Stopped backing up / external drive full ?

Hi my time machine will no longer back up.
i have an external Lacie 500GB hard drive, almost full granted, and SOLEY used by my attached my Imac for the sole purpose of Time Machine.
Now it wont back up any more, saying there is "in sufficient space remaining"
i thought Time Machine just warned you that the disc was Full, and was it OK to over write the Oldest back ups?? Im sure it says that in the manual>
I would be happy for it to do this ?
am i missing a setting somewhere, Or do i have to delete the entire external drive, let Time Machine re format it, and start all over again
(but this obviously worries me, as doing so will delete all my Time Machine back ups)

also followed up another suggestion;
CHANGE the device determined Vault (to anything else)
((ie any other drive attatched of even your macs internal drive) and apply/save
come out of that preferance
Go back into that (same) preferance panal
Change the Preferance Vault Back to your (origional) chosen drive
apply/save
- it will now re'seacrh' when you hit back up, and Bing ! it works again

Similar Messages

Why did my Mac stop recognizing the external drive?

My Mac suddenly stopped recognizing the external drive when I try to back up through time capsule. It is on and plugged in. What is the problem? what can I do to correct it?

See if the Mac can access the device directly; not via Time Machine. Try the (presumably) USB device on a different computer, and also try a different USB storage device on the Mac, and try different USB ports on the Mac. Also unplug all other USB devices and hubs, and connect the device directly to the Mac. If the USB device has an optional external power supply, try using that. Basically, try different combinations and see if the Mac or the USB cable or the USB device is the most likely source of the problem.

HT201250 Can time machine back up external drives to external drives?

I was wondering if I can use Time Machine to back up external drives. I know it backs up just my Mac, but need to know if
it will back up an external drive to an external drive.

Open your Time Machine drive. Open the Backups.backupdb folder therein. Open the Computer Name (e.g., Adam Smith's iMac) folder. Open any folder there whose name contains a date later than when you attached your (other) external drive. You should see a list of folders representing the drives that are being backed-up. One is typically Macintosh HD, your internal hard drive. There should be one for your other external drive.

Pondini, I beseech thee....Time Machine won't back up external drive partitions

Pondini (or anyone else that would like to help),
I am running Mac OS X 10.7.5. At my edit bay, we utilize a Facilis Terrablock 24D for storage, which connects to our system via fibre cables. Before upgrading to 10.7.5, Time Machine would back up all of our drive partitions on the Terrablock. Since the upgrade, Time Machine still recognizes the drives, we can add or subtract files from the drives, and it appears to make and save the changes, but when Time Machine backs up, it will only back up the local hard drive. No error messages come up. It just does its thing but only for the local HD.
All of the drive partitions are Mac OS Extended Journaled. All of the permissions seem to be in order.
I have contacted Facilis and their technical support claims that they never tested their products with Time Machine (as they sell their own backup equipment) but in theory that it should work.
I'm not sure what other information you might need but please let me know and I'll do my best. I was wondering if anyone else has come across an issue like this? Thank you for your time.

LALB wrote:
Upon including this partition and all of its contents, it disappears from the exclusion list as it should AND its size is reflected in the Estimated size of full backup. But this is the kicker! Upon clicking "Save" and starting Time Machine's backup, I receive the error "Time Machine could not complete the backup. There are no disks available to be backed up." Upon going back into TM Preferences > Options, I find that the external drive / partition has been put back on the Exclusion list. It's like it is automatically rejecting the partition after I have saved my exclusion list.
That's quite strange.
TM does that if you try to back up a USB Thumb drive (I've filed a bug report), but this is the first I've heard of it under any other circumstances. Then again, I don't recall a post by anyone trying to back up from a drive connected this way.
If a drive isn't formatted for a Mac (ie, FAT32, ExFat, NTFS, etc), Time Machine cannot back it up, and will list it in gray on the exclusion list (same as the backup drive), and won't let you remove it from the list, so it's clear.
This sounds like a "cousin" of the way it treats a thumb drive, so sure seems like a bug. TM will back up USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt drives without a problem, if they're formatted right.
If you have any Macs under 90 days old, or covered by AppleCare, a call to them is free, and the best way to get a quick answer (you may have to escalate to a "specialist" however, and it still may take a few days for something unusual). Otherwise it's $50 U.S.
An alternative is to file a Bug Report, per the green box in Reporting a Problem to Apple. That most likely won't get a response for quite a while, though.
Sorry, wish I had a fix!
Let us know what, if anything, you find out.

Time Machine won't back up external drive to Time Capsule

I recently got a Time Capsule, and successfully set it up to back up my iMac's primary drive, but for some reason Time Machine won't back up my external drive to the Time Capsule.
I removed the external drive from the exclusion list in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and from what I've read this should be sufficient to make Time Machine back up the drive.
The external drive is connected to my iMac via Thunderbolt > Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adaptor > Firewire 800 input, and the Time Capsule is connected via Ethernet to my LAN.
Since I'm using Ethernet, I've disabled Wi-Fi on the Time Capusule by going to AirPort Utility > My Time Capsule > Edit > Wireless > Network Mode > Off.
The reason I believe the external drive is not being backed up is because when I click the Time Machine icon in the upper-right status bar and choose "Enter Time Machine", none of the folders on external drive show any older versions.
Furthermore, when I click Finder > Time Machine Backups > Backups.backupdb, I can see only one sub-folder which has the name of my iMac's primary drive. I can't see any equivalent folder for my external drive.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I don't see anything you have done wrong.. perhaps it does backup in a different way.
Load the widget.. A1 here... http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
That will allow you to track the log of TM to see what it is doing.
I would also try rebooting the computer.. exclude the drive again.. reboot.. and remove the exclusion.
You should be able to check the actual settings of TM in plist file.
And you can do a full reset of TM as well.. See A4. Check what is in the file. Pondini lists the location for you.
Nothing surprises me with Mountain Lion ...!!

Backing up external drives that aren't always connected?

I've got external hard drives for each of my clients. I'll connect them to my machine for a few days, then remove them and it might be months before they're connected again.
Will TM backup these externals (assuming I don't exclude them) and then keep that backup even if they're not connected for a long time? Or will it delete that backup after a period of time if the drive hasn't been reconnected?
Thanks!

TM only keeps hourly backups for 24 hours and daily backups for 30 days. Beyond that, TM keeps a weekly snapshot for as far back as you have disk space available. So depending on when you have the external drive connected, you could get no backup if connected less than 1 hour; a backup for no more than 24 hours if the external is not connected for the first backup of the day (between midnight and 1 AM); or a backup for no more than 30 days if the external is not connected for the first backup (between midnight and 1 AM) of the seventh day. Put another way, to guarantee a weekly backup, an external drive would have to be connected for a full seven (24 hour) days.
There may be further complications. TM needs to recognize a reconnected external drive as the same unit that was previously backed up or it is going to rebackup the entire external drive. This will very rapidly eat up your available TM backup disk space. I had two same model external drives that are only occasionally connected. I found that, for reasons I could not figure out, one of these was recognized by TM as having been previously backed up; the other was not.
Since I use these externals to store video files that change very infrequently, I gave up using TM to back them up and repartitioned my backup disk to have separate partitions for each external with the remainder for TM. I back up the externals with SuperDuper! as necessary and let TM backup just my internal drive. I don't think this will work for you since it seems you are dealing with many different client drives.

External drive - full file or relocate original?

Hello,
I have run into an issue where my Aperture file is now taking up too much space on my iMac(about 130gb). I have my external drive always hooked up to my iMac and have more then 1tb left, so I would like to transfer my file over to the external. Ive seen differant options on her, just wondering which one would be best for me, and what the advantages would be for one over the other.
My options are
1. Move the full aperture file over the the external and not have it on my iMac at all
or
2. Relocate the original files over to a directory on the external and still have the main file on my iMac
Will having the main file on the iMac with my current year only on the iMac (previous years relocated to the external) work better, or should I just move the full file to the external and open it from there?
Remember, I have my external hooked up all the time as this is a stationary computer.
Thanks for any advice you can give
Mike

Hi Mike,
It's impossible to say without more information (and likely testing). RAM and CPU and more likely to be performance bottlenecks than drive throughput, IME.
I suggest moving your Aperture Library to your external drive and running it from there. (I assume it is FW800, USB-3, or Thunderbolt.) Double-click the Library file in Finder in order to launch Aperture the first time after you move the Library -- the program will remember the new location of your Library.
I manage several Libraries, some of them quite large, and all but one are run from dedicated external drives.
If you find this set-up does not meet your needs, then you should consider putting the Library back on your system drive and relocated some (or all) of your Image's Originals to your external drive (as you mention).
Remember that you may have to manually add any files on your external drive to your back-up sets.
HTH,
--Kirby.

"Get Info" stopped working for external drives

MacPro Early 2008
OS X 10.9.2
4 x Internal HD
4 x External HD
For some weird reason my external disks have suddenly stopped responding to ‘Get Info’. The four internal HD’s display Info fine but the four external disks do not. They did until a few days ago. There has been no physical change to my machine in that time. There has been no update or change to software in that time.
The problem occurs regardless of whether I Ctrl Click and use the context menu, whether I use the Info button on the finder menu bar or whether I use Cmd I keyboard shortcut.
The four external disks display properly in finder and all other functions seems fine.
There is no ‘hang’, no spinning beach ball, just quite simply nothing happens.
All four disks pass “Verify”.
I have checked and repaired permissions on the system disk.
If I sign in as guest the problem disappears - it would seem therefore to lie in my configuration.
I have tried the following:
Re-launch finder using Alt-Cmd-Esc.
Deleted Finder’s plist and restarted to create default settings.
Removed all items from Users & Accounts > Login Items.
Backed up and removed all files from User/Library/LaunchAgents
Backed up and removed all files from /Library/LaunchAgents
Backed up and removed all files from /Library/LaunchDaemons
Checked /Library/StartupItems which is empty.
All to no avail …………..
I have not touched any launch or startup directories from /System/Library/
Any suggestions where else I might look?
David Macdonald

No new software has been installed or updated in the immediate time frame of the problem appearing. Except one Apple OS X auto update.
The problem persists in Safe Mode. I first booted into safe mode with just keyboard and mouse connected and then tried adding in the drives one by one. Each one shows the same symptoms.
I then tried plugging in other external drives - another HD and a pendrive. They work fine. The problem seems confined to just the four drives that are permanently connected.
I then backed up one of the drives and erased and re-formatted it. Problem solved works fine. Remaining three same old problem no "Get Info".
So to sum up.
The problem exists in even safe mode for my four permanently connected drives.
The problem does not exist for any other external drives.
The problem is cured by re-formatting the drive.
From this I would supect that something has zapped the integrity of the drives themselves .... except ..... the problem does not exist when logged in as guest.
So, unless anyone can draw some clever conclusions from the above, it would seem to me I have three options:
1) Back up my external HD's and re-format them then restore from backup. See if the problem returns later and if I can identify what triggered it. Although it involves several terrabytes of backup and restore it can at least go on in the background and overnight and needn't take up too much of my time and I don't lose my machine.
2) Start a fresh user acount in which the problem does not occur and restore my system from time machine. The risk of course is that this may re-install the problem. Advantage is once again this can go on unattended but I lose my machine for half a day.
3) Start a fesh user account and re-install my system app by app and see if and where the problem returns. This seems like less work and more reliable than unistalling and re-installing and will start me off with a relatively clean new system. But it's a LOT of time and work.
Hmmmmmm .......

Time Machine isn't backing up external drive

I've been using Time Machine successfully for some time now. Recently I decided to move my iTunes music to an external drive (my internal drive was nearly full.) So I moved 150+ GB of iTunes library to the external drive successfully, but Time Machine seems to completely ignore the external (FireWire) drive. It's formatted as Mac OS Extended (that's HFS+, right?) so I don't understand what the problem might be.
Also, if I can get Time Machine to start backing up both drives correctly, should I erase the backup drive and start over? Otherwise, I assume that I'm going to be wasting a lot of (backup) drive space, since the 150GB iTunes library will be backed up from its original location on my internal drive, as well as from its new location on the external drive… what's the best way to deal with that?
Thanks in advance for the help.

Dave Troup wrote:
If V.K.s suggestion doesn't work, try excluding the drive, quitting System Preferences, then removing the exclusion.
Also, if I can get Time Machine to start backing up both drives correctly, should I erase the backup drive and start over? Otherwise, I assume that I'm going to be wasting a lot of (backup) drive space, since the 150GB iTunes library will be backed up from its original location on my internal drive, as well as from its new location on the external drive… what's the best way to deal with that?
You may not need to. TM will, eventually, delete it's copies of anything not still on your internal HD. When is just a question of how soon the TM drive/partition gets near full, and TM must start deleting your oldest "weekly" backups. You are supposed to get a message about that, if you have the appropriate box checked in TM's Preferences, but several folks here report they never did, so assume nothing.
Still, if you want, you can delete all the backups of a file or folder. Enter Time Machine, find and select the folder in question (presumably iTunes on your internal HD) in one of the "cascade" of Finder windows, then click the "gear" icon. That will give you an option to +Delete all backups of <folder>.+
You'll then get a confirmation prompt (may take quite a while, considering the size), then the usual place to enter your Administrator's password. The actual deletion will probably take quite a while, also. There was a report the other day that the item was still visible for quite some time after TM seemed to have finished the deletion, but eventually it did disappear.
Then make some change to the folder, or something within it, so TM will consider it changed and back-up the new (smaller) version.

Trouble backing up external drive with time machine

I have a small USB stick that I use to store important documents but documents that I don't access very often. I have an additional 500 GB hard drive that I use for backing up with Time Machine. I want Time Machine to backup both my internal hard drive (Macbook Air 2011 Lion) as well as the small USB stick. I've searched the forum and discovered that I needed to reformat the USB stick, which I did (it is now Mac OS Extended). The USB now appears in the list of excluded drives in Time Machine preferences, which I removed. Thinking that Time Machine would be backing up my USB stick now, I backed up and then turned the computer off. The next day, I looked at the external drive, and it didn't seem to have a backup of the USB. I entered Time Machine and the USB is "greyed out" which means it wasn't backed up. I've retried backing up several times by including the USB in Time Machien preferences, but it seems that when I click "save" it doesn't actually save because when I open Preferences up again, the USB stick is in the list of excluded items again. Have I done something wrong? Any imput would be greatly appreciated.

I don't use Time Machine but my view is that it is too dangerous for sticks which may be removed - I understand that it may delete previous backups if it discovers that the stick no longer exists.
You could:
manually copy the stick to your main drive from time to time
use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup the stick
use a utility to mirror the stick to your main drive

Does TM automatically back up external drives or only internal?

I have two external drives....one that I am backing up to (500GB) and one that will hold all my iphoto/tunes files (1TB). Will TM automatically back up the photos/music drive directly to my TM drive?
Also, the above drive I just bought is an iomega 1TB drive. TM said it was wrong formatting for backing up to, but can I still copy my files to it and will TM back up those files (to the other ext drive) without having to reformat it? If not, how do I reformat it?

ecddesign wrote:
I have two external drives....one that I am backing up to (500GB) and one that will hold all my iphoto/tunes files (1TB). Will TM automatically back up the photos/music drive directly to my TM drive?
Time Machine can back it up, if it's formatted for a Mac. Look in the exclusion list in +TM Preferences > Options.+ If the drive is listed there +*in black,+* it means it's not being backed-up, but can be. All you have to do is select it and click the minus sign at the bottom.
But if it's listed +*in gray,+* it means it's not formatted properly. Time Machine cannot back it up, and you can't remove the exclusion. You'll have to reformat it (which means erasing everything on it).
Also, the above drive I just bought is an iomega 1TB drive. TM said it was wrong formatting for backing up to, but can I still copy my files to it and will TM back up those files (to the other ext drive) without having to reformat it? If not, how do I reformat it?
See #5 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum. Use the same procedure to format both drives.

How to back up external drive attached to time capsule

How can I backup an external 1 TB drive containing my itunes library that I have attached to my time capsule usb port to my time capsule?
Over the weekend I purchased a timecapsule and I love it! I thought the idea of not having to mount and unmount my usb external drive from my laptop would help with my itunes library intergrity (keep loosing large chunks of music). I have now plugged the drive into the timecapsule usb port but the only configuration time machine allows that I can find is to tell it what not to back up on my laptop and now that the external drive is not attached to my mac it doesn't even appear. what now? I want to get this completed prior to upgrading to snow leopard.

go system preferences > time machine > options and make sure the external is not excluded from backups.
that's it. time machine should automatically backup any drive connected directly to your computer (unless it is told not to and given there's sufficient space on the TC).
JGG

Backing up External drives to Time Machine - what happens if the drives are not connected at the same time?

I have 2 x 1 TB drive that I use interchangeably. 1 holds Video and the other Photos. I only have 1 connected when I'm working (using Premiere or Lightroom). I have a 2 TB NAS for making redundant copy of the other 2 drives.So far I've been doing the copying manually.
I'm considering of using Time Machine to make proper backup sets (though I'm always only interested in the latest set). I know that I can set Time Machine to backup to Nas over the network and include any external drives connected to the mac at the time.
The questions now are:
Will Time Machine fails if it can't find any of the external drives?
Does Time Machine handle backing up the external drives one at a time - only when it's connected - without thinking the files on the "missing" (or disconnected) volume had been deleted?
Thanks

Hi Ronald,
I can't answer the TM question, but Tri-Backup handles those situations perfectly...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html

Time Machine Stops when using External Drive

I recently purchased Seagate GoFlex Desk 3TB external drive. It is connected in USB port for MacPro. Unfortunately, Time Machine starts backup, but it is discontinued after several minutes with message "cannot create backup folder." The backup seems to stall before it gives message, since the file count on the backup seems to stop. Any suggestions as to why this external drive will not work with Time Machine? Any suggestions on how to resolve the problem?

The external Seagate GoFlex Desk 2.0/3.0 usb drive starts and runs the backup for awhile, and then after 40-50 gb of backup quits, and I get a message that backup failed. When I restart the Time Machine backup, the prior backup seems to be on the disk, but it will only run for a period of twenty minutes or so, and then it will stop the backup. I thought that there might be a problem with the 2.0 usb capacity as too slow, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that the speed would be the problem. I also have seen that the GoFlex Desk drive has a problem with Lion OS, but the Seagate site seems to say it is compatible. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Back up external drive to ANOTHER external drive

Is there a way to back up an external drive, automatically? I'd like to keep my Aperture masters on an external (preferably NAS) drive, and then back it up to a separate external drive. Haven't found a solution for this yet!
Reason I need to do this is I have 1T of photo's and 500GB HD on my laptop!

Youre endangering your valuable data by assuming its ever safe on ANY single place, especially the internal HD.
Grab a 1TB HD for $65 and offload/copy your photos to another HD.
You dont need superduper to copy ONE external HD to another......just connect both and drag and drop what or all to the new HD.
Superduper will do the same with just 2 clicks if you want, its free.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Stopped backing up / external drive full ?

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