Merge 2 time machine back ups on 1 back up drive?

I was running low on space on the USB drive I use to back up my Air, OS 10.6.5 with TIme Machine, and I had a new USB drive handy, so I just used the new drive. Now I have 2 USB drives and each has a time machine back up file, "Backups.backupdb"
I'd like to free up the first USB drive, and have the use of all of those old TIme Machine backups on the new drive.
It's clean up time, trying to reorganize my back ups and drives... is there any way to save the old Time Machine back ups from the old drive in usable format?
Thank you for any help
(btw, I do not want to upgrade to the latest versions of Mac OS's)

Funny you should mention... it was Pondini's TM FAQs that sent me here
If they answered this question, I missed it.
I have also read up on http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5096
But neither could tell me how to manage the back up files when I had already started another external drive as backup disk.
I am currently copying all the files from the original back up drive to the new drive under another folder, it's taken about 10 hours so far, estimates 6 hours more to go.
And on the apple bulletin, it said I should uncheck "ignore ownership on this volume", which I failed to note.
Thanks for the link though, its a great one. If I missed it there, (and I checked Troubleshooting too) please let me know?

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HT201250 I have thousands of pictures on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac I don't want them lost. I do time machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough for making sure my pictures don't ever get lost?

I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?

tgs6164 wrote:
I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?
Purchase a couple of these when they go on sale.
Start burning all the photos onto DVDs.
At least you'll have all your photos if your computer, time machine or any other backup you use goes bonkers.

Time Machine appears to be doing back-ups, but they do not appear on the external hard drive. The last one I can find is June 30. I did a utility scan of the hard drive disk and it is fine.

Time Machine appears to be doing back-ups, but they do not appear on the external hard drive. The last one I can find is June 30. I did a utility scan of the hard drive disk and it is fine. What do I do?

Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar. The time of the last backup is shown in the drop down.

I recovered my back up via a wired connection. now Time Machine does not recognise older back ups wirelessly and wants to do a first back up

I recovered a back up from my time machine via a wired connection after getting the 'white screen of death'. Now Time Machine does not recognise any back ups on the time machine when connected wirelessly and wants to do a first back up of the whole machine. How do I get my mac to recognise these older back ups? It connects to the wifi network the time machine creates fine, with the same name and password.

I recommend the following.
1. Reset the TC to factory.
Universal Factory Reset.. any model TC or AE.
Unplug your TC/AE from power or turn off at the power point.
Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. (this is often difficult without a 2nd person or a 3rd arm).
Release it when the status light flashes rapidly. If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have missed it and try again.
Note..
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations of the router.
No files are deleted on the hard disk in a TC.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
2. Rename the TC to SMB standard.
That means short names.. 2-20 characters but less than 10 is excellent. eg TCGenx (use number for x that is actual generation of the TC)
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric. No apostrophe.
3. Ensure IPv6 is set to link-local..
Do the same thing for ethernet if that is used.
4. Manually mount the TC disk in Finder.
Use Go in the top menu.. connect to server.
Type in
AFP://TCname.local (where TCname is your new short name for the TC and local is default domain .. it helps using the domain I found).
You will then find the computer either can or cannot find the network resource.. if it fails something else is wrong with the actual network and you will need to fix that.
It will request the password if it is found.. password is public by default unless you changed it.. type in the password and check to keep it in your keychain.
5. Delete current TM setup and redo it with the newly named TC.
See A4 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
If your backups cannot be found, try B6 again, now that you actually know that the disk has been properly discovered.

My external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive. Same thing has happened with Final Cut Express.

My new LaCie external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive.
The same thing happened recently between Final Cut Express and my other LaCie external hard drive used as the Scratch disk. It fixed itself.
I've run out of ideas. Help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

have you done some searches on FCPx and time machine? Is there a known issue with using a TM drive with FCPx? dunno but ...wait...I'll take 60 sec for you cause I'm just that kind of guy.... google...." fcpx time machine problem" Frist page link
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard- drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/
You cannot have time machine backups on your hard drive if you intend to use it in FCPX.
booya!

After upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?

after upgrade to mavericks: time machine keeps asking for my back up disk and won't open unless i plug in the disk. any solutions?
before the upgrade, i could open time machine without the need for having the back up disk plugged in.

Ok. I got it to work, sort of....
As I mentioned before I tried the "disk password" and the "Time capsule Password" options to see if I can start the back up again or start a new backup. Neither worked. So I tried the firmware down grade, but like you said that did not work. I then decided to try the "Account password" option and I have never used this option before becasue it states that if there is data on the drive it would not be acessable after creating an account. Since I wiped out the disk that was nno problem. When I created the new account and choose the drive it asked for the user name and password. I entered the info for the new account I just created(FYI this has nothing to do with your login username and password), bingo! It worked!
Now I have two partitions on the TC disk. The old one and now the new account. I am guessing this is to be used if I have multiple computers, which I don't.
I any case, I am going to wipe out everything again and try again to do a backup the way I had it before.

Time Machine won't let me back up an external hard drive

Hello,
I am running time machine to backup onto a 500GB USB drive and keep my iTunes library on a firewire 250gb drive. When I looked in time machine options in system preferences I found that my firewire disk is already listed as 'do not back up'. I want it backed up and don't seem to be able to remove it from that list. Anyone have an ideas why?
Cheers
Steve
PS First ever post!

Are you referring to the drive used for backups, or the drive I want to back up? When I first used Time Machine, my external drive (used to house my itunes library) was on the exclude list. I easily removed it and the TM window reflected the additional contents (indicating a backup of about 75G (27 on internal drive, remainder on external). But backups are being done only on the contents of the internal drive.
I too have re-included the external drive on the exclude list, then removed it. No help. Do I have to reformat my external drive and lose all of my itunes music?
thanks

How do I use Time Machine on my Mac to back up files stored on an AirDisk?

I have a Macbook Pro 17-inch, Mid 2009, with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I use an external HDD connected directly to my Mac via FireWire 800 for Time Machine backups. I have an external HDD connected to my Airport Extreme (Gigabit) router that I use for file storage. My iTunes library and iPhoto library are both stored on this AirDisk. Can I use Time Machine on my Mac to back up the files that I store on my AirDisk? If so, then please describe how to do so. Thank you for your assistance.

Unmount and physcially disconnect the TimeMachine drive and reboot the computer without it being connected.
Reboot the comptuer with the disk inside the machine holding the option or c key down, select the disk to boot from.
Second screen in is the installer, under the Ulitites menu is Disk Utility.
Use Disk Utility to Erase with Security option Zero all Data if your planning to wipe the drive and install 10.6
Don't do the above if your simply reinstalling only OS X 10.6 to cure a problem with it.
How to reinstall just OS X or erase/install OS X
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6

I upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Thank you. I followed the faq#14 (using setup wizard from the osx install disk). Everything went just as planned until I woke up this morning and noticed there was no progress on the "transferring documents" meter. It stopped about 1/4 of the way. I can hear the computer working and the bar is somewhat animated like it is advancing but it's not.
Should I cancel and restart or should I wait it out? It already been about 13 hours since I started the process. Do you think it is my time machine or my iMac? Maybe the time machine file is corrupt or something.
Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine

I want to know about time machine if i can use the hard drive that i use for time machine back up as a normal hard drive too or if it's only for time machine
and if it yes i want to know if i have 1TB hard disk to use the 500gb for time machine and the other 500gb for normal use

thank you very much because i am considering to buy the porsche design hard disk 1TB and i want to have it for normal use and for time machine is a pitty to give 1TB for back up only again thanks and i know seperate the back and the working jobs are better but the i have to have 2 hardisks and i want only 1

The memory on my MAC is full. It holds 4GB of RAM of which 79GB are photos. I would like to back up my photos to an external drive but just don not know how. I do not wish to use time machine. How do I back up my photo library, then delete the them t

The memory on my MAC is full. It holds 4GB of RAM of which 79GB are photos. I would like to back up my photos to an external drive but just do not know how. I do not wish to use time machine. How do I back up my photo library, then delete them from my MAC to free up that 79GB? Thank you.

Hi
Just to clarify a couple of points in your post.
RAM (memory) is different from hard drive space. You have 4GB of RAM, but that has no bearing on the amount of drive space you have, of which we know that 79GB are photos.
If those photos are in iPhoto, you should be able to move the entire iPhoto Library, from the Pictures folder, to your external hard drive. You can just drag and drop. Do not have iPhoto open while you're doing this. Once it's done, you can double-click on the moved iPhoto Library file to associate it with iPhoto, so that the app remembers where the library is for next time.
One more thing. When you move a file to a different location, and then delete the original, you don't have a backup. You still only have one copy. So if that external drive dies, you will lose all your photos. Time Machine is a very good way to prevent this from happening. You should dedicate a different drive for Time Machine backups.
Matt

HT3275 For the past several days, I have been getting this message during backups: Time Machine could not complete the back up. The backup disk image "Volumes/Data/iMac.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error-1).

For the past several days, I have been getting this message during backups:
Time Machine could not complete the back up. The backup disk image "Volumes/Data/bhoppy2's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error-1). When I click on the 'help' icon on the message, it reverts to a blank page, and I cannot find anything online regarding the term 'sparsebundle.' In addition, I cannot access previous backups any longer.
Help?

See C17 in Time Machine Troubleshooting by Time Machine guru Pondini:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

My Time Machine keeps repeating the error message "Time Machine could not complete the back- The back-up disk image "/Volumes/Data/User's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1). How can I fix this?s/

My Time Machine could not complete the back-up. The error message says "The backup disk image "/Volumes/DataUser's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error-1). How can I fix this problem?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
See > http://pondini.org/TM/C17.html

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.

Time Machine stalls when trying to back up to Time Capsule or an external hard drive.

TIme Machine stalls when trying to back up to Time Capsule or an external hard drive. Time Machine shows a message such as "Backing up 4MB of 9.00GB" but nothing happens for hours.

Are you really running 10.6.4 OS?
What model TC and what firmware?
Wireless or wired?
How is the TC setup?
If TM can work to neither a TC or external hard disk it is more likely the computer is faulty hard disk..
Do a verify of the disk.
See A5 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Merge 2 time machine back ups on 1 back up drive?

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