Keeping the Time Machine moving

My Time Machine says its still backing up but the progress bar isn't moving.
Backgroud: Confessions first. I don't have a time capsule. I have a 4TB drive attached to my Airport Extreme that I use for my Time Machine Backups. My Mac Mini has two external hard drives attached via USB and the Mac Mini is physically connected via Ethernet cable to my Airport Extreme base station. I am performing the initial backup. The data I've selected for backup totals about 3TB.
The Problem: Whenever I return to the computer after 4-6 hours absence I find that the backup has stalled. My energy saver settings say to never put the hard drives to sleep, but I suspect that only applies to the internal drive. I suspect that the externals are going to sleep after a couple hours and so the backup stalls. When I return I have to access files on the external USB drives connected to my Mac Mini to "wake them up" and when I hear them spool up suddenly the status bar starts creeping along again. How do I keep my drives awake and engaged so that my backup can continue without my frequent involvement?
In case you ask why I've connected the 4TB drive to the AEBN instead of directly to my mini via USB, the answer is: because I want the benefits of a Time Capsule with a larger drive. I want my other computers to have the ability to backup to it wirelessly as well.

Is TM no fun for rebuilding a drive just because its slow? Or is it not really a reliable backup agent? My externals have my iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes libraries which do change several times a month.
What's your opinion of the "Copy" tool in Drive Genius 3 compared to CCC? Is CCC really worth another $40?
TM is slow and is both unreliable at times and difficult to get it to rebuild a single drive.
Copy tool in Drive Genius 3 I have never used.. if it is not a backup software then you still need something that will do incremental backups.
Last question. I followed this blog post on how to back up wirelessly using an airport extreme base station (I have the first gen N model).
It might work perfectly.. for a few months.. then corrupt itself and die.. you set it up again.. and it does the same thing.. in a few months it dies.. over and over and over.. it is not reliable.
Read the TM expert's opinion.. and do as you see fit.. if you think Pondini is wrong.. go ahead and use AE with USB drive. Lots of people have bet all their data against Pondini being right.. and lost.. you might be the one who wins the lottery.. do you want to risk it??
http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html
And if you want something cheaper you can certainly look around at line level tools like rsync.. it is an exceptional tool.. if you can only figure out how to script it or write the commands properly.. I have tried and failed.. but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try again.. just i am old enough (too old to tear my little remaining hair out over command line tools) that $40 doesn't mean that much.
http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/mac_rsync.html

Similar Messages

Malignant secondary boot device. When I plug in an external hard drive which has time machine in one partition and a secondary boot device in another, the secondary boot takes over and wipes existing files. How do I turn it off but keep the time machine

Please help new (senior) convert to Mac Pro (OS X). Am following the 'switching to a Mac' portable genius 2nd ed, and as it advised, I bought an external hard drive (a Mac My Word) and partitioned it with one partition for a secondary boot device and another for time machine. Book implied I needed both. Seemed to download OK but now when i plug in the external hard-drive it wants to reboot me fresh all over again. How do I keep the time machine partition going but have the secondary boot device only in case of emergencies? Do I 'eject' that partition- and if so how do I do it from outside the hard drive (I am not game to reattach it currently)

Launch the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu) and select the Startup Disk preference pane. Set your internal drive as the startup disk. Close the window.

I have moved to rural Texas USA and have Exede satellite internet (only source available). A time machine is connected to the Exede satellite box. Besides the time machine I have one Airport Express. Both devices show function. Daily lose internet service

I have moved to rural Texas USA. Only ISP is Exede, a satellite service. I connect with a time machine and an Airport Express. Daily service gets dropped and requires disconnecting and reconnecting the time machine to the satellite box. The dealer is working the problem without success. He is not very familiar with Apple products. Any solutions?

You are going to need to do a few things. And there might not be a simple resolution at all.
I would ring the ISP again and ask if they support any routers.. because in the end, replacing the router might cost you $100 but save a lot of pain. You can keep the extreme for wireless connections to those devices that work ok with it.
I would also note, the issue might not be extreme but Mountain Lion.
Do a search .. many people have experienced issues with the wifi refusing to join when it wakes. I have experienced it myself. There was no problem with the wireless.. it was some sleep issue in the laptop.
But one thing I would do, on the last screen shot you gave me..
Where the ip range is 10.0
Please change that to 192.168
Because of the private addressing used by the ISP.. you will run into issues with routing.
When you change the value.. you will need to then reboot everything.. and everything will change to 192.168.1.x addressing. This is important.
Secondly, change wireless names to all meet the lowest common denominator.. ie SMB protocol.
So names that are short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.
I recommend you change all names to that spec.
C9 here gives some more info for why this is important, although the specific issue is different.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Thirdly I want you to install 5.6 utility unless you are running Snow Leopard or Lion still this is a bit tricky. But only 5.6 can access the Extreme's log. Also you can see the actual wireless connection graphs.
All of this was chucked away with v6.
How to load 5.6 into ML.
1. Download 5.6 for Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Click to open the dmg but do not attempt to install the pkg.. it won't work anyway.
2. Download and install unpkg.
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
Run unpkg on the desktop.. it is very simple.. drag the AirPortUtility56.pkg file over to unpkg.. and it will create a new directory of the same name on the desktop.. drill down.. applications utilities .. there lo and behold is Airport utility 5.6 .. drag it to your main utilities directory or just run it from current location.
You cannot uninstall 6.1 (now 6.2 if you updated) so don't try.. and you cannot or should not run them both at the same time.. so just ignore the toyland version.. the plastic hammer.. and start using 5.6.. a real tool.
For screen shots see this post.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4668746?tstart=0

HT201250 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. do i keep my files in the portable hard disk when I connect it again with the macbook or the time machine will era

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

I created an album from photos taken off three different cameras. I am sorting the photos manually and when I close iPhoto, the photos move back either by date or by camera import time. How can I keep the photos from moving around?

I created an album from photos taken off three different cameras. I am sorting the photos manually and when I close iPhoto, the photos move back either by date or by camera import time. How can I keep the photos from moving around?

Don't tell us, tell them
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html is the place for feature requests and feedback

HT201250 I had turned off the time machine auto back up and now when I try to turn it back on it keeps looking for a disk even though the time capsule is shown, do I have to set it up again as an initial?

I have been using the time capsule to back up both my iMac and recently added MacAir, it has been working fine but recentlky I had turned the time machine off on the Macair and now when I try to turn it back on it keeps looking for a disk even if I select the time capsule. Do I have to start the backup for the Macair as a new backup?

That happened to my brother earlier. He went into Facebooand then into another app and the same thing happened. he ended up having to restore it. Mine stayed with the Apple logo for a bit but its back to normal after pressing the buttons a million times. I hope you get your problem sorted. Goodluck!

Why does my Mac Mini keep crashing when I try backing up to the Time Machine?

I have a Seagate Barracuda internal harddrive stuck in an external enclosure. I have formatted the harddrive to meet with the Mac's standards. I am trying to backup using the Time Machine feature and the computer has crashed three times so far. Is there something I can do? It is getting aggravating.

Alright, the computer just crashed again and this is the error report log that was generated. If need be, I will post the other 3 or 4 from last night to now:
Interval Since Last Panic Report: 693 sec
Panics Since Last Report:          1
Anonymous UUID:
Sun Mar 24 12:14:23 2013
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff8021e43dae): "a freed zone element has been modified in zone: kalloc.256"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.22.13/osfmk/kern/zalloc.c:219
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff81f38eb330 : 0xffffff8021e1d626
0xffffff81f38eb3a0 : 0xffffff8021e43dae
0xffffff81f38eb3e0 : 0xffffff8021e435f2
0xffffff81f38eb4c0 : 0xffffff8021e245ed
0xffffff81f38eb4f0 : 0xffffff8022159e20
0xffffff81f38eb520 : 0xffffff8021ed76d2
0xffffff81f38ebd80 : 0xffffff8021ed8dec
0xffffff81f38ebf50 : 0xffffff80221e063a
0xffffff81f38ebfb0 : 0xffffff8021ecdd23
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: backupd
Mac OS version:
12D78
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 12.3.0: Sun Jan 6 22:37:10 PST 2013; root:xnu-2050.22.13~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID:
Kernel slide:     0x0000000021c00000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff8021e00000
System model name: Macmini5,1 (Mac-8ED6AF5B48C039E1)
System uptime in nanoseconds: 905838718889
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How can I delete all the Time Machine backups to make room for more? And how do I force the trash to empty?

I moved a bunch of my husband's files from his Macbook (which is dieing) to my iMac. I created a user for him on my iMac so he'd be able to keep his stuff separate from mine. All is working great except my Time Machine is now unable to backup. The total of used space on my hard drive (including the recently added user's files) is about 420 GB. The amount of capacity of my external hard drive is 999GB. I think Time Machine failed because there was all of a sudden so much more data and a new full backup would be more than the unused capacity of the HD? Regardless I don't need any old backups. I have all my files and all his files. So I moved all the backups from the external HD to the trash. Apparently that's a no no. I can't fully empty the trash now and that is making my iMac crazy slow.
1) Can anyone tell me how to force the trash to empty?
2) Is there a way to delete the whole external HD and start over with a new full backup via Time Machine? In Disk Utility I try to erase the partition and get an error "Volume Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk." Then I try to Unmount it and get another "Unmount failed. The disk Backup iOmega could not be unmounted. Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk." I turned off Time Machine and tried again but with the same errors.
The external HD is called iOmega. It only connects to the iMac with USB. Any help is much appreciated!!!!

Try this instead:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup volume from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
4. Click on the Erase button.
You will need to reconfigure Time Machine preferences for the backup.
FYI: Never remove Time Machine backup data except through the Time Machine application. If you aren't sure about using Time Machine then visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things related to Time Machine.

Changing Boot Drives and Keep Your Time Machine History

A problem with Time Machine is that it is specific to the target and backup drives. Change one or the other and TM will want to do a new full backup. If you don't have enough space, it will delete your old backups. HOWEVER, this is a way to install a new boot (or other) drive that TM is backing up and get it to pick up where it left off doing incremental backups. This is extremely helpful if you change your boot drive. In my case, I moved from a HDD to an SSD but wanted to keep my history intact. TIme Machine "knows" which drive to backup based on the UUID (unique drive identifier) so merely changing the name of the drive in the Finder won't do it. You need to change the UUID in the latest backup of TM.
Note: This is not for the faint of heart or technically challenged. It also requires a mild knowledge of unix or at least the ability to follow instructions TO THE LETTER! You will change the UUID from the Latest Backup in Time Machine from the "old" drive to the "new" drive thus tricking TM into thinking the new drive is the old drive and it will continue to do incremental backups of the new drive. The technique described below was originally developed under OS 10.5 (and posted on the MAC OS HINTS 10.5 blog but I have just used it under Snow Leopard. It might work for newer OSs but I haven't tried them. I actually did 2 things: 1) Installed a larger TM drive and 2) installed a SSD as a boot drive. I will post under a different title to provide information on installing a larger TM drive since putting that information here may be confusing.
You will need 2 Unix commands: xattr and fsaclctl. xattr is included in OS 10.6 Unix shell but fsaclctl is not. You will have to get fsaclctl from a version of OS 10.5 using the techniques described in the article posted below. I had an old 10.5 disc and found it in: /sbin/fsaclctl at the root directory of my 10.5 hard drive. I also performed the technicque described below logged in as root but this may merely logged in as an administrotor.
** How to change your boot (or any other) drive and get Time Machine to just pick up where it left off doing incremental backups and not do a full backup of the new drive:
1) Turn OFF Time Machine
2) Install the new drive
3) Clone the old drive to the new drive (in my case HDD -> SSD) using SuperDuper, CarbonCopyCloner or even Disk Utility
4) Make sure you have both xattr and fsaclctl commands installed
5) Open Terminal
6) Follow the instructions here:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789&query=time+machine +new+disc
Note: you may need to use the command switch "l" (the letter l) to see the ascii version of the UUID
sudo xattr -l com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID my_partition
Note: Unix uses spaces (white space) as delimiters and is always case sensitive so if you have spaces in the name of your drives, you MUST put the drive name in quotation marks:
if the drive name is: My HDD then to list the contents of the drive in Unix would use the command ls thus:
> ls "My HDD"
will list the contents of My HDD
(the command: > ls My HDD (without quotation marks) will produce an error - no such file or directory)
When you've followed the above procedure and turned Time Machine back on, the first time TM may warn you that the disc has been changed and "someone may be trying to trick your computer" into using the new drive. Answer: do the backup
I wish I could take credit for this brilliant technique but I just followed it and it worked for me. I also read the entire thread before starting.

The two drives are handled as separate drives, even if they have the same name.
In essence, the old backups are from a drive that's no longer connected; see #E3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Can't switch the time machine off!

Hi everyone,
At the advice of a friend I've turned my external hard drive into the time machine, but I don't want to do this, I just want it as an external plae where I can store music. I tried to switch it off by going to timemachine and then moved the switch to off, but for some reason everytime I plug my external hard drive in, it keeps showing up as the time machine. Does anyone know why?

Use Disk utility to erase the drive. When it remounts you will get a dialogue box asking if you want to use the drive as a TM backup. Simply decline.

Limiting the Time Machine's Time Capsule space

Hi all,
So I've searched through numerous threads and can't seem to find a good answer for this. I'm fairly new to Mac BTW, with a late 2012 MBA running 10.8.3. I want to limit the space on my Time Capsule for the Time Machine to use. I've already tried this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7mSizqUSI
Got to the end and it says my Time Machine Backup is out of 2TB (which is my Time Capsule size) instead of the 2GB I set the image file to. I also tried this and it wouldn't let me - it says whatever size I set it to is too small:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTaNMkmQUEk
So I guess the question is, is there a way to do this without having to repartition my Time Capsule? I have data on my Time Capsule, and as I understand it, I will lose this data if I partition it now...? Maybe that's not true? If it's not, than can someone tell me how?
Second question:
I recently had to restore from a backup because of an SSD failure (thankfully Apple replaced it under warranty). I restored earlier this week. I moved this old sparsebundle to a new folder on my Time Capsule. Then I backed up using a new sparsebundle using the trick in the first youtube link above (which, like I said, didn't work). My question is - why is this new backup smaller (26GB) than my old backup (29GB). I know for a fact that I haven't deleted 3GB worth of stuff in the last couple days or so, and have actually added files. Strange...?
Thanks for your help!

Hi.
The best Time Machine info outside Apple can be found here.
You cannot partition the Time Capsule's internal drive, but in Mountain Lion you should be able to limit the size of the sparsebundle containing your backups, and it is also possible to create a disk image on the Time Capsule's drive.
Pondini advises TM needs 2 to 3 times the size of the data to be backed up (2GB is definitely too small). But I have found that 1.5 times is enough for more than a year's worth of backup data. However, my strategy is to also maintain an Archive drive to which I move inactive files (like finished projects), and I keep a clone of that Archive drive separately from TM.
Thus, I use TM solely for the ability to restore my startup drive (some or all) if necessary, and "historical archives" are maintained separetly. I have a 500GB Time Capsule as backup for about 260GB of current data (everything on my startup dtive except Downloads folder).

I am trying to get space on an external hard drive which has some old time machine back up files that I do not need but can not eliminate, even by going into the time machine, clicking on the backup file to be eliminated and using the drop down eliminate

I am trying to get space on an external hard drive which has some old time machine back up files that I do not need but can not eliminate, even by going into the time machine, clicking on the backup file to be eliminated and using the drop down menu with the gear box symbol to eliminate

I cannot find this 300GB "Backup" in the Finder, only in the Storage info when I check "About This Mac".
You are probably using Time Machine to backup your MacBook Pro, right? Then the additional 300 GB could be local Time Machine snapshots. Time Machine will write the hourly backups to the free space on your hard disk, if the backup drive is temporarily not connected. You do not see these local backups in the Finder, and MacOS will delete them, when you make a regular backup to Time Machine, or when you need the space for other data.
See Pondini's page for more explanation: What are Local Snapshots? http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I have restarted my computer, but the information remains the same. How do I reclaim the use of the 300GB? Why is it showing up as "Backups" when it used to indicate "Photos"? Are my photos safe on the external drive?
You have tested the library on the external drive, and so your photos are save there.
The local TimeMachine snapshot probably now contains a backup of the moved library. Try, if connecting your Time Machine drive will reduce the size of your local Time Machine snapshots.

I want to set up the Time Machine and I would love to use the Time Capsule but since I already have a wireless router I need suggestions on what other external disks Apple could recommend to use with the Time Machine and how to configure that disk

I want to set up the Time Machine and I would love to use the Time
Capsule but since I already have a wireless router I need suggestions on
what other
external disks Apple could recommend to use with the Time Machine and
how to configure that disk.
A complication that I need to resolve is the fact that I am using Vmware
Fusion to be able to use Windows on my Mac. Now it seems that Time
Machine is not backing up my files
on that virtual Windows without additional configuration and my question
is whether you can advise me here or whether this is only a matter for
the Fusion virtual machine.

If you want to use Time Capsule you can.. you simply bridge it and plug it into the existing router.. wireless can be either turned off or used to reinforce the existing wireless.. eg use 5ghz in the TC which is much faster than your 2.4ghz.
You can also use a NAS.. many brands available but the top brands are synology, qnap and netgear readynas series. These will all do Time Machine backups although how well always depends on Apple sticking to a standard. There are cheaper ones.. I bought a single disk zyxel which was rebadged and sold through my local supermarket. It actually works very well for TM at least on Snow Leopard. Major changes were made in Lion and again ML so do not instantly think it will work on later versions. I haven't tried it yet with those versions.
Any external drive can be plugged into the mac. Use the one with the fastest connection or cheapest price according to your budget. USB2 drives are cheap and plentiful. But no where near as fast as USB3 or FW800. So just pick whichever suits the ports on your Mac. Interesting Apple finally moved to USB3 on their latest computers.
TM should exclude the VM partition file.. it is useless backing it up from Mac OS side.. and will slow TM as it needs to backup that partition everyday for no purpose.. TM cannot see the files inside it to backup just the changes.
You need to backup windows from windows. Use MSbackup to external drive.. if you have pro or ultimate versions you can backup to network drive. But MSbackup is a dog.. at least until the latest version it cannot restore the partition without first loading windows. There are about a zillion backup software versions for windows.. look up reviews and buy one which works for you. I use a free one Macrium Reflect which does full disk backups and is easy to restore.. to do incremental backups though you have to pay for it.

HT201250 Is there a possibility to recover erased files from an external hard drive that was reformatted by the Time Machine?

Is there a possibility to recover erased files from an external hard drive that was reformatted by the Time Machine?

Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
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. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
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.

I am using I Photo 9.2.3 with OS 10.6.8 When I upgraded to current I photo some of my Iphoto books i put together disappeared. Cant find them anywhere, including in the time machine...I photo cant open older files...How can a find th book entitled "Mom"

I am using I Photo 9.2.3 with OS 10.6.8 When I upgraded to current I photo some of my Iphoto books i put together disappeared. Cant find them anywhere, including in the time machine...I photo cant open older files...How can a find the book entitled "Mom" ? Does Apple keep ordered books on file?

Apple keeps books for a short time (used to be 40 days. I've not seen a recent time frame)
What version did you have?
Books do nor exist except in the iPhoto database so you can not "find" a book vista TM. You restore a previous library (be sure NOT to overwrite your current library) and switch to it
LN

Keeping the Time Machine moving

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