IMac and Time Machine

Hello all,
I have a Imac ( intel ) and have connected an external usb hard drive and enabled time machine backup.
I have a lot of photos saved in Iphoto. Will the time machine application back up / save all of my photos as part of the process or will i need to do this seperately? If i do it seperately will i be able to use the same hard drive i use for time machine back up?
Thanks in advance. Any help very much appreciated.
J

It will backup your iPhoto Library that contains your photos. Individual photos would have to be saved separately in the Pictures folder.
It never hurts to have more than one backup. Consider getting a second backup drive on which you create a bootable clone as opposed to a Time Machine backup. This way you have two different backups from which you can recover files.
Basic Backup
Get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete external drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets especially for Firewire drives (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

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Connection with iMac and Time Machine VERY slow

People
For the past of couple of days the connection with my iMac and Time Capsule has gone askew. The iMac shows the wireless connection at 5GHz with a transmit rate over 200. However, internet is slow and backing up about 300mb is in its 24th hour and it's only reached 180mb.
I don't understand what may have happened. The two machines have been best mates for a long time and now something's gone wrong. The only thing I did a couple of days ago is install the Update for the Apple Magic Mouse.
On the other hand, my MacBook, which also have the Magic Mouse update, has not trouble with internet speed - wireless, once again - and the Time Machine backups are happening without a hitch.
I bit the bullet and turned off the Time Machine and rebooted it. Unfortunately, it's made no difference.
Does anybody have any suggestions?

Both your 5 GHz band and the guest band have the same SSID unless you have assigned separate names to them. I think it's much easier to identify them if they have separate names of your choice.
If you have a separate name for the guest 2.4 GHz band, click on the Airport icon at the top of your screen and then click "Join other network". The 2.4 GHz band should appear as a choice and you can connect to it.
I'm using Leopard, not Snow Leopard so I don't know if things display the same way on our operating system. If you want your computer to connect to a given network:
Click System Preferences, then Network.
Click the AirPort connection on the left and then click the Advanced button at the lower right. You can drag the network that you want your computer to connect to first to the top of the list.

Slow iMac and Time machine won't recognize iMac hard drive

I have an older iMac (2.16GHz Intel) that is upgraded to OSX10.6.7. Recently it has been running very slow (although it did not seem to correlate with any particular install that I know of). I have looked at the Activity Monitor and cannot find anything that is consuming vast amounts of memory (although I can't say that I really know what I'm looking for exactly, just no high numbers). I did a Safe Boot and it is still really slow there (EXAMPLE of slow is taking several minutes to open a program or taking 27 hours to download my pictures (which only took 13 minutes on my MacBook)). I know my iMac could use more memory (1G), but the slow problem is there even if only running one program. I can't find a particular pattern to it, it just hangs up and then comes back most of the time. It did however start shutting itself down recently. I finally got into disk utility (I've been trying to run disk utility and it usually goes into an eternal spin that I can't even force quit - have to hard boot). So from disk utility I ran verify disk in first aid - it says "the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok." I"m not sure what else I'm supposed to do in here either. So my first question is Does anyone have any other suggestions for the slowness? Second, in the meantime I'm desperately trying to back up my data on the time machine that I stupidly have never set up as a back up. I can manually put files one at a time over there, but if I try to use it as a time capsule (system preferences, time capsule on) my hard drive does not show up as one of the options???? My external drive and the data that is already on the time capsule show up, but not my iMac hard drive. So my second question is How do I get my time machine to see my hard drive or is there another way to get my files to move over there? I realize I'm in trouble, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to provide as much info as possible. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

My own response, or rather an update: I took the computer up to the Genius Bar - my hard drive is bad. They are going to try to rescue my data. For those of you reading this with a similar problem, make an appointment and go to the Apple Store if you can. Mike, my personal "genius" for this encounter, said that stressing the machine when the hard drive is going bad just risks damaging it more. If you potentially have a hardware issue, take it and let them determine what is wrong. They have tools and diagnostics most of us wouldn't know how to use if we read about them here - and they have ways of retrieving data (I hope) that most of us do not have. Please note that disk utility said my hard drive was ok, but the diagnostics they did showed that in fact my hard drive was much less than ok, but it was still "mounting" hence the disk utility reporting it was ok. It is over an hour drive for me to get to the Apple store, and I only wish I had gone sooner.

How big a hard drive do I need for iMac and Time Machine?

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere already. I am going to buy an iMac, probably the new 24" with a 320G internal HDD. I already have one Lacie external 320G HDD so I was wondering whether I can use this for Time Machine backups, or do I need to buy a bigger one? If so, how big? Is there a rule of thumb for working out how much hard drive space you need to have for Time Machine, for instance if I were to buy the 500G iMac what would I need?
thanks.

I agree with the "double the size" rule of thumb. You should also consider how much of the 320GB you are actually using and are likely to use in the next year or two. After all, it's the amount of storage you use that matters, not the size of the disk. Disks will very likely be cheaper soon. You should also keep in mind that TM deletes old archive data when it runs out of disk space. So as long as you have more disk space than you have data to back up, TM will work, though you will lose older versions of your data.
So if your 320GB drive only has 100GB used and you're not the kind of person who eats up disk like there's no tomorrow, the 320GB drive should be fine for now. If you expect that 320GB disk to be full soon then a 750GB TM disk is more like what you need.
The same logic applies to a 500GB iMac. If you only expect to use 250GB in the next year or two then a 500GB TM disk should be OK. A 1TB drive will be a lot cheaper next year or the year after.

Failing imac and time machine backup reliability?

my imac is having some issues - symptoms include 10+ minute start up time, spinning ball during simple tasks such as opening a folder, disk utility failure to repair, even disk warrior consistently froze. apps freeze. calendars disappear from ical. time machine is reporting lots of errors (viewed in console), and it's running pretty hot. plus, when i ran disk utility from the install disk, it failed as well.
so i'm bringing my imac back to the genius bar again. the initial thought from my first trip to the genius bar was the fan was failing. once they opened it up, they said it was just dusty, and after cleaning it up, assured me it would be fine.
so a few weeks later, it's acting even worse. so i called apple care again.
the apple care people first said it was something to do with the directory being very badly damaged since disk utility and repair attempts were failing and unable to complete. the most recent apple care person said the hard drive was failing since it wasn't mounting (and showed up light gray) during the most recent disk utility / repair attempt.
i bought two new external d2 quadras, and i'm in the process of making a second back-up via time machine.
console is reporting odd errors. here are a few:
CoreEndianFlipData: error 4940
unable to rebuild path cache
event store UUIDs don't match for volume: HD
Journaling is disabled on the backup destination volume
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume
my biggest question is, how reliable will these back-ups be on my external drives from time machine if there's something going on internally with the imac?
if they need to install a new hard drive, or install the OS again, and we do a restore from time machine, would the back up be reliable? on my first external, the back up initially failed. but after leaving it on for a day, and repeated attempts, it finally became successful. still with those same messages in console, but it completed the back up nonetheless.
thanks for any advice. i'm disappointed that disk warrior couldn't help, which makes me think there's something else more serious going on perhaps.
thanks for any advice.
susan

ungabunga wrote:
CoreEndianFlipData: error 4940
unable to rebuild path cache
event store UUIDs don't match for volume: HD
Journaling is disabled on the backup destination volume
Was that followed by a message about enabling it, or if you check it via Disk Utility, is it enabled now? If so, it's fine.
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume
None of those are real error messages. If the backup completes normally, it's fine (as long as you didn't exclude anything important, and as long as the iPhoto app wasn't open, as that can prevent Time Machine from backing-up the changes to your iPhoto library.)
See #A1 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum) for a handy widget that will display the backup messages from your logs.

Backing up photos on iMac using external hard drive and time machine

How do i back up photos from my imac using an external hard drive and time machine
Thanks in advance

Apple explains how to use Time Machine in http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427.
Setting up and using TM is very simple to do, connect any external HD (format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility ) and your computer shoudl ask if you want to use that EHD for a Time Machine backup. If you have any questions visit your local Apple Store or reseller and they can answer how to setup and use TM and also should be able to offer suggestions on EHDs. My personal preference is OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro due to the build quality and OWC's level of support.

HT201250 What is Airport Utility and why do I need to access this in order to backup my iMac using Time Machine...PLEASE??

What is Airport Utility and why do I need to access Airport witeless devices in order to backup my iMac using Time Machine...HELP!!! PLEASE??

AirPort Utility is required to configure an Apple AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule.
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IMac, MacBook Pro, 750GB USB Hard Drive and Time Machine

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So I have made some head way regarding this odd problem. Turns out my memory card reader is fine I think. My memory card reader will eject on the right port using a 4GB Lexar 133X professional CF card but NOT on the left USB port. However ALL 3 of my sandisk CF cards work fine in the reader on both USB ports. These 3 cards range from all different speeds from 15MB/sex to 30MB/sec. My lexar is 20MB/sec rated. Go figure!?
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http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2302617
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-PC/My-Passport-2TB-USB-3-0-keeps- randomly-disconnecting-HELP/td-p/477224

I was transferring data from my old iMac to my new iMac via Time Machine. After about 4 hours, the electrical power fluctuated and turned off my wi-fi. Now most of my necessary programs are useless. How do I erase and start over?

I was transferring data from my old iMac to my new iMac via Time Machine. After about 4 hours, the electrical power fluctuated and turned off my wi-fi. Now most of my necessary programs are useless. How do I erase that mess and start over?

Hello there, LynnS.
The following Knowledge Base article and it's referenced link should get you started with the Erase and Install of Mavericks:
OS X Mavericks: Erase and reinstall OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14243
Once you've gone through those 2 articles, this article should help you with restoring from your Time Machine Backup:
OS X Mavericks: Recover your entire system
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14185
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

Am I able to use both Carbonite and Time Machine as back-ups for my iMac?

HI,
I have a iMac, and I have recently recently completed the initial back up for Carbonite. I also have a 2TB Seagate external hard drive that I would like to use with Time Machine. I am wondering if I am able to use both Carbonite and Time Machine simultaneously.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
As bdmarsha says, yes, you can run both simultaneously.
But one caution; there are some reports here that some of the online backup apps keep some fairly large, frequently-changing files on your system. Time Machine will back them up along with everything else, which can take some extra time and space on your TM drive.
After your initial TM backup, see how large the incremental backups are (by watching the progress bar and info on the +Time Machine Preferences+ window). If those seem too large for the changes you've made since the previous backup, see #A2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for a couple of apps that will show exactly what was backed-up.
If you find such things, you can exclude them from TM backups, per #10 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I rest

I had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I restarted the computer and tried again to run Photoshop and the same error message appeared. The message was followed by a message that stated that I needed to contact Adobe technical support and mention Error: 150.30. I need Adobe technical support to provide me a solution for my problem so I can continue using my Adobe products installed on my computer.

Unfortunately when Adobe products are restored from backup, especial CS4 and especially Mac, it breaks licensing.
There is a python script included in the license recovery kit that should work if you are familiar with Terminal.
If not, you must reinstall your CS4 suite. You don't need to delete your preferences, so it should be the same as before.
Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS
Gene

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Depening on how many email accounts you have setup, it may be necessary to nuke the whole Mail folder in your User/Library.... Hard way to get it to work, but just my idea.

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I noticed on my MacBook (Leopard to Snow Leopard upgrade) that it has icons for Spaces and Time Machine in the dock to the left of the divider. These are missing from the dock on my iMac that I upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard. They are both System Preferences with no option for adding to the dock in the Preferences and the Preference icon in "Show All" in System Preferences is not selectable. I located them in System/Library/PreferencesPane but dragging the preference pane file to the dock doesn't work. I did a Show Package Content but did not see anything in the folder that could be dragged like an application. I can put it on the right with the stacks but is there a way to add a Preference to the dock on the application side?

Time Machine is in your Applications folder and Spaces is in your Applications/Utilities folder. You can drag them to the dock from there.

Windows 7 and Time Machine

I am using Windows 7 on my iMac. When I back up my iMac using Time Machine does it also back up Windows 7 and all the pc applications I have installed?

howardprice wrote:
When I back up my iMac using Time Machine does it also back up Windows 7 and all the pc applications I have installed?
no.
more in [this_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/2.html] user tip.
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JGG

IMac and Time Machine

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