Moving Time Machine (server)

I have users who backup to the server. I recently received a bigger drive and want to move that data to another drive. Can I just move the data and then turn the service back on or will the clients complain? Please let me know

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.

Similar Messages

Cannot use my Mac Mini server as Time Machine server

Hello,
May some one can help me...
I try to connect clients to a time Machine server, well it's seems to be a bit difficult, I created user's accounts, computers accounts, group of computers... It works for the update services, but after configuring Time Machine on the server, shared in server admin, in Workgroup manager, file sharing, preference pane, user's services... I can see the volume in time machine preferences, but there is always the same issue, first message is "the disk is not reachable" second "there is a probleme with the network name and password" I tried with different posix, ACLS, with user's password, server admin password, directory admin password... Well I'm a bit tired...
I tried on the server and on a Promise 4To, I can see the shared items folder and the Backups foledr and that the only thing I can do...
Well if some one can help me it will be great for me and for every body arround me...
Thanks,
Nicolas

Hello Peter,
Thanks for your answer.
There must be something wrong in the different steps I follow.
Firts I set Time machine on the server for each user, shoosing the Volume "SmartStor" (a network volume attached on the Mac Mini server) it creates a "Shared items" folder with a "Backups" folder in.
In Server Admin tools I can see in the AFP services the share point /Backups
In Workgroup Manager I set the Time Machine's preferences for the different computers and computers' group with the path afp://myserver.local/Backups/
At least on my client's computer I can shoose the volume "Backups" "on my server".
And it doesn't work... even with all the logins and password, User's, Dir Admin and Server Admin.
With User's and Dir Admin it runs quickly and tells "the volume is not reachable on account of wrong user's name or password"
With Server Admin login and password it runs indefinitly, nothing occurs ...
Is there something to do in terminal ?
Well I tried to find explanations on the web but I found nothing for the moment... The informations are to set a network volume in Terminal in place of the default one...
'Hope to find soon, I can't stand that something runs for every one but not with me...

Time Machine Server backup speed

Has anyone used time machine on OS X 10.5.8 Server to backup 50+ client machines at one time?
We have a project where we will be binding 50 Macs to AD and migrating user data. We have a process for the migration and will have done extensive testing by the time the migration happens, so if I have any questions about that it will be in a different forum.
We would like to have a solid backup that is easy to restore if we run into issues. We have Retrospect backups yet the backup server is a Windows 2008 Server and sometimes even restoring small amounts of data can be troublesome. I would rather not restore a user's account using Retrospect if at all possible.
We don't want to goto each machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner if possible, yet we are looking into using CCC over the network for backups/restores.
One backup plan is to setup a Time Machine server on one of our OD masters with an external RAID.
Next we touch every machine and direct each client to the Time Machine Backup drive on the network and they all start backing up.
How long would you think it takes for 50+ machines averaging 10GB of data to backup using Time Machine on a new Gigabit LAN with CAT 5e cables and a Cisco managed switch setup?
Is there a way in ARD to send a command to set clients to choose a Time Machine Backup server?
If you were in my position and needed to backup 50+ machines in the shortest amount of time with the quickest/easiest restore process, how would you do it?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Well SAM
It actually worked. THANKS A BUNCH! I trying again as root, allthough I thought sudo did it.
I needed to first do some repairing (permissions and so on), change the host name and bind all the machines anew to server.
Anyway it finall works. The disk is available form startup prior to ANY login.
So aganin: thank you. I am sorry I can't find how to change the appraisal of your answer from 'helped' to 'solved' to give you more credit(s).
Francesco

What is best stockage for time machine server

H i hello
I want make a time machine server for backup all macs in my network
I have mountain lion server, and i want know what is the best solution for stockage for time Machine
Nas ? San ?
Can i use NTFS with time machine ? CIFS ? or just AFP ?
Thanks you for your help

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Any modem will work. Note that you will only use your modem to connect your Time Capsule to it using an Ethernet cable, and it will bring the Internet connection to the Time Capsule, so all modems do the same

Back up Mac Server with Time Machine Server installed on the same Time Machine Server

I want to back up several Workstations (“Workstations 1-4” in diagram below) and a Mac OS X Server (“MacMini Server” in diagram below) that runs “Time Machine Server” on that same “Time Machine Server.”
Is this possible?
The MacMini server doesn’t seem to find the “Time Machine Server” for backups. I read that this is due to the fact that Time Machine backups via network are organized in another way than “normal” Time Machine backups are.
MacOS server is running MacOS 10.8.5 with server app v2.2.1(169)-
workstations are running 10.10.1, 10.9.5 and 10.8.4

The Time Capsule and Time Machine will automatically keep backups for each Mac separate.
A user on one Mac will not be able to "see" the backups of the other Mac.
You can add a few more Macs if you wish. 4 or 5 Macs would probably be a practical limit, depending on the size of the hard drive in the Time Capsule.

Time Machine Server - external firewire 800 RAID array incompatible??

Hi all
I originally posted in the wrong forum... so here I go again...
I have an XServe G5 connected to an 8TB RAID array via firewire 800 (running latest version of leopard server) purchased solely to act as a time machine server for a whole bunch of machines. A lot of money and resources went toward this as this is a vital part of our office. One of the machines is a completely decked out Mac Pro with 4x500GB Hard Drives striped for multimedia processing. (Thats why I need a HUGE backup partition on Time Machine)
Now, this was working for about 4 months. Some computers still see the backup array as a destination, but can't write to it, (just sit there for ever "preparing backup") and one machine successfully is still backing up to it.
But for the majority of the machines, when I try to set the Xserve external raid array as a Time Machine destination for the network, it comes up with a yellow "!" sign and "This disk drive may not support Time Machine over the network. Get more information about compatible drives" with a link that points here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306332
As you can see, that was completely not helpful, and now i'm wondering if I'll still have a job after the boss finds out I've just wasted his several thousands of dollars...
When selecting a backup destination for time machine backups, the array appears, but it always says "Failed" with an "i" next to Latest Backup in the system preferences, with the message "Backup volume cannot be found". Thats not true because i've so much as gone to the effort of actually mounting the dang drive in the finder... so its just not looking hard enough!
Here is some info about the external device:
It looks like a PC tower thing, with 8 firewire 800 ports on the back and 8 internal SATA slots. I purchased 8x1TB drives and inserted them in, and software partitioned them to create a giant striped drive (I understand that this might be a little unstable but its just a backup drive).
I daisy chained the firewire 800 ports on the back to output 2 cables, both going in the back of the xserve. Formatted fine, and works a treat. Except for the silly time machine thing....
I think what I am going to do is completely and utterly start again... go nuts one weekend and erase everything, every computer, every wireless router, everything, and start fresh. Since there have been so many little glitches here and there I just want them dead.
Well, if anyone has a quick fix, i'd appreciated it before the weekend

Hi everyone, Just thought I would give you all an update on how things went.
Lets just say that I got everything working fine... this is what I did.
1. I went through, completely un-raided and formatted the external 8 Bay firewire 800 drive
2. Completely reformatted XServe and reinstalled fresh (Probably not an option for a few, but I had a spare weekend)
3. Completely reformatted all client computers and reset all client accounts (Once again, probably not an option for most)
Essentially, I was starting out with a completely virgin setup and setting up for the first time. I installed the firewire 800 drives, and made them into a RAID again. Then installed Leopard server. Brought all the backed up files across, and when I plugged in the drive in Finder, it asked "Do you want to use this as a time machine backup" to which I said "Yes". It proceeded to create a backup.
When that finished, I went into server preferences, and selected the external as a time machine backup for the network. It worked...
I then went about everything like business as usual, and everything worked great. Still going... for now.
So thanks for all that helped, maybe try completely reinstalling everything and it may work.

Time machine server / Bonjour

At my workplace we have Mac OS X Server Leopard 10.5.3 that we use as a Time Machine server, with a share point with the option "Enable as Time Machine backup destination" checked. Until now my Time Machine worked very well, both when my computer was connected to our lab's Airport or wired-ethernet.
But now there is a new institute-wide wlan, from which I can contact our server (with ssh, afp, ...). When I connect to this network Time Machine doesn't backup automatically anymore, and the backup fails. In my system.log I discovered the following:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Network mountpoint /Volumes/time not owned by backupd... remounting
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: [SnapshotUtilities remountVolumeRef] url could not be resolved via BonJour
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Failed to remount network volume.
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Backup failed with error: 19
So, apparently the problem is the fact that Bonjour is not working over the institute-wide network, which personally I find kind of logical, or at least it's difficult for me to find reasons to convince the upper levels to enable it. I also don't see any reason why Time Machine actually 'needs' bonjour, since it can connect the server, by ip address, hostname. And I can mount the time machine mount 'by hand' with 'Connect to server..." from Finder.
Is there anybody who knows (without destroying my current Time Machine archive) some way to change this behavior of Time machine so that it doesn't need Bonjour (by changing some setting, or putting a hard ip address in a plist or something) ?
Thx,
Werner Van Geit

Hi,
Actually I don't know, the IT service over here is quite of 'black box', and it takes quite some time to get some information. I'm quite sure that even don't know what Bonjour is, they install all kinds of devices without actually knowing much about all the settings, so it will be **** of a job to get Time Machine working if Bonjour is necessary. But like I've already said, I don't think Bonjour should be necessary to use Time Machine, but I could be wrong.
Werner Van Geit

Moving Time Machine Drive from Direct Connect to Network Share

I have a 1 TB external USB 2 drive I use for my Time Machine backup. I'd like to move that drive to a file server and continue backing up to it. The problem appears to be that when backing up to the drive as a network volume, Time Machine wants to create a new sparsebundle for the backup and not use the existing TM backup folder on the drive.
Is it possible to migrate a Time Machine drive from direct connect to network while preserving the backed up data? Thanks!

Kenneth Kirksey wrote:
I have a 1 TB external USB 2 drive I use for my Time Machine backup. I'd like to move that drive to a file server and continue backing up to it.
Depending on what "file server" you're using, that may or may not work reliably. Here's the criteria they must meet: Disks that can be used with Time Machine. And be careful here: just because some 3rd-party hardware claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports it, or that it will work in all circumstances.
The problem appears to be that when backing up to the drive as a network volume, Time Machine wants to create a new sparsebundle for the backup and not use the existing TM backup folder on the drive.
That's correct.
Is it possible to migrate a Time Machine drive from direct connect to network while preserving the backed up data? Thanks!
See #18 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Reset network Time Machine Server Settings

Does anyone know how to reset the settings for the Mac Server Time Machine service? Somehow it is jacked up. I can backup to a network Time Machine and restore files through Finder but when I boot into recovery mode and try to do a restore, I can see the backup drive, I authenticate but then get an error saying it can't connect to server name.local. Doesn't appear to be issues with DNS. I have tried setting up a new external drive that hasn't been previously used before and it does the same thing. So I wanted to reset the settings without having to reset all the other services. Does anyone know where these settings for just the Time Machine Service are?
Thanks,

Richard,
I am running a headless mac mini with Lion Server. Same setup as yours, except externals are connected via USB. I have no problems backing up our macbook pros over newtork via Time Machine. My current backup drive is an old 500GB WD Book-whatever. I have also successfully used a 2TB drive in a generic Rosewill JBOD external enclosure. Both were freshly formated HFS+ (journaled) with GUID map prior to TM use. Make sure you format journaled using GUID.
I also get the "This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network." popup but after ignoring it am able to add the disk (don't bother following the information link in the popup...hello 2005!).
Not much help, but a note to say that it can be done and don't give up.
Of note...if you are successful and one day you suddenly can't mount the backup volume on your server, fire up the Terminal and disable then reenable journalling on the volume using diskutil. The Disk Utility app will check the drive/volume and say it they are fine, but the volume won't mount until you play with the journaling.

Time Machine server Address?

My new Mac Book Pro 15" late 2013 model (the newest) can't seem to see my time machine backup that's on my external Hard drive (backed up from my late 2008 Macbook 13"). I'm trying to find the 'server address' (if that's the right term?) of my HD Backup so I can manually tell Migrant Assistant where the backup is to transfere all my data from. Does anyone know how I find this?

Since TM network backups are placed in a sparsebundle I can't use the often-referred-to solution from macosxhints.com.
Hi, I've already read this hint (see quote above), but figured it isn't appropriate for my situation. Seems, I was wrong! Well, I found out that all I needed to do, was to adapt it for my setup.
In case somebody is in the same boat (and for me to better remember it), here's what needs to be done:
• Turn off TM on the client
• Reselect the TM network destination drive
• Turn TM back on
• Backup will fail, but hidden MAC address file will be created on the network drive
• On the server look at the TM drive via Terminal (ls -la)
• Rename the sparsebundle to reflect the new MAC address
• Make sure that the hidden MAC address file got created, otherwise just rename the old one
• Still on the server issue the hint's commands, which are
sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Backup\ of\ macbook/ -d
sudo xattr -w com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress NEWMACADDRESS /Volumes/Backup\ of\ macbook/Backups.backupdb/macbook/
sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Backup\ of\ macbook/ -e
So essentially what I missed, was to fix the extended attribute of my backup destination right on the server!
Thanks, the client is backing up (to the correct destination) right now...
Björn
PS: Reading this (in addition to the above link), helps a lot in understanding everything: http://seankelly.tv/blog/blogentry.2008-08-25.8041499927

Moving Time Machine sparsebundle to new backup drive

Hi all,
This may be a bit of a unique situation, but hopefully I can get some guidance...
I've been backing up two different computers using Time Machine, with the backups stored on a hard drive attached to a third computer (an old MacBook) that's set up as a server. So the backup drive has had two different sparsebundle files, one for each computer.
That drive filled up, so I've recently purchased a larger one. To keep things a little cleaner and to keep the larger computer's backup from crowding out the other one, I've decided to put the TM backups in two separate partitions on the new drive. I set up the partitions in what is hopefully the correct way based on some other discussions I've read (Mac OS-Extended, case sensitive, journaled; partition map scheme: GUID Partition Table).
However, I couldn't find any tips on how best to transfer over the old TM sparsebundles to keep using them on the new drive. SuperDuper probably wouldn't work since I only want to copy one of the sparsebundles into each of the partitions, not duplicate the existing drive.
So I'm hoping I can just copy them over manually using the Finder (that's what I'm doing now — and will be for the next 5 hours or so). Once it's done I'm planning to point the TM Preferences at the new partition and hope that it recognizes the existing backup. (If that fails, I'll mount the sparsebundle first.)
In the meantime, I just wanted to confirm that this is the correct way to go, and see if there are any other factors I need to take into consideration.
Thanks!

maxfreund wrote:
Thanks! Your timing is perfect -- I was just looking at Pondini's FAQ on exactly my situation:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html
This would seem to confirm that I'm on the right track. I guess I'll know for sure in around 5 hours!
Always a Good Read...
Let us know how it goes...

Moving Time Machine backsups to another hard drive gives an error??

My current 250gb HD that Time Machine was putting my backups on has gone sour. So.. I bought a 1.5TB Seagate for time Machine. I moved what I could from the old Time Machine HD (which still shows up in the finder) but I can't move the Backups.backupdb file which houses all my backups. I get an error "-1426"
What should I do?

Linda Baham wrote:
The new drive I formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The old one is simply Mac OS Extended.
And the *Partition Map Scheme?* That needs to be either +Apple Partition Map+ or GUID. Check by clicking the top line for the drive in Disk Utility's sidebar; it will be shown at the bottom.
I cant "repair" the old backup drive. Disk Utility freaks out. Whenever I restart the computer, I get a pop up saying that the disk "Time Machine" could not be repaired... blah blah blah.
Ah, then they can't be copied, either (and would you really want to copy corrupted backups?)
+Disk Warrior+ or another such app might be able to repair them.
Otherwise, they're unusable.
If you haven't already, partition the new drive, so Time Machine has it's own, exclusive space. See #4 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Moving Time Machine Backup from Old Mac to New Mac

I had my old MacBook happily backing up via Time Machine to my Time Capsule. Then I bought a new MacBook and moved all my files etc across with the Apple Migration Assistant.
However, having problems with TM - tells me there is no room on my TC to complete my backup (not true, plenty of disk). However, I suspect this is because it views the backup data on my TC as "owned" by the old Mac and hence that chunk of disk is unavailable to the new Mac.
Is there a way to associate the old backup data with the new Mac?
Or do I need to wipe the TC clean and start all over again?
Thanks,
SM

Hello only:
I performed a similar migration a couple of months ago. In my case, I used a SuperDuper clone on an external firewire drive as the source, but what you describe (#1) should work fine. In any event, keep the G5 handy as you can firewire attach it to the new Mac if you wish.
If I were you, I would just delete the files you do not wish to move from the G5, run a backup now for Time Machine, and then proceed with your transfer.
Barry

One client can't see Time Machine Server

The environment consists of an Xserve running 10.5.6 with all updates. There is a share set up as a Time Machine backup share point. All of the clients, with the exception of one, can "see" the Time Machine share point when they open up Time Machine to set it up, and the backups have been going great. The one remaining client cannot see the share point and hence can't back up.
Any ideas?
Steve

We are having the same problem with our Xserve (10.5.6, all updates installed). I am trying to set up a network share that our users can back up to using Time Machine, but the network share doesn't appear. I suspect that it has something to do with Bonjour and our separate ip subnets. We're a University campus, so we have many subnets - the server will run on a 20.x subnet and the clients will (mostly) be on a 60.x subnet. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what can be done?

Moved Time Machine drive - can't see backup.

I was having trouble with my Time Machine drive, which was connected by USB to my Airport Extreme. I moved the drive to a USB connector on my MacBook Pro to improve the speed, and after formatting the drive, made a complete, new backup with Time Machine, which took about 8 hours.
Then I moved the drive back to the AirPort and told Time Machine to use it for backup. Time Machine doesn't see the earlier backup (I can verify that it's there using the Finder) and is now doing another complete backup of my MBP.
What's wrong here? How can I tell Time Machine to use the backup it made yesterday instead of starting over?
Walt

Actually, Tech Support told me that they support only Apple Time Capsules connected to the Air Port Extreme. They most certainly do NOT support using Seagate drives such the ones I have been using successfully for over three years, on two MBPs.
I firmly believe (but Apple does not want to hear this) that my problem originated with the erratic WIFI connections since I upgraded to Lion, which has been discussed at length in the forums. Time Machine reported backups failing when the WIFI connection could nto be restored after waking from sleep.
My wife's MBP, running Snow Leopard, is working just fine on the same hardware.
Walt
EDIT: I tried "Inheriting" the backup that was made via the direct USB connection, but it still doesn't show up in the TM history. The tmutil program is interesting - it does distinguish between the "machine_directory" - the backups.backupdb folder that was made by the direct USB backup, and the sparse_bundle file that was created by the AirPort backup.

Moving Time Machine (server)

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