HT201250 Time Machine Exclusion Set-up

I would like to keep only my documents, photographs and videos in my backup in Time Machine. What is the best way to set the exclusions in the Time Machine? It little complicated. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

If that is all you want to have a backup of just copy them to an external disk or even 2 external disks.

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HT201514 i can't see the time capsule from airport utilities. i did follow "From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences. Choose View Time Machine. Set Time Machine to On if it is off. .....but i couldn't find the time capsule from airport utility.....

i did follow "From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences. Choose View > Time Machine. Set Time Machine to On if it is off "
. .....but i couldn't find the time capsule from airport utility..... why?

Are you using a new 802.11ac Time Capsule - the "tall" one - and are you still using Mac OS X 10.6.8?
You need OS X 10.7.5 "Lion" or later, or an iOS device, to configure an 802.11ac Time Capsule:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1645/en_US/airport_time_capsule_802 11ac_setup.pdf
See page 12.

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it?

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it

http://pondini.org/TM/21.html

Mail gets stuck importing messages from Time Machine when setting up new Lion Macbook Pro

I just used time machine to set up my new 13-in mid-2012 Macbook Pro and am having trouble setting up the Mail application. It opens fine, asks me to import my messages, takes about an hour and a half, then gets stuck at "less than a minute." I then have to cancel out, and restarting causes the whole process to start over.
I've tried deleting the Envelope Index, but that didn't help. I also tried restarting the computer. Hitting "Cancel" instead of "Continue" to try to set up Mail without importing my messages just exits the application.
Any ideas why it hangs at the very end, and how I can avoid this?

Did anyone find a solution here?
This has happened to me after numerous crashes over the years and just did again. Seems to be a recurring problem when dealing with lots of mail messages.
Today, after 3 attempts, it still hangs up on 50,951 of 166,972 (yes there are a lot and for a reason).

HT201250 Time Machine Set up

Can you set up time machine without an external drive or time capsule?

No. TM requires a separate HD .
OT

HT201250 Time Machine trouble

I'm having trouble with time machine backups on lion. I set up one of my external drives as my backup in snow leopard weeks ago, it was working fine, now in lion it shows in the preferences that the external I was using for tm is on the exclude from backups list and my backup is not on my computer, as a matter of fact when I look in the backups folder the only backup TM is today's. Does anyone know what the problem is?

photokit wrote:
Thanks Pondini, Its all very confusing. My imac drive has about 1TB of data, my time machine drive BFBUD is a 2tb external, and the other items on that drive add up to 1.7tb
That means there's only 300 GB available for backups? No wonder there isn't room to back up your 1 TB internal HD!
Time Machine needs considerably more space than the data it's backing-up, to be able to keep a reasonable "depth" of backups for you. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #1.
And, it's not a good idea to keep other data in the same partition as your backups. See #3 in the FAQ.
I'm trying to exclude some of the 1.83TB from the time machine bu drive from backup...
The Time Machine drive is already excluded (automatically).
One more issue, I connected my Iomega TM backup drive from my other computer to move some files and I think time machine thought it was looking at the backup drive. I cannot select either BFBUD (big friggin back up drive) or Documents drive from the exclusion list.
Again, it's already on the exclusion list. And since it's listed in gray, that means it's not formatted for a Mac and Time Machine cannot back it up, so you can't remove it.
Sounds like you need a 2 TB drive to dedicate to your backups.

HT201250 Time Machine backup disk not found

I recently reconfigured my external disks, creating a 500GB oartition for Time Machine backup. thefirst time I set up Time machine to use that partition all went well. Seconed time it failed "cannot find backup disk."
This is a 24 inch, mid 2007 iMac OS X 10.8.2. I am using two external backup drives - 1T LaCie with 4 partitions and a BlackX removable adaptor with a WD 1T drive plugged in. Both are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) In the view below the top "Time Machine" drive at the top is a duplicate of the last drive in the list.
If I select the top drive - I have the option to "Remove Disk" - NOT to "Use this Disk." So I have to select the bottom "Time Machine" drive. The backup will then run once but on the second try I get "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine". Unable to complete backup. An error occured while creating backup folder." Whether I remove the top listed disk or not doesn't seem to matter, sometimes it finds the drive, sometimes not!
The BlackX is a USB connected directly to the iMac. The other partition on that drive contains movie clips and they run fine.
There is a backup folder on the Time Machine drive with six backups - however I have to "reset" the Time Machine each time to get it to backup. It craps out on the second try every time. Got me buffaloed! Any ideas?

Assuming you have nothing on your Time Machine volume that you need, erase that volume and Verify it from Disk Utilities. Repair if necessary. Then, go into the Time Machine Preferences and Remove the selected drive to use. Now, reselect it and try a backup.

Need help removing hard drive from Time Machine exclusion list

I have a 1TB Western Digital Essential hard drive with about 500Gb of music, movies and other assorted data tethered directly to my iMac. I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that serves as my wireless router and connects to my iMac over the wireless network. I'm trying to use the Time Capsule as the ultimate backup device, to backup the data on my iMac and the tethered 1TB Western Digital hard drive via Time Machine. It already backs up all the data on my iMac, but unfortunately, Time Machine places the 1TB Western Digital hard drive in the exclusion list (which I understand is normal), but will not let me click the minus sign to remove the drive from the exclusion list (which is where I'm at a loss). Someone please help me find a way around this as I've been unable to find a way to remove the Western Digital drive from the exclusion list and have Time Capsule access its data. Many thanks in advance for any help with this.

gotham,
Forgive me, but are you highlighting the drive in the list before you click the "-" button?
Also, were is the external drive? Connected to your Mac or the TC. If the TC, then Time Machine won't backup the external drive. It needs to be connected to the Mac directly.
Otherwise, you can delete the TM .plist.
*Delete The Time Machine Preference .plist*
Go to --> Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences (Note: NOT Home / Library / Preferences).
Drag the .plist file labeled,
com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
to the root level of your Macs’ hard drive.
Reboot your computer.
This .plist file is automatically recreated at startup if it is missing.
You will need to reselect your Time Capsule in the TM Prefs for backup.
Now try 'removing' the other drive form the exclusion list.
Let us know if this helped resolve your issue.
Cheers!

HT201250 Time machine backup permission issue

Hi,
We setup time machine backups in an office environment which is managed by a mac OS X Lion server.
Each device on the network (all mac minis) is configured to take hourly backups to the drive on our server.
On some occasions, a device requests an admin username and password whilst time machine is backing up.
We believe this may be caused by backupd attempting to access parts of the file system it is not authorized to as each device has application restrictions set in profile manager. Computers that do not have application/directory restrictions do not get the admin prompt.
Here is a dump of the backupd daemon (and other possibly related processes) whilst a user was prompted for a password:
Feb 1 10:00:25 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Starting standard backup
Feb 1 10:00:25 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/Backups
Feb 1 10:00:47 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Backups using URL: afp://[email protected]/Backups
Feb 1 10:01:16 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24835 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:33 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24067 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:34 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Feb 1 10:01:41 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Disk image /Volumes/Backups/PC-205.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Feb 1 10:01:41 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Feb 1 10:03:45 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: 100.0 MB required (including padding), 38.86 GB available
Feb 1 10:05:59 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Copied 1381 files (5.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 1 10:06:00 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: 100.0 MB required (including padding), 38.77 GB available
Feb 1 10:06:15 pc-205 sandboxd[513] ([61]): mds(61) deny file-write-data /dev/dtracehelper
Feb 1 10:07:12 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Copied 718 files (2.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 1 10:07:16 pc-205 mds[61]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
Feb 1 10:07:17 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 1 10:07:36 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/PC-205/2012-01-30-184609 (4.8 MB)
Feb 1 10:07:36 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 1 10:07:37 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 1 10:07:39 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Feb 1 10:07:40 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
The backup seems to finish successfully even if the user doesn't enter the username/password. Any ideas why this would be happening and how to avoid it? Could this be fixed by running a full backup as admin so that time machine doesn't have to backup these inaccessible files (to normal users) anymore?
Thanks for your help

mickleroy wrote:
We setup time machine backups in an office environment which is managed by a mac OS X Lion server.
I'm not familiar with the server product, but the actual backup process should be the same as on the client version.
On some occasions, a device requests an admin username and password whilst time machine is backing up.
Does it say Admin password, or could it be a password for the backup device?
Feb 1 10:01:16 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24835 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:33 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24067 not responding.
Not related to Time Machine.
Feb 1 10:06:15 pc-205 sandboxd[513] ([61]): mds(61) deny file-write-data /dev/dtracehelperThat's not coming from Time Machine. Looks to be related to Spotlght (mds) trying to index something.
Feb 1 10:07:16 pc-205 mds[61]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
We see that occasionally. It seems to be spurious, or at least not a significant problem.
Feb 1 10:07:37 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 1 10:07:39 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Feb 1 10:07:40 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Yes, that's the "bottom line."
Could this be fixed by running a full backup as admin so that time machine doesn't have to backup these inaccessible files (to normal users) anymore?
No. However a backup runs, it runs as the root user, so has access to everything.

Use TC as temporary AEBSn Until Time Machine is Set Up & ready for B/U?

I want to set up TC by itself with iMac and MBPro and use the same as AEBSn until I set up Time machine on each computer. I have Leopard on both, but with extended first backup times that I have been reading about I want to have TC ready to go but set up time machine up on each computer and do the backups at convenient times when no one will be using the computers, such as overnight.
Message was edited by: Terry Temple

That's essentially what I want to do. I'm just wondering if the TC can just operate as a AEBSn until I turn Time Machine on on each computer for the first time. Normally, I would connect all of the devices I intend to connect and get TC working and then turn Time Machines on when I am ready.

HT201250 Time machine displays calculating size?

When trying to set up time machine for the first time with a 4tb Iomega external drive is displaying message calculating size for some time?

All sorted now, used some of the advice from Pondini's FAQs; thanks!

HT201250 Time Machine taking forever...???

I am backing up 230GB from my local drive to a new external drive using Time Machine. I am now 24hrs into the process and only 25GB along...should it take this long?

You might start with this link:
http://pondini.org/TM/D2.html
and
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
Also the other links within these Time Machine general information web sites may shed light on your issue. For instance, you need to format the external backup drive properly, probably not causing your issue, but check this link just in case:
http://pondini.org/TM/5.html
FYI, my Time Machnie backup for ~ 215 GB took 2.5 hours, yours should be similar, so checking through the above links' list of troubleshooting steps might be worthwhile. Mine was via firewire and USB 2.0 might be somewhat slower, up to a factor of x2, but the time you have been waiting seems excessive.
Sep 5 12:53:27 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Starting standard backup
Sep 5 12:53:27 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb
Sep 5 12:54:28 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Backup content size: 242.2 GB excluded items size: 29.7 GB for volume Macintosh HD
Sep 5 12:54:28 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: 255.02 GB required (including padding), 1.82 TB available
Sep 5 12:54:28 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Sep 5 15:11:02 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Copied 1168316 files (212.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Sep 5 15:11:10 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: 10.24 GB required (including padding), 1.60 TB available
Sep 5 15:11:10 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
Sep 5 15:23:53 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Copied 15087 files (14.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Sep 5 15:23:54 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Copying Lion Recovery set
Sep 5 15:24:03 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Starting post-backup thinning
Sep 5 15:24:03 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Sep 5 15:24:03 username com.apple.backupd[1029]: Backup completed successfully.

HT201250 time machine parallels backup

Will time machine to an external drive include Parallels and all the Windows files?

What I do is set the flag inside each Parallels VM to exclude that VM from Time Machine. Then, I archive my VM folder onto an external drive that is not used for Time Machine.
If you are using Windows more often than me and have files that you want backed up more regularly, you can configure Parallels to use your Mac home directory for equivalent places in Windows. Then, your user files would be backed up in Time Machine, in a slightly crude fashion. You have to make sure that your Windows applications are saving data to a place that actually lives on the Mac. This might take some investigation.

HT201250 Time Machine migrate to a new Macbook Pro and keeping Logic plugins

So, I'm getting a new macbook pro (the latest 15" with the highest spec) and I'm looking to transfer everything using Time Machine, so that it's as if I'm still using the same machine. I use Logic 9 and I have hundreds of expensive plugins and I want to be sure that they will transfer across and I won't need to buy any of them again. I appreciate that some may have compatabiity issues, but that aside, will everything transfer as if I'm using the same machine and it will all be exactly the same?

Hello there, micchaelfrombarnes.
As per the article you were referred to us from, Time Machine should be able to restore your new MacBook to be just like your current one:
Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Time Machine automatically backs up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, email messages, music, photos, movies, and documents.
Additionally:
Migrating a Time Machine backup to a new Mac
When you get a new Mac, you can transfer all of your applications, files, settings, and other information from a Time Machine backup you've already made. When you start up your new Mac for the first time, the Setup Assistant asks you if you would like to restore from backup. If you've already set up your new Mac, you can use theMigration Assistant (located in Applications/Utilities) to do the same thing.
After Migration Assistant completes the transfer and you select your existing Time Machine backup drive, you will be prompted with "Inherit Backup History". Once selected you will be able to continue to use your existing Time Machine backup on your new Mac.
For a more detailed instruction on how to migrate the data from your Time Machine backup, refer to this article:
OS X: How to migrate data from another Mac using Mavericks
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5872
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

HT201250 time machine - no Permission to restore

HI,
I HAD A POWER FAILURE AND I HAD TO RESTART MY IMAC AND THEN I NOTICE THAT
THE CABINET FOR NEAT WORKS WAS MISSING. SO I WENT INTO TIME MACHINE AND
TRIED TO RESTORE, BUT INSTEAD I GOT THIS MESSAGE: " The operation can’t be
completed because you don’t have permission to access “Neat Library
2012.nrmlib”. THERE IS NO PASSWORD NEEDED AND I CAN RESTORE OTHER FILES.
THIS NEAT WORKS CABINET (LIBRARY) HAS 300 PLUS MEGABITS OF INFO, SO HOW DO
I GET IT BACK?
I TALK TO NEAT WORKS PEOPLE AND TRIED, THEY SAID THE PROBLEM IS TIME
MACHINE. SO WHAT IS ONE TO DO?
JIM SCOTT
[email protected]

It sounds like it's not finding any destination drive(s), as that's the next selection (see #14 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
Your backups are most likely fine; if it showed you a list, then they're there (and the "magic" of TM is, every backup is, in effect, a full one, even if many old ones have been deleted).
Select Utilities from the menubar again, then +Disk Utility+ and be sure the new drive appears and is set up properly. On the first line (with the name and size) it must have the GUID *Partition Map Scheme* for an Intel Mac; or the +Apple Partition Map+ for a PPC Mac.
On the second line, indented, it should have the +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+ Format.

HT201250 Time Machine Exclusion Set-up

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