HT201250 Will Time Machine backup the files on my desktop?

Will Time Machine backup the files on my desktop? Backup files anywhere on my computer even if they're not neatly in the document folders?

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3107
Most commonly used backup methods explained

Similar Messages

  • Does time machine backup open files that I am currently working on?

    Will time machine backup files that are open? I have a quickbooks file or others that sometimes will be open for as long as a week. I was having problems with a file I was working on that had days worth of data that I had been changed. When I tried to restore a file with time machine, I had to go back a week. All my changes were lost. I assumed that time machine would be backing up a file even as I was working on it. Maybe not? Can find very little info anywhere. Yosemite 10.10.1

    I don't believe it does. I know that there was an issue in the past where it wouldn't back up any of the iPhoto Library if iPhoto was open. I don't know if that was fixed. But, like you, I can't find anything else to verify my suspicion.
    If the program supports Auto-save and Versions, then you would be able to go back through the versions, but I don't think QuickBooks would support that.

  • Does Time Machine backup system files (/usr/local/*)?

    Does Time Machine backup system files (/usr/local/*)?
    If so how do you locate them in the Time Machine interface?
    If I go into Time Machine mode and type say "/usr/local" in the Time Machine search bar I get nothing although I can open a terminal application and cd to /usr/local and see bin, lib, include, etc.
    Of course I can never see /usr/local in Finder either ... only at the command line.
    Thanks.

    John, another tech pro ("baltwo") suggests:
    Run this in the Terminal:
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
    OPTION-click and hold on Finder's Dock icon->Relaunch which reveals all hidden files. Then, look for that file and delete it. To hide all of those, use the same command, substituiting zero for the one, and relaunch the Finder.

  • Can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?

    can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?

    can time-machine backup the boot camp drive?
    No. Use third-party software such as WinClone to do that.
    Time Machine can backup a Windows image file used by an emulator such as Parallels Desktop.
    (50538)

  • I'm getting an error message on my time machine backup: "The backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/MacBook.sparsebundle" is already in use." Any suggestions?

    I'm getting an error message on my time machine backup: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/MacBook.sparsebundle” is already in use." Any suggestions?

    Excellent apple networking on Lion or ML is usually the issue.
    Reboot the TC.. if that don't fix it.. reboot the whole network.. modem.. router.. TC.. clients.. restart in that order.
    There are tools.. download the real tool if you have lion..
    For ML you are stuck with toyland.. AU 6.1 .. good luck with the plastic hammer.
    Read C12 and C17
    http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

  • How might I move my Time Machine Backups.backupdb file to a partition on a different drive to enable reformatting the drive it is on, so that might put it back in place later?

    I have an external drive I use as my Time Machine backup location.
    Recently, I started getting an error on it.  It tells me there is a problem, and to repair it with Disk Utility.  Disk Utility cannot verify the disk, and needs me to repair it, but it cannot repair it. It advises me to copy all of the important files from this disk to another location, and then reformat the drive.
    So, I have copied all of the files that were not part of the Backups.backupdb folder structure to a partition on another disk, and removed them from the defecting drive, leaving ~250GB of files in the Time Machine backups files.
    I cannot seem to get this to copy to a ~350GB folder on another drive, formatted Journaled, Extended as recommended.
    What do I do?

    A Time Machine backup is owned by TM.. this is standard kind of issue.. the very fact that you cannot copy it suggests it is corrupt.. or you cannot change permissions on the whole file.. let me assure you the way TM works.. what you have so far copied is completely useless.
    Have you run a verify of the backup??
    The fact that disk utility is not working means something is wrong.. it should be able to fix a drive..
    And the fact the drive is only 12-18months old is also not relevant.. the present state of the drive is too poor to be considered reliable.
    What type of drive is it.. ie USB2 USB3 and what brand??
    It is not just the disk that can go bad but the controller/power supply as well.. and some brands seem to have bad batches.. eg seagate USB drives I was seeing recently.
    I prefer drives where I buy a shell and put the drive into it.. so I can move the drive to another shell without breaking warranty (or the case).
    The actual command for terminal I always just look up when I want to do them.. I am getting old and I have no space left for command line stuff.. although it was all there in the past.
    eg today I hit. http://www.cnet.com/au/news/using-the-os-x-terminal-instead-of-the-finder-to-cop y-files/
    This includes the rsync command.. lets try this one..
    I can copy my downloads directory to a time capsule disk. I start with login as super user just to make sure I don't have permissions issues.. you should definitely do this. running rsync is great as it will give you info when it fails and it will do incremental if you run it again later. You construct the command by simply dragging the folder from finder into terminal and slightly modifying it as per the article above.. So my actual command as I am copying deliberately to a new folder on the TC.. You don't want files to land on the root.. even if it creates another folder.
    $ sudo su
    Password:
    sh-3.2# rsync -av /Users/Ray/Downloads/* /Volumes/DataTCgen3/downloads/
    building file list ... done
    #A 12v25v Descrip.doc
    $T2eC16V,!)!E9s2fB+iqBQNKwsSzpQ~~60_3.JPG
    $_12.JPG
    0198f23d9wahwkzzsf20dk15czcy.pdf
    0340039AINETCNCTKGS.PDF
    I have 60GB or so in this folder and it is copying at about 20MB/s over ethernet.. so it is not super fast.. but there is probably some error checking going on at the same time.

  • HT201250 Does time machine compress the data in backup?

    I have got to replace my internal hard drive so have to back up just everything to an ext drive.
    When I use 'time machine' to back up to an external disk, does that disk have to be larger than the file size on my iMac?
    Does Time machine compress the data?( eg will 1TB fit on a 500 gig external drive?)
    Thanks

    No, Time Machine doesn't compress the data. I recently started a new TIme Machine backup, and the first backup required the same amount of space as it was backing up (actually a little bit more during the backup process).

  • HT201250 Finding Time Machine backups in a file mode not star look.

    How do I look up by back-ups for time machine in a file format, not the star format?

    It's what I assumed.
    An iWork document created with the format introduced by iWork '09 is in fact a folder packed with a specific tool.
    If we remove the name extension, the system can't guess that it's an iWork document.
    According to the structure of the file, it recognize it as an archive and it unpack it.
    It's a variant of what I do when I want to study the contents of the index.xml file describing a document.
    In my scheme, I rename wxyz.pages as wxyz.pages.zip
    When I unpack it, I get a document wxyz.pages which is a Pages document in the old structure.
    When Time Machine give you a document entitled wxyz, it's important to add the extension name by yourself.
    If you forget and expand the beast as a folder, nothing is lost. Just rename the folder waxy as waxy.pages and Pages will open it.
    From my point of view, the fact that Time Machine return a document without its name extension is a bug in Time Machine.
    Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 2 mai 2011 22:30:54
    Please :
    Search for questions similar to your own before submitting them to the community
    To be the AW6 successor, iWork MUST integrate a TRUE DB, not a list organizer !

  • Will Time Machine backup Time Capsule files to an attached usb drive?

    Hi Everyone,
    I want to put shared media files on my Time Capsule and then have Time Machine backup my imac and all the files on the TC to a usb drive attached to the Capsule. Possible? That way I have a shared media server that is being backup up regularly.
    Thanks for the help!

    No. Time Machine cannot backup any network attached storage device such as TC. TM can only backup a Mac's internal HDD plus and ATTACHED/LOCAL HDD to the external HDD connect to the TC USB port.

  • HT201250 Can Time Machine backup files stored on external hard drive

    Can Time Machine back up files that are stored on external hard drive and save them on a different external hard drive?
    I have my pictures stored on an external hard drive connected to my iMac. I want to make an exact copy of the pictures folder on a separate external hard drive. Can Time Machine do that?
    If yes, how?
    If no, what's a good way to create a mirror of the folder on External Hard Drive #1 (the original) on External Hard Drive #2 (the backup)?
    I am not opposed to manually copying every couple weeks or month, but (1) it's less convenient and (2) I got an error message the first time I tried this saying the files couldn't be copied because some of the files being copied had the same name as each other (not exactly that, I'm at work and don't have the message in front of me right now, but that was the gist of it).
    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)

  • Will Time Machine backup of SL erase Lion at the same time?

    I normally wait before downloading new OSX's from Apple, but didn't this time and regret it. Before installing Lion, I did a Time Machine backup of my iMac. My question is: how do I restore my iMac to that last backup with Snow Leopard? I want Lion off my iMac (for now), but I DON'T want to have to reinstall all my applications, lose my iTunes Library, lose my iPhoto and Aperture libraries or all of the other applications I have. So - do I load the Snow Leopard disc.. erase my hard drive, reinstall Snow Leopard then restore from Time Machine, or can I just select the last restore from Time Machine and it will delete Lion for me? The reason I ask is because I want my internet back without having to manually reconnect through Network Preferences every 10 minutes. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

    Restore to a multiple disk setup should work fine. But there are as always some tricks to it.
    See our expert Pondini's explaination and follow his links.. I suggest you actually spend some time understanding how TM works.
    http://pondini.org/TM/32.html
    I would also recommend spending a few dollars and buy CCC or superduper. Make a backup of each drive. These 3rd party backup programs are more flexible and you can create direct images of the drives. It makes recovery a much much easier process.
    If it is a Mac Pro put in another disk for TM backups and use a USB or even esata card and external sata drive for backups using CCC. Doing it that way you can make a bootable image of your main drive.

  • Will time machine affect additional files on external Hd?

    I'm wanting to set up time machine for the first time, using an external HD. However there are some files on the external from some other file moving I was doing, that still aren't on the main computer.
    Will TM copy over those files when it updates, or just leave them as is?
    Thanks.

    that depends on how your external is formatted. if it's formatted mac os extended journaled with appropriate partition scheme (APM for PPC mac and GUID for intel), TM will give you an option to leave the existing data on the external alone. if it's not formatted correctly, TM will force you to reformat the drive before you can use it for TM. in any case, it's a bad idea to have other stuff on the TM partition besides TM backups. There are too many situations when you need to erase a TM partition and having other data on it makes it more complicated. It's best to have a dedicated partition just for TM.

  • Time-Machine Backup of File-Vaulted Account - Problem?

    This is the situation:
    I have to install the last good backup from Time-Machine. I did this but my drive was encrypted using File-Vault.
    Now I cannot get past the login to my account at startup!!!!
    My password is CORRECT.
    I am the only user.
    The login will take my password but will not progress any further past the following error message:
    "Unable to log into the File-Vault Account "....." at this time. An error has occurred."
    Has anybody out there heard of this happening? Does anybody see a picture of what is going on - or what could be done?
    Can I ever get back my old account (complete with emails/apps/keychain/doc etc?????!!)
    Regards
    Greg.

    O.K - So I'm now up and running again with a new installation. The Factory default installation disk has been installed.
    I still have my Time-machine backup on my portable drive. The applications folder is accesible. All of my old apps are still there even though it was an encrypted HD. However, everything else is missing! iPhoto's !!!! Work documents! movies! itunes downloads etc etc...nothing in my old home folder and personal libraries are there - just the encrypted files.
    Any ideas from here?

  • HT201250 Accessing Time Machine backups from other machines

    I am using Time Machine to back up my iMac to Time capsule. The iMac will then be going to work with my husband and we would like to access the music and picture files with our two MBPs. Is this possible? I would be happy to only back up the iPhoto and iTunes libraries but that doesn't seem to work. Any advice on that?

    It would be extremely inconvenient. You can Browse Other Time Machine backups, find the photos or music files on the backup, then restore them to your MBPs. Not very easy or convenient.
    It would be better to transfer both Libraries to an external drive connected to the network, then set those up as your Music and Photo Libraries.  Some network drives also offer iTunes and iPhoto sharing such that you can put the libraries on that network drive and access them from your MBPs. They will be shared out just like they were from the iMac.

  • HT201250 If time machine backups hourly.  Why does it need to backup daily, weekly and monthly

    If time machine backups hourly.  Then why does it need to backup daily, seekly, and monthly?

    It doesn't.
    What it does is discard intermediate backups at the end of 24 hrs and keep just three spaced backups from the previous day.
    At the end of the next day, that day's will be reduced to 3, and the previous 3 trimmed to one; the last backup of that day.
    Daily backups are kept for a month, then trimmed to the last backup of the week.
    The weekly backups are kept until the disc runs out of space and TM starts deleting the oldest ones.

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