Proven external disk for Time Machine backups?

I'm looking for a good, reasonably priced, external disk to temporarily use for Time Machine backups. My 10.9.4 install is messed up and Time Machine no longer works with my ReadyNAS NV+ system. I want to use the disk to backup my MBP and reinstall the OS. Can someone please suggest a proven external disk (2TB+) with a USB 2.0 (or Ethernet) interface?
Thanks,
Ira

Hello all,
I decided to give my 2007 MBP one last upgrade with a new 1TB internal disk that I will install with 10.9.4 from scratch and will (slowly) migrate all my digital hoarding over to it. I've been using the same OWC FW800/USB enclosure since upgrading the original 160GB disk way back when. If TM still doesn't work with the new install (which will narrow down the TM issue to the ReadyNAS NV+), then I will put the current 750GB disk into the enclosure, flash it, and retry TM.
For the record, I chose the HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache internal disk. It was just $75 from Amazon and I used Amazon Points to pay for half of it.
Regards,
Ira

Similar Messages

Can two macs use same disk for Time Machine backup with Airport Extreme?

Hi
I use a Western Digital disk as a wireless Time Machine backup connected to the USB port on my Airport Extreme and it works great. My question is: can my girlfriend use that same disk for Time Machine backup from HER computer too? (I don't mind formatting the disk if needed.)
If she can't, is it then possible to connect a USB hub and have two disks hooked up to the Airport Extreme?
Thanks for helping. I am constantly in awe of all the help people like you give people like me. Thanks!!!
Jakob

I've gone through the manual setup and the assisted setup and can't seem to get my MacBook to use the Time Machine. Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.
Well, as the Jolly Giant points out....+this type of configuration is not supported by Apple+, so it's difficult, if not impossible, to provide a fix for something that Apple says that you cannot do. Reference these Apple Support documents regarding this topic:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2038
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
Your situation is not unlike other users who try this and find that one computer may backup...(usually for a limited time before corruption issues start to creep in)...but another computer cannot backup. Count me as one of those users who thought that because things seemed to work that I had somehow "beat the system".
I started getting the corruption error messages after 4-5 weeks of successful backups, so I figured that it did not make sense to continue to try to get a second computer to backup (yes, I too could not setup a second Mac to backup).
Sorry, I could not get a second machine to backup, so can't tell you how to accomplish that goal. If you want to continue to try backing up this way, you might want to also think about a second backup strategy...just in case backups become corrupted on the WD drive.
Maybe if Apple says you cannot do this, they just may be right?
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

Looking at external HD for Time machine backup and for XP OS?

Bought a 24" iMac desktop with a 500 GB HD and am going to be running up to Best Buy to snag a Western Digital external My Book 750 GB HD. Mainly this external is for Time Machine backup, photos, iTunes library, etc. but I'd like to fire up boot camp and install Windows XP OS. Question is, can I install the XP OS on the external HD so I don't have to divide and possibly mess up my internal Mac HD? Also, when I do install XP OS, how much space for a partition? XP will be mainly for just a few PC games that are PC only like Company of Heroes.

Hi Saius,
yeah, the more the better...
BootCamp requires the use of XP with SP2. Without SP2 (SP1 or earlier) it either does not install or if installed can produce some odd errors.
If you have access to a Windows XP PC you can try these instructions to slipstream the SP2 together with your 'old' XP CD to a new XP SP2 CD.
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxpsp2slipstream.asp
Before spending some unneccessary dollars might be worth trying.
It's not very difficult to do this (done it myself some years back).
Also it is a good idea to use your external HD and make a bootable clone of your OSX volume using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
That way in case something goes wrong, you can easily revert back.
Personally I would not use Time Machine for that task.
Have Fun and thanks for the star.
Stefan

External HDD (for Time Machine backup) detected but won't mount on desktop

I have been using this external HDD as my Time Machine backup for many months now. No desktop display settings have been changed (I checked), but now it won't mount on my desktop. I suspect one of my kids was banging around on the keyboard, as they have done in the past, and renamed it. Unfortunately it appears they renamed it to NULL this time around. I didn't think that was possible, but I've plugged it into 3 different Windows and iMac machines, and in all cases the external drive gets detected, but then in all cases it doesn't mount. The Volume Label does appear blank in the device properties.
Is there a way to access my drive again to rename it? Will that allow it to mount again? Or is there a way to access it to just reformat the whole darn thing?
Thanks!
Tom

I don't think it's possible to have a null name for a drive so i suspect there is a problem with it. open disk utility. does it show the name of the drive? try repairing it (repair disk not permissions). if that doesn't help you can always reformat it with Disk Utility. select the whole drive ( model, not name) and use the partition tab.

Recommendations for external hd for Time Machine backups

After having my 1TB G-Tech G-Drive Q desktop external h.d. crap out on me for a second or third time, this time for good, I give up on G-Tech. (I also had a faulty 500GB G-Tech portable which had to be replaced.)
For many reasons, my iMac's Time Machine backups have to be stored on an external hard drive. Two or three times, the external h.d. has become corrupted or something and has had to be reformatted, losing all the previous backups and starting all over again. This time, since the external h.d. is toast, I have no backups at all.
My MAIN question: Do any of you have a recommendation for an external hard drive - probably desktop, but not necessarily - preferably 1TB - which is RELIABLE?
Is this h.d. corruption/repeated failure a function of Time Machine? The hard drive itself?
What good is Time Machine if we lose backups all the time?

limerick2010 wrote:
Sorry to butt in, but I'm on the lookout for a solution to make a secondary, offsite back-up of my company's data. I was also looking at the usage of external hard disk for the purpose but am stumbling at a very basic question.
If the first disk(say 1TB) runs out of space and I connect a new hard-disk, wouldn't Time Machine back up all the stuff previously backed up, all over again on the new disk?
Exactly. Bt you're talking about two very different things: secondary backups vs. not enough room for primary backups.
The whole point of secondary backups is having a second, separate set, so if something happens to the primary set (lost, corrupted, disk fails, etc.), you have another complete set. As noted in the link in my previous post, it's also a good idea to use a different app for the secondary set, in case there's a problem with the primary app.
If your Time Machine disk gets full, you have three choices:
Let Time Machine start deleting old backup(s) automatically, to make room for new ones. You don't need to keep them forever -- a few months should be plenty for most users.
Get a new disk and start backing-up to it. Keep the old one "on the shelf" until you're sure you don't need the old backups any longer. You can always view and restore from them via the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Get a larger disk, copy the old backups to it, and continue backing-up to the new one. See #18 in the FAQ.

Auto mount/eject external drive for time machine backup/restore

I have an Iomega ultramax drive connected via firewire 800 for my Time machine backups.
This drive will automatically spin down after a period of non-use. I like this as it means lower power usage and lower risk of data loss (head crashes etc..).
My problem is, when the drive spins down like this, some file open operations pause until the drive spins up again. I cannot remember exactly which applications I have had the problem with, but I assumed that this was part of the OS. This delay can be up to 5 seconds or so and is really annoying.
Assuming this is not just a specific third party application thing. My suggestion to Apple is to do one or both of the following:
1) Multi thread the file open dialog (process?) so that is comes up instantly, and then adds the drive when it has spun up.
2) Modify time machine so that it can automatically mount/eject the external drive just when doing backups and restores.
Currently I have a bit of a messy work around to this problem where I have a loadd scheduled shell script that runs every hour that mounts the drive, runs time machine to backup and the ejects the drive. It works, but is not perhaps as nice a solution as it could be.
Does anybody else suffer from this problem?

Yes that is correct, the drive spins down and remains mounted.
To be perhaps clearer. The problem is not essentially a time machine problem, it is to do with whatever implements the file open capability that other apps use. In the above sitation, there is always a delay for the drive to spin up when I go to open a file (perhaps five seconds) in other applications. I assume this delay is caused by the file open process waiting until some data is retrieved from the external drive before giving me the option of choosing a file. This delay is annoying, as I do not ever want to open a file from my external drive (this is dedicated to time machine backups) when I am using pages, or any other application other than a time machine restore.
This particular issue is similar (but I suspect nowhere near as bad) as one of my pet hates about windows XP. In windows it appears that the explorer will wait for a response on all its connected drives (hard disks, mounted cds, network drives), so any sort of network connectivity or hardware delay will cause explorer to freeze. As explorer seems to be embedded in most things you do with the OS, this can cause anything or everything to freeze (web browsing, you name it).
In my setup, as I have the external drive totally dedicated to time machine backups, another thing that would fix the problem for me is the suggestion number 2 I suggested where time machine auto mounts for the backup and then ejects after the backup. With the feature, then the external drrive will only ever be mounted for short periods of time (the above problem does not ocurr if the external drive is not mounted), and when it is mounted it will be spinning, so I will never have my file open delay. I would however have a short delay when doing a time machine restore for the mount of the drive, but this is a much rarer event the using file open in all my other apps.
Thanks for the info on the feedback link, I will post this to that.

Using a Second External Drive For Time Machine Backup

I have been using Time Machine for almost a year and the external drive I'm using is almost full. Can I switch to a second external drive? If I decide to keep using the same drive is there a way to keep my original backup? Is there information that I need from that first backup that I did?
Thank you!!!

bvasel900 wrote:
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
I have been using Time Machine for almost a year and the external drive I'm using is almost full. Can I switch to a second external drive?
Yes, if that's what you want to do (see below). If you start "fresh" on a new drive, your first backup will be a full one; everything on your system. Or, you can copy your current backups to it via the procedure in item #18 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum. TM will then continue making it's usual "incremental" backups, and you can erase the old disk and use it for other things.
If I decide to keep using the same drive is there a way to keep my original backup? Is there information that I need from that first backup that I did?
Probably not. As Mr. Peck noted, TM will automatically delete your oldest backups when it needs room for new ones (unless you have the +*Warn when old backups are deleted+* box checked in TM Preferences > Options).
But unless you've been deleting things from your internal HD, counting on TM to keep it's backup copies indefinitely, you won't lose anything you need.
That's because of the "magic" of Time Machine. Each backup is an "incremental" backup, copying only the items that have been added or changed since the last backup. But by using "multi-links" to the backups of items that did not change, each backup is, in effect, a full, complete copy of your entire system!
So when TM deletes your oldest backup, all it will be deleting are it's copies of things you changed or deleted long ago.

External disk for Time Machine and Aperture Vaults

I'm planning on buying an external HD for backups with Time Machine and I will also be using it for Vaults in Aperture.
Should I partition the disk into two volumes, one for each, or will TM and Aperture co-exist quite happily on the same volume?
I'd rather use a single volume as, in my experience, partitioning a disk always results in one volume filling up long before the other, however integrity of the backups is the most important requirement.

I strongly agree with V.K.
The other big reason to partition is, as you say, one volume will fill up before the other.
That's exactly how TM is designed to work -- fill up whatever space you allocate to it. Unlike traditional archive-type backup systems, it manages it's space and deletes backups automatically. As you probably know, it keeps it's hourly backups for 24 hours, then deletes them, except the first of the day, which becomes a daily backup and is kept for a month. Similarly, after a month, one of those daily backups becomes a weekly, and the others are deleted. But the weeklies are kept as long as there's room. Unless something goes wrong, you never have to do a thing.
So, if you have other data in that same partition, TM will, eventually, fill up the remaining space, limiting the space available to Aperture.

MacBook won't recognize external disk for Time Machine

Help!
My husband now has my old MacBook (white, 2008). It's running the latest version of Snow Leopard.
He also has his old Mac Mini (PowerPC, not Intel). Its optical drive is failing, so I decided he could use it as a TM backup disk.
Last night, I connected it to his MacBook with a FireWire cable, convinced it to start up in Target Disk mode, wiped it clean with Disk Utility, and told Time Machine, "Hey, look, here's a disk for you!". TM immediately began a full backup, which completed successfully. It did a few more little "mini backups" (as TM does) while he was using the computer. When we went to bed, he closed the MacBook but didn't eject the Mini or turn it off.
When I looked at the Mini this afternoon, it was off. I figured it had shut itself down or whatever. I opened his MacBook and started up the Mini, but it doesn't mount and the MacBook can't see it in Disk Utility. (And yes, the very first thing I did was check the FireWire cable's connection, LOL. It's fine.)
So what just happened here? IDEK.
Thanks in advance!

A.Carlo wrote:
The Mini cannot boot up. Since you wiped out its operating system, it's not able to get up and running. It works only while in Target Disk mode, but rebooting it without holding down the T key to enter Target Disk mode pretty much means it's waiting for an operating system to load.
OMG, I don't know how I could be so stupid, because I totally know how Target Disk Mode works! Clearly, I cannot brain today; I have the dumb.
I connected a USB keyboard to it and booted up while holding down the "T" key, and it showed up on the desktop. TM is now backing up.
Thank you!

Can Not Use Air Disk for Time Machine Backup

I have my Lacie 750 GB drive plugged into my AEBS, and it shows up on my network. I can not get Time Machine to recognize it so I can backup. I would appreciate any specific setup info. anyone has that can fix this problem.
Thanks -
Dudley Warner

Have you installed the most recent Airport updates? BTW, while the update now allows AEBS with a tethered drive to be used for TimeMachine Apple doesn't support it. So far I've had no trouble, backing up and restoring, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be hidden problems waiting to get us. Also, since Apple doesn't support it, if there are problems, we are on our own.

Can I select certain drives only for Time Machine backup?

I have several internal drives and several external drives connected to my MacPro desktop computer. If I backup everything in all of the drives using Time Machine, the capacity on my designated external drive for Time Machine backup will soon be filled. Is there any way to selectively backup via Time Machine from only designated drives, not all drives connected (internally or externally) to my computer? Is so, how can that be done? I assume that Time Machine will start deleting data when its capacity is exceeded. If that is so, and I remove the designated Time Machine drive at that point and replace it with a new drive, will the removed drive thereafter be able to be reinserted and the prior material read and transferred as needed? Is there any way to utilized Time Machine after I insert the replacement drive to only archive new material saved after the switch of drives?

Yes, mount the drive by opening a new Finder window and clicking on your base station's name in the left column that says 'Shared'. Then double click on the drive name to mount it on your desktop. From there, open Time Machine prefs and select that mounted drive as your backup disk. Time machine will then back up to it. Theoretically.
If you want that disk to automatically mount every time you login to your computer, go to Sys Prefs Panel and select 'Accounts'. Then click 'Startup Items'. From there, drag the mounted drive's icon from the desktop in to that startup items list. It will then auto-mount from there forward.
I have had many problems backing up this way with Time Machine. It will, 9 times out of 10, fail over a wireless backup with an Airport Extreme Gigabit base station and a 1TB Western Digital My Book. Nothing seems to fix, so I have given up. When TM is finally fixed - I will use it. Until then, it's junk software as far as I'm concerned.
But - best of luck. The instructions above are how it's 'supposed' to work..

Adding a Dedicated External Drive for Time Machine

Hello,
I want to use a dedicated external drive for Time Machine backup and another drive for a SuperDuper backup. Before even adding another drive, I'm already pulling and replacing usb connections from the back of my computer.
Can anyone tell me if a splitter is a workable solution? Something like this:
7-Port USB High-speed Hub with Splitter Cable -- http://www.shop4tech.com/user.htm?go=view_item&id=8997&r=183 -- or perhaps other recommendations ..
Thanks.

...I recall reading that USB 2 was faster ... but I think they said faster than FW 400, but the drive I have is FW 800.
USB2 is 480mbps and Firewire400 is 400mbps. On paper, this would appear that USB2 is faster than Firewire400. But USB2 cannot handle large data transfers very effectively. I can't explain the technicals, but suffice to say that the figures I gave of 40min-versus-2-hours-for-25GB is typical of Firewire400 versus USB2.
Firewire800 is 800mbps, so would potentially be even faster. However the physical hard drive that's installed in the Firewire enclosure would be the bottleneck as a normal "platter" hard drive is much slower than Firewire400 or 800. If it were an SSD drive, then you'd likely see a very significant difference.
But regardless, USB2 cannot keep up with a large data stream like Firewire can. Potentially USB3, which is up to 5Gbps, would be faster than either Firewire 400 or 800, although I suspect would be on par with Firewire3200 in the real world. However since there are no adapters for either USB3 or Firewire3200 for the Mac, it's a moot point for now. (Your drive is not USB3, there are only a few USB3 drives available, and you'd need a Mac Pro to add the adapter in anyway, if they existed.)
So are you saying that FW 800 is faster than USB 2.0 -- and that I should be using the FW connection to get better throughput? And that I can resume daisy-chaining multiple external drives through the one port?
Definitely Firewire would be faster than USB. And I have 5 external hard drives daisy-chained through a single Firewire800 port on my Mac. So daisy-chained Firewire is the way to go.
Like I said, for the small, incremental, hourly Time Machine backups, the speed difference is insignificant. But when the day comes that you have to restore your hard drive, (i.e.: hard drive dead so you buy new blank hard drive. Or you just want to replace with a larger drive,) if say your Time Machine backup is 80GB, that restore would probably take several hours over USB2. On my Firewire400 drive, my 100GB Time Machine restore of my Macbook Pro took about an hour and a half. (The data transfer was about an hour, but OSX took awhile after that to finish up the restore.) YMMV, of course, but IMHO, use Firewire over USB2 as much as possible. If you're lucky enough to have a Mac Pro or iMac and can use multiple internal hard drives or eSATA, then that would be even faster than Firewire800. Only owners of a Macbook Air or non-Firewire Macbook should resign themselves to USB2.

Changed Hard Disk for Time Machine

I have a question, I've searched and can't find the answer (maybe I'm just not good at searching).
I ran out of room on my external HD for time machine backups, so I added another external HD and changed the time machine location to the new HD. I did not copy any backup files to the new HD, I figured that I'd just keep the old ones on the old HD and start from scratch.
I am using an old iMac G5 that has one (yes, one) USB2.0 port, the other USB ports are the old, slow ones. I have the new HD plugged into the USB2.0 port and the old HD plugged into one of the other ones.
Then I selected "back up now," and it's been backing up for more than 12 hours and it's only about 1/3 of the way done according to the progress report (37.4 GB of 96.9 GB).
Question -- does time machine automatically copy my old back up from the old HD to the new HD? That's the only thing that I can think of that would make this back up so slow. It shouldn't take 12 hours to back up 37 GB, right?

Thanks. I think I need to just wait until it's done and then check things out. I let it run all day while I was at work, and it's another 1/3 of the way to the end. I don't want to stop it and then find out that I just need to let it run its course.
Here is the backup log from the time machine widget:
Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb
2010-06-22 18:33:57.446 FindSystemFiles[1245:713] Querying receipt database for system packages
2010-06-22 18:34:02.962 FindSystemFiles[1245:713] Using system path cache.
2010-06-22 18:34:03.335 FindSystemFiles[1250:713] Querying receipt database for system packages
2010-06-22 18:34:04.293 FindSystemFiles[1250:713] Using system path cache.
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Storage Central
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Alternate Storage
No pre-backup thinning needed: 116.45 GB requested (including padding), 376.49 GB available
Copied 11 files (0 bytes) from volume Storage Central.
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Storage Central

HT3275 "The external disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because it has an incompatible filesystem." What if I don't want to erase the disk?

I'm trying to use Time Machine on my Macbook (which is a year old) to back up onto a 1Tb external hard drive. I have 860 Gb free on the hard drive. But for some reason Time machine presents me with the statement above. How can I back-up my laptop without clearing out the data I already have on the hard drive?

Time Machine must back up to a hard drive that has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Your drive is likely formatted in FAT 32.
If you want to use the drive for Time Machine backups, you will have to erase it and reformat using Disk Utility on your Mac.
First, move the files that you do not want to lose to another temporary location and test to make sure they are OK.
Second, erase the drive that you want to use for Time Machine backups and format it for Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Third, move the files back to the hard drive. Test to make sure they are OK. When you are sure that the files are safe, you can erase them from their former "temporary" location. (Although I do wonder how you are backing up these files).
Time Machine will not touch the other files that you have on the hard drive.

My 320GB external drive for Time Machine now only has enough capacity to keep a backup of one day. All my other backups are gone. What can I do to fix this situation?

I've been using a 320GB external drive for time machine for the last several years. The backups always worked fine and when necessary I was able to look at & restore older data from the time capsule. Recently, I keep getting the message that a backup cannot be completed and an older backup will be deleted. Usually this wasn't an issue because I still had several months of information on disk. Now a one-time backup takes up 315GB and therefore I only have a backup of the previous day. I don't understand this because I thought that the backup only saves information that has changed and doesn't copy everything everytime. What do I need to do to get my backups to a reasonable size so that I can keep at least 1 month data stored on it.? Please don't tell me I need a larger drive ... that would be too easy.

Get a larger drive for your TM backups.
The recommended size is 3 times what you are backup. So if 315 GB is a backup then you need a 1 TB drive.
Allan

Proven external disk for Time Machine backups?

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