I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

The initial Time Machine backup can certainly take a long time over wireless. Days, possibly. It's impossible for anyone here to be able to predict how long it will take, and wireless environmental conditions can change at any time.
Is there antivirus software running in the background
Only you can determine that. If you're using third party AV software, anything is possible.
NAS devices may not be compatible with Time Machine, regardless of what their manufacturers may claim. Even after the Time Machine backup completes, your backup may be unreliable. You may not discover that until you need to rely upon the backup for some reason, and corruption can occur months or years from now.
Time Machine supports the following backup configurations:
A locally mounted volume
Time Capsule
A volume resident on a USB hard disk connected directly to a Time Capsule or current production AirPort Extreme Base Station.
That's it. Any configuration other than the above list places you in an experimental category. If your backup fails, you're on your own.

Similar Messages

First Time Machine backup not the same size as my computers HD

I just completed my first Time Machine backup of my computer's hard drive. I have a 160 GB hard drive (actual capacity = 148.73 GB) with 145.43 GB used. I expected my backup to be the exact same size or darn near close. When I did a "Get Info" on the backup, its size was 62.11 GB. I looked through some of the files of the backup and it LOOKS like its all there but can't be certain of it. I would like to know the answer to this and PLEASE PLEASE DON'T give me the run around! IE: go see this page, go see that page, click this link, etc.! Just give me the answer straight up. I've already been looking all over this forum and at other Time Machine websites and have NOT found a good answer. I would REALLY appreciate just a straight up answer! Thanks!

Would you like me to give you a complete list of every website I have looked at? Would that help? Well, here they are:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427?viewlocale=en_US
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D2.html
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071101005330768
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D5.html
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2655/leopardtime_machine_delete_files_folders_frombackup/
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial &channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=DeletingTime+Machine+backup+files+in+MacOS+X&btnG=GoogleSearch
http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26704/timemachineeditor
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342&start=75
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1342&start=0
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D7.html
Those are all the websites I have visited in regards to Time Machine. Other then that, I have for the most part already stated what I have done. Hope that helps.

Doing a first time machine backup with OS X 10.8.3. Taking For Ever. Have a 24g flash drive and only 21 g to back up. What to do?

This is a brand new MacBook Pro. This would be the first time machine backup being done on it. Is that why it is too slow?

Note that a 24 GB flash drive is completely inadequate to use effectively with Time Machine. It will probably run out of space very quickly. You want at least 2-3 times more space on your backup drive than what you are backing up. Or you want to choose some other backup app that does not do incremental backups.
Get yourself a good hard drive. 200 GB would be cheap and would give you more than enough space to store many months (maybe years) of backups, unless what is being backed up grows significantly.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

First time machine backup from MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011) on time capsule is extremely slow - unusable!

I recently bought a Time Capsule 2TB.
First I set it up to create a new wifi network parallel to my existing wifi network. The first Time Machine backup on my MBP 13 connected via ethernet cable finished overnight (under 10 hrs for about 150 GB), as expected.
Then I found that my MBP was logging into my old network more often than to the time capsule network so that backups were not being made regularly. So I re-configured the Time Capsule to extend the exisitng network - all fine. Except that now Time Machine said it couldn't find the existing backup. After trying logging out and in, etc. I eventually deleted that sparsebundle to force Time Machine to start again new.
Now I get an estimated time of 2 - 3 days for the first backup - even via ethernet cable. Sometimes it hangs up and says something like 4000 days... I can't afford to hook my MBP up to the time capsule or even stay at home for this time to let it finish, and I know it should be faster than that!
I've tried a few of the tips I found so far in the forums, such as excluding my home folder from Spotlight, or even turning Spotlight off, but nothing has helped so far. Perhaps I missed some important step on the way.
Can anyone give me a reliable step by tep method to solve this problem. I don't want a geeky workaround, I want to plug in (o better, be in my wifi network) and make the backup work like Time Machine is supposed to do it. And I would like to keep on using Spotlight, too.
Thanks in advance!
Robin

Unless you have a desktop Mac you can back up to over your network, your choices are:
Spend a bunch on a Time Capsule, kind of a waste if you already have a wireless router.
Spend $100 or so on an external HD and have some inconvenience until Iomega updates.
Risk losing all your data.
It's your call, but a no-brainer to me.
Better: get a portable external. Once you get the Iomega working, start making regular "clones" to the portable and take it off-site so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, etc.

"Permission denied" on sparsebundle after first Time Machine backup

I've been using an encrypted sparsebundle for several months. Yesterday I bought a new Apple Airport Time Capsule, and created my first Time Machine backup. Today when I double-click the sparsebundle, instead of being prompted to enter my password, I receive a Warning dialog box saying "The following disk images couldn't be opened" with the sparsebundle listed next to "Permission denied." According to Get Info, my account does have Read & Write access to the sparsebundle.
How can I get access to my 4.5 GB of encrypted data?

Thanks for the response. In my case, when I booted into my cloned backup and ran from that, I was able to open the sparsebundle normally. Then when I returned to my original system, it too worked normally. Although I'm relieved I didn't lose my data, it's all very mystifying. It particularly concerns me that no online source seems to be able to explain the nature of the error message I received!
I did repair permissions before posting here, to no avail.
So that terminal command will turn your encrypted sparsebundle into an unencrypted sparsebundle, without prompting for the password? That's alarming.

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

I used migration assn't to load a Time Machine backup onto a new mac. The first TM backup after that took some time, perhaps not surprising. But the backups thereafter have all taken hours, with huge amounts of "indexing" time. Time to reload TM?

Does every backup require lots of indexing? If so, the index may be damaged.
Try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't help, see the pink box in #D2 of the same link.

Time machine won't recognize my WD MyBook Live as a backup drive

I am having an issue with Time Machine not recognizing my 1 TB MyBook Live External Hard drive. I recently changed internet providers and have a new modem and router (motorolla modem and medialink router) and since then I can't get Time Machine to consistently recognize the backup portion of this hard drive. Every now and then, not sure why, it will recognize the drive and back it up but won't stay connected all the time. Most of the time it acts as if there is no backup drive. I checked to see when the last backup was made and it said it was made a day ago but it was while I was asleep over night. Not sure why it connected then or how. To get even more odd, it does recognize the drive because I can access all the files on the server portion of the mybook live drive. For example I have all of my iTunes library on there and run it off the drive and that works fine and recognizes everything.
I have a macbook and I'm running Snow Leopard. Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

My first TIME MACHINE backup (on a week old iMac)

Hi...I am a "NEW" Mac user/owner, and "LOOOOOVE IT". I purchased a SEAGATE GoFlex external hard drive (with FIREWIRE), to use for my TIME MACHINE backups, which was "VERY" easy to use (atleast I think). My question(s) is....
1.) Can anyone tell me, about how long the backup should have taken on a virtually "NEW" machine???
2.) It only showed my machines backup, as around 30GB....could this be possible, with all of the applications presently on my machine (FINAL CUT, APERTURE, MS OFFICE, iLIFE 2011, ADOBE CS5 MASTERS)???
3.) Does Time Machine ALSO backup your applications SERIAL NUMBERS (for restoring purposes)???
Again....this is a pretty new machine, and I purposely did'nt do much on the machine until I go the external drive, so that I could have a backup as close as possible to my machines OUT OF THE BOX state.
THANKS in advance, for any help, that anyone, can offer

FRESHADDICT235 wrote:
Oh no.....I have all my Apple software, and as for the Adobe (and any violation)....Seller clearly stated, this was not a resell of the software, but rather that it was being given FREE OF CHARGE, with the machine
I'm not questioning your integrity, but technically, it doesn't matter. Apple sells hardware but (like everybody else) licenses software (mostly as an anti-piracy measure). The people you bought the Mac from don't have the right to give software away without the original discs that come with a new Mac (and if it's really new and unused, and all on the up-and-up, why wouldn't they include them?) From the license for OSX:
"*1. General.*
The software (including Boot ROM code), documentation and any fonts accompanying this License whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the “Apple Software”) are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Computer, Inc . . ."
"*3. Transfer.*
You may not rent, lease, lend, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software. You may, however, make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (a) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts, *+original media+*, printed materials and this License; (b) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (c) the party receiving the Apple Software reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of this License." (emphasis added.)
See the full text at [http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.htm].
The licenses for most paid apps have similar provisions.
The system was never used (other than, the installation of apps, and to assure the machine had no defects), and all components (of the machine....Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor/HD) were still sealed in its factory packaging
Also irrelevant without the original discs that come with every Mac (and many paid apps).
|
But, the "Software Police" are not about to come seize (or erase) your Mac.
What's done is done; the main point is, you need the discs to be able to do some things, including those mentioned in my previous post.
Fortunately, the OSX discs aren't particularly expensive; if your Mac came with Snow Leopard, AppleCare will send a replacement set for a nominal fee. If it didn't, just buy a retail Snow Leopard disc from an Apple Store or the online Apple Store, for $29.
If you're not sure what it shipped with, AppleCare can tell you, or plug your serial number in to this site: [http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php]. It will give you all sorts of specs, including when it was built and the *Original OS* it shipped with.
You'll have to decide what you want to do about your other paid apps.

Time Machine backups onto new hard drive

My hard drive recently failed and I had it replaced. I am trying without success to restore my data using the Time Machine external drive that backed up my old hard drive. When installing Snow Leopard, it wouldn't recognize my TM drive, so I just did a regular install and updated it to 10.6.6. When I click on the external drive in the sidebar it says there is a file in it called backups.backupdb, however it says there isn't any data in there. Disk utility shows the external drive has 400gb of data on it, which is correct, but I am unable to access it.
This link: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/5.html describes how to pull data off of Time Machine, but it says both disks must have the same partition scheme - my external TM drive is APM and my comp is GUID. Is it possible to change my computer's partition scheme without causing problems in the future? Any other idea on how to pull data off of TM, even if it is manually doing it piece by piece?

Oh, that doesn't sound good. Have you tried doing this on the drive:
Repair the Hard Drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. After DU loads select your TM backup volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Check the drive again to see if the Backups.backupd folder is still empty. If so then the next thing is to see if there's anything on the drive that's now invisible. The following instructions will enable the Finder to display invisible files:
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Now if all this fails and you find nothing in the user tips, then that means trying recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

How do I restore from time machine backup onto unmounted disk drive "disk0s2?" :-(

In trying to restore my MacBook Pro after a strange freeze, I seemed to have unmounted the main disk drive. So, I have no drive on which to restore my computer using my time machine backup. What do I do now???

Give this a try:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Lion/Mountain Lion
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
See if you are able to get the partition to mount. If not select the Terminal from the Utiilities menu. At the prompt enter:
sudo mount disk0s1
Press RETURN and authenticate. Your password will not be echoed. Press RETURN again. I'm assuming you have a disk with one partition. If that's not correct, then do not use the above command.

Issues with restoring a Time Machine backup onto new Macbook Pro Retina

I recently got a new Macbook Pro Retina and I've been trying to restore a Time Machine backup made today from my old Macbook Pro laptop. I didn't restore from the first start up (foolishly, seemingly) simply because of the trivial reason of wanting to see the system all clean and new.
I've tried the Migration Assistant but it gets stuck on "looking for source..", despite having the ex.HD plugged in and double checking the existance of the backup itself on the ex.HD.
I've also tried booting the laptop up in the 'restore' mode (cmd R) and restoring from there but it sends me in a constant loop of 'this backup was from a previous model of laptop' or something to that affect. It also doesn't display the recent backups at all, only displaying those from the beginning of this year for some reason. All backups are in the same place on the ex.HD so its not an issue with locating the backups.
Really stuck on this one! Would really appreciate some help!
Thanks a lot, and merry Christmas

Yes, you can restore to another machine if needs be.

Unable to restore time machine backup onto a new hard drive

I recently bought a new hard drive for my mid-2010 white Macbook. I have kept this computer regularly backed up with time machine, but just to be sure I made sure I hooked up my external hard drive prior to changing the hard drive and made sure it was fully backed up. I checked my exceptions and saw that my system files and applications were listed, so I removed them from the exceptions list and let it back up again (it only backed up a further 60MB though, so that made me a little uneasy).
I successfully switched over the hard drive and then plugged in my external hard drive so I could do a restore from Time Machine. My external hard drive has 3 partitions: 2 time machine backups for each of my computers, and one partition for storing files that also has an old copy of 10.6 on it.
When I booted the computer, I held option, then selected Macbook TM. When it came to the window with 4 options, including disk utility and restore from time machine backup, I selected restore from Time Machine backup. When I did so it said "No OS X Backups Were Found." Why wouldn't it have backups listed if I have been consistently backing it up? How else do I do a full system backup?
Also, how can I be sure that I'm restoring this backup onto the new hard drive? It didn't prompt me to select that drive at any point, and I want to make sure I'm not overwriting the middle partition on the backup drive (or anything else).

Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
You will find that Mountain Lion stores an invisible copy of the Recovery HD. You can boot from your Time Machine backup drive by restarting with OPTION boot:
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the disk icon for your Time Machine backup drive.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.
Your computer should boot into the Recovery HD. You will be presented with a main window of options. Select the option to restore from a Time Machine backup then click on the Continue button.

Mountain lion time machine backup onto mavericks?

Hi all;
I recently had to get rid of my 2013 MBP running mountain lion. In the process, I had to to a time machine backup to an external HD to preserve my [then] current data.
Now I am replacing that computer with a brand new MBP with mavericks.
My question is– what do I need to do to get my data back on to my new machine from that backup?
Any help is appreciated!
Cheers!

Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine. Item 14 should be what you want.

How do I copy a time machine backup onto my old computer after I've replaced the hard drive?

Hi everyone,
I own a MacBook that I purchased in 2009, and it's served me very well since then; the only exception is that the hard drive suffered after I dropped the computer, and I had to replace it last month.
The old hard drive is now useless, and the new one is nearly blank, and I'd like to upload my old Time Machine contents onto my computer without losing some new files I've gained. What's the best way to do it?
Thanks!

Use Migration Assistant to move over the files from the Time Machine backup to the Mac.
Finder > Applications > Utilities > Migration Assistant

Copy my time machine files to a western digital drive

I am having trouble with my time machine and I need to copy my backups to a Western Digital Passport with Windows format - how can I do it

Create a regular storage / data drive on a new drive and transfer the files manually from within OS X, not TimeMachine.
see here how to correctly format and use such a drive as well as other options and information.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201
However if your desperate and willing to work and pay money, you can extract files from the TM sparse image with this software
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29553/back-in-time

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

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