Putting Time Machine preferences back in tool bar
I had to do an erase and install then restore my data with Time Machine. It"s no longer showing in the tool bar and there is no box to check. Does anyone know how I can get it to show? I hate having to open the preferences pane if I want to check on it. Does this make sense?
Click on the Applications item in the Finder's sidebar and drag it to the Dock, or install the Mac OS X 10.5.7 combo updater and then check the box. Older Mac OS X 10.5 versions don't have an icon for it in the menu bar.
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Similar Messages
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Time Machine preferences window appears as Finder view after restore
I wanted to upgrade to a larger disk drive, so I backed up using Time Machine to a USB drive, and then swapped out drives and did a restore. However, after the restore, now when I click on time machine preferences from the top bar, instead of the GUI appearing, a finder view appears with timemachine.prefPane in its heading. Any ideas what is going on? If I go through the System Preferences route, it works.
Not actually answered... Has been reposted...
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Ever since I installed Lion (version 10.7), I am unable to reconnected to my Time Capsule and get on the internet after I put my computer to sleep and then wake it back up. This doesn't happen all the time -- just when I put my computer to sleep when Time Machine is backing up. If I put my computer to sleep when it's not backing up, it's fine. If it is backing up though, when I wake my computer up again, it is unable to reconnect to the Time Capsule to allow me to use the internet. I have to wake the machine up, click on "Stop Backing Up", wait 30-60 seconds, click "Turn Wi-fi off", wait another 30 seconds, turn it back on and then I am fine. If I just turn wifi off and on without stopping the backup, it doesn't work and I am still unable to connect to the internet. I currently have 10.7.1 but it still has the same bug. 10.6.x did not have this bug. Other than "don't put your computer to sleep when Time Machine is backing up," any suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
In this case, that hint may help.
According to Apple support, some configuration files may get damaged or corrupt by time, after updates or upgrades and should get deleted ocasionally.
OK ... switch off wifi on the machine.
Then go on and delete the files mentioned below.
You will find the files on your system drive (not your home folder) as follow:
/library/preferences/com.apple.preferences.accounts.plist
/library/preferences/com.apple.preferences.sharing.plist
/library/preferences/SstemConfiguration/preferences.plist
/library/preferences/SstemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
If there are files in this folders with the same name but additional .orig at the end, delete them too.
It is possible that not all files are on your system. That will be ok.
The files will get newly created by system on reboot.
For that reboot the machine.
Join your wireless again.
If you are using Lion, the Library is hidden. You have to use (menu bar) "go to" -> "go to folder" on finder to access them.
If the problem (unlikely) persists, report back here.
Lupunus
Message was edited by: lupunus (typo's fixed) -
Time Machine not backing up. Very slow, essentially hanging. I have 10.7.5 Mac OS X Lion (11G63). I have put in all updates. I tried to put my folders into "private" in the Spotlight (b/c I read that might be the problem). Still not working.
Thanks in advance for any help!For all things Time Machine see Pondini's excellent information here...
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Start at Troubleshooting. -
How do I stop Time Machine from backing up Aperture thumbnails?
Hi,
My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups, and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
However, if I run "xattr" on the Aperture files, the attribute does exist!
During my next time machine backup, the iPhoto files were skipped as I wanted them to be, but the Aperture thumbnails were backed up again
I thought that maybe time machine was looking at the aperture package as an atomic unit, but iPhoto is stored as a package as well, and the attributes worked there on files inside the package.
Does anyone have any idea why time machine is still backing up these files? Is there any way I can get around this?
It seems to me to be an incredible oversight on Apple's part since both tools are Apple. The thumbnails files are very expensive to backup, and they are not necessary for backup since the are easy to rebuild from the original photos which are also backed up.
Thanks,
RonShadow99999 wrote:
Hi,
My 2TB backup drive recently became full, and I became curious as to what was filling it up. I wrote a perl script to analyze the Time Machine backups,
No need to write your own script for that. there are a couple of already made nice GUI tools for this - TimeTracker http://www.charlessoft.com/ and BackupLoupe http://soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
and I noticed that over 50% of my backup was filled with AP.Thumbnails and AP.Minis from the Aperture project directory. In particular, the AP.Thumbnails files in the backup consumed 737 GB of disk space!
The problem with the thumbnails files is that they are a single file that contains all of the thumbnails for all of the 40,000 photos I have in Aperture and it is now 20gb in size. Every time I add a new file to Aperture, the thumbnail file changes, and I get a new 20gb of data added to my backup. I add photos often which means that most of my backups have 20gb of Aperture files (which are easy to rebuild and don't need to be backed up).
I decided to try and stop Time Machine from backing up these files, and there seems to be no way of doing so (without telling Time Machine to skip backing up my entire Aperture project which I don't want to do). In Finder, you can do a "show package contents", but the Time Machine GUI doesn't allow this.
I tried to tell Time Machine to exclude the files via the GUI, but Time Machine sees the Aperture Library as a single package and won't let me exclude individual files from within the package.
I don't have aperture but I think most people exclude the whole thing from TM backups and back it up separately. but if you want to exclude a subfolder in a package that's easy too. just select the package in finder, control-click on it and select "show package contents". in the resulting finder window drill to the folder you want to exclude and drag it to the TM exclusion list in TM system preferences->options.
I googled around, and found the attribute that Time Machine puts on files to exclude them from the backup. I used xattr to set the attributes:
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:comapple_backupexcludeItem com.apple.backupd <filename>
I was not aware of this method for excluding stuff from TM backups. could you provide a link to where you found this?
I also used this command on the iPhoto thumbnail files.
I used spotlight to find all of the files with this attribute using this command:
sudo mdfind "comapple_backupexcludeItem = 'com.apple.backupd'"
This command returned the iPhoto files, but did not return the Aperture files.
that's because Spotlight never looks inside packages unless you start a search inside a package directly. iphoto seems to be the only exception. I don't know how it's done. -
When i run Time Machine to back up my computer on to an external hard drive, i have no way of knowing when the back up process has been completed. This is necessary to know because i don't leave my external hard drive connected to the computer. I routinely disconnect it after backing up the hard drive, and then i store the external hard drive in a different location from the computer. So, knowing when the back up process has been completed would be a very helpful thing to have the computer specify.
Just enable Time Machine's menu extra (System Preferences -> Time Machine -> Show Time Machine in menu bar.
This will add a little Time Machine icon to your menubar. When Time Machine is actively backing up your data, the icon will spin as a visual indicator. You can also click the menu icon to see the backup status, including how much data is left to back up. -
Does Time Machine also back-up iPhoto/iTunes libraries?
I'd like to do a complete reset of my Macbook Pro, in order to get him faster.
I have a LaCie Hard Disc. Will my iPhoto and iTunes librairies also be backed up when I do a back-up with Time Machine?
When I re-installate my mac, and then I put the back-up from the LaCie back, will everything be recovered?
I want to make sure that I don't lose anything.https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
As you will see, the above states:
Time Machine automatically backs up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, email messages, music, photos, movies, and documents.
If you happen to be running any anti-virus or cleanup programs, get rid of them as they will be the main culprit in slowing down your Mac! Indeed, if you ARE running any of these, delete them first and see how your Mac runs before resorting to a reinstall of OSX. -
Time Machine stopped backing up
I am using Time Machine on a 500 GB Time Capsule (which also serves as my Internet router). I have 3 Macs using Time Machine: 1) PowerMac G4, 2) PowerMac G5, 3) MacBook. The G4 is wired to the Time Capsule, the G5 and the MacBook are wireless. The G4 does not have a wireless card. From all machines, I can browse the Time Capsule and see the backup files contained there.
The PowerMac G5 and the MacBook still function normally and are being backed up regularly with Time Machine. The G4 had been working fine, being backed up regularly, then the backups suddenly stopped. I can look at the Time Machine Preferences and see when the last backup occurred (Sept 4) and see that the Time Capsule has 264.7 GB of 463.3 GB available. I have 3 volumes attached to my Mac (excluding the Time Capsule) and have excluded entirely 2 of those attached volumes. The only volume included (my boot volume) I have configured to exclude a large number of files (most applications, for instance). The total used space on that drive is 186 GB, so I know that the backup is not too big.
I do not get any error messages that I am aware of (can you tell me somewhere specifically to look?). My configuration shows Time Machine in the menu bar, and if I select "Back Up Now" from that menu, nothing appears to happen. If I open the Time Machine Preferences pane and edit the EXCLUDE list, it appears to queue a backup, as the preference pane indicates next backup in 119 seconds, 118 seconds, etc, counting down to 1 second, and then jumps to next backup at xx:xx. I can keep the preference pane open and watch it until that time (xx:xx) actually ticks by on the clock and the time for Next Backup in the preference pane jumps to the next hour, with no backup performed.William,
A shot in the dark. I just posted this for someone with a similar but not identical issue. Try it for what it is worth. It at least might start getting us going in the right direction.
It can occur that Time Machine doesn’t recognize its’ own previous backups. In that case Time Machine will ignore these backups and attempt to start a full backup.
First try, Ctrl-click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and select “Browse Other Time machine disks…”
Now see if it will allow you to select the existing backups. Now can you go ‘back in time’ and see your previous data? Then it is indeed still there, it has just lost the link to it.
*Computer Name*
If that’s the case, the most likely culprit is you or something else has changed the name of your computer.
Go to System Preferences --> Sharing. If the “Computer Name” field is blank, Time Machine will have a difficult time maintaining consistent backups. Before adding or changing the computer name do the following:
In a Finder window open your Time Machine drive.
Open the folder labeled “Backups,backupdb”.
Inside is the folder containing the backups of the computer in question.
Note the name of the folder. It might be something like “Bills MacBook Pro”. That was your computers’ name when Time Machine performed its’ first full backup. If this name is missing or different in the Sharing “Computer Name” field then time Machine backups will fail.
Copy the name of the folder and paste it in the “Computer Name” field.
Next turn Sharing OFF and then back ON by unchecking and then rechecking the box on the left.
Close the backup folder and eject the Time Machine disk.
Now try resuming backups or launch Time Machine and try viewing your past data..
*Corrupt Backup Files*
If you were not able to access your previous backups via the “Browse Other Time machine disks…” function, then it is likely that the backup data is corrupt.
In that case you’ll want to erase the disk or partition that the old backups are on and begin Time Machine backups again.
To help prevent future instances of corruption, avoid storing other data files on the same partition that the Time Machine backups reside on. Rather create a separate partition for other files and folders to use.
Let us know if any of the above helped. -
Am I able to use both Carbonite and Time Machine as back-ups for my iMac?
HI,
I have a iMac, and I have recently recently completed the initial back up for Carbonite. I also have a 2TB Seagate external hard drive that I would like to use with Time Machine. I am wondering if I am able to use both Carbonite and Time Machine simultaneously.Hi, and welcome to the forums.
As bdmarsha says, yes, you can run both simultaneously.
But one caution; there are some reports here that some of the online backup apps keep some fairly large, frequently-changing files on your system. Time Machine will back them up along with everything else, which can take some extra time and space on your TM drive.
After your initial TM backup, see how large the incremental backups are (by watching the progress bar and info on the +Time Machine Preferences+ window). If those seem too large for the changes you've made since the previous backup, see #A2 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), for a couple of apps that will show exactly what was backed-up.
If you find such things, you can exclude them from TM backups, per #10 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). -
Time Machine Preferences breaks when I wake from sleep
I have recently started having a problem.
When I start my computer, everything is functioning fine. I am able launch System Preferences and open any preference pane and quit System Preferences and everything is fine.
When I put my computer to sleep and then wake it up, I have issues. If I open System Preferences, I can close it. If I click on Trackpad, I can close it. But if I click on Time Machine Preferences and try to quit System Preferences, it doesn't quit. If I try to Force Quit, I get the standard "this app isn't responding" error box.
I cannot quit System Preferences is any way. Force Quit does nothing and eventually the rest of my apps on my machine stop functioning. I have to hard reset my machine to get System Preferences back.
Anyone else seen this? I don't want to blame it on 10.5.6 but I think that this started happening after that.So I have made a further discovery.
It is related to my non-Time Machine external hard drive. When it is connected I have the issue mentioned above, when it's not connected I have no problem. I re-formatted the drive and no longer have the issues with the System Preferences, but now, if I sleep, when I wake I can't shut down. It just hangs and I have to hard restart.
A couple of notes from the console log. When the "bad" drive is hooked up, I see the following message (multiple times when I wake up:
*kernel AppleYukon2: 00000000,00000000 sk98osx_dnet - recovering from missed interrupt*
Also, when I try to do the actual shutdown, I see this error:
*/usr/sbin/kdcmond[37] dnssd_clientstub read_all(3) failed 0/28 0*
So I feel like the issue is somehow connected to my eternal drive having a conflict with the wired network card. I am going to do some more tests. -
Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
Official Mac document:
Issue or symptom
After about 10 GB or more of data is backed up to an external disk, Time Machine may stop backing up. This may happen the first time Time Machine backs up your files.
Products affected
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Time Machine
Solution
Some hard disks ship with a Master Boot Record (MBR) partiton type. You will need to erase the external disk so that it is supported by Time Machine. Important: Erasing a disk deletes all files on it. Make sure that you have or make a copy of important files in another location first.
Use Disk Utility to erase the external hard drive:
Use "Apple Partition Map" partition scheme if Time Machine will be used on a PowerPC-based Mac.
Use "GUID" partition scheme if Time Machine will be used on a Intel-based Mac.
Once the external hard disk is reformatted, select it again in Time Machine preferences and use it for your backups.
This document will be updated as more information becomes available.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306932If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting. -
Is information stored in Time Machine considered backed up?
Sorry for the newbie questions below - I scanned the threads but didn't find exactly what I was looking for.
1) As far as backing up contents of my computer, is Time Machine (and the external drive it's running on) considered safe? That is to say - if my only back up is Time Machine to feel that my pictures, videos, etc are safely backed up - am I crazy?
2) When the external drive Time Machine is currently running on fills up, do I buy another one and disconnect and store the first one?
3) Getting close to buying a HD camcorder - so - how best to manage the big volumes needed for storage? Can I rig up a big external drive specifically for large files such as high res photos and HD video? Will iMovie and iPhoto reference such an external drive?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers.Time Machine is currently my only form of overall backup. There are two ways to do a restore.
If you start up from your Mac OS X installation disc, you can run a utility that restores the entire volume. I have actually tried it recently, to make myself feel comfortable with how it works, and it did work as expected. I did do a clone to another volume immediately before, in case the +restore complete volume from Time Machine backup+ process failed.
The other way is to go into the Time Machine archive directly. So if I want to start with a fresh system installation instead, I can go do a system installation onto an erased volume. Then run Migration Assistant and use my Time Machine backup as the data source. Or I can migrate the data manually using Finder (the way I would really do it), by going into the Time Machine archive directly. The folder structure is organized by date/time of the backup. By using something called multi-linked files when Time Machine created the backup, Finder will show a complete backup for any available date/time, even though a file that never changed is stored in the archive only one time. In other words, each date/time folder shows everything being backed up, even though 99% of it did not change from the backup one hour earlier. So I can manually copy the files I want from the archive to the new installation, just by picking which available date/time to use.
Since I have these two options, I feel comfortable with Time Machine being my only backup for most of my personal data. For data that is extremely valuable, I back that up separately to another hard drive. But I would do that second backup (for the most critical data) no matter what backup method I was using.
When Time Machine runs out of space on the drive, it tells you. If you let it continue, Time Machine starts deleting your oldest date/time backup states to make room for the newest date/time backup states. So how far back in time you can go starts moving forward. However, there is no need to get a new drive, if that automatic process is OK and you mostly want the recent backup states. It is a good idea to buy as large a drive as reasonable, so that Time Machine has plenty of space. From my experience, Time Machine starts to take a long time to perform each run once the free space on the drive starts to become low (or gets to a point where it is deleting the oldest backup states).
You can tell Time Machine to back up attached external drives, as long as the Time Machine volume is larger than the total size of the data being backed up. To operate effectively, the Time Machine volume really should be +at least+ twice the total size of the data being backed up. In System Preferences +Time Machine+ pane, the Options button shows a list of what NOT to back up. External drives are put on the list by default. If you want an external drive to be backed up, remove it from this list.
You can generally tell applications where to store data. -
How to make Time Machine only back up once per day?
I really really don't need time machine to back up EVERY HOUR. It's overkill for me and with the level of computing I am forcing my computer to do most of the day its VERY irritating. Is there anyway to change the settings so it only backs up once every night?
Yeah, we tried using TimeMachineEditor on a friend's laptop. There will be 2 laptops backing up, and we wanted them both to backup overnight at different times when there would be no interruptions (for user or computer). It seemed to work OK (have to check w/ them), but how do you verify when backups were actually done?
I have a couple related question to this, though, that may also be helpful for folks:
- I'm guessing Time Machine cannot do a backup when the computer is asleep, correct? If a Time Machine backup starts while the computer is 'awake', will it keep the computer from sleeping so it can finish?
- If I set a schedule in the Energy Saver preferences to 'Wake Up' the computer at midnight (before scheduled backup), and 'Sleep' later on (say 4am), does this override the other preferences set for sleep in Energy Saver? (ie - if it's set to sleep after 30min., will the computer wake up at midnight only to go back to sleep 30min. later, or will it stay 'awake' until 4am?)
- Do you need to uncheck 'Put the hard drive to sleep when possible'? -
HT3275 time machine preparing back up
My time machine is stating "Preparing backup" for a very long time but it has not back up any information in 2 months. What can I do to get my time machine to back up again?
I had the same problem. Time machine would do a few backups successfully, but then it would continuously display "Preparing Backup". . .and would never progress to the backup itself. Even after a full day or more.
I found the answer buried here under another discussion of this seemingly frequent problem:
Open SYSTEM PREFERENCES. Go to HARDWARE/ENERGY SAVER.
UNCHECK the checkbox next to "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible.
Having done this, my Time Machine backups run on time and correctly! -
Time Machine Cannot Back up My Applications
Dear Friends. My time machine cannot back up my applications and library although I do not put them in the lists of excluded files. I have macbook pro with retina display and I use Western Digital for my time machine. Please, help!
Triple-click the line below to select it:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu. A Finder window should open with a file selected. Move the selected file to the Trash. You'll be prompted for your administrator password. Reboot, recreate your Time Machine settings, and test.
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