Moving external time machine backup to AEBS

I've been backing up my mac to an external drive for a while. Recently I just got an AEBS and I want to move that drive to the base station. This works fine, but time machine on my mac no longer recognizes it's backups. How to you migrate you backup to the base station without deleting your old backups and starting over?

Time Machine backups to AirDisks (e.g. USB HDD attached to Extreme) is unsupported, but has been successful by some. As well, once you decide to move any old TM backups (HDD connected directly to the Mac) to an AirDisk, you cannot continue backing up to your previous TM backup. The format it saves to vs. a local HDD is different. The folder structure you see becomes a sparsebundle/disk image via the AirDisk.
If you are interested in proceeding with your plan, check these links out:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8225748&#8225748
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8650723&#8650723
http://jamesshore.com/Blog/How-to-Accelerate-Time-Machine.html

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Hi, Question about secure empty trash. I moved some Time Machine backup files to the trash from an external hard drive. Now I can't secure empty trash. It starts, finds 74,003 files, and does nothing. The external hard drive shows it's empty, but it isn't

I moved some time machine backup files from an external USB hard drive to the trash. Tried secure empty trash. It counts 74,003 items, then just sits there. The external hard drive window shows it's empty, but the info pane says it only has 50G of memory left. I left the secure empty trash on over night. It did nothing. Ideas?
Thanks,
Ron

Relaunch the Finder, then from the Finder menu bar, select
Finder ▹ Preferences ▹ Advanced
and uncheck the box marked Empty Trash securely. Try again to empty the Trash.

My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help!

My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help would be appreciated.

This can be done easily with ethernet.
Please follow the instructions strictly.
To make it easier I want you to do this overnight so you can turn off all your current connection to the internet.
Just go to the airport fan in to the top right and turn airport off.
Get ethernet cable and connect the laptop to the TC lan port.. ie <-> ones.
Press and hold the reset on the TC for about 10sec. until the front led flashes rapidly.
Open the airport utility.. go to manual setup and change the wireless to off. (so other people around you cannot join your network of one).
Ignore all the errors.. they won't stop the backup working.
Go to the TM and reselect the backup target disk as the TC.
It should start after 2min and run through to completion.
That is it.. for a backup of many GB it might take a few hours.. so make sure the laptop has power plugged in and the sleep is off.. (on early ones I think this is needed but I am a late arrival to the scene).. sleep doesn't affect later OS.

Time Machine backup to AEBS external hard drive

Buy in haste, repent at leisure they say. I needed a new wireless router and thought the AEBS looked just the thing - and a quick look on the spec page showed you could connect an external hard drive via USB - great, I could back up all our computers wirelessly I thought, using Time Machine. Didn't see the small print that says you cannot do this, tho' can't see why Apple couldn't make it work.
I have had a whole string of hard drives go down in the past year, LaCie, Maxtor, WD, and two internal hard drives from a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. The only ones that seem bullet proof are the Gtech drives I have for editing in Final Cut so I bought one of those for our communal Time Machine drive.
To begin with everything worked fine despite Apple not supporting this set up. Then with a regular Software update I must have upped the firmware to 7.4.2 and the system stopped working. I discovered the problem and went back to 7.4.1 but no joy. Then, inexplicably, it began to work again later that day so I just breathed a sigh of relief. Now it's happened again - I realised that I had updated to 7.4.2 again - presumably from a Snow Leopard update, and I am now unable to get it going again even after going back to 7.4.1.
I can select the external HD so that it appears on the desk top as a wireless drive, it appears in the list of available disks in TM, but if you ask it to back up it takes an age to return a message saying it 'could not access the sparsebundle (error 109).
It seems to me I have invested heavily in a system that is never going to work but I wondered if there was some way of backing up manually over the wireless link using another type of back up system? Or are there other things I should try? I know some people seem to have this set up working fine...

The problem here is the way Apple chooses to implement Time Machine Backup in 10.6.x to a Network volume. When TM first came out myself and a bunch of similarly naive Unix hackers figured we could get the best of both worlds by backing up with Time Machine to a backed up or otherwise redundant network volume using Time Machine. But in the beginning TM didn't backup to network volumes. It does now by creating a sparse bundle on the network volume and backing up to the Sparse bundle as if it were a physical, local, disk drive. I seems logical to infer that Time Machine was written to backup to locally connected disk drives which differ from network disk drives in one very important respect: You can tell a local, physical disk drive that you need to know the status of any given write operation and you can trust that result with a reasonably high degree of confidence. That same can't be said for a write to network drive so Apple fakes it by creating a Pseudo Drive or Disk Image Drive on the network volume and writing way. The Sparse Bundle Error comes up when the Pseudo Drive wasn't put away correctly. There are filesystem repair programs to fix this condition which are described in other threads. Dig around for "fsck sparse bundle" on Google the next time this happens and you may be able to rescue things.

Wireless Time Machine Backup via AEBS Failing

I just bought a Airport Extreme Base Station (5th Generation) so that I can use an external hard drive (Western Digital My Passport SE) to wirelessly backup my Mac Book Pro. I've been using the external hard drive as my time machine via USB cable and it works fine. However if I connect the external hard drive to the AEBS, the TM software says that the "disk is unavailable", even though I can selected the external drive as a TM disk in the TM preferences and the Mac Book Pro can read and write from the external hard drive wirelessly using the airport. The only function not working is the TM wirelessly.
Has Apple blocked this functionality? I called Apple Care and they said it is unsupported and that they will only help if I buy the time capsule.
This is what I have tried from of posted that have failed with the same error "disk is unavaiable":
Updated firmware on AEBS and external drive
Reformatted the external drive using the Mac Book Pro disk utility to MAC OS (Journaled)
Erased old backups and started the TM wirelessly from scratch
Started TM through USB, canceled then tried wirelessly
Tried this terminal command: sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Turned off the wireless signal and connect AEBS via Ethernet cable to the Mac Book and started the TM
Used another external hard drive (Seagate 500 gig)
I'm stuck! Any ideas?

I'm afraid that you are not going to like this answer, but it will explain the difficulties that you...and almost all other users who try this....will experience sooner or later.
Apple does not support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme
Reference this Apple Support Document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
All you can really do if you want to continue to try to backup using Time Machine to a disk at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme is connect the drive directly to your Mac and run Disk Utility to "repair disk" and/or "repair disk permissions".
This will likely get you going again....until the backup becomes corrupted again....which might be a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. Eventually, Disk Utility will not be able to repair the disk.
You might want to consider a secondary backup plan if you elect to contine to try the backups through the AirPort Extreme.

Moving a Time Machine backup from a directly connected external disk to that disk on OSX Server

I have an iMac that has been using an external drive for Time Machine (TM) backups since 2013, so there is a lot of history in the backups. I now have a Mac Mini running OS X Server, and would like to transfer the drive to the Mac Mini, but continue to use the drive as the backup disk, that is, doing TM backups via the TM service on the server. However, if I simply stop TM on the iMac, disconnect the drive, connect it to the Mac Mini, tell OS X Server to use the drive as a backup disk, and tell TM on the iMac to use the Server TM service, it seems that a new backup file is started, rather than continuing to use the old one (symptom: when I enter TM on the iMac, I don't see any of the previous incremental backups).
Is there a way to persuade OSX server to continue to use the old backup file, rather than start anew, losing my history?
Both the Mac Mini and the iMac are running Mavericks and the Mac mini is running the latest version of OSX Server.
thanks

What you are attempting is complex, and I am not certain whether it would be successful. I recommend you buy a new drive and start a new backup today, and set the old drive aside.
I have a somewhat different view of the benefits of what you are calling "History". I think that History just adds complexity to the Backup structure that makes it LESS likely you will be able to do a Restore. And Backups are only as good as their ability to do a proper Restore.
Copies of the currently-present files is all that Time Machine promises to keep -- older files that have been removed from the current source are not necessarily maintained on the Backup. In my opinion, a fresh, clean Backup from today is more likely to be able to Restore the things you need most -- without any error messages.
The most requested Restores are things Users broke or discarded today or yesterday, and those will be readily available tomorrow and going forward. In the event you need some really old copies of something, you can try to get them off the old Backup drive you set aside today.

Firewire 800 External Time Machine Backup Drive Disconnects

Hi. Is this the Time Machine Firewire 800 external problem or Mountain Lion or the iMac Late 2009 model (iMac 11, 1): it doesn't happen often but it disconnects then OS X (10.8.2) would prompt that it should be ejected properly. After awhile it;s mounted again. How can I repair this? Is there a way to check if a firewire external drive (1TB) is still ok or if the firewire port is not damaged (I don't remove it often, almost not at all).
Thank you in advance.
God bless.

I don't know except that this kind of problem always seems to be reported by WD owners. I think I read that this drive tries to spin down or sleep or something in a way that is not liked by the Mac OS. That could be wrong - it's just a vague recollection.
Anyway, what do you have in System Preferences, Energy Saver, under "Put Hard Disks to Sleep..." I would try not checking that one, if it is currently checked.
charlie

Snow leopard to lion external time machine backup

I am starting app programming and I need to download Xcode but my operating system which is OS X 10.6.8 (snow leopard) isn't compatible with it. OS X 10.7.4 (Lion) or higher is required to download Xcode 4 so I obviously want to upgrade to that. I have an external hard drive connected to time machine and I was wondering if it will be compatible with lion since it's currently formatted to snow leopard. if it will be harmed by just plain old updating my Mac, what can I do to keep it safe? thanks!

Your Time Machine drive is not formatted to a version of OS X. If it works with Snow Leopard then it works with Lion and Mountain Lion. Updating won't affect it. In fact, just disconnect it from your computer before you upgrade.
If your computer can run Mountain Lion, then upgrade to it. Only bother with Lion if your model cannot run Mountain Lion.
Upgrading to Lion
If your computer does not meet the requirements to install Mountain Lion, it may still meet the requirements to install Lion.
You can purchase Lion by contacting Customer Service: Contacting Apple for support and service - this includes international calling numbers. The cost is $19.99 (as it was before) plus tax. It's a download. You will get an email containing a redemption code that you then use at the Mac App Store to download Lion. Save a copy of that installer to your Downloads folder because the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation.
     Lion System Requirements
       1. Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7,
           or Xeon processor
       2. 2GB of memory
       3. OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
       4. 7GB of available space
       5. Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.
Upgrading to Mountain Lion
To upgrade to Mountain Lion you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. Mountain Lion is $19.99 plus tax. The file is quite large, over 4 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.
     OS X Mountain Lion - System Requirements
       Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion
         1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later
         2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later
         3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later
         5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
         7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later
To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.
     Are my applications compatible?
         See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.
     For a complete How-To introduction from Apple see Upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion.

Moving existing time machine backups to time capsule

I have so far not been able to copy over the existing backups I have on an external drive to my new time capsule. Dragging them across does not work neither does cp in the terminal. I get an error message saying file attributes cant be copied over. Has anyone managed to copy their existing backups over? Apple care suggested it was something to do with the permissions on the external drive but I cant see how.

Yes, you will lose files on old backups. You'll be starting fresh with new backups.
I wonder if you can save your old backups on the old drive, and if you need to go back to one of those, change back to that drive somehow.
But considering I didn't backup before, it's no real loss for me.

Repartitioning a single drive from 2 partitions to 1 while maintaining a Time Machine backup

This is a bit of a quirky situation and I had a very difficult time finding the right search terms to bring me anywhere close to an answer. I still don't have one.
So here's the situation: I have an iMac hooked up to a 1TB external HDD via FireWire. Previously I had the HDD partitioned into 1 500GB partition for Time Machine and 1 1500GB partition for media files. I have since decided to move all my media back onto my internal HDD and would like to repartition the entire external HDD for use with Time Machine (as I will now have Time Machine backing up many of these media files as well) but I don't want to lose my existing backup history. I've seen the instructions for moving a Time Machine backup from one drive to another but how do I move a Time Machine backup off of an external HDD, reformat said drive from 2 partitions to 1, and move the backup back to it without disrupting the hard links?

BacktwoBedlam wrote:
The Time Machine backup is just an image
No, it's a complex set of folders and files, intricately linked together with multiple hard links.
Copying it to your internal HD will take a long time, if there's room for it; and emptying the trash after deleting it will take an extremely long time, and likely result in permissions and/or locked file problems.
If you do have to copy the Backups.backupdb folder, copy it only to a separate partition so you can just erase it when done.
See #18 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for details.

Can time machine backups be migrated to another drive?

I'm intersted in moving my time machine backups from one external hard drive to another with larger capacity. How can I do this and still have access to the older backups? Neither of the drives are Time Capsule and they both have USB and FireWire compatibility.

What I've done - on numerous occassion when moving my TM backups from a drive of a lower capacity to ones with a higher capacity - is use Carbon Copy Cloner to make block copies of the data from one drive to another. I've moved from a 1TB drive to a 2TB drive to a 4TB drive and never had any problems. Just select the 'new' TM drive in System Preferences and the backups just take up where they left off.
ALWAYS turn Time Machine OFF when making the copy - just so it doesn't get 'confused'.
Then turn Time Machine back on and point it to the 'new' drive or drives.
There are likely other methods, but this one has worked for me.
See http://pondini.org/TM/27.html.
Good luck,
Clinton

Time Machine Backup does not fit on HDD

Hi,
I have a very odd problem. I do have a 750GB hdd in my macbook pro. My external time machine backup drive is 1TB. After haveing some issues with my system I had to reinstall OSX. Now I want to recover my system from the external drive. When I run through the recovery process formatting the 750GB drive the drive utiliity tool tells my that I have 748GB available. When I get to to the point to chose the target for my recovery partition of the 748GB only 697GB are left. Now, of course) the recovery tool tells that there is not enough space to recovery the system from the external drive.
My old system was quite full. I only had 2 GB free space left. So the size of the time machine backup should be close to the 750GB. But 697GB is just not enough. What happened to the 50GB between formatting the drive and wanting to recover from the external HDD?
Thanks for your help.

Erbsenroller wrote:
When I run through the recovery process formatting the 750GB drive the drive utiliity tool
Do you mean Disk Utility? If so, that's not how you restore Time Machine backups.
After erasing the HD, quit Disk Utility and select the Restore From Time Machine Backup option.
See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14 for the gory details.

Accidentally deleted Time Machine backups into Trash...

I messed up big time -- I moved my Time Machine backups into Trash from Finder. I've looked around online and it seems like I've really screwed myself over. I can't reformat/erase the disk because I have about 1.4 TB of other material on it and I don't have any other disk big enough to temporarily hold all these files. Is there any way to either restore or delete the backups without harming the rest of the files on the disk?

Full Details Here from Pondini....
Can't empty the trash after deleting backups via the Finder

Can't copy Time Machine "Backups.backupdb" to another drive.

My external Time Machine backup drive now displays this message every time I connect it to my Mac.
Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Backup Drive"
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can.
Since this is a Time Machine drive, I found these instructions here -- Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive -- that say to copy the Backups.backupdb to a new drive.
Every time I do this, the process gets to about 150,000 files then crashes my Mac. Sometimes it's a grey screen with words telling me to hold the Power Button down to force a reboot. Sometimes it just crashes and reboots itself.
I've repaired disk permissions and it keeps happening.
How do I copy Backups.backupdb to a new drive when the process keeps crashing my Mac?

Try using one of the clone apps to copy. It's possible the drive is too damaged and the files will not copy.
Both of these applications can be used to create a clone.
SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/
CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Mavericks doesn't mount my Time Machine backup drive

Since I downloaded and installed Mavericks, it can't find my external Time Machine backup drive. Not found by disk utilites - not on my desk top.

I had a similar issue but I think I've solved it (temporarily atleast). You can try this and see if it works for you.
I restarted my MacBook with the external drive still plugged in. Once the system restarted, it ran the file-system check process (i.e. fsck_hfs process under Activity Monitor. If you're wondering what it does or why it utilizes a lot of CPU, here is some information: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man8/fsck_hfs.8.html).
It ran the process for about 10 to 15 minutes (probably depends on your external drive size) and then Time Machine recognized the backup and just completed a backup minutes ago.
If you're interested in more information about the make of my MacBook, external drive and the problem I had, continue reading:
I've a 500GB WD My Passport with two partitions: Mac-Journaled partition for Time Machine backups and a FAT-32 partition for other stuff. My computer is a late-2009 white MacBook on which I've been running Mavericks since mid-October.
Yesterday I noticed that though both partitions showed up, the backup partition was orange and not green (which is the color usually) and the backup hadn't started automatically. I manually selected the partition in Time Machine and the backup began.
But today when I connected the external drive, only the FAT-32 partition showed up. The backup partition was not to be found anywhere other than the Disk Utility, where it was greyed out. The Repair Disk/Erase Disk didn't work (even when I did that in the boot screen after using the Command+R). I tried to earse the whole disk and partition it but even that was unsuccessful.
So that's when I restarted my MacBook with the external drive plugged in. My two cents: keep another backup (flash drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or a good old DVD) of very important information.

Moving external time machine backup to AEBS

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