HT201250 Time machine won't overwrite on an external hard drive

My seagate 500gb external drive won't allow back ups due to capacity when it gets to 150gb of space left. Any ideas as at the moment I just erase the drive and start again each month. Not ideal. Many thanks

Sorry, but Time Machine does not back up reliably, if at all, to most network drives, except Time Capsules or a shared drive on another Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard on the same local network.
Here's the criteria they must meet: Disks that can be used with Time Machine. And be careful here: just because some 3rd-party hardware claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports it, or that it will work in all circumstances.
The messages indicate that Time Machine found the volume, but couldn't write to it. That may be some sort of sharing or permissions error, or it may be that the device doesn't support all the things Time Machine requires, per the link above.
Are you sure that it's compatible with Snow Leopard? Some NAS devices that worked with Leopard didn't seem to work with Snow Leopard, at least when it first came out.
You may need to check with LaCie or the place you got it.

Similar Messages

  • Time machine won't let me include external hard drive in backup

    My memory was full on our computer so I got an external hard drive to move over our iphoto library to (I have a large iphoto library ~22,000 pictures that continues to grow).  For discussion purposes I'll call this - IPhoto HD.
    I also have another external hard drive that we've had for quite some time that I use as our time machine backups.  (Time Machine HD).
    I copied over my iphoto library to the new external HD (IPhoto HD).
    I then went into my time machine under settings and wanted to make sure that the IPhoto HD was being backed up on the Time Machine HD.  (after I got verification of this I was going to delete the iphoto library from our computer to free up some space).
    When I go into time machine under options - the Iphoto HD is greyed out - and it won't allow me to delete it from the "do not back up" list.  (however the Time Machine HD is not greyed out - I could delete it if I wanted to).
    I tried searching for the answer in the forums and couldn't figure it out.  I did verify that the format of the IPhoto HD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
    I should note that both external Hard drives are WD My Book for Mac 2TB.  Not sure if that makes a difference.
    Thanks in advance for your assistance.

    Sorry, but Time Machine does not back up reliably, if at all, to most network drives, except Time Capsules or a shared drive on another Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard on the same local network.
    Here's the criteria they must meet: Disks that can be used with Time Machine. And be careful here: just because some 3rd-party hardware claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports it, or that it will work in all circumstances.
    The messages indicate that Time Machine found the volume, but couldn't write to it. That may be some sort of sharing or permissions error, or it may be that the device doesn't support all the things Time Machine requires, per the link above.
    Are you sure that it's compatible with Snow Leopard? Some NAS devices that worked with Leopard didn't seem to work with Snow Leopard, at least when it first came out.
    You may need to check with LaCie or the place you got it.

  • HT201250 I run time machine on my iMac using an external hard drive.  I just bought a MacBook Pro and want to know if i can run time machine on it using my wireless network on to the iMac external hard drive

    I run time machine on my iMac using an external hard drive.  I just bought a MacBook Pro and want to know if i can run time machine on it using my wireless network on to the iMac external hard drive

    How do I set up Time Machine to a shared drive on another Mac?

  • I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?

    I just backed up my mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine. What would happen if I turn Time Machine off and then plug the external hard drive back into my computer?
    What I am ultimately wanting to do is make more room on my computer by backing up all of my files onto the external hard drive and then deleting them off of my computer. However, neededing to be able to retrieve them from the external hard drive later down the road.
    From what I have read and am trying to understand, is that I probably shouldn't have used time machine. I need to use the external hard drive like a basic flash drive where I can put things on and get things off without having it automatically update through time machine everytime I connect it to my computer.
    Not tech savvy at all and barely understand basics. I need very simple and easy to understand explanations.

    sydababy wrote:
    and then deleting them off of my computer.
    BIG BIG MISTAKE ..... youre making a linchpin deathtrap for your data trying to shove everything on a single fragile HD.
    Dont suffer the tragedy other people make, buy another or 2 more HD, theyre cheap as dust.
    The number of people who have experienced terror by having a single external HD backup is enormous.  One failure that WILL HAPPEN, and kaput,......all gone!
    Dont do it, its all about redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.
    follow here:
    Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
    Deleting them off your computer is fine....having only ONE copy is extremely BAD.
    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.

  • I upgraded to Maverick and now Time Machine will not connect to the external hard drive to back up files.  The external hard drive is a Western Digital "My Book Live" 2 TB.  How do I solve problem?

    I upgraded to Maverick and now Time Machine will not connect to the external hard drive to back up files.  The external hard drive is a Western Digital "My Book Live" 2 TB.  How do I solve problem?

    I also had problem accessing my WD MyBookLive after upgrading to Maverick.
    To resolve the problem, I used  Connect To Server (Cmd K) to specify the IP address.
    Then I enter a user id and password I created in the MyBookLive.
    You can also verify that you have admin access to the MyBookLive using Safari or Chrome.
    Just enter the MyBookLive IP address as the URL.

  • HT3275 When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option.  How do I change this?

    When I press "select backup location" in the Time Machine section of System Preferences, my external hard drive doesn't appear as an option.  How do I change this?  My external hard drive is a FreeAgent GoFlex Drive.

    Hi, what Format is the external Drive?
    They usually come PC Formatted for Fat32/MSdos, or NTFS... is there anything on it now?
    How to format your disks...
    http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
    (To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
    Thanks to Pondini, Formatting,  Partitioning, Verifying,  and  Repairing  Disks...
    http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

  • I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

    I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

    Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
    Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
    http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
    Can't imaging something not being covered there.

  • If I deleted a file on my Mac would Time Machine delete its copy on my external hard drive when backing up?

    I just finished backing everything up onto my new 2T WD My Book Essential because my Macbook Pro is absolutely full of Photoshop files. I want to delete them from my Mac (since they're backed up) but I'm too scared Time Machine will delete them from my external hard drive.
    Thanks in advance.

    Move the images over to an external drive that is connected to your Mac by USB or FireWire.
    Then....Time Machine will backup both your Mac..and..the hard drive automatically. 
    Can you elaborate on this?
    I have a 128GB McAir (mid 2011 model) with a 2GB TC for backup. I need another external hard drive to save pictures and home HD videos. I wanted to partition the TC but learned that is not recommended. So now I’m looking to get two external hard drives to store priceless files and back it up.
    Your comment makes me think I only need one external hard drive and use the 2GB TC as backup. A good option since 2GB is an overkill for a 128GB notebook.
    Can you please share the steps? Plug in a HDD to McAir and run Time Machine? Is that it?
    Thanks.

  • Time Machine won't backup up to external firewire drive

    MacBook Pro - Time Machine won't backup to firewire external drive.  Has worked well in past few weeks..........any ideas?

    Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
    Select "system.log" from the file list. Enter "backupd" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. Post the messages from the last backup, beginning with "Starting standard backup."
    Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Do not post many repetitions of the same message.
    Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.

  • How to stop Time Machine backing up on a specific external hard drive?

    I work on a iMac 2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, with Mac OS X 10.6.8. I use two external hard drives that are the exact same model, 2 TB WD My Book 1110 Media: one is intended for back-up, the other for storing video editing files. They're both connected through USB 2.0.
    I set the "back-up" hard drive as back-up disk for Time Machine, through the Time Machine preferences. Now, everytime I connect the "video" hard drive, Time Machine recognizes it as a back-up disk, and starts backing up on it. I could delete the "Backups.backupdb" file that Time Machine had created by connecting the "video" hard drive to another Mac and moving it to the Trash, but as soon as I reconnect the "video" hard drive to my iMac, Time Machine backs up on it again.
    Is there a way to "de-select" a hard drive from Time Machine's list of back-up disks?
    Note: I should mention another thing that might indicate a conflict. When both hard drives "back-up" and "video" are connected to my iMac, if I open Final Cut Pro X, I can only see my "back-up" hard drive. To access the files I am working on, I need to eject the "back-up" hard drive, and suddenly the "video" drive appears.
    If you have any idea of how to solve this conflict... I am a bit lost.
    Thank you!

    Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
    Give them unique volume names using Disk Utility.
    Then set Time Machine back up to that unique volume name.
    For example, I regularly use 4 external drives (though they're not all the same model).
    The descriptions quickly tell me which drives I have connected to my MacBook when open Finder:
    My Time Machine backup volume is named 'Time Machine 1TB'.
    My iPhoto backup volume is named 'iPhoto Backup 320GB'
    My iTunes backup volume is named 'iTunes Backup 120GB'
    and the last is 'Windows 7 Backup 250Gb' but since it's a Windows volume, it is formatted NTFS.
    This likely means that you will have to erase and repartition one of your drives to name it.
    You MIGHT be able to rename it using Finder, right-clicking on the volume, and selecting Rename (current volume name).
    WARNING: I can't be certain of what just renaming it that way could screw up in the way of permissions and file links.
    Within Disk Utility, it seems it is absolutely not possible to change a volume name without clicking the Partition tab, and that involves erasing.
    Given the choice, I'd probably choose to rename (erase and repartition) the Time Machine drive. A current backup or two on Time Machine, and I'm good. I don't really need to go 'way back' to recover files, because I really don't ever erase anything. I just keep buying bigger drives!
    And I still burn the 'absolutely critical, priceless, can't ever be without this stuff' files to DVD or CD at least monthly or quarterly, in case one of my TM or backup drives fails at the same time as my primary hard drive. Call me paranoid, but I worked in Information Technology for many years: Murphy was an optimist!
    Message was edited by: kostby

  • Time machine with 10.5 Server (+thrashing external hard drive)

    I run MacOS server to provide support for a small group of collaborators -- mainly via SVN and Wikis, as well as a static website that is publicly accessible, all running off a Mac Mini.
    I want to use Time Machine to keep a backup, so I can quickly get up and running if anything goes wrong.
    However, when Time Machine is switched on, it seems to spend an inordinate amount of time thrashing the external hard drive (a 1GB in a separate enclosure, connected via Firewire). Looking at top shows du using ~70% of one of the cores on the Mini, and the thrashing lasts for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, even though very little has changed on the server (the wikis get updated at most once a day, and the website gets visit a 10s of times in 24 hours).
    Turning off time machine silences du (and the somewhat noisy hard drive)
    Any suggestions (or tips for using Time Machine to back up a server in general -- once I get this sorted I plan to test that I can actually recover the server from the backup and install on a new machine)

    Turns out that the thrashing was due to Sharepoint; but it was only an issue when time machine was running (so far as I can see). Am still checking that the problem does not come back, but will mark this as solved.

  • Why won't Time Machine recognize my seagate 2 TB external hard drive?

    Hello,
    I am trying to set up my Seagate External Hard Drive as my backup. When I click on Time Machine, then Set Up Time Machine, Choose Backup Disk, the list comes up blank. Even though my external hard drive is sitting on my desktop available for use. Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.

    And then I found this on the Seagate website:
    Formatting your drive for a Mac
    STEP 1: Open Disk Utility like this:
    Click Finder.
    Click Applications.
    Click Utilities.
    Click Disk Utility.
    STEP 2: Select the drive you want to format. Be sure it’s the correct drive.STEP 3: Go to the Partition tab.STEP 4: Click on the Current Volume Scheme drop-down menu and select One (1) partition.STEP 5: Click Options. From the Partition Schemes provided:
    Click on the GUID Partition Table radio button.
    --OR--
    Click on the Apple Partition Map radio button.
    STEP 6: Click OK. Select other options as desired (e.g., Volume Name, Format, etc).
    STEP 7: Click Apply. The Partition Disk screen opens.
    STEP 8: Click Partition. At this point, the volume dismounts from the desktop and the drive is partitioned and formatted.
    Note: When Volumes are created, Time Machine may open, asking if you would like to use the volume for backups. Click Cancel to proceed.
    STEP 9: When finished, select the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu and choose Quit Disk Utility.
    And it worked.
    Thanks for all the help guys. I appreciate it.

  • Time machine will not backup to empty external hard drive after replacing Mac's internal hard drive and restoring

    First - I live in a tiny fishing village in Belize, so getting support here is virtually non-existent. There is no one else in my village who even uses a Mac. Recently, my hard drive in my 2012 Macbook Pro 13" went bad (said it suffered a "shock"?) and I was traveling to Cozumel, Mexico, so had it replaced there. We used an external hard drive backup to restore the data to it's last time machine backup (October of 2014). Everything was working fine, until I returned home, added some pictures, and wanted to do a fresh backup. Now, time machine will start the backup, but gets about 113,000 of 181,000 done, and it locks up. I can do nothing - everything freezes, and I have to eventually power down the computer. I even tried deleting the old backup from the external hard drive, erasing it completely, and reformatting the external hard drive using disk utility. Still locking up. It is a 5 GB external hard drive, so space shouldn't be an issue, and it was backed up to the same external hard drive previously with no issues. I'm still running Mavericks, and don't want to try to upgrade to Yosemite until I can be sure I have a backup of my old data and pictures. I am a writer, and use that to make my meager living LOL
    I'm stumped. I've looked through the files endlessly but can't find anything similar to my issue. Any suggestions? I know just enough to be dangerous, and don't want to lose everything we worked so hard to retrieve when my hard drive crashed last month.
    Thanks!

    SMH5206 - I tried letting it sit and crank overnight twice. First time I thought it was my error causing it to lock up. Now I know better. I haven't changed any of my time machine settings - and actually never used time machine regularly. Only reason I had a fresh backup from last Oct was because I did one before I upgraded to mavericks. Everything worked fine then - and we used that to restore when the hard drive crashed and was replaced. I have actually deleted hundreds of pictures off my hard drive and one entire user, so it should actually be a much smaller backup - so if it did it before on the same external hard disk, I don't understand why it won't now.  I'm really confused.
    Kahjot - the external hard drive is the same one I backed up to previously - and I have completely erased it and reformatted, and the information I'm backing up now is less, so there should be no reason why it doesn't have enough room now, when there is actually less information on my current hard drive (see my reply to SMH5206). When I plug it in, it says it is a 500.07 GB WD "My Passport"
    I've even tried to have time machine only backup certain files, and not the whole thing. Still locking up.
    I'm sure it's my error somewhere, - I just don't know how or where

  • My Time Machine stalls during initial backup on external hard drive even after several hours.

    We have been using Time Machine and an external hard drive to back up our MacBook for almost a year now.  Recently, the hard drive (using a USB) was removed without ejecting it properly.  After that, the auto backups began stalling.  We tried setting up Time Machine all over again but the initial back up stalls at different places (like 6MB of 87GB) even if it's left for several hours overnight.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?  If not, can anyone suggest another inexpensive way of backing up our files from our MacBook? 
    Thanks!
    Shane

    It might have created a new user and loaded under that.. new user being the old user. But if you have issues do it again, only this time pick where the backup will go.
    http://pondini.org/TM/16.html
    The other questions might also be relevant as a new hard disk will make the Mac appear to the TM backup as a new computer.
    See 14-18 for restore info.

  • Time Machine Not Backing Up to an External Hard Drive - Error 11

    Hi!
    I am unable to backup my MacBook with my external Hard Drive. My Mac is a fairly new machine (September 2009) and I have backed up since upgrading to Snow Leopard previously but I cannot backup at all at the moment.
    I have run disk utility and repair completed without any issues, in fact it told me that the drive was running ok. I have also reformatted my drive (mac os extended (journaled) ) and made sure the partition is GUID. The following is the message that appears when the backup fails:
    "The backup was not performed because an error occured while copying the files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use disk utility to repair your backup disk."
    I have had a look at the log using the Time Machine Widget and the following is what has been generated:
    Starting standard backup
    Backing up to: /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb
    Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
    Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
    Backup content size: 100.2 GB excluded items size: 85.9 GB for volume Macintosh HD
    No pre-backup thinning needed: 17.11 GB requested (including padding), 148.45 GB available
    Waiting for index to be ready (101)
    Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz, /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb/Eric O'Mahony’s MacBook/2010-05-02-210743.inProgress/E450C379-52F6-48A3-99D7-F45043074122/Macin tosh HD/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz
    Aborting backup because indexing of file failed.
    Stopping backup.
    Copied 158300 files (12.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Copy stage failed with error:11
    Backup failed with error: 11
    The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font?? Can anyone help me? It is driving me crazy and I need to backup my files.
    Thank you for your help!

    ericomahony wrote:
    Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz,
    The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font??
    Yes, indeed. Start by just excluding it, per the blue box in #C3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
    If the backup then runs ok, you'll need to figure out what's wrong with that file.
    If you get another error, see the rest of #C3.

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