I'm afraid Time Machine use to crash hard drives

Now it happened again - this time a Time Machine partion on my Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB external drive is damaged.
I can see Backups.backupdb but can't copy it on another hard drive. Restore is also impossible. There's no owner, the error message says. And the partition is marked as unwritable.
Since I use Time Machine this is the second hard drive with troubles.
Am I the only one with this problem?
Cheers

Vanderhellen wrote:
Thanks for this hint. I wouldn't have written in this forum if I haven't tried all possibilities.
You'd be surprised how rare that is!
What errors did DU find that it couldn't fix?
My Mac is running on a german system - so maybe the words are not exactly the same as in the english version after my translation.
First error message was shown like "Disk utility can't repair, save your data immediately" - so I've tried to copy the database to another volume - which failed. In the meantime the disk is writeprotected and the error messages says: "can't copy because there is no owner".
That sounds like the messages here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275?viewlocale=de_DE
I can usually figure out which is which by comparing the English version and picking out the handful of German words I know, but this one seems to be arranged differently than the English version. See if what you're seeing in German is the rough equivalent of +"The disk (volume name) was not repairable by this computer. it is being made available to you with limited functionality. You must back up your data and reformat the disk as soon as possible."+
If so, then your backups are corrupted and your disk may be failing.
You can't copy TM backups via the Finder in Leopard anyway, and if they're corrupted, you probably can't copy them with the Restore tab of Disk Utility either.
If you have a heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app like +Disk Warrior+ (version 4.1.1 or later), it might be able to repair them. If you don't, it's probably not worth the expense (DW is about $100 U.S.) to get it just for this.
You might be able to reformat the drive and let TM start over, but even if that works, I don't think I'd trust my backups to it if I were you.
The whole disaster seems to be a physical problem. Somebody in another forum is talking about that Time Machine prevents the parking of the heads - head crashes are more likely.
Rubbish. Since Time Machine runs hourly at most, the drive isn't used most of the time. And if you'd had a head crash, the disk would be totally unusable -- DU wouldn't even see it.

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How do I retrieve data from a 500 GB Time Machine used as external hard drive?

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You can then set things back to the way you want them. You should have more than one back up as hard drives do fail. In this case, you could use a clone and keep it on the WD drive.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
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i am using for first time the time machine and an external hard drive because I want to erase my macbook and start from zero files. Am i keeping my files in the portable hard disk when I will connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will erase all?
I would like to know if after I erase all my data, empy hard drive inside the macbook, the time machine will erase all my files that I have saved in my "WD "My passport" external hard drive

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Time Machine has to erase the external disk in order to make backups. Before setting Time Machine up, copy the files of your external disk to the hard disk of the Mac in order not to lose them, and then, set up Time Machine. The first backup will start automatically.
If you want more information about Time Machine, read the Pondini's site > http://pondini.org

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I have been using a Mac Mini running 10.6.8 for years as a media server. I have always been very careful to maintain backups of everything, and the inevitable did happen - the hard drive containing all my media did fail.
To clarify my set up, my Mac Mini internal hard drive is insufficient to store all my media, so I have been using an external 2TB drive to store it. I then set up Time Machine to back up both the Mac Mini and the 2TB external drive to a second 3TB external drive. Now that the 2TB drive with my media has failed, I seem to be having problems restoring all the media from 3TB drive. This is because the Time Capsule interface is designed to display finder windows at various points in time so you can go back to when your missing files existed and restore them. The problem is that I need the entire contents of the dead 2TB drive restored to a new drive, but I can't open a Time Capsule window that shows the contents of the old drive. I have tried opening /Volumes in a finder window, then invoking Time Machine, but my dead hard drive does not show up in the list of volumes. When I open the 3TB drive in a Finder window I can clearly see that it has backups of the 2TB drive, but they are spread out among 83 different snapshots of various dates.
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This web site might answer all of your Time machine questions:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Ciao.

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I'm planning on selling my computer but want everything that is on my Mac saved so when I can afford to buy a new computer I will have all of my files, music, pictures, etc. I hooked up Time Machine to an external hard drive last night. So everything should be saved to the external hard drive now right?...will I be able to open any of those files on another computer using my external hard drive that has my backup on it? For example, if I have my resume as one of the files can I plug in my hard drive that has my Time Machine back up on it to open edit and resave the file? Or am I better of manually saving the files to the external hard drive without using Time Machine?
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How Do I use my time machine as an external hard drive?

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http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/
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When you have it configured on the network, you can use the Finder to copy/paste or drag/drop files from your Mac to the Time Capsule disk.

Using Time machine with an external hard drive and AEBS???have a

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I have connected to my AEBS by USB. Recently upgraded to Leopard but cannot get time machine to see my hard drive.
The base station is 802.11n.
Is this possible?
Have read a few other threads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks,
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In addition, when you get Time Machine to be able to see your external drive connected to AEBS, in TM prefs exclude all but one small folder from your hard drive (say, /User/Library) and allow TM to do its initial backup. This will create the sparsebundle (resizable disk image) that TM uses to back up to a network drive.
Then turn off Time Machine, unmount the USB drive and reconnect it directly to your Mac, mount it, set TM prefs to use the sparsebundle that newly-mounted drive, remove previously excluded items from TM's exclusion list, and turn TM back on. TM will then back up everything much more quickly than if connected wirelessly.
After that, you can return the USB drive to the AEBS. Incremental backups take much less time, so the slower connection won't matter as much.

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Can you use time machine on a networked hard drive?

See if this helps: Using Time Machine with a networked hard drive

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This is my current setup for my 1tb usb hard drive:
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I am prompted to enter in my encryption password for the 15" time machine on my 11".
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Best I can say is to try it. Plug the drive into the Time Capsule, ensure it's shared on the network, and then try and set it as a backup target from a machine in the Time Machine backup panel (you'll need to ensure it's mounted first). If it works, you're all set.

HT1553 DO I HAVE TO HAVE THE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION DISCS IF MY HARD DRIVE IS REPLACED BUT I MADE A BACK UP WITH TIME MACHINE TO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ?

I have an imac from late 2009 and received an email saying the seagate hard drive may fail and apple is going to replace it free of charge. I will back up using time machine to an external hard drive but do I absolutely have to have the original installation CD's or is there a way around this to restore the computer once they replace the hard drive??

Yes, you can partition your 2TB drive that way. In fact, I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions: one for a SuperDuper! clone of my Snow Leopard partition, one to clone my Lion partition, and one larger partition for Time Machine (which only backs up the Lion partition).
I would expect the authorized reseller to have a complete set of OS X disks.

HT4413 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, only some files and applications and setting are transferred, not all of them. In my latest back up I have them all. How can I fix that?

When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.

sohs wrote:
When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.
If you want to use Time Machine to recover the contents of one of its a backups to a new drive, follow the instructions in Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering your entire system. Note that you must select the "Restore System From Backup" option from the Utilities menu of the Installer disc to do this.
Also note that if you are transferring files to a hard drive to be used with a different computer, you should use Migration Assistant instead. This intentionally will not copy everything because some settings, applications, etc. are not compatible computer-to-computer. Migration Assistant will copy everything that is.

HT201250 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ?

When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ? I need time machine to migrate the latest back-up. Should I delete the older back-ups ?

As noondaywitch says, it should use the latest backup.
Where are your backups (external HD, Time Capsule, etc.)?
It sounds like there are two separate sets, and you're not connected to the right set.

HT3275 Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough

Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups. I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer. How can I erase old backups and complete this one?

Walter Goodman wrote:
Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If that doesn't clear it up, how much data is on your Mac? If TM is only trying to back-up 34 GB, it should be able to delete old backups to do that (assuming you're running Lion).
It sounds like your backups may be corrupted. Try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I recently added memory, which may confuse Time Machine into thinking it is a new computer.
If that's all you did, no.
How can I erase old backups and complete this one?
Just erase the drive per #1 or #2 of Using Disk Utility.

Does Time Machine backup other external hard drives?

I am using a Seagate 500 GB to backup my data. Will Time Machine backup another external hard drive on which I store my iMovie projects? If so, how do I access them in the Time Machine mode? Thanks in advance.

nachdenki wrote:
strange, my external HDs were added to the exception list automatically. maybe because they wouldn't fit on the time machine volume.
It seems to depend on when the drives were connected. When you first turn Time Machine on, it only excludes the TM drive itself, and any drives not formatted HFS+.
If you connect a drive later on, that drive will be excluded automatically.

I'm afraid Time Machine use to crash hard drives

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