HT201250 my Time Machine back up icon is missing form my finder side bar.

When i try to do a back up it says that "back up disk is not available" even though my external hard drive is connected via USB. I have also tried re-starting my computer and that didnt work. i also have tried connecting and resonnecting the USB, that didnt work either.

Launch Disk Utility. Is the backup volume listed? If so, is it mounted (the mount status is shown at the bottom of the window when the volume is selected)? If it's not mounted, can you mount it by clicking the Mount button in the toolbar?

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HT201250 My time machine back up does not appear to back up documents and e mails (the most important things for me). How do I get this done?

My time machine back up does not appear to back up documents and e mails (the most important things for me). How do I get this done?

How do you know it's not backing up those things? To check documents, go in the Finder to your documents folder, then go to the Time Machine icon in your menubar and click Enter Time Machine. Scroll back through time and see if previous versions of the documents exist in the backups.
For Mail, same thing. Open the Mail app, go into Time Machine in the same way, and scroll back. Your inbox should change to reflect how it looked when it was backed up.
Matt

HT201250 My time machine back has been working perfectly well until yesterday when it failed. The error message I get is Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only. How do I fix it?

My time machine back has been working perfectly well until yesterday when it failed. The error message I get is Files can’t be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only. How do I fix it?

Hello,
http://pondini.org/TM/C6.html

HT201250 Does Time Machine back up e-mails from Mail?

Does Time Machine back up e-mails from Mail?

Make Mail the foremost application and then enter Time Machine.

HT201250 Since time machine backed up my computer does that mean I can delete files so I can increase storage space on my hard drive?

Since time machine backed up my computer does that mean I can delete files so I can increase storage space on my hard drive?

NO!
Time Machine is not an Archival Backup. It will keep files for a while, but if it needs the space, it will delete files that no longer exist on the hard drive.
Get a couple external drives and move the files to both of them.

HT201250 will time machine back from an external drive

I save all data ,photos documents etc to an external WD My book Live drive and want to back this up.How do I do that in Time machine

With your WD EHD connected to your Mac...
Go to Time Machine > Preferences > Options... then select the + to add your WD EHD...
Some interesting reading here...
http://pondini.org/TM/27.html
See the Green Box.
More Info here > http://pondini.org/TM/10.html
From Pondini’s excellent Information Here...
Frequently Asked Questions

HT201250 Will Time Machine Back Up Everything On My Mac?

I have to submit my Macbook Pro into the store to get the USB Port fixed and they recommended backing up my computer before submitting it. I found Time Machine on here and started to back up on it... I just wanted to make sure everything will be backed up (i.e. iPhoto pictures, music on iTunes...etc)

It should.
I'd make 2 backups on 2 different drives - oops happen. It can be either 2 Time Machine or Time Machine and a clone.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
Commonly Used Backup Methods

HT201250 Can time machine back up external hard drives too?

I'm new to Time Machine. Can I set it up to back up both my internal HD and an external HD?
Thanks,
Carol

Yes but it's poor advice by Apple for the reason hardware fails just as often as software, if you drop that drive, you have ruined all your backups at the same time.
If you get malware, you have just infected all your backups at the same time.
Apple created TimeMachine and didnt provide a Windows version, in my opinion it's to trap as much as your data as possible so you can't decide to later to switch to a Windows PC without a great deal of pain and effort.
So the more drives you backup with Apple's TimeMachine the more data is trapped in it when the hardware or software fails.
The best advice is to have a multiple backup system and match each piece of hardware with two of it's own seperate hardware backups.
So if you have a boot drive, you need two external backups of it.
If you have a storage drive for extra space, then you need two more drives as backup of that.
Drives are cheap, data is not.
If you drop the only backup, get a power surge, or a criminal breaks in or a fire and it's dead or gone, or get malware, you won't know until it's already infected the first backup restored that it's still on the loose and need ot take stronger measures, your going to wish you had the second backup safe and sound someplace.
Most commonly used backup methods

HT201250 Can time machine back up external drives to external drives?

I was wondering if I can use Time Machine to back up external drives. I know it backs up just my Mac, but need to know if
it will back up an external drive to an external drive.

Open your Time Machine drive. Open the Backups.backupdb folder therein. Open the Computer Name (e.g., Adam Smith's iMac) folder. Open any folder there whose name contains a date later than when you attached your (other) external drive. You should see a list of folders representing the drives that are being backed-up. One is typically Macintosh HD, your internal hard drive. There should be one for your other external drive.

External hard drive connected and running time machine backups but icon not showing up in finder

My external hard drive has been connected for a couple of years and is using time machine perfectly. i am trying to save my iphoto library on the external drive but the icon is not displayed in finder. Only time machine icon is displayed......thanks for your help!

Did you create a second partition for your iPhoto Library or did you just use the same single partition that TimeMachine is on?
Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X
Apple Tips: Using Disk Utility 3. Add a Partition

HT201250 can time machine back up to icloud

Can I back up information straight to icloud instead of an external hard drive.

iCloud on your mac is not a backup solution. It's for syncing between devices. It will contain certain information, for example, mail (from an icloud account), contacts and calendars, but you should continue to backup to an external drive.

HT201250 I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them?

I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them? No, they were not part of previous Time Machine backups, and I have checked both the hard drive the documents were lost on and the new one that I now use for backups. Any suggestions would be helpful, as the lost files are old pictures that are gone forever. :[ Thanks!

1. Yes, if both drives are formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
2. Reformat the drives if needed, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, and remove the drive with the pictures from the list of items set to be excluded.
(110331)

HT201250 how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up

how do i add external hard drive to my time machine back up so that I may view the files independently on apple tv please?

To elaborate on above. I am looking to add about 300gig of photos on an external hard drive to TC.
Once I do this I believe I can then have itunes source its photos from TC without having them stored directly on my iMac?
Then I am assuming once I keep itunes on with home sharing I can stream these photos through Apple TV?
My inital problem is getting the photos onto TC in an individual folder not just a backup folder....is that possible or what would you suggest please?

HT201250 I have thousands of pictures on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac I don't want them lost. I do time machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough for making sure my pictures don't ever get lost?

I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?

tgs6164 wrote:
I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?
Purchase a couple of these when they go on sale.
Start burning all the photos onto DVDs.
At least you'll have all your photos if your computer, time machine or any other backup you use goes bonkers.

HT201250 How to change Time Machine back up time

Is there a way to change the hourly Time Machine back up time to once or twice a day?

Tidy wrote:
Now I have my original back up on time capsule which time machine can't see and it keeps starting over again to make a new backup - so my time capsule disk shows two separate backups one the original one of 2 days ago named for my computer and a new one almost the same gigabytes (139gb) which it has called Macintosh sparse bundle ????
It's possible the first one is damaged, but that seems unlikely, unless you turned the TC or Mac off while it was trying to do a backup. But even that shouldn't cause TM to start a new one (absent any messages to that effect). And it shouldn't be named "Macintosh" unless you've changed your computer name to that via System Prefs > Sharing.
A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. Locate both backups in question, then copy and post all the messages for each one here. (Since the first backup has been a couple of days, the widget may not show the messages for that backup; if not, the pink box shows how to use the Console app to find them.)
With the messages from both backups, we may be able to see what's going on.
I'm thinking that I should just leave time cap ON and see which it backs up to then delete the other one.
Let's see what we can find first.
I assume connecting iMac to time cap via Ethernet cable would not be a problem?
Correct. Doing the first, full backup via Ethernet is recommended.
Also if just turning time machine off is enough to disrupt time capsule backups how about turning the iMac off, which I will have to do once in a while.
Neither should be a problem, unless a backup is in progress and either the TC or Mac is shut down abnormally.

HT201250 my Time Machine back up icon is missing form my finder side bar.

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