How to get Time Machine & Time Capsule to back up external drive

Hi.
I have just consolidated my I-Tunes music library to an external HD due to my I-Mac's lack of space on its own HD (I only had 20Gb left). I have a 1Tb Time Capsule which was doing all the back up via Time Machine. What I need to know is, how do I now get the Time capsule to also back up all my music/films etc, etc which are now on an external HD.
Many thanks for your response.
Regards
Paul

go system preferences > time machine > options and make sure the external is not excluded from backups.
that's it. time machine should automatically backup any drive connected directly to your computer (unless it is told not to and given there's sufficient space on the TC).
JGG

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Thanks so much Terence. I tried some of the fixes from that page, but then discovered the suggestion to compress the Time Machine Back up of the original library and transfer it as a zip back to my computer as detailed here:
http://pondini.org/TM/E9.html
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How do I set Time Machine to alternate between two attached external drives (so that if one fails I will have a separate backup to use)?

Hi Everyone.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Right off the bat let me say I am using Mavericks 10.9.1 on a 2011 Macbook Pro and using all Lacie external hard drives.
I am trying to get Time Machine to alternate between two attached external hard drives, trying to be safe in case one of the backup drives itself fails.
I have both drives set in Time Machine.
From what I gather Time Machine should by default alternate between drives when backing up (I would assume it does one big initial backup on each then subsequent backups are just changes).
But this is not how it seems to be working and I cannot find a straight answer despite much Googling and Foruming
Unfortunately it seems to only be backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
There have been 4 backups since I set it up, all on "External Hard Drive 1", even though "External Hard Drive 2" is also attached and set in Time Machine.
I manually clicked "Back Up Now" and it started to work on "External Hard Drive 2" (like I want it to) for a minute but it appears to have stopped and gone back to backing up to "External Hard Drive 1".
Am I missing something? Does Time Machine only move on to another disk when the first one runs out of space? Do I have to turn one off in order to force it to back up to the other drive (that would be less convenient of course)?
I am hoping that I am missing something and that it will just alternate between the two. Otherwise it is not the most comforting and thorough backup system as I had hoped when I purchased the additional external hard drive.
I have a 1TB drive and a 500gig partition on another drive, both dedicated to backups (my Macbook HD is 475gig). It will take awhile for each to fill up and who knows what could happen during that time. Having Time Machine alternate between hard drives would be a nice small bit of security if the worst happened.
I realize that there are tons of other options for backing up but I just want to use Time Machine if I can.
Again thank you for your help!

You cannot use Time Machine in that way. I'm not sure where you heard that Time Machine alternates between drives automatically. What you can do is create a mirrored RAID array for the backup. This automatically duplicates whatever is on one drive onto the other drive.
Both drives must be the same size, and prefereably, exactly the same make and model. RAIDs can be configured using OS X's Disk Utility.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server:
Hardware and Service Comparison.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

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Download it and see if it will help.
Clinton

Can I use Time Machine to backup to partition on external drive and a Time Capsule?

Trying to plan in advance...
I was wondering if I can (with a laptop) use Time Machine for both:
1. Creating Time Machine backups on a partiion of an external drive. My plan was going to create 2 partitions: one to be used for Time Machine backups of another external hard drive (that holds all of my media) and then the other partition was going to be a bootable clone of my internal drive (totally separate from Time Machine)
and
2. Also use Time Machine for my Time Capsule, to create Time Machine backups of my internal drive.
Is this possible? I had heard that you can't use TM to make backups to a partition on an external drive, AND use it for another drive (like Time Capsule) at the same time. But I would think that this should be possible-
Thanks everyone-

Yes you can, and if you are using Mountain Lion it's easy.
If you are using Snow Leopard (as in your profile - this is the Mountain Lion forum), you have to manually select the backup volume each time. Tedious, but possible.
Read Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini's FAQ on that subject: "Rotating" Time Machine backup disks

How to copy from time-machine backup of iTunes copied to external drive onto micro SD card

del Name: MacBook Air M
Have a new MacBook Air 6.2, Processor:Intel Core i5, 1.4, Memory: 8 GB, HD: 256 GB
It operates OSX Yosemite 10.10.1
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Hi Mac users.
Can you kindly teach me how to backup iphoto library stored on an external drive to my external time machine drive. My internal drive is full so I moved my iPhoto library to a separate drive and deleted the library to create space. Thank you.

Actually there's nothing to do. TM backs up all connected volumes automatically. One has to exclude a volume or folder(s) to keep them from being backed up in the TM preferences.
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I would suggest you partition your new external drive and create a 2nd partition that's large enough to hold files you want to off load so you can free up space.
Or if you're using Time Machine, each backup is suppose to allow you to go back in time and restore files that have been deleted or modified since the last backup. So, if you were to start using your new external drive and performed an initial full backup in Time Machine; then delete your iPhoto file and do another backup, you should be able to go into Time Machine and restore your iPhoto file from your first backup. I would still off load the files to a 2nd partition just to be on the safe side and if Time Machine backups were to somehow become corrupted. Any important files, in my opinion, should be backed up in more than one place... just in case.

Thinking of using Time Machine. Can you purge the external drive?

I currently have a 500gb external drive that I use with the software that came with it. It has a feature that I run manually from time to time that purges any files not on my computer. This is helpful for those times when I have many old project files, podcasts, etc, that were backed up but no longer needed.
I am thinking of buying one of the new Time Capsules to use with Time Machine just b/c I could use a new larger drive.
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Thanks.

Thanks for the message.
What I mean is that on my current drive, I can click a button that reads "purge" and the software will either "mass delete" all files no longer present on my computer or it will allow me, one by one, to approve their deletion. It does then when I want (not only when the drive is full).
From what I'm gathering, Time Machine decides for itself what to delete only when the drive is getting full?
Thanks.

Time Machine running on Linksys WRT600n with external drive.

Hey Folks,
After searching the internet for the answer on how to setup OS X Time Machine on my Linksys WRT600n with storage link, and finding nothing or only parts of what I needed, I finally got it to work. Hopefully this will help you in your setup.(this should work for any linksys routers with storage link.)
1) First you will need to attach your external USB drive to the Linksys Router, and format it using the linksys utility. This will format the drive as fat32 so it can be access by the mac and the router.
2) You now need to create a share on the drive using the Linksys utility (I called mine "TimeMachine") and grant R&W permission to it. I found and article that said you have to create a group called "root" and a user called "root" within that group, then grant the group R&W access to you share. I did this but I am not sure if its required. you may be able to edit the default "admin" account.
3) Once you have the share created you should be able to access the share from your mac by logging into it using your (Linksys) "root" account and password. Make sure you can save a file here. You maybe able to create a folder but make sure you can save a file (.doc for example).
4) Apple has blocked the use of unsupported drives in Time machine so you will have to make a change for this to work. open a terminal window and type the following in one line:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Hit enter, and close terminal.
5) For some reason Time Machine will have issues creating the .sparse bundle Disk required for the backup over the network. So you will have to create it yourself. Safely unplug the USB drive from the router and plug it into your mac. Open disk utility (applications > utilities > disk utility) and create one the same size as your external drive.
parameters:
- Volume name: "Time Machine" (has to be this to work)
- Mac OS Extended (Journaled);
- No partition map
- sparse bundle disk image
Make sure the sparse bundle is in the share folder. If Time Machine had created this sparse bundle it would named it after your machine. You will have to rename it accordingly. This is the required format 'computername'_'mac address without colons'.sparsebundle
(eg. "joe's MacBook Pro_000000000000.sparsebundle")
6) Once all the above is complete you can reattach the drive to the router, and attach to the share again from your mac. Open Time Machine and you should see your share. Setup Time Machine to use this drive. You may want to be connected using Ethernet for the first backup as it may take a while.
I have found the wireless backup to take a bit of time to prepare and run but it seams to work nonetheless. The slowness could be caused by the difference in mac addresses from wired to wireless. So you may want to change the sparse bundle file name depending on how you are accessing time machine.
Hopefully this will work for you as it did for me.

I am afraid I have to pour some cold water on your enthusiasm.
Yes, what you say can get TimeMachine working, but there is a nasty snag:
WRT600N uses FAT32 for its external harddrives and (regretably) understands nothing else. FAT32 has two restrictions:
1) Maximum file size is 4GB
2) (a lesser-known one) Maximum number of files in a directory of 65,535.
The first restriction isn't really a problem because Time Machine organizes its data in 8MB "bands", which are files within your sparsebundle directory.
The second restriction, however, will cause Time Machine to eventually hit a brick wall: The sparsebundle bands are given a sequence number in hexadecimal and there isn't really a limit to how many you can have. If you run Time Machine on a large harddrive attached to the WRT600N, you will eventually run into a situation where you are hitting the 65,535-files-in-a-directory limit. Time Machine will, therefore, run for a while and then suddenly fail for no apparent reason.
Given the parameters of Time Machine, you can't run Time Machine reliably on a WRT600N with an external harddrive larger than 8MB * 65535 = 512GB. If that's good enough for you, then great. If not, you can do one of two things:
1) Get something that doesn't format its harddrive in FAT32.
2) Install DD-WRT on your router (thus voiding its warranty), fight with it for a while in order to get SAMBA running on it, and gain the ability to format your harddrive in Ext2.
I hope this helps somebody.

Time Machine reverts to Macintosh HD after external drive is ejected

I've seeing a problem with Time Machine with one of my external drives. Here's my setup:
MBP 15"
OSX 10.7.4
Work external drive - Seagate GoFlex, via USB
Home external drive - Western Digital Green, via USB
I had been using both home and work drives as Time Machine backups, and things were working fine. I would have to re-designate the appropriate Time Machine backup drive when I changed locations, but everything was working.
The problem:
When I attach the work drive and point Time Machine to the drive, it works. When I eject the work drive, the Time Machine prefs panel shows "Time Machine - work" in greyed out text as the target drive, reflecting that the drive is not available.
When I attach the home drive and point Time Machine to the drive, it works. But when I eject the home drive, the Time Machine prefs panel shows "Macintosh HD" in normal text as the target drive. Worse, I think it actually attempts to back up to the internal drive, because at the next Time Machine backup interval, I get a "The identity of the backup disk has changed" error from Time Machine.
I've tried a full reset of Time Machine by deleting the prefs file. I've also tried verifying the home external disk. The problem persists. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

stevekim wrote:
I did indeed have the /Backups.backupdb folder, but deleting it did not solve the problem. I thought that was the local backup folder (disabled by executing "tmutil disablelocal")?
No, Local Snapshots are in a hidden .MobileBackups folder. The /Backups.backupdb folder was created by Time Machine trying to make actual backups to the internal HD.
EDIT: See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #30 for the gory details.
Reformatting the WD Time Machine partitiion and resetting Time Machine (turning off TM, deleting the prefs file, restarting) seems to have fixed the problem, though.
Curious. Keep an eye on it, especially when the backup drive isn't available, and a backup is scheduled. That seems to be when the trouble starts.
From your first post:
I had been using both home and work drives as Time Machine backups, and things were working fine. I would have to re-designate the appropriate Time Machine backup drive when I changed locations
Stay tuned on that one. The rumor sites say that can be automated in Mountain Lion. See the last point in the How it Works section here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Mac_OS)
Message was edited by: Pondini

Time machine backup with 1/2 gig external drive

I use a 500mb external drive to back up my MacBook Pro. It now says I have 15.2 gb free. Can I erase the Passport and start again? It says it needs 277.2 gb for a full back up. I thought of seeing what was my latest full backup and off loaded into my System harddrive. I have checked the box saying to let me know when the old backups are deleted, but I have never been told anything. I am on Mavericks 10.9.4, and have 16 gig of ram.

That means you've backed up more than one volume (what Apple calls a "disk") or machine to the same destination. It could be the result of erasing the primary volume, depending on how you restored it.
Time Machine will delete older snapshots when necessary to make room for new ones, but it will never delete the last snapshot of any volume or machine. So you can end up without enough space for a new snapshot.
You can try to delete old backup folders by dragging them to the Trash, but often the Trash will then fail to empty completely with strange error messages, and you then can't empty it at all without erasing the volume, nor can you put the folders back where they were.
The best course of action is to put the backup drive aside and stop using it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data it contains. Then erase it and start over. Meanwhile, start another backup on a different drive. You should do that anyway, as one backup is not enough to be safe.
Don't erase your only backup.

Time machine error could not find passport external drive

Trying to run time machine. At the end of the process i get an error that the back up was delayed until the disk could be found. The passport external hardrive is attached . is formatted for MAc and can be seen in finder. What can I do so Time machine recognized it?

If none of his tips describe the issue, then all I can think of is that there's something amiss with the WD ext HD. Erase and reformat it and don't use the WD SmartWare which isn't. FWIW, I don't use TM, so if this doesn't do the trick, then I'm out of ideas.

Time Machine stopped working after using two external drives

I'm using a MacPro OS x 10.5.8. I started using Time Machine in April 2011 to back up my files to a 2TB Lacie external drive connected via firewire. Everything has been working fine until recently. A friend needed some files transfered from Seagate 1TB to another external drive. I bought a Lacie 1TB USB 3 drive and connected it to my Mac to make the file transfer. After doing this I noticed that the generic drive icon for my 2TB Lacie backup drive had disappeared. I could see the generic icon for the new 1TB Lacie drive. Then I noticed a Lacie icon on my desktop. I clicked on it and found it was my 2TB backup drive.
I decided to check Time Machine to see if it was still working properly. When I tried to restore to a previous time, the restore button stayed grayed out and didn't respond. Other times it would light up and respond when I clicked on it but I got an error message. I would like to restore my system back before I connected the two ext hard drives used for file transfering in case that was what caused the problem. Could connecting another new Lacie 1TB USB 3 external drive have caused my problem? I haven't had this problem with other external drives.

First, merely connecting another drive could not have caused Time Machine to stop working.
Since your backup is in a doubtful state, your highest priority should be to protect your data by making another backup to a different drive. You need more than one backup anyway. Connect an empty drive, select it in the TM preference pane, and start a new backup set. Once that's done, I suggest you run "Repair Disk" in Disk Utility on the old backup volume.

How to get Time Machine & Time Capsule to back up external drive

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