New external drive... time machine?

I'm setting um my new external drive, which I bought to back up iPhoto and iTunes for the most part. When I plugged it in, a prompt for Time Machine came up first.
Should I use this as back up if I want to use my external drive or no? I have never used TM up till now, so I'm not sure...

Well..I got a new external and said yes to Time Machine. Now it appears I can't use the external in any other machine! I was hoping to back up my old iBook and clean it out, and use the external at Uni as well as home.
Maybe I am just not doing something right, but I don't want my external to be exclusive to my iMac at home. Is this what is supposed to occur? Can I de-Time Machine my external?
(Sorry to butt in on your question with further questions, but I figured the issue I'm bringing up might be relevant in your deciding whether or not to Time Machine)

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Hard drive failure! New hard drive/Time machine backup/iPhone questions

Hello,
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro who's hard drive failed (rather acutely too, I do use disk utility to check it's health regularly) and I bought a replacement to install (SSD!). I have a bunch of questions but have only found partial answers in searches. Maybe it's best to list them:
1. I'd like to do a fresh install of the OS X using OS X Recovery because I'm concerned my Time Machine backup is partly corrupted. I hadn't updated to Mavericks, will I be able to install Mountain Lion? If not: will this be a problem with my backup files?
2. Say the OS X Recovery works, how do I use Time Machine to restore things like my iTunes library/iMessages/email/iPhoto library etc? In other words: just the data I can't get any other way (I hope it's not too corrupted). And/or should I use my iCloud backup on a few of these (iMessages/contacts)?
3. Do I need to set up the new OS X install with the same account names/home disk name etc. for the restored backup files to function?
4. Is this going to f'up iCloud or vice versa?
5. Finally, how do I sync my iPhone to the "new" computer without erasing the iPhone (which had an iOS update since my last backup to Time Machine). Or do I have to restore the iPhone too.
6. How come Apple doesn't have a mobile theme for their website yet?
Any help would be much appreciated,
Matt

Do you still have the original System Reinstall DVD set that came with your Mac?
If you created that Lion external drive you have from YOUR Mac, when Lion was installed on it, and it also contains a Recovery HD partition you can use that to boot to the Recovery HD and reinstall Lion on the new drive. And or Clone that external to the new internal drive you installed.
Right since your Mac came with Snow Leopard you can't use the Online Internet Recovery system to reinstall Lion, as your system didn't originally come with Lion, but you should still be able to boot to it to do diagnosic things like using Disk Utility, going to the Net to get help and even Restoring the system from a Time Machine backup. But you will get an error if you select Reinstall Mac OS X. The firmware update is usually applied with system updates.
If you created a New Time Machine Backup when any of the Download Only version of OS X were installed on your internal drive Time Machine, the system, Copies over the files needed to boot the system from that backup drive. If it was a care over backup from when Snow Leopard was installed is might or might not be bootable. Only way to tell is to connect it and at startup hold down the Option key to get the Boot selection screen, IE The Boot Manager screen, and see if it shows up as a Boot Source. If it does thenn it contains the files needed to get to the Mac OS X Utilities, IE the Recovery HD files.
What you should do is Boot the system from either the Time Machine backup, if it is bootable, or your External that has Lion on it, The Recovery HD if that drive contains a Recovery HD, or your Original Snow Leopard reinstall DVD that came with your Mac and then try to Restore from your Time Machine backup drive.
If that fails to restore your system properly then nyou should reinstall Snow Leopard and the iLife Apps from the Original Discs then upgrade to Mt Lion which will be in the Mac App Store under your Purchases area. Then maybe you can restore your files from that Time Machine backup.
scardanelli wrote:
I've had a bunch of issues with my computer (you can look at some of my other questions on these forums) which, to my mind anyway, seemed to be finally given a diagnosis when my HD crashed. It may be paranoia but there have been enough problems that I'd rather do a clean install to be on the safe side.
I have an early 2011, shipped with Snow Leopard.
I was under the impression that Time Machine can't be used as a boot drive and the OS X Recovery is a firmware update (on my computer) or hard wired in (on later computers). I might be wrong. I was planning on using the internet recovery, the HD failed right after I got some password protected files unencrypted and onto an external drive (was that necessary?) but wasn't sure if it's a problem if it installs Mavericks.
So Setup Assistant will configure my accounts the same and I don't need to worry about that? That's a relief.
Thanks for the lengthy response.

Transferring iPhoto Library to External Drive/Time Machine

Hi LarryHN and Terrence Devlin (and any others who can answer my questions);
I have successfully transferred my iPhoto Library for the first time to an new external drive (thank you LarryHN and Terrence Devlin for your awesome threads). Would I be able to do this again when my iPhoto Library on my laptop requires another transer without changing the first transfer?
However, another part of LarryHN's thread is that the iPhoto Library transfer to an external drive is not a back up, why is it not considered a back up? I am trying to utilize Time Machine (also for the first time) but they are recommending I use an external drive with nothing on it (as they would be wiped out). Luckily I haven't wiped out my iPhoto Library on my laptop and am willing to re-do that after I set up Time Machine.
I appreciate your recommendations!

If you're running the library on the EHD as your working library then it's not a backup, it's your working copy.
To have a backup you must have two copies of the the working library on different hard drive. so to use Time Machine you need a dedicated HD just for it. When set up TM will backup your MB Air hard drive and any other EHD connected to it.
If you need to run your library from an EHD because your MBA doesn't have enought room and you want to use TM to backup your files including the iPhoto Library you'll need to have 2 EHDs.
So where do you want to run the library: on your MBA or on the EHD?
If you intend to run the library on your MBA make sure it's up to date and then reformat the EHD as OS X Extended (journaled) with Disk Utility. Connect it to the MBA and launch TM. It will ask if you want to use that drive for you backup and click yes. From there it's automatic. The first backup will take a while so have your MBA plugged in to a power outlet and let TM do it's thing.
This website has the best information on TM available: Apple OSX and Time Machine Tips
An alternate solution would be to use a backup application that can make incremental backups like Synk Pro. It will copy only those new or modified files from your working library to the backup copy on the EHD. I use it and have it configured to do the copy as soon as I quit out of iPhoto to keep the writing to disk at a minimum. Synk Pro will backup any selected file or folder you select so it doesn't have to be the entire hard drive if you don't want it. Personally I think TM would be a better solution for you as it will backup other files that may be important to you, i.e. music, documents, movies, etc.
OT

New hard drive-Time machine trouble

I exchanged my hard drive from a 160GB to a 500GB recently. All went well with the installation of the old programs and transferring all my old files back from my time machine.
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thank you
Sophie

Soffan73 wrote:
Now a week has gone by and I want to back up my computer to the time machine and the computer can't find it. It's plugged in and all seams to be on but it just can't to find it.
Eeek! A week? If you make many changes, you really should back up more often.
Are you getting a message? If so, what?
Try just re-selecting the drive via Time Machine Preferences. If that doesn't work, do a "full reset" of TM per #A4 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
I really don't want to screw anything up here and loose my old backups in the time machine so figured better ask for help before something goes terrible wrong..
Good plan!
You may lose some, or many, old backups anyway, though; the new drive will be backed-up in full, so if there isn't room for that, TM will delete old backups trying to make room. If your TM drive isn't at least 2.2 times the size of the data on your system, TM will probably delete all but the last backup, then fail for lack of space. If that's the situation, consider getting a larger external HD for your backups.

HT3275 Lacie external drive/Time Machine errors

I am using Lacie external drive with Time Machine and now have an "invalid node structure." Wants me to back up and restore...again. I have had problems in the past and have restored twice so far. Other problems include "Incorrect number of thread records" and "Invalid directory item count." Why does this keep happening? Is it normal to keep restoring your external hard drive? Where else should I back up my hard drive?

Terriodo wrote:
I wonder if this is a problem with Time Machine or my external hard drive.
Hard to tell, unfortunately. As posted earlier, that can be caused by lots of things.
Our Lacie hard drive is backing up everything that is on our computer. Meaning there isn't anything getting backed up that has been deleted. But it is annoying to erase the darn thing every couple of weeks and load it all on again.
My advice would be to get another drive. Since you have a desktop Mac, get a desktop drive, with it's own power supply. Plug it (and your Mac) into a same good-quality surge suppressor; or, better, U.P.S. (battery backup) system.
It's always prudent to keep secondary backups. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for an explanation and some suggestions.
That recommends using a different app, but in your situation, you might want to use both drives with Time Machine temporarily; you'll have to switch back and forth manually via the TM Preferences panel (Mountain Lion allows multiple destinations, but Snow Leopard doesn't). If the new drive works fine, but the old one doesn't, that will implicate the LaCie, or it's connections, etc.
If you determine it's ok, then use one (probably the desktop) with Time Machine, and the Rugged with another app. Consider taking it off-site, as mentioned in #27.
If it's not ok, replace it.
I am running 10.6.8 and have Lacie 1T Rugged external hard drive connected by firewire on my Mac desktop.
I have a smaller version of that drive, as do several folks here. It gets good reviews, but like any drive, won't last forever. If it's over about 3 years old, it could be starting to develop a problem.

External drive, Time machine don't work after upgrade

On Wed, Feb. 1 I connected my external drive, did a back-up on Time Machine, everything was fine. Then I download the most recent update for my MacBook Pro, OS X Lion 10.7.3 On Saturday, Feb. 4, I again connected my external drive to back-up and the icon for the external drive never showed up on the desktop and Time Machine did not automatically start. This morning I put this question out there and it was suggested that I reinstall OS X Lion 10.7.3 (Client Combo), which is what I did tonight when I got home. It didn't work. The external drive is running, I clicked on Time Machine in the utilities and it says it is backing up now, but the external drive still is not on the desk top and I have at least two years of back up documents and thousands of photos stored there. The external drive holds 1 terrabyte and I am very sure it is not full. Time Machine is not reading all the other back-ups I have done over the past year or so.
Please any other suggestions?

Others here wouldnt recommend it, but on a new OS install, since I have a giant pile of HD, ...i just grab another HD and create a new fresh Time Machine backup
after its complete, I take the original HD with the OLD backup and format/erase it.
Im a tad too lazy to wait, as you yourself mentioned, 1 hour for TM just to PREPARE to backup. Nope, no,...not gonna do it.
I updated 4 Macs to Mavericks and id rather make a wholly NEW Time Machine backup on another HD and erase the original.
Since I keep about 12+ redundant archives of my important data, I have no worry on earth of ever losing data.
Time machine is a backup, NOT an archive for vital data.
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

External drive (Time Machine) password is spontaneously incorrect

I've been making Time Machine backups to a Seagate 1.5TB USB-2 attached external drive for about 2 years, and about 3 weeks ago the backups began to fail due to "incorrect password" for the external drive. I thought the drive connection might have just gotten dropped, so I plugged in my administrator's ID and pwd only to get that rejected. I then rechecked the appropriate fields in my pwd manager, re-entered the same data, failed again, tried permutations of the ID and pwd, tried other adminstrative identities in case something had gotten wrongfully plugged in, and it has all failed. I looked in my keychain and found that there have been several pwd changes to the drive in the last couple of years, all numeric pwd's vs. my alpha-numeric pwd, so I tried the most recent of those (from July 2012) and it too failed. I have had Sophos anti-virus running for at least the last 2 years plus our system is behind a router, and after this password problem, I ran a Sophos scan to see if malware was present -- all was okay. At this point, these are my concerns/questions:
I can't access my Seagate external drive at all.
Does anyone know what is going on with the spontaneously changed pwds?
How can I correct the pwd changing problem and regain control of my external drive?
TIA,
Bradley

A powered hub connected to your Mac should be fine. There are rare complaints about hub incompatibility but they are not specific to Time Machine, just equipment in general.
If it doesn't work you will know right away.
Read this post that I just answered for more information on AirPort Extreme and Time Machine:
Airport extreme back up problem

HT201250 new hard drive time machine

I want ot install a new hard drive in my mac mini. How can I transfer all my old hard drive on to it and make it the primary drive

Put either drive in an enclosure, use a product such as the Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper to clone the system, and select the desired volume in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences.
If your computer shipped with Mac OS X 10.7 or newer, you can also install the new drive, connect it to the Internet, start up with the Option, Command, and R keys held down, and restore a Time Machine backup through the Internet Recovery system.
If you have a Time Machine backup from Mac OS X 10.8 or newer, you can also plug the drive containing it in, restart with the Option key held down, and use the recovery partition on it to restore the backup to an empty drive.
(110199)

New hard drive - Time Machine

I will be replacing my hard drive and will back up with Time Machine. Currently my Launch Pad is a mess with unwanted applications. How to I keep these unwanted applications from being copied back to my new hard drive?

There really is no way to select which applications you want to restore. Either delete them before running Time Machine, or delete them after restoring from Time Machine.
If a program has an uninstaller utility, use it. If not, just drag it to the Trash.

Hard Drive Crashed - New Hard Drive - Time Machine

So my hard drive crashed. I have the black MacBook A1181. So I decided to get the Western Digital - Scorpio Black hard drive. Its a perfect fit and a huge upgrade from the stock Toshiba hard drive you get. The only problem is, i can't install Mac OSX. I have the disk but I have no Time Machine back up, since i don't have an external hard drive and I wasn't expecting my hard drive would crash any time soon. So what am I supposed to do? Get a time machine back up off my sisters computer or one of my friends computers?

Hi,
Do you still have the disc(s) that came with your computer? You'll need this to format the hard drive and install the operating system.

Lacie external drive time machine error

I'm using my Lacie external drive (2TB) for my time machine. And it has this problem that every time after I put my macbook to sleep, the time machine won't work, it keeps showing this message "error occurred during back up" (but it doesn't not specify what kind of error). And the time machine can't recognize the history backup from the drive.
However, it will function again if I eject the drive and replug it in.
It's not a major problem, but it's kinda annoying and I wanna know what's causing it.
Thanks yall.

Hi George,
The one way I found to get the TM back on the rail is to access my back up disk from finder, choose the sparse disk image. Hit cmmd-delete and banish it.
Start over again. Be sure to be connected by a wired connection as on a wireless network it will take a while. But I guess you have the HD attached via firewire or usb so it should not be a major issue.

External Drive Time Machine and other files

I want to use an external drive for time machine and storing other files. Does time machine need the external drive exclusively or can one also put other files on the drive?

A backup strategy is one of individual choice. By having more than on HDD for your data, you are distributing the risk
I have 5 external HDDs. One is dedicated to Time Machine, the others have data that simply takes up too much room on the internal drive in the MBP (mostly video). Some of the data that I have on these HDDs is redundant copies of what I have on the MBP and in Time Machine. This is data that is important to me. This may seem excessive but I would argue not.
Ex: my iTunes is on the internal HHD, Time Machine and also on my secondary MBP (and the iPod). That for me is important an I do not want to lose it.
I have seen too many instances on this forum where individuals have lost data without adequate backups looking for answers on how to retrieve that information only to be disappointed. Please don't let that happen to you. Given enough time, ALL HDDs will fail!
Ciao.

Time capsule & external drive - Time Machine Back-up of two macbooks - Can't connect

My wife and I each have a macbook pro and want to back them up using Time Machine. I had my macbook and a time capsule for a while before she got her laptop, so I backed mine up to the Time capsule - no problems.
Now, I have purchased an external drive so that mine backs up onto the time capsule drive and hers is set to back up on the external drive due to space limitations.
However, with hers set up, my macbook can no longer see its original back-up file. Meaning that hers will back-up all the time, but mine can't ever connect.
Is there a different configuration / setting that I should try to make this work?
Help is greatly appreciated!

I don't follow how the change on one laptop can affect the other, unless they are networked together in some way.. how is the second laptop connected??
I suggest you reset Time Machine.. and rediscover the TC..
A4 here http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
If you upgraded to Lion or ML recently that is the issue.. reboot the TC and maybe the whole network to clear the old IP addresses.

I am trying to move my old external hard drive (time machine ) to a new one

I have tried to move my old external drive time machine to a new external drive:
1. have formated the new time external hard drive
2. I have unlocked and ignored the drives ownership
3. I have turn of the new hard drive and them tried dragging the file (backups.backupdp) to my new external hard drive
when I do that a message come up that says "this volume has that wrong case sensitivity for a backup"
What does this mean and how do I fix it?
Thanks
Denise

Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. All existing data on the destination volume will be erased. That shouldn't be a problem, because you don't want to mix backup and non-backup data on the same drive anyway. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

New external drives for Time Machine

I have a 1TB iMac with a 1TB portable external HDD. Both are backed up to a 3TB external HDD.
Right now, I'm reaching the upper limits of both my internal and external hard drives. What I would like to do is move the contents of the 1TB drive to a new 2TB drive. I would also move all of my music files (about 650GB) from my internal hard drive to the new 2TB external hard drive.
I back up both the current 1TB external and the 1TB internal to the 3TB Time Machine. I've got a solid 18 months of backups, and although I have only used it once, it was to find an album that somehow went missing from iTunes, and it only existed in a backup from October 2012.
I know there are a boatload of Time Machine experts here, because over the years, since TM came out, this is my go-to place for infor.
Question 1. What is the best way to move the 1TB drive to the new 2TB (also including all of my media files that are on the iMac). That's about 1.2TB of data. Now I could do it the old fashioned way, and use the finder to move all the files, and wait 20 hours for it to finish. But when I start backing up the new 2TB drive, Time Machine is going to take that and think it's a whole new drive. Anyway to avoid that. I'm worried that once Time Machine does this, it's going to start scrubbing out a year of backups.
Question 2. I'm now going to have 3TB of storage backing up into a 3TB Time Machine. That's probably not a good idea (I once read that you'd like to have your TM be at least 2X the amount of data you're backing up). Should I upgrade to a 4TB Time Machine?
Question 3. If I move to a 4TB Time Machine, is there any way to save the increments since August 2012? Or given my new set up, it's just going to backup the 1TB internal, the 2TB external to the new 4TB Time Machine?
Any help will gratefull appreciated.

Do I have this question in the wrong place? I usually get an answer like in an hour.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

New external drive... time machine?

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