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

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Can I delete my music on my Macbook air now that I have time machine set up?

I cannot see the music files on the time machine. Can I delete my music on my Macbook air now that I have time machine set up to an external hard drive?

The Time Capsule is for your Time Machine backups, not "everyday" files. .
If you delete the music files on your MacBook Air.....there are a number of negative things that can occur.
1) The only copy of your music will be on the Time Capsule. When....not if....the Time Capsule has a problem, you will lose your music files, since you have no backup for them. In other words, you always need at least two copies of your important files on two separate drives.
2) Time Machine backs up the changes that occur on your MacBook Air. If you delete the music files from the MacBook Air, at some point Time Machine will also delete them from the Time Capsule.....and there is no way to know when this might occur.
A better plan to consider might be to add a USB or FireWire drive and connect it directly to your MacBook Air. Move the music files over to that drive.
Then, Time Machine will back up both your MacBook Air and the attached hard drive. So, you have an "original" copy of your data on one drive and a backup copy of the same data on the Time Capsule. That would be a minimum backup plan.

Managed computer Time Machine setting blocks login

I have seen this a couple of times with 10.7 clients bound to 10.6 servers, and now with 10.8 clients and servers.
I have machines bound w/ authenticated binding to the server so I get a machine entry in WGM / OD. I create a machine group and set a preference for the group for Time Machine (set disk and quota). Now, on the client side, I log out (so the MCX settings refresh) and all logins are blocked (both network and local users). I get the spinning gear and have to reboot with ARD.
I'm not sure what it is in the process that is stopping the login process - any ideas of where to look?
Thanks,
Miles

Just reset the Admin password for my account using the system disk and everything works now.

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.

Time Machine: setting-up external hard drive question

I purchased the Lacie 2TB External Hard Drive from Apple and in the set-up process it said to free up all 2 TB storage space if I intend to use it only for my MAC (which I do), so that's what I did. However, when I was doing that, the set-up screen kept giving me these warning signs if I did all MAC like the screen told me to do it would erase data on the disk...I did all MAC anyways so not sure what got erased since nothing I thought is supposed to be on there...don't these come clean with 2TB available? I just want to make sure I did this right!

KrystelleLynne wrote:
I have been doing back-ups on with it using time machine. I did not, however, do the check in disk utility. Since there are back-ups on the hard drive, should I still erase?
Not now no. All is ok then.
If Time machine HAS been backing up to it, its fine, it couldnt use it otherwise.
However now that youve got A (single) backup, dont make the huge mistake everyone else does, backup your data on yet another HD and update it and store it somewhere safe
second HD doesnt have to use time machine, just drag and drop your valuable data.
Hard drives are cheap as dirt, buy another one at minimum if you cherish your priceless data.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.
Many countless people think they're safe and doing well having a single external backup of their vital data they worked months, years, and sometimes decades on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Never let yourself be in situation of having a single external copy of your precious data.

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.

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.

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.

Time Machine: setting up second external harddrive does it make a complete back up the first time?

Time Machine: when setting up a second external hard drive (after a Time Capsul is already set up) does Time Machine place a complete backup onto the new external hard draive?

I want to use Time Machine to begin "doing it's thing" - creating a second Time Machine backup of the hard drive on my computer - on a new 2Tb external hard drive I've just installed and initialized.
When I open the TIme Machine App it automatically goes into "Star Wars" mode as it's already commected to my Time Capsule. THere is no menu bar anywhere. When you cancel the "Star Wars" mode, it just closes the application.
Where are the TIme Machine App "controls" - the menus where I can direct it to install and do an ongoing second TIme Machine backup of my Computer's hard drive on the new extrnal drive?
Thanks for any help. I hope this is as simple as it sounds.
Steve
PS If having a 2nd external drive doing regualr Time Machine backups of my main hard drive will slow down my computer too much (MacBook Pro 2009 running Mountain Lion) please advise. I can also just do some other type of file and folder backup on a daily basis once a day. I used to use Retrospect before I got the TIme Capsule 3 years ago. Looks like REtrospect isn't among the most popular file backup apps for the Mac anymore.

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 - 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 not keeping hourly backups.

My Time Machine backups don't seem to be working correctly. It doesn't appear to be keeping hourly backups. When I enter Time Machine and look at the backup from just one hour ago, the newest file is from several weeks ago, not one hour ago.
Same thing with monthly backups. At a certain point, the backup history skips several months.
I've scoured the internet but can't seem to find anyone else with this problem or a solution.

That's odd. Mine go away after 24 hours like clockwork.
As VA2020 says, it's probably not a significant space problem, but worth investigating, especially after that long a time.
I'd suggest downloading the Time Machine Buddy widget, which extracts TM's messages from your logs and displays them in a little window. Check your last few backups, especially for messages about "thinning".
As an example, here's my most recent set, showing routine deletion of an hourly:
*Starting standard backup*
*Backing up to: /Volumes/TmBackups/Backups.backupdb*
*No pre-backup thinning needed: 133.2 MB requested (including padding), 175.83 GB available*
*Copied 492 files (2.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.*
*Starting post-backup thinning*
*Deleted backup /Volumes/TmBackups/Backups.backupdb/JPs.G5.iMac/2009-01-19-191145: 175.83 GB now available*
*Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed*
*Backup completed successfully.*
If yours look hinky (pardon the technical term), especially any sort of failure message, or not being able to delete old backups, copy and post them here (be careful to get all the messages, as they often overflow the little window).
One question: have you used any of the 3rd part apps or postings about modifying TM's preference file to alter the backup schedule?

HT201250 Time Machine Set up

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