Running a time machine back-up of a HD in target mode

Hi guys
Wondering if anyone can offer me some advice. My macbook pro won't start up and gets stuck in grey screen with apple logo. I have tried various troubleshooting tips as per apple support documents but cannot get it to start. Before I get to install and archive, and then maybe install and erase I wanted to update the time machine backups. I do try and keep on top of it regurlary and did a full time machine back-up end of August, however there are some things that were updated since then, which is why i want to run one now.
I can access the Macbook HD in target mode using my imac but am unsure how to proceed from here. Can I plug-in the external hard-drive which is used for time machine back ups into the imac and then run a full back up on the Macbook in target mode? If so, I'd be grateful if somebody could point me in the right direction of how to do this.
Thanks

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
OS X can only restore data to the drive where Time Machine backed up files from.
If you want to restore files from the Time Machine backup onto an external drive, your only option is to access to the Time Machine drive manually (open a Finder window and choose your Time Machine drive in the Finder sidebar), navigate through its folders and copy the files you want to the external drive

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HT201250 Time Machine cannot find my external back-up drive when I click on the "select disk" button. No drive is found. I have run a Time Machine back-up to this external drive in the past. I'm on the latest version of Snow Leopard. Thank you!

Time Machine cannot find my external back-up drive when I click on the "select disk" button. No drive is listed. I have run a Time Machine back-up to this external drive in the past. Any suggestions

Does the disk appear in Disk Utility?

Restoring from a Time Machine back up: iMac can't find them

A series of set backs after initially attempting to update Pages to be consistant and usable across my devices. iMac required me to update to Mavericks to be able to download the latest Pages update. After doing this, my iMac failed to reboot - just stuck on the white apple screen. This happened again next tie I attempted a Mavericks installation. So, I tried to restore from a Time Machine back up. After restarting in recovery mode I selected Restore from Time Machine back up - message reads "Searching for Time Machine back ups" (and hard drive is plugged in and switched on) but nothing is found.
How to enable the connection to the TM back up?
How to install Mavericks in this situ?
Thanks!

It may be that you can't do a full-system restore because system files were inadvertently excluded from your backups. But it could also be that the backups aren't usable at all. Since you don't know and can't check at the moment, you should assume the worst.
If you want to preserve the data on the startup drive, and it's not already backed up, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Start up from the Recovery partition, from Internet Recovery, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
2. If Method 1 fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
3. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
4. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? Also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard 10.6.8?

No and Yes
Don't use TM for this purpose, clone your drive to an external, plug the external into another MBP and reboot from it. Please note that booting a machine that came with Lion may not be possible from a drive with Snow Leopard.

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library

I have an iMac and I am running out of disc space. I am considering an external drive to house my iTunes library. If I buy a second drive to operate as a back up will time machine back up the disc on the IMac and the external drive with the iTunes library?

If you have a considerable photograph and/or movie collection you may want to consider off loading those to the EHD too. Here are Apple's article showing how handle iTunes & iPhoto libraries.
iTunes: library on EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
Roger

Unable to import or copy photos from a time machine back up saved from snow leopard into iPhoto now running on lion

unable to import or copy photos from a time machine back up saved from snow leopard into iPhoto now running on lion

The correct method of restoring photos from Time Machine is to restore the entire library.
The way that TM backs up files makes nearly impossible to go into the backup via the Finder and recover individual files. So you will have to restore a library that contains the photos you need being sure to select the option to keep both versions.
Then open the restored library and export those photos you need. Open your original library and import those photos. After that you can delete the recently restored library.
OT

Running more than one time machine back up drive

I have a back up drive assigned as my offices time machine back up drive.
I need to set up an off site back up drive too. I know that time machine will only allow a connection to one back up destination at once.
What problems could i encounter if i set up a off site drive as another time machine drive, disconnect on site drive and connect the off site drive to back up.
Thanks

That will work just fine, other than the hassle of having to tell Time Machine every time you swap.
Give the drives at least slightly different names (that's for you; Time Machine knows they're different).
Each set of backups will be complete and independent. When you do a backup to either one, it will contain all the changes you've made since the last backup +*to that drive.+*
The first backup after a swap may take a bit longer than usual, as there may be more changes to "catch up" with, but otherwise there should be no troubles.

Can I run a Mountain Lion Time Machine Back up if I have a Snow Leopord boot up disc?

HI, I have a new hard drive in my Mac after my old hard drive crashed.
The only boot up disk I have is a Snow Leaoprd (which came with the computer). However, I had since upgraded to Mountain Lion. My most recent Time Machine Back ups were all on in Mountain Lion.
My question....If I use the Snow Leopard boot disc, will I be able to restore the Mountain Lion back up through TIme Machine? Or do I need a Mountain Lion boot disc?
Thanks!!

Restart with the Command-R keys held down to get to the Mountain Lion recovery volume that you can use to reinstall or reload from backup, or if your drive has just been replaced and does not have this, then if your system was made in 2011 or later then it likely has an internet-recovery option to load these tools, which can be started by booting with Option-Command-R held down.
Alternatively you can create your own external recovery drive using Apple's Recovery Disk Assistant tool (http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433) to use if your system does not support Internet Recovery and you need to access these tools. To boot to this external drive once created, boot with the drive attached and the Option key held down, and then select it from the boot menu that appears.

My external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive. Same thing has happened with Final Cut Express.

My new LaCie external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive.
The same thing happened recently between Final Cut Express and my other LaCie external hard drive used as the Scratch disk. It fixed itself.
I've run out of ideas. Help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

have you done some searches on FCPx and time machine? Is there a known issue with using a TM drive with FCPx? dunno but ...wait...I'll take 60 sec for you cause I'm just that kind of guy.... google...." fcpx time machine problem" Frist page link
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard- drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/
You cannot have time machine backups on your hard drive if you intend to use it in FCPX.
booya!

Time machine back-up stuck on "cleaning up" before actually showing back-up progress

On my MacBook Pro running latest Snow Leopard, after replacing the internal HD and restoring the data from the Time Machine back-up apparently seamlessly, when starting back-up again to the the same external disk connected to another mac on the network, this happened. Almost 12 hours now. There is activity on the external back-up disk as the LED light is blinking and I can hear it work.
The message in Time Machine Preferences pane is "cleaning up" which usually shows at the end of the back-up but this time it is before any progres has shown.
I have Time Machine Buddy widget installed and this is what it says, again for the last 12 hours or so:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TM WD Book-1
Failed to attach to image: /Volumes/TM WD Book-1/Vladskibook.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35
Disk image /Volumes/TM WD Book-1/Vladskibook.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Should I just wait patiently or perform a repair of the back-up disk or do a full reset of Time Machine?
If I should wait, can I use my mac without affecting this process?
Thanks

Yellowvan wrote:
Hi Pondini,
Yes, I bought DiskWarrior 4.1.1 - it came up with this report:
" DiskWarrior has successfully built a new optimized directory for the disk named "Untitled."
The new directory is ready to replace the original directory."
Did you let it do that? If not, nothing was changed!
The drive is still under guarantee - can they really fail this quickly?
Sure, a few drives from any production run will be D.O.A, and a few others will fail very quickly, as with nearly any manufactured product.
But you don't know yet whether the drive is bad. If you didn't let DW replace the directory, run it again and do so.
If it's still troublesome, try the other things in my last post before deciding it's the drive.

Will existing Time Machine back ups build after 1 account migration

I have one i-Mac happily backing up with Time Machine to an external hard drive.
I have just bought a second i-mac (the old one's filling up) and propose to use migration assistant to move an admin account from the old to the new i-mac leaving two other accounts (and their files etc) on the old one. I see from some posts that it seems as if Time Machine will start a new back up series for the new i-mac's back ups (cos its a new MAC address). But what about the old i-mac? Will that continue to extend the existing (old) Time Machine back up files, albeit without my transferred account and its files? I'd like to end up with the old i-mac continuing to work with and build its Time Machine back ups (less my account and its new files) and have a new back up series from the new i-mac building to a separate partition on the external drive.
Second minor point: I have read that putting a partition on the external drive is the best way forward as it will stop competition for space and allow changes in one set up in future to have no impact on the other. Is this the best way forward?
Does this all make sense?
Sorry but I can't see an answer in the forum to what must be a reasonably common issue in this expanding mac world.

I then tried to move it (TM back up files) off with Restore, whilst preserving the TM back ups but I couldn't seem to do it to the i-Macs hard drive nor to partition that to allow this to happen (assuming the lack of a discrete partition was the problem).
That's likely correct. This only works if you restore one entire partition to another, and check the +Erase destination+ box.
The problem was that I could not (maybe for the same contiguous reasons) create a new partition on the old i-Mac just to temporarily move the TM back up to. Without it I could not 'empty' the WDC firewire drive and partition it prior to returning the TM back ups to it albeit contiguously in a dedicated partition.
Unfortunately for me to retain the TM back ups for the account I moved to the new i-Mac, I will have to leave that account on the old i-Mac as well. I can't see a way around that? If I delete the account on it then surely I will lose the ability to Log onto it and then to click TM and see back in time on that account?
If I understand you correctly, that will be true eventually, but not immediately, as TM will, eventually, delete it's copies of anything that's no longer on your internal HD. That will depend, of course, on how long TM can keep it's backups. But while they're still there, if you log on with Admin privileges, you should be able to view the old backups.
Not sure I explained myself clearly. Sorry. Having understood from your earlier help that 'migrate' actually means 'make a copy in another place', I have the migrated account in two places: one now dormant, on the old i-Mac and two, where it is migrated to (the new i-Mac). But TM continues to back up all accounts, indeed everything, on the old i-Mac by dint of its MAC address. So to see the migrated account's past history I assume I have to access the version on the old i-Mac. To put it another way, when logged into one account on the old i-Mac I believe it is not possible to see the TM history and files of another account on that i-Mac despite TM backing the entire HD. You have to be logged in to that account to see it. On the new i-Mac, with its different MAC address, TM is busy creating the first TM back up and I assumed that in the migrate it did not bring TM history as I had read that it is MAC address specific.
The only issue (apart from having this account's history spread over two machines (pre-today on the old i-Mac's TM and today onwards on the new i-Mac) is that I have all the files on both machines. I am not worried about security only unnecessary usage of disk space. It isn't critical, there's lots of it, but it just seems wasteful and untidy. Unless you guys know otherwise?
If I understand what you've done, you do have duplicates of the current contents, but only one copy of the old backups (on the old F/W drive).
On the old i-Mac I have the two accounts I wanted to stay there plus the now dormant account I migrated. TM continues to work away at memorising ALL these although there will be no further changes to the dormant migrated account as I will not be running it on the old i-Mac. On the new i-Mac I have the migrated account of which TM is now creating its first (huge) back up but starting today. There is no history here. So I have copies of everything; its just that the old history of the migrated account remains on the old i-Mac and a new history (does that make sense?) is building from the new one. My point was that if I were to delete the dormant account from the old i-Mac, then I could not access it to use TM with it. I believe TM only shows the history of the account and screen you're in at the time?
There is an option in TM that will allow you to selectively +Delete all backups of+ selected items. +Enter Time Machine,+ locate and select the item(s), click the "gear" icon in the Finder window's toolbar, and select the +Delete all backups of ..+ option.
What you can't do is, keep the backups of only previous versions of things that were changed or deleted. It's all or nothing.
Not sure I understand this. What would have been nice but I do not think is possible is to have moved the account to the new i-Mac together with the TM's back ups of that account and continue to build it up (whilst having access to its history) on the new i-Mac. If that were (is?) possible I could have totally deleted the old account and with it its files from the old i-Mac, freed up some HD space and had a full AND growing TM history all on the new i-Mac.
Many thanks for staying the course and for your continuing help.

How do I install my time machine back up on a new hard drive because the old one died?

Hi! My MacBook hard drive died, so I had a new one installed. Now, I am hoping I can transfer my Time Machine back up on it without having to do it manually. I was running Leopard on it. Can I boot from the Time Machine back up or will I have to install Leopard on it first? I'm not extremely computer savvy so , of course, I am looking for an easy way to do this! Thanks for any suggestions!

The Time Machine backup is not bootable
You will have to install Leopard first

How do I recover my Bookmarks from a Time Machine Back Up

I just upgraded from a 2 year old MacBook running Snow Leopard to a new MacBook Pro running Lion. Because of the problems Apple has between these 2 operating systems, I can not use the automated Migration Assistant to migrate over any of my old files, user info, or settings to the new machine. I'm having to manually pull over document files and applications from my Time Machine back up disk.
I can't seem to find my Bookmarks from the old computer in my back up files. On the Time Machine drive, I've looked in User, Application Support, Library, amongst many others. Not seeing it anywhere. They don't seem to be in Time Machine at all, or rather they're only there if I do the automated migration for all of my programs and settings. Which of course is not possible, because it leads to massive disk permission errors and a corrupted hard drive on the new machine. One thing I'm realizing i should have done was make a manual back up of my bookmarks in Firefox before I wiped my old machine. If I didn't do this, am I screwed?
If anyone has ideas I would love some help, I really really don't want to lose years of bookmarks.
Oh, and whatever you do, don't buy a Mac with OSX Lion unless you want to waste LOTS of time fixing Apple's mistakes. This whole process has been a disaster so far. There are all kinds of issues with the transition to Lion, I'm 40+ hrs in now. Apple now has their very own version of Vista.

The following has instructions: OS X Mavericks: Restore items backed up with Time Machine
The following is old but specific to iPhoto and may help: iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)
Also, see http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup

I had a new hard drive fitted to my imac and restored it from my time machine back when I try to open itunes I get this message "the itunes library extras.itdb file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file"

I had a new hard drive fitted to my imac and restored it from my time machine back up on an external hard drive when I try to open itunes I get this message "the itunes library extras.itdb file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file"

To solve this issue all I did was check to ensure that the file permissions were set as described by the earlier posts, followed by simply deleting the iTunes Library Genius.itdb file. Once the file was deleted I was able to open iTunes without difficulty. Note that I am running Windows 8. Hope this helps!

SSD/HDD Time Machine Back Up Issue

I am having an issue with my 2010 13" MacBook Pro.
A few months ago I removed the optical drive, replaced it with the existing HDD, and then replaced the HDD with an SSD.
The SSD runs my OS (Mountain Lion 10.8.4) and Applications, while the HDD is where I store my Home Folder.
I did a Time Machine Back Up in March using a SeaGate external hard drive, with no issues.
Last week I updated the Time Machine Back Up using the same external hard drive, but this time something has gone wrong.
I am unable to move files within my system without Finder prompting me for a password.
I am unable to write to any external USB as I do not have 'permission to perform some actions'.
I am unable to connect to external servers via VPNs.
Finder does not open a new window when slected, I am forced to press 'Comman+N' every time.
Numerous other issues.
I have read that it's an issue to do with ACL's, but since my Home Folder is not on my Startup Disk, there is no way for me to do this.
I am the only account on the computer, and both drives have 'Read & Write' permissions.
Does anyone know how to fix this issue?
Please feel free to ask for more details.
Thanks.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac.
These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing.
Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects.
Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then copy it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands.
Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.
Launch the Terminal 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 Terminal in the icon grid.
When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign.
Step 1
Triple-click the line of text below on this page to select it:
kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}' | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Then click anywhere in the Terminal window and paste (command-V). A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. You can then close the TextEdit window. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that. No typing is involved in this step.
Step 2
Repeat with this line:
{ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{print $3}'; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook 2> /dev/null; } | open -f -a TextEdit
This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which you do have to type. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. Type it carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Heed that warning, but don't post it. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step.
Step 3
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}' | open -f -a TextEdit
Step 4
ls -1A /e*/{la,mach}* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts .la* 2> /dev/null | open -f -a TextEdit
Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting.
Step 5
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' | open -f -a TextEdit
Remember, steps 1-5 are all copy-and-paste — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output.
You can then quit Terminal.

Running a time machine back-up of a HD in target mode

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