I want to use Time Capsule and/or Time Machine to Mirror Two Macs

I have a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. The MBP is work-related, but I have many creative projects that I have to do on both machines. I want to have both the MB and the MBP showing exactly the same files, and updating exactly the same files, in the same fashion, even when I am working primarily on just one of the two machines.
How can I use Time Machine or Time Capsule (or both together) to synchronize my two MacBooks, so neither one is showing outdated file/folder contents?

time machine is a backup tool and time capsule is the backup destination of choice for some users. you will not be able to mirror your two Macs using TM.
you will find a wealth of information on TM on [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/Home.html] site.
another good source: _*Time Machine 101*_
an suitable alternative to TM might be ChronoSync.
happy holidays !
JGG

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I want to use time machine to backup two 4 TB drives, one USB and the other thunder bolt to 2 4TB USB drives

I have a 2012 iMac running Mavericks, booting off of a external 4TB thunderbolt drive and using a separate 4TB USB drive for my pictures. I want to back up each of the drives to two USB 4TB drives with Time Machine. I cannot seem to figure out how to have multiple sources with multiple destinations.

Hello Randy,
Try excluding the drive in Time Machine settings. Take a look at the article below to go through and remove the exclusion of the external drive so that can be backed up as well.
OS X Mavericks: Exclude items from a Time Machine backup
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14182
Regards,
-Norm G.

So I can't use NAV if I want to use Time Machine?

I just want to make sure I comprehend what I am reading on here and the internet in general: If I want to use Time Machine without lags, I need to disable Norton Auto Protect. So does that mean I can't have virus protection if I have TM in the "ON" setting?

If you want to use NAV, disable Auto-Protect during the initial Time Machine backup to speed things up for that initial backup. After that, turn Auto Protect back on if you'd like. You can judge for yourself, but I doubt you will notice any significant slowdown compared to when you had Auto-Protect turned on prior to using Time Machine.

HT201250 I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

Evetually yes.
If your pictures have been in the same location (same folder, same subfolder, ...) for more than a week, then copies if them will remain in your TM backups until it fills up. They are then vulnerable to being deleted.
If they've been there for less than a week, TM could delete them as early as a month from now. If they've been there for only a few hours, chances are TM will delete them tomorrow.
This is why TM is not the best tool to use to archive data that you will be deleting from your main hard drive. Copy them to a dedicated external drive, or burn DVDs.

Could not restore CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3

Could not restore Photoshop CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3 - the change was dictated by a power supply problem (now fixed) in my Macbook Pro - that has been fixed.

Restoring the Adobe application via Time machine is not a good practise and may cause other issues as well.
Please install the application properly rather restoring.

Just got ext HD and want to use Time Machine; questions first

I finally purchased an ext. HD with enough capacity to actually start using TM. My question is, the main reason for getting it was to back up media, mainly videos and such, things that I'd have quick access to. So, my question is, is okay to partition the drive? And if so, about how much should I allot to it? The drive is an Iomega ego and is 320GB. My iMac is a 250 GB HD with only about 100 GB's used.
Also, when I first plugged in the Iomega, it automatically took me to a Time Machine screen asking me if I wanted to use this drive for TM. I guess it's formatted for mac right out of the box. Should I click yes on this? Will it allow me to format after the fact? OR, do I need to hit "cancel" and then go into Disk Utility and set up my partition?
Many thanks. I know this is probably pretty rudimentary, but it's my first time using Time Machine.

Yes it's OK to partition a backup drive in order to use part of it for storage and the other part for TM backups. But your external drive is not large enough for both. A TM backup volume should be at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. In your case that means the TM volume should be at least 500 GBs to back up a 250 GB drive (it's really less important how much space is currently used then how much space could eventually be used.)
If I were you I would get a second larger external drive for TM backups. Or adopt a different backup strategy that does not involve using TM such as a simple cloned backup that you update periodically with backup software. This would only require a 250 GB volume on your external drive leaving about 70 GBs of a storage partition.
For backups you could use one of the following:
Backup Software Recommendations
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

How to fix podcast privileges when using time machine backup on another mac

hello,
my imac broke down the other day and is now at the menders. i had been using time machine with a LaCie 500gb external hard drive.
i am now using my macbook pro as a substitute and want to use the itunes library from my LaCie instead of copying everything over again. I have managed to achieve this by changing the library destination in itunes preferences. However, when i try to "get" the latest podcasts that usually subscribe to, it says "you do not have enough access privileges for this operation". similarly, when i try to buy anything from the itunes store, it will not let me download, giving me an error 5000 message instead. i had signed in correctly by the way. the purchased songs are still in the downloads folder but greyed out.
any advise would be much appreciated. i'm not that technically minded so please spell anything out to me!

johndave, did anyone ever respond to your post?

Using Time Machine backup from one mac to another

I had a Mac book pro running 10.7.5 and used Time Machine to backup the system. The macbook died and I want to restore the Time Machine backup to my iMac running 10.7.5.
Question 1: Is this possible and how is it done?
Question 2: Will it restore all the software and files from the macbook pro to my iMac?

It can be done without any problem and everything will be restored from the Time Machine backup.
If you want to replace the actual content of the hard drive of your iMac with the content of the Time Machine backup, press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting, choose the option to restore the Time Machine backup and follow the steps.
If you want to keep both content, use Migration Assistant to create a new user with the data of the MacBook Pro. Open Migration Assistant and follow the steps. Then, open  > Log Out, and log in the new user to access to the migrated data

Using Time Machine to setup new Mac

I have just bought a new Mac and need to take all the data for 3 users from the old one. The old Mac is backed up using Time Machine to an external 500Gb Firewire drive.
The problem is that I can't do all the data transfer in one go and due to space and time restrictions I will need to take a couple of sessions to complete all this. This is what I was thinking of doing ...
Backup old Mac using Time Machine
Create a Root account on new Mac
Log in as root and run Migration Assistant and restore user1 and user 2 and user3 from FW drive
Pack away new Mac and plug Time Machine drive back onto old Mac
Old Mac continues updating this Time Machine drive until a few days later ...
I can either just plug in the Time Machine drive to the new Mac and restore back to just after the point I was on the first installation or I could just repeat the whole thing again. There is over 300Gb of data to transfer which is why I would prefer to not have to run the whole restore again and just pick up the changes.
Thanks

Trying to mate a TM backup to a new computer is an exercise in futility, IMO. See http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1872713 for caveats upgrading a PPC (your G5) to an ICBM (Intel-chip-based Mac). SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner, Disk Utility, etc. can create a bootable backup/clone of your existing system to an external, bootable FireWire (recommended)/USB 2 external HD (usable with the new machine, but won't boot the old one, and is about 40% slower than FW). Once that's finished and tested to ensure it looks and acts as the original, just walk it over to the new machine, boot it up, and use the Migration Assistant to move your stuff, as described in the above link.
What I just did with a new 24"iMac and transfer stuff from a G4 (which was running Leopard) was to initially boot the machine, enter the same username/password combo, internet settings, and finish up. When the machine pops up the Desktop, Software Update will run an offer a host of updates. DON'T install them, but go to System Preferences, launch SU, and disable its auto-check and install option. That comes later. Then, I manually transferred my G4's user folder to the iMac's Desktop. Next, I started moving stuff from that folder into its appropriate places in the new user's folder. For instance, I replaced the current login.keychain with the former (thus bringing over all previously saved username/password combos), replaced the new Safari folder with the old (preserving all bookmarks, history, etc.), replaced the cookies.plist in Cookies, all preference files (except those in the ByHosts subfolder), merged everything in the other Library folders, mergee\d the Documents, Desktop, Music,Movies, and Pictures folders.
Launched System Preferences and opened each prefPane, checking and modifying as necessary. Note that one significant change is the mouse—the iMac ships with a Mighty Mouse, which has many new functions over the previous single-button mouse. Once that was finished, I restarted, repaired permissions, launched Safari to ensure it workedjust like the old versioni, checked e-mail (I use Eudora), and when I was satisfied everything was working as intended, I made another clone, so I could forego the previous if something went wrong. Note that many Dock icons will showup as plain files with a question mark (since you haven't installed the missing 3rd-party items—just ignore that—but they will identify what they should be pointing to.
After recloning, launched Software Update and let it install everything, except the Time Machine and Airport updates, since I don't use them, and repaired permissions. After ensuring that everything worked as expected, I updated the second clone, launched the Migration Assistant.app, only selected applications, and migrated them. Next, I replaced the ? Dock icons with their real aliases, launched each to ensrure they worked, restarted, and did one more permissions repair.
The only complication I ran across was that QuickTime lost its Pro registration information, so I had to putit back in. About the only thing that ran on my old machine under Tiger runs under Leopard, but I've been updating them for the past 20 months while beta-testing Leopard. AppleWorks 6.2.9, Quicken 2005-07, Eudoira 5.2.1, MS Office 2004, TurboTax 07, and just about everything except Unsanity's haxies (nonbetas) runs under Leopard.

Using time machine to backup my mac to external harddrive as well as backing up a second seperate harddrive to another external hard drive???

Hey Guys, i currently have time machine backing up everything on my 2011 imac to an external harddrive, which is working fine! No problems there.
As a photographer, i currently have two seperate harddrives. Harddrive (A) - All projects/files, & Harddrive (B) - Backup of Harddrive (A) with all projects/files.
What i'm wanting is for time machine to continue backing up my i mac as usual to the external harddrive, whilst also backing up the contents of Harddrive (A) to Harddrive (B) at the same time without backing up everything on my imac
Is this possible to do??
Hope you understood what i meant easily! haha
Cheers
Leslie

Sorry Leslie but time machine cant do what you are asking for, however there are free apps like backuplist+ that can sync Harddrive to Harddrive, the app can be found here

Sharing a Time Machine backup between two Macs

Hi
So I was running my music production software on a first gen Mac Mini. I would store all of my project files on an external drive and backup that external drive to a second external drive using Time Machine. I had Time Machine set so that it excluded everything on the Mac Mini except my original external drive.
Now I've stepped up to the latest and the greatest Macbook Pro 15 inch. I'm running the same music production software on it and loading up all my files from the same external drive. When I go to back it up with Time Machine, it wants to start a separate backup for the Macbook Pro, even though it is only backing up the same stuff from the Mac Mini. The thing is that there aren't any system specific files being backed up, just my project files. For the life of me I can't get it to continue the original backup. I plan on using both Macs for music production and plan on using the same drive for both. I would like to back up every time I finish a session on either computer.
Is there anyway I can get Time Machine on each computer just continue one backup??
I know I can access the backup from each computer by "Browsing Other Time Machine Disks", but I want to backup, not restore.
If not, is there any other software you can recommend? Although I would hate to lose the backups that I already do have...
Thanks!
jg

That's probably a good option for you. It's not easy to keep a 3 way sync.
If you really want to keep certain files synced on your Mac Mini, you might want to look at ChronoSync. It appears it's a good backup-sync program. Don't know if will keep synced between the 2 computers and external drive without a little manuel effort, but would be easy to sync at least 2 devices, such as MacBook to Mac Mini, or MacBook to external.
If you don't need to keep synced files, then best option is to do a full TM backup of both computers. Since you have 2 externals, use one for each. You can still use TM to access files if you need, and if you have a hard drive failure, it's an easy replace drive and restore the whole computer from TM.
And don't overlook the option of File Sharing between the 2 computers to access each others files or a shared folder. That's a real easy way just to copy a few files when you need them.
Anyway, Good Luck and Happy Holidays

I want to use time machine on a network drive

i know in the past Apple holds us hostage to buy their time capsule. With Lion now launched, is there a work around to allow families to buy there own hard drive and use it for multiple macs for time machine?
Im fairly new to Mac, convinced my wife to switch, now here we are held captive to buy a TC when we already have a fantastic 2TB drive we purchased for a fraction of the price of a TC. I dont care about wifi, I just want to save our Mini time machine to our MBP networked drive (or vice versa).
I currently have Lion on the MBP, and Leopard on the Mini. After installing and hating Lion on my MBP, i have not "upgraded" the mini. (although I am currently following the "upgrade back to Leopard" threads)
Thanks for any help or ideas.

In the past Apple was not holding you hostage by requiring you to use a Time Capsule for network Time Machine backups. Search on Google for Time machine NAS OS X (or something like that) You will find a number of drives that were working with SL.
Now, they did change the file protocol in Lion, so some of the NAS servers won't work with Lion, at the moment. So long as it is a decent company that makes the NAS they should be releasing a firmware update to get their NAS working with Lion.
One of the companies that put out a press release was Western Digital. They said they would be working on an updated firmware so that you could use it as a Time Machine drive.
Just look around the interwebs and I am sure you will find several that will work.

Want to use Time Machine as wireless back up only - no internet

Im searching everywhere and unable to locate how to set up my TM as a wireless back up only. Im already hooked up to the internet and only want to use the backup feature in TM. Can someone give me directions or point me to the thread? thanks

Welcome to the discussion area!
By TM, I take it that you mean Time Capsule, correct?
If you want to backup using wireless only to the Time Capsule, you have two basic configuration choices to consider:
1) Connect the Time Capsule to your existing wireless router using an ethernet connection, and turn off the wireless on the Time Capsule. Backups will occur over your current wireless network. For most users, this is the easiest and most reliable way to configure a Time Capsule for back ups.
2) Configure the Time Capsule to "join a wireless network". In this configuration, the Time Capsule can be located virtually anywhere that it can receive a good wireless signal because it becomes in effect, only a wireless backup device.
Configuring the Time Capsule to "join" a wireless network can be quite tricky, even for experienced users because you must know the exact type of security the wireless network is using. It sounds simple, but different manufacturers use different names for the same thing, and it can be a challenge to get the device configured correctly without multiple tries. If you already have an Apple main router, this will be much easier to configure.
Post back for more details.
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

I want to use Time Machine to restore from one IMAC to a different IMAC. How do I do that?

I use Time Capsule to back up two different IMACs. I want to use the back up from machine A to restore machine B.
When I am on machine B I can't see the back up on machine A. How do I do this?

Look at Q16.
The whole 14-17 is good to read so you understand what you are doing.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Want to use Time Machine but my external HDD is NTFS formatted

Discussions suggest install NTFS ng but download failed (I'm on satellite broadband)...I need to backup my Macbook before installing Bootcamp and then I can use Windows on my Mac. I'm a new mac user and have just switch platforms. I don't want to loose the data on my Mac OR format the external HDD which is the backup of my previous WIN machine.
What is best plan.. <?> get a new HDD to exclusively Time machine to OR install Bootcamp and hope for the best...?

Lancer 10 wrote:
Discussions suggest install NTFS ng but download failed (I'm on satellite broadband)...
It's only 4 MB. Perhaps you should try again. If your satellite broadband can't handle that, perhaps you need something better, like 3G or dialup.
What is best plan.. <?> get a new HDD to exclusively Time machine to OR install Bootcamp and hope for the best...?
Time Machine requires HFS+ to work. It will create an HFS+ disk image when used with a server. For an external hard drive, I suggest you partition it into 2 volumes, one being HFS+ and the other NTFS.

I want to use Time Capsule and/or Time Machine to Mirror Two Macs

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