Suggested enhancements for Time Machine

I like Time machine but it has some limitations: mostly that it does not provide any mechanism to control the scope and duration of backups. It also does not provide a way to manage the backups.
I would like to see the following features in a future version:
1) Provide a way to limit the space or time for backups: I would like a way to tell it to limit the backups it takes to a certain amount of disk space (for example 500GB out of a 1TB drive), or for a certain time only (like just for one month) or for a certain number of versions.
2) Provide a mechanism to remove old backups in a controlled way (like remove all backups older than one month or just retain the last N versions of all files)
What do you people think ?
Albert

This is a user forum. Post feedback here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

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I used a partitioned HDD for time machine, using a partition already containing other data files. I am now no longer able to view that partition in Finder. Disk Utility shows it in grey and "not mounted". Any suggestions of how to access the files?

I used a partitioned HDD for time machine, using a partition already containing other data files. I am now no longer able to view that partition in Finder. Disk Utility shows it in grey and "not mounted". Any suggestions of how to access the files? Does using time machine mean that that partition is no longer able to be used as it used to be?
HDD is a Toshiba 1TB, partitioned into two 500GB partitions.
OS X version 10.9.2

Yes, sharing a TM disk is a bad idea, and disks are cheap enough so that you don't need to.
Now
Have you tried to repair the disk yet

HT201250 new external hard drive for Time Machine backup suggestions?

Ok, I have 3 external hard drives; unfortunately I've used them on my PC and they are read only on my iMac. So, I need to buy a new external hard drive for Time Machine backup. I'm a little confused; can I buy any EHD and them format it so Mac can use it or are there special EHD's I need to purchase?
Anyone have a particular EHD that is working well for you? Thanks, Blue

Bluehowler wrote:
Ok, I have 3 external hard drives; unfortunately I've used them on my PC and they are read only on my iMac. So, I need to buy a new external hard drive for Time Machine backup. I'm a little confused; can I buy any EHD and them format it so Mac can use it or are there special EHD's I need to purchase?
Anyone have a particular EHD that is working well for you? Thanks, Blue
Unless you need all three external drives for your PC, you can reformat in one of them in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for use with Time Machine. However, since Time Machine backs up hourly, you'd need the external drive to be running constantly. That means ventilation of the drive becomes an issue since some, such as Seagate, can get very hot in their sealed enclosures. Some drive manufacturers try to get around this by spinning down the drive when not in use, but I've read complaints that that doesn't play well with a Mac. So whether you reuse one of your current externals or get a new one, it's a good idea to keep the drive's ventilation in mind.

Can I use an empty (NFTS)partition on my 1tb WD drive for Time Machine

I have a 1TB WD external hard drive formatted NTFS into 6 partitons. Can I use one of the partitions for Time Machine? or will it try to destroy all the partitions I have on the NTFS drive? I have Macbook Pro (early 2011 with OXS 10.7 Lion) and am running Parallels with Windows Vista on the Mac. And I have a Toshiba satellite running Vista. I just want to be able to read and write to my USB drive, from both and transfer files from the windows machine to the Mac and vice versa. Any Suggestions?

TimeMachine backups should be at least 2x the size of the HD. Assuming you hve a 500 GB drive, all of the 1 TB will be needed, not just 1 partition.
Even if you decided to run below specs, you still need a disk with the GUID partition mapping scheme and HFS+ partition for TimeMachine.
I just purchased a new/self-powered LaCie 1 TB fro my 500 GB MBP. "New" being the operative word.
As to reading/writing NTFS ... Mac can read read NTFS but not write it without special software.

HDD for Time Machine and other stuff

Just a very short question.. Can I use my external harddrive for Time Machine and for example putting files on it to take it to my friend, or the otherway around, put files on it and take it back home?
The reason I ask this is that I hooked up a USB HDD and it said I needed to clear all the data on the disk first before using Time Machine.

As you probably already figured out.. I don't know anything about External HDDs. That's why I want you to ask which of those LaCies you would suggest for TM with 40GB of used data and it needs to be fast:
1: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11022 (320GB)
2: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11013 (320GB)
3: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10695
4: http://www.lacie.com/nl/products/product.htm?pid=10811 (only a Dutch link, I'm sorry)
Hope you're able to help because your help is fabulous so far!
Message was edited by: FiveMenM

Possible to share ext HD for time machine?

I have an large 4TB external hard drive hooked up to my iMac and am using it for time machine backups. I would like to have our MacAir to also access this drive for its Time Machine backups through our local network (wirelessly). Is this possible? If so, how?
Thanks.
Tony

Barney,
I finally got around to trying your suggestion. It partially worked...I was able to start the backup (i.e. it recognized the external HD on my iMac), but it got stuck at "preparing for backup". It just continued to spin and spin until I got some message that it wasn't able to back up. And, I did see the external HD was being accessed since the lights on it started blinking.
Anyway, close but not quite. I appreciate the help though. I'll just have to remember to connect the hard drive direct to the laptop from time to time and backup manually.
Regards,
Tony

Can I use iPod for time machine back up?

I have several iPods that I don't use, and would like to use them as time machine back up drives, for multiple computers.
They are 30gb iPod videos. I am aware they aren't as reliable as an actual external hard drive and that this much read/write can cause the iPod to burn out, but for these purposes I don't care.
I have 300 computers that I want to restore to one master, as they are all used for the same purpose, but currently they all have OS 10.5.x of varying versions. I currently use a time machine backup on an external hard drive to restore the systems, but I have 15 iPod videos, and I would like to use 2-3 of them, to speed the process up.
I use carbon copy cloner once I get a system restored, to restore the stations around it, but time machine is about 15% faster than using CCC, so I would like to use these iPods to increase my ability to restore these systems on a regular basis without having to buy external hard drives or enclosures to make external HDs.
I have tried:
Erasing the iPod in disk utility.
-It will erase the volume as HFS+ (extended journaled) but it won't erase the main device as it shows in Disk utility, it consistently stays as Fat32.
--Same idea if I recreate the partition. I tried GUID partition scheme, Apple Partition Map and Master boot record, but all produce the same result.
I also selected the iPod and attempted a zero-out of the whole iPod using the security options in disk utility. The system still will not let me use it for time machine.
Has anyone been able to use an iPod for backup? Are there any other techniques anyone can suggest to get this iPod to work?
Thanks for your help.

And to clarify, originally I made sure disk usage was enabled on the iPod.
I have also tried dragging and dropping the contents of a time machine backup to the iPod, but it's still not seen as a backup volume. I suspect there are some hidden files that enable a volume as time machine capable. Any ideas on how to maybe copy the hidden files or any other methods that might work?

My iMac suddenly can't read the backup hard drive I've been using for Time Machine. I did NOT just upgrade the OS or anything. The external HD is an OWC Mercury Elite All Pro. It's worked fine since I got the iMac 4 years ago.`

My iMac suddenly can't read the backup hard drive I've been using for Time Machine. I tried unplugging the cord that connects the HD to the iMac and plugging it back in, but I still get "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" below which are buttons for Initialize, Ignore and Eject. I was using a cord that went from larger square plug to larger square plug. So then I tried one that went from smaller square plug to what I think is USB (thin rectangular plug) of the sort that connects the keyboard and mouse. It's the type that my printers and scanners use to connect to the iMac. I did NOT just upgrade the OS or anything. The external HD is an OWC Mercury Elite All Pro. It's worked fine since I got the iMac 4 years ago. What else can I try before just trying to initialize and

Thanks, Michael! I do hear it at times spooling up and running. Just after I bumped the thread I looked for troubleshooting for this drive online and found the manual which suggested using Disk Utility which I've seen before accidentally (if I hit Command Shift U instead of Shift U to type "Unit" on a new folder for a student's homework ) but had never really noticed. Disk Utility does see it and also a sub-something (directory?) which might be the Time Machine archives on the disk, called disk1s2), sort of the way that my iMac's hard drive shows up as 640.14 GB Nitachi HDT7... and has a sub-something titled DB iMac, which is what I named my iMac's hard drive.
Anyway the owner's manual just shows the image under the formatting section, not the troubleshooting section, but as soon as I saw it in the manual I remembered seeing it accidentally a few times, went to it, and am now verifying the disk. Right now it's telling me that it will take 2 hours to complete the verification, so I guess I have a bigt of a wait. :-)
Does that fact that Disk Utilities can see it mean it's not failed, or just that it hasn't completely failed?
I can see the virtue in having multiple redundant backups, or at least two backups. What do you suggest? Two external hard drives? I had this one linked by ethernet, and but I also have a cord that could link it by USB (like a printer), so if this one is reparable I could get a second one and link it by USB. If this one is not reparable I could get two and do the same thing. I do have an Airport so I suppose it's possible to get some sort of Wi-Fi hard drive (my new printer/scanner uses only the network and not a cable, although it has a cable that I used for the initial installation), but I'd suspect a Wi-Fi hard drive might have a higher price.
What hard drives, if any, do you recommend? I seem to recall that when I was looking at external hard drives 4 years ago, Apple's were substantially more expensive, which is why I got the OWC Mercury Elite All Pro.

How can I open up more space on my external hard drive for Time Machine?

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I use with Time Machine. I believe I have half designated for Time Machine and the other half to use as an external drive to put whatever I want on it. My issue is that now my Time Machine back up needs more than 250GB of space.
How can I make more space available on Time Machine and less for the external half (maybe split it 400/100 for example) or just designate the whole 500GB for Time Machine?
Am I going to have to reformat the hard drive? I'm trying to do this in a way that I'm not going to risk losing what might already be on Time Machine...
I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this. Hopefully someone can help.
Amanda

I would also suggest you get a 2nd, much larger hard drive, partition it if desired, move your data to it, and start a 2nd Time Machine backup on it. You can set Time Machine to alternate between the 2 drives by adding the new drive to System Preferences/Time Machine. If you want to make a copy of your current backup on the new drive, you can do that using the Disk Utility Restore tab. If you chose to do that, make the copy first since using the Restore tab erases all data on the drive or the partition.

External hard drive for time machine back-ups

Can anyone please suggest the best external hard drive to use for time machine back-ups on my iMac?
I also use a 1TB external hard drive for my iTunes library, but I've noticed that it can be slower to access the music than if I used the iMac hard drive......any suggestions? My iTunes library is currently sitting at around 200GB.
Thanks.
Brian

i'd recommend a firewire 800 drive. many folks here speak highly of drives supplied by [OWC|http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire> and [LaCie|http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156].
JGG

External drive for Time Machine and Firewire Hub

Just got a new iMac. My old iMac G5 was running 10.4.11 so no Time Machine. On the new iMac I am running 10.5.6 I find I have questions about how to go about making best use of this new facility available to me. Since my new iMac has only one firewire port (FW 800) I also need an additional port here.
My thoughts are to use an external drive connected with FW 800 as a Time Machine backup and use the (usually) extra FW 800 port to extend the FW 800 and I find I can get a dual interface drive with both FW 800 and FW 400, so I could use the FW 400 for FW 400 devices like other FW 400 drives and my video camera.
Currently I use SuperDuper to make clone backups of my HD on a weekly basis (I use 2 drives for this on a rotating basis). I plan to continue that in addition to the facility offered by Time Machine (on a separate drive).
My questions are...
Is it a good idea to use the extra FW 800 or 400 port on an external to connect other drives to use for clone BUs?
If that is a good idea...
What brand and size of drive to use for the Time Machine BU (FW 400/800 sharing)
A. Maxtor?
(I have several OneTouch II and OneTouch III that I use for clones, I have been using them for a few years without problem. I seem to remember reading about some problems with Maxtor, have I just been lucky?)
B. Newertech MiniStack v3 from OWC MacSales?
C. OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro™?
If the OWC Mercury Eltite is a good choice...
Is a 750 GB large enough?
Is it worth it to get the 1TB Enterprise 7200RPM?
Any other suggestions?
Andy

i needed 3 drives in total so went with my 2nd choice of buying external enclosures and then hard drives,
at the end it cost me much much less so i endded up buy another as a spare,
so currently using 4 NexStart combo enclosure each one fitted with a 500gb hard drive,
i got one connected to my G5 and 3 connected by FW400 to my imac through a daisy chain,
for time machines it doesnt matter about speed so you dont need to use up the FW800 Port,
FW400 will be fine,
before this i had a USB2 WD Book and was using that with time machine and never had a problem through USB,
i always connect to a port i hardly use as i wont ever need to keep taking it off if i had to connect my camera to it for example....

How to limiting the size of an existing Sparse Bundle for Time Machine?

There seems to be a solution for locking the size of a new sparse bundle to be used for Time Machine backups (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2383738?tstart=0). However, I have a Time Machine sparse bundle with a year's worth of history that is getting very large and I would like to limit its size. Is there a way to constrain the size of an existing sparse bundle without trashing it.
Appying the suggested techniques"
hdiutil resize -size 300g xyz.sparsebundle
and
SetFile -a L PATHTOSPARSEBUNDLE/Info.*
on an existing sparse bundle somehow corrupts it and TM wants to start from scratch.
A method for constraining the size of a TM sparse bundle without trashing it would be very appreciated.

budden10, please try this:
Disconnect the external drive to simulate it not working or having failed
Open Time Machine on your Mac and wait a few minutes for your backups to load fully
Go back in time and select a date when you were backing up the external drive
Now look at the Finder window and locate your Mac on the left side of the window under DEVICES
Click on your Mac
What do you see in the window there just to the right?

Any love for Time Machine?

I've just installed Leopard and although I do have a bootable clone of my Tiger system via Carbon Copy Cloner, I was intending to use Time Machine for my regular Leopard backups (from both my internal HD and my Lacie 250GB Firewire external). Is there ANYONE on this forum using Time Machine and having a positive experience with it?

Nothing but problems. I thought I had it working until tonight when I tried to load Prallels and it kicked in. I was able to shut down Prallels, Mail and other open application but I couldn't stop the backup that was taking place.
I couldn't force quit System Preferences. I couldn't logout, restart or shut down the iMac. If I did a Relauch on Finder, the Finder would just cause Finder to go away. I could see the Finder Menus but couldn't access them. Saw the beach ball thing.
I knew from experience the only solution was to turn off the TM external drive which is a LaCie 1TB by the way. Once I did that System Preference came up. I disabled TM and Restarted the machine.
I have Spotlight disabled on all but my internal drive. I partitioned the external TM drive GUID and that did help. I only have about 100Gig or so to back up and like I said, it has been working fine.
I spoke with Apple Support and the technician suggested I try to "get by" as updates were pending within the next few days. I spoke with him yesterday so maybe they'll be out soon.
I plan on disabling TM while using the comptuer and let it run at night and see what happens. Or maybe during the day while at work. At least that way I can let Super Duper! do its thing. It won't make a bootable but neither will TM. I think it will at least get my data.
The thing is, for a couple of days, it seemed to work. Once I partitioned the drive as GUID things were better.
I agree that it will be a great product once it works but I can't help but think Apple didn't test it fully and didn't really care to.
No love for Time Machine yet. But I'm trying.
It does have a cool interface though. It will be great for my Mom. I may like it too but as a compliment to Super Duper instead of a replacement.

EHD recommendations for Time Machine back-up?

Hi!
I need to buy a 2 or 3 TB EHD, preferably Firewire, for Time Machine back-ups of my iMac and EHD. Can anyone tell me what's a good reliable brand at a reasonable price? I've found several Western Digitals, Seagates, Iomegas, and LaCies, but none of them get stellar reviews. Frankly, I'm afraid to trust any of them based on what I've read.
I currently have a 1 TB Seagate GoFlex Desktop that's a huge pain in the tush because it powers down regularly and then ejects from my desktop giving me an error message. I get sick of this happening all day long, so now I don't trust Seagate at all.
I've had an internal WD hard drive fail after a year and a half in my previous iMac. So, any suggestions? I want to pay $150 or less, so if I can only get a USB one for that, it's okay as long as it gets great recommendations.
I'd love to hear what others have had good luck with.
TIA!

i have actually very good experiences with LaCie drives, particularly the d2 Quadra.
however, the Mercury Elite line by OWC is also recommended often.

Why no disks listed for time machine

I got my MACBOOK yesterday. When I ran time machine for the first time. it shows: A storage for time machine backups isnt set up. I clicked "set up time machine" , and click: choose backup disk. Howeve, none disks are listed, neither the internal HD, nor a portable disk connect to my MAC.
Don'tknow whether i missed anything, or just did something stupid. Can anybody help? Thanks a lot!!

I have the same problem with my EZQuest 120GB HD that I have been using for many years. I sent all folders/files to trash before trying Time Machine which failed to see this disk. In disk utility, it checks ok (repair permissions and repair disk) but it fails to recognize the disk for partition.
Any suggestions? The "Get info" results are pasted below.
David
Name : Indigita
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
Disk Identifier : disk1
Media Name : Indigita Generic 1394 dev Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 13753799005283824
Device Tree : /PCI0/RP04@1C,3/FRWR@0/node@30dd01e005a5f0/sbp-2@c000/@0:0
Universal Unique Identifier : E2117719-B767-3D51-8FCC-5D78AAAFA5F2
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
Location : External
Total Capacity : 111.8 GB (120,034,123,776 Bytes)
Free Space : 89.9 GB (96,504,556,544 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 0

Suggested enhancements for Time Machine

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