Problems with Time Machine backup for two machines to one external drive

I have a brand new WD 500GB USB My Book external drive plugged into my Intel Mac Mini running 10.5.1 to use as a TM backup drive (TM reformatted it to HFS+ journaled). The Mini's connected by ethernet to the Airport Extreme. It works great. I setup my wife's MacBook Pro 17" Dual Core 2 w. 10.5.1 for TM using the Mac Mini's TM backup drive and it works fine (a little slower at 811.n wi-fi speeds, but OK). I have the Mac Mini setup in Energy Saver to shut down at night and restart in the morning. The morning after I setup my wife's MacBook Pro for TM I found a big black & white message (in half a dozen languages) on the Mac Mini saying start up failed and I need to reboot using the power button. I did and everything was cool. Now comes the problem, it's done it three days in a row so it looks like there is a problem with the TM setup. It didn't do this before I setup my wife's computer for TM.
Any thoughts on what is causing this? We've had minimal problems with Leopard setup (short of a brief hunt for an Airport Extreme Drive and a couple of network printers during initial setup).

1 mistake @ a time wrote:
I works fine over a network if the TM drive is attached to another Mac running Leopard. It won't work with an Airport drive (Apple deep sixed that feature in the final release).
We have an Airport Extreme base station, and we plan to add an Airport Express to boost the power to reach the second floor. We are ordering 4 iMacs, 20", plus I have the Macbook 13" that I have had for a few months.
We thought we could connect one large external drive via firewire cable to one of the iMacs and use it to back up all five computers via Time Machine.
Is that possible, or does everybody need their own external drive?
Thanks!
susan

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Can I use a single external drive to maintain time machine backups for two Mac computers?

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We have an older mac mini and macbook air. I have one Western Digital external USB drive. Can I use the same drive to hold and maintain time machine backups for both machines?
I already have the macbook air time-machined on the WD drive. I now want to backup the mac mini onto the same drive. Is it going to over write the time machine backup or is the software smart enough to maintain two separate files, partitions, whatever it does..?

It will maintain separate backups. Note that it's generally advisable to use separate drives for best practice backup, but yes, it will work for both computers, provided you have enough space (need generally 2-3 times the total used file space for both Macs).
Matt

Time Machine questions: Handling backups for multiple Macs to one FW drive

I am reviewing the Time Machine thread and seeing a lot of helpful information, but I would like to ask something I haven't quite found yet.
We have 2 Leopard Macs, a MacBook Pro and an intel iMac... with plans to upgrade another MBP from Tiger to Leopard at some point.
In planning for Time Machine, we set up a 1 TB drive, attached it via FW 800 to the iMac, partitioned it GUID for Intel, and made 3 partitions, one for each planned Mac we want to back up to it.
I started Time Machine on the iMac first and the first backup of about 100 gb took maybe 4 hours.
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Questions: Was it necessary to partition my 1TB drive into a partition for each Mac's Time Machine backup? I did make each partition bigger than the hard drive it is designated for.
To get the MBP to mount the external FW drive on its desktop, I had to disconnect the drive from the iMac. Is there any way I can connect the FW drive to both the MBP and the iMac (the drive has two FW 800 out connections, so it is physically possible)? I'm thinking (from reading posts of others with notebooks) that one strategy is to connect your notebook to your Time Machine drive at night and let it back up, but it'd be great if I could leave the iMac connected while doing so. Is there a way the volumes on the drive can mount on both desktops?
When I try wireless again, I'm seeing mixed posts regarding whether the MBP will need a password to log in to the remote volume each time, or only the first time when the Time Machine backup is established... if I could get clarification on that, it would be helpful.
Thanks!
thanks

What do you see on your notebook when you click on your TimeMachine icon in the Dock?
My notebook is mounting the backup drive on an hourly basis, running a backup, and looking like it is doing something... but when I then look at TimeMachine, I can't see the backups. (On my iMac with the drive directly attached, I see a progression of windows showing all the hourly backups the last 24 hours, etc.) I just called Apple to ask why this is so, and they told me they couldn't help me because wireless Time Machine backups aren't supported.
I know backups to a hard drive attached to an Airport Express Base Station are not supported. But when they say "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. +Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices+"... well, how can you DO that?

Problem with Time Capsule backup

My Time Capsule is a first gen (500 GB), and I recently upgraded to Lion on my iMac. It seems like right around the time I upgraded that I started having problems with Time Machine backups. They will complete, but then the disk does not eject from my desktop. I am running the Time Capsule buddy widget, and here's the log file:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TimeCapsule
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
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Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
100.0 MB required (including padding), 174.27 GB available
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100.0 MB required (including padding), 174.27 GB available
Copied 1656 files (718 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
Backup failed because the destination disk was ejected or disconnected unexpectedly!
You can see at the end where I ejected the disk manually.

I finally resolved this. However, I had to erase the entire backup on my 3tb and start with a new backup. I connected via hardwire to make it go faster. No problems now.

Time machine backup fails in my seagate 3tb external drive

Time machine backup fails in my seagate 3tb external drive

Without any specifics it's impossible to assist you, however the best tool for debugging TM failures is using Pondini's Time Machine Troubleshooting guide.
Good luck.

Can time machine be used to back up one external drive to another external drive?

I use the photography program Lightroom to organize and develop digital photos. All my photos are stored on my iMac internal drive. The internal drive is almost full so I want to move my photos to a new external drive. At present, I have an external drive devoted to backing up my iMac using time machine. I have no need to change this arrangement. I would like to use a new external drive to serve as the primary location for my pictures, which I will move from the internal drive. Then I would like to backup that drive to a third external back up drive. Can time machine be used to automatically back up the second drive to the third drive as well as for continuing to provide ongoing backups to my internal drive as it is currently doing?
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Jeffery t wrote:
Thanks for the links, but I don't see in the pondini links, the scenario I am asking about.
Time Machine can easily back up multiple internal and/or directly-connected external drives and partitions simultaneously (but Time Machine cannotback up data that's on a network).
From the first link.
Jeffery t wrote:
... Please note that my iMac internal drive is backing up to external drive number 1 using time machine. I want my pictures on external drive two and those backed up to external drive three. So are you saying that if I have 500 GB of pictures on drive number 2, I will need a third drive that is at least 1 TB?
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Welcome to the forum!
There are a couple of "solutions" to your problem. The easiest, and possibly the best for you (although it is a bit slower) is to copy your catalog onto the external drive as well.
Then when you plug in the drive, you will always have your latest catalog for access.
The other way is to keep a local copy of your catalog, and copy it onto the local drive as a way to transfer it from one computer to the other.
This has the problem of possibly not being in sync, that is, you forgot to copy it over once and did some editing. Then you would end up with essentually two different catalogs, instead of one in two places.
You can copy the catalog either with your OS, or you can "export as catalog" and specify the external drive as the destination. Then, on your other computer, "import from catalog" and only take the meta-data settings (it's on the import dialog box).
Personally, when I'm traveling, I have my catalog on my external drive as well. It just makes life easier, and I don't have to worry about it being out of sync, or losing it (and not the images).
So, I would go with the first method, at least to start. To get your catalog over there, you can either export as catalog or copy it, either one will work.
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Cheers!

Two Time Machines from the same computer on one external drive?

Hello all. I tried searching for a similar situation but didn't see one.
I have a MBP running Leopard 10.5.8. Its Time Machine is located on an external mirrored raid LaCie drive.
I have installed Snow Leopard on a separate external LaCie d2 drive on its own partition. On a second partition of that drive is a clone of the MBP HD (with Leopard 10.5.8).
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Thanks. I hope I've posed the question clearly enough to trigger thoughts. It's a brain twister for me ...

Can the external mirrored raid LaCie drive I use for Time Machine contain both of the Time Machine backups that are created by the same MBP - one when Leopoard is running, and another when Snow Leopard is running?
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Time Machine 1 iMac, 1 Macbook and one external drive

This must be a very simple question as I cannot find anyone else that seems to have this problem.
I have a Macbook that is just a few months old and a very new iMac each running Leopard. I have an external drive connected via Firewire 800 to the iMac. I have shared the drive on the iMac so the Macbook can access it. I mount the drive under Devices in Finder on the Macbook. In Time Machine preferences on the Macbook I select the drive to be used by Time Machine. When I do a Back up Now I get the Preparing message for a few seconds and then get a Failed message. The status is: 'Latest Backup: Delayed'.
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Time Machine Error The backup volume could not be mounted.
Is Time Machine an idea before its time (I speak as an old Windows user that is used to stuff being released before it is stable - and I am beginning to wonder if I should have stuck with the devil I know)

See this article: Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine - "The backup volume could not be mounted" alert.

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I keep my entire archive of digital photogarphy (700 gb) in a folder on an external drive. I want to duplicate that folder on another external drive and use Time Machine to automatically synch and add new photos to this back up folder on another drive.
My questions are:
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If not, then what could I use to do this?

If both are attached to the computer, you might be able to do that using a clone program that can regularly schedule backups. Many have free demo modes.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Lighroom 3 on two Macs utilising one external drive

Hello
This my first post
I use Lightroom 3 on a MacBook Pro. My photographs(library) is held on external disk
I have recently purchased a MacBook Air for use in the field, I have installed LR3 and have
what I thought would be a simple issue.
How can i access the photographs from both Macs??
grateful for any input

Welcome to the forum!
There are a couple of "solutions" to your problem. The easiest, and possibly the best for you (although it is a bit slower) is to copy your catalog onto the external drive as well.
Then when you plug in the drive, you will always have your latest catalog for access.
The other way is to keep a local copy of your catalog, and copy it onto the local drive as a way to transfer it from one computer to the other.
This has the problem of possibly not being in sync, that is, you forgot to copy it over once and did some editing. Then you would end up with essentually two different catalogs, instead of one in two places.
You can copy the catalog either with your OS, or you can "export as catalog" and specify the external drive as the destination. Then, on your other computer, "import from catalog" and only take the meta-data settings (it's on the import dialog box).
Personally, when I'm traveling, I have my catalog on my external drive as well. It just makes life easier, and I don't have to worry about it being out of sync, or losing it (and not the images).
So, I would go with the first method, at least to start. To get your catalog over there, you can either export as catalog or copy it, either one will work.
You can find the location of your catalog file (if you don't know where it is) in the catalog settings menu prompt. Both the location and the name will be displayed.
Cheers!

Problem with same layout (variant) for two ALV Grid and ALV Tree

Hello!
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Hi,
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Does Time Machine conflict with Crashplan offline backup for Macs?

Hello,
Has anyone experienced Time Machine on Macs conflicting with Crashplan offline backup for Macs? I would like to run both on my iMac... Time Machine for local backup to my E-drive and Crashplan for a backup to their servers.
Thanks

This article may be of help to you:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/articles/time_machine
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Time Machine- manually removing backups for different machine

Hey all-
I'm running into a problem where Time Machine is suddenly not able to back up my laptop anymore, due to the TM disk being out of space. As part of trying to figure out what was going on, I went to manually browse the TM disk, and noticed that there are backups of an old machine that I no longer have chewing up a lot of space on the TM disk. Is there a way for me to remove those old backups of a no-longer-existing machine from the laptop that I now have?
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lackhead wrote:
when I go into Time Machine, and double click on the "Time Machine Backups" icon under "Devices" in the left-hand navigation panel, all I see are the backups for the machine I'm coming in from. However, if I go to Finder, command-K and browse to my data store, I see sparsebundle files for my both my laptop *and* the now-gone-to-the-graveyard machine.
Ah, your backups are on a network?   In that case, it's easy:
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Can I backup two macs onto one external time machine?

Can I backup two macs onto one external time machine drive? I am trying to do this over Wi-Fi.

Yes, the external drive has to be formatted correctly to HFS+ and shared to the network.
It doesn't matter how the second machine logs into the network but wireless back will be extremely slow as it will involve double hop wireless, I presume to a wifi router somewhere. For incremental backups this is no biggie but do the initial backup with the drive plugged into that particular computer or over ethernet.. gigabit for preference.
Pondini has some instructions as he has for most things.
http://pondini.org/TM/4.html
Also look at Q33 where he lists using a shared drive on another Mac.
If you are planning using something other than wifi router give clear information about the network layout you have and hope to use.

Problems with Time Machine backup for two machines to one external drive

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