I can somehow connect the external hard drive to the router so she can use her laptop anywhere in the house and have it backed up.
I clearly recognize that I can hook it up direct to the laptop but I thought if someone had an idea, this approach might be easier for her.
I haven't gotten the external hard drive yet so I thought I would ask before I do.
Thanks for any help anyone can provide me,
Skip

You can restore from the larger disk since Time Machine makes a complete copy of the Mac on the first backup on any new disk.
So, the first time your Mac backed up to the larger disk, the entire contents of your Mac's hard drive (minus any files that you excluded) were copied over. Then, Time Machine began to back up the incremental changes on all subsequent backups.

HT1364 I have moved my library to an external hard drive and changed the location of the iTunes media folder in Preferences, but every time I close and re-open iTunes, I have to do it all over again. How can I make the iTunes media folder change permanen

I have moved my library to an external hard drive and changed the location of the iTunes media folder in Preferences, but every time I close and re-open iTunes, I have to do it all over again. How can I make the iTunes media folder change permanent? I have an older machine with Windows XP.

I don't believe mounting the hard drive should be necessary, unless you have several external drives and want your computer to recognise them as folders, rather than drives. I've never had to mount a hard drive, ever. If you don't know how to do it, then it shouldn't be necessary now.
Try this:
Prepare iTunes so that it can see the external drive.
Make a note of which drive-letter the external drive has been allocated. (Look in Windows Exploer)
Look at the file location for a song. Make sure it plays (and therefore that iTunes has found it). Highlight it and select File/Get Info/Summary>Where: and make a note of the drive letter for that song.
Close and shut down the computer.
The next time you turn the computer on again, connect the external drive
Before you start iTunes - check the external drive in Windows Explorer. Is it ready, does it have the same drive-letter that it had last time? Can you go into the drive and see the files on it?
Once you can, start iTunes. (If the drive lettter has changed, you need to work out why before going any further.)
If iTunes fails to find your external drive, you need to check where iTunes is looking for your Library.
Select the same song you checked before (presumably iTunes can no longer find it). Follow the procedure for locating it. You should be able to see where iTunes thinks the file is. It's the drive that counts. Which drive letter is iTunes looking at? Is it the same one that it was previously (which should also be the same one that the drive has now).
What happens, which step do you have problems with?
Message was edited by: the fiend

My Macbook Pro has become slow and sometimes it hangs. How can I make it work fast and normal.

My Macbook Pro has become very slow and it sometimes hangs. How can I make it work faster and normal? I used Etrecheck and got the report below;
EtreCheck version: 1.9.12 (48)
Report generated June 16, 2014 at 18:05:25 GMT+1
Hardware Information:
    MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) (Verified)
    MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro9,2
    1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores
    4 GB RAM
Video Information:
    Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: (null)
        Color LCD 1280 x 800
System Software:
    OS X 10.9.3 (13D65) - Uptime: 0 days 1:50:52
Disk Information:
    APPLE HDD TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500.11 GB)
        EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
        Machintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 499.25 GB (465.33 GB free)
        Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
    MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-8A8
USB Information:
    Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
    Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
    Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
        Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
    Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Thunderbolt Information:
    Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Gatekeeper:
    Mac App Store and identified developers
Launch Daemons:
    [loaded]    com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support
    [loaded]    com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support
User Login Items:
    iTunesHelper
    Dr.Web Light
    Dropbox
Internet Plug-ins:
    SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.0.0 Support
    FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 14.0.0.125 - SDK 10.6 Support
    Flash Player: Version: 14.0.0.125 - SDK 10.6 Support
    QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
    Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
Safari Extensions:
    iGetter Extension: Version: 2.9.2
Audio Plug-ins:
    BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
    AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9
    AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9
    iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
iTunes Plug-ins:
    Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9
User Internet Plug-ins:
    iGetter Plugin: Version: 2.9.2 Support
    iGetterScriptablePlugin: Version: 2.9.2 Support
3rd Party Preference Panes:
    Flash Player Support
Time Machine:
    Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU:
         4%    Dropbox
         3%    WindowServer
         0%    fontd
         0%    Microsoft Word
         0%    Microsoft Excel
Top Processes by Memory:
    242 MB    drwebd
    176 MB    Dropbox
    147 MB    Dr.Web Light
    86 MB    WindowServer
    82 MB    App Store
Virtual Memory Information:
    43 MB    Free RAM
    1.68 GB    Active RAM
    1.65 GB    Inactive RAM
    641 MB    Wired RAM
    421 MB    Page-ins
    0 B    Page-outs

Meli070,
uninstall Dr.Web Light.

How does time machine work when being used with a mac pro?

How does time machine work when backing up a mac pro?
Considering the fact that the mac pro can hold 8TB and a external (non NAS) hard drive can hold only 2TB does time machine only backup the OS disk.

macnewcomer22 wrote:
Considering the fact that the mac pro can hold 8TB and a external (non NAS) hard drive can hold only 2TB does time machine only backup the OS disk.
Time Machine will backup everything by default, on every disk in your Mac.
Choose System Preferences > Options to exclude items. You could exclude everything except your OS...but I'd think it is your data that's more important to you, if you have to make choices.
See...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018
While it's true you can store almost 8TB, how much do you think you'll actually store? If you have 1TB of data you want to store then a 2TB drive can do it. Also when your TM drive begins to get full it will begin deleting the oldest backups to make room.
You could also get a Drobo with 8 bays...
http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php
-mj

How can I make my Apple TV more reliable? It takes a day to download a HD movie on a T1 to play later, but when I try to play the movies, Apple TV can't, and says try again later. Doesn't the day download time put the HD movie on the Apple TV device?

How can I make my Apple TV work? I downloaded two movies, to play later, on April 4, 2014. I tried to watch them this evening only to get a message they are not available and to try later. How long can it take Apple to download the movies? I encourage anyone thinking about buying an Apple TV to get a different media player that is reliable. Apple TV is not worth the money, nor the time it takes to download movies, nor the effort trying to get your money back when Apple TV fails,and it failsl oftern.. Apple never seems to have a problem charging for the movies, but it frequently has a provlem delivering what people pay for.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Try the following steps, check whether things are working after each step where appropriate, before trying the next.
Restart the Apple TV (Settings > General > Restart).
Restart the Apple TV by removing ALL the cables for 30 seconds.
Restart your router.
Reset the Apple TV (Settings > General > Reset > Reset all settings)
Restore the Apple TV (Settings > General > Reset > Restore)

I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive?

I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive? Thanks!

Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Or you can simply use the Restore option of Disk Utility to clone the drive to the backup:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

My husband uses adobe cs5. The clone tool isn't working and after resetting the tools adobe bridge now goes to picasa. How can we make the clone tool work and have bridge go to cs5 not picasa?

My husband uses adobe cs5. The clone tool isn't working and after resetting the tools adobe bridge now goes to picasa. How can we make the clone tool work and have bridge go to cs5 not picasa?

A lot more information about your hardware and software is needed.
BOILERPLATE TEXT:
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
such as your platform (Mac or Win),
exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CC", but something like CC2014.v.2.2) and of Bridge,
your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
the type of file you were working on,
machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
what error message(s) you receive,
if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
a screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too,
etc.,
someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster, who is not a Windows user).
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

MacBook Pro (OS X 10.9.1) calendar continues to "connect to server" and will not allow shut down or restart. Force quit worked. How can I make this calendar "behave"?

MacBook Pro (OS X 10.9.1) calendar continues to "connect to server" and will not allow shut down or restart. Force quit worked. How can I make this calendar usable? The problem began after I updated to Maverick.

babowa, it seems like it is using Fuse & NTFS, so I don't think it's the classic WD + 10.9 mess, but extra WD tools & drivers can still break things MtTran.
MrTran, if you must use unsupported disk formats on your Mac you must also consider actually paying the developers that made the trial software.
It's probably a good idea to follow the developers removal instructions, reboot & then install one tool at a time.
MacFuse, FuseOSX, NTFS-3G are all likley to confict if you run older versions so you need to be sure you are using the latest version. I can't remeber which one depends on the other, so you will need to read the manuals.
When the disk is readable copy the data to another disk. You could probably do this from a Linux distro or Windows if OS X won't do it.
If you insist on only using the trial versions you will need to reinstall Mac OS, copy data off this disk & reformat it.
Is there any good reason for not using the Mac HFS extended format?

TS3274 I went to an Apple store yesterday and the guy there did something and now the ipad only works in the vertical (portrait) position and not the horizontal (landscape) position. How can we make it work in both positions?

I went to an Apple store yesterday and the guy there did something and now the ipad only works in the vertical (portrait) position and not the horizontal (landscape) position. How can we make it work in both positions?

Just in case you are not running iOS 7 and don't have the control center feature.....
If you see a lock icon in the upper right corner of the screen - then the screen orientation is locked.
Try the side switch above the volume rocker first and see if that unlocks the screen. If that doesn't do it and you are running iOS 5 or 6, double tap the home button and swipe to the right and look for the lock icon all the way to the left.
If you are running iOS 7, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to get to the control center and the lock icon is in the row of icons at the top all the way to the right.
If the screen is unlocked but still will not rotate, reset the iPad.
Reset the iPad by holding down on the sleep and home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple Logo appears - ignore the red slider - let go of the button

How do Time Machine work? And how can I make it work?

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