Time Machine and "might be a problem with your network"

Hi! My Power Mac is from 2008, and I'm in the middle of replacing my hard drive. Here's a summary of what I've gone through, including various trouble shooting...
OK, the hard drive dies (all of which I wrote about in an earlier thread and, I think, not very relevant for this thread). While waiting to buy my replacement, I created an external bootable drive, hooked up via FW800. I created a new User Account, and then I used the Migration Assistant to bring in all the user settings, files, etc, from my Time Machine. It took many hours and and during the stage when it was transferring files, it gave me the prompt: "There might be a problem with your network. The other Mac is not responding. Make sure that all of your network devices are connected and turned on. Also, make sure that your Ethernet cables are still connected properly to your computer and to the network, or if using AirPort, that the base station is in range and turned on." After clicking "Continue" got me nowhere, I clicked Cancel, and it was a very incomplete migration [no apps, no files]. I didn't sweat this since this external drive is a temporary solution anyway.
Tonight I came home with the new internal drive, installed it, installed Leopard, and began the Setup Assistant. I got the same prompt as last night. NOTE: This time with Setup Assistant; last night was with Migration Assistant.
I notice from reviewing the boards that this Time Machine glitch seemed to happen a few years ago, in Leopard, and maybe hasn't happened since. But I haven't read a thread with a solution. (Maybe I missed it?)
A few things come to mind:
1. Could there be an issue with the fact that the computer is only 10.5 and many of the files/apps may have been installed when I was running 10.5.8? I'm just tossing that out there. For instance, what if I set up an initial User account, then updated the software to 10.5 and THEN used Migration Assistant to bring in the older account?
2. Soon, since I'm reinstalling Leopard, I'll get the prompt to use Setup Assistant, and this time I'll just select account settings and apps. I'll bring in the files manually, later. Since the progress window seems to get hung up during the file-transferring stage, maybe I'll have better luck if I skip that.
If anyone has any suggestions, man, I'd be way grateful!
Thanks!

"try trashing the timemachine.plist in your original user's Library>Preferences."
I didn't even get to that step. Here's what happened.
I went back to my original Admin account (the one I restored via Setup Assistant, from my Time Machine backup), and ran Migration Assistant again. I selected Applications only and when it gave me a prompt about the account name already existing. So, I created a new account name (TEMP 1, I called it).
All of my applications were restored.
Next, I tried it with all the files and folders. It didn't give me the duplicate name prompt this time. It copied all my flles and folders over.
Was it perfect? Well, a lot of the apps need some fresh registration and some upgrading, but I suppose that's to be expected. Or is it?
While I feel like this problem is in my rear-view mirror, I'm still interested in your suggestons for a Time Machine altenative.
Thanks again for your advice!

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I'm working on my iMac PowerMac8,2 PowerPC G5 (3.1) 2 GHz machine and have been having problems with the computer shutting down unpredictably. After the problem becoming impossible to work with, I shut the machine down. Now a little better, but reoccuring

I'm working with my iMac PPC G5, PowerMac8,2, 2 GHz machine running OS X 10.4.11, and was having a problem for a while with the machine shutting down unexpectedly. There was no clear pattern to when it was shutting down as far as I could tell. For a while, it would also not restart when buttoned on.
I set the machine aside for a while, probably a month or more, and then got it back out after its rustication. It started up and runs significantly better than it had been, but I have noticed it shutting down sometimes now again, though not as frequently as before. Sometimes it runs for a good long time between active work, sleep mode, and active work again. Once in a while it does shut down when no one is working on it (while asleep). But now it always restarts when buttoned on.
I've done the thorough vacuuming of any dust from the unit vents. I wonder if there's anything else I should try. In most other ways the machine works pretty well and has become the family desktop for basic uses, so I'd like to keep it running if I can. A little frustrating to not be able to upgrade all programs (iTunes) to useable versions, but that's another story....
I would appreciate any ideas about the shut down problem.
TCC

Option 1
Reset your PRAM. Press and hold down the Command Option P R keys while starting your computer. You will hear the startup chime. continue holding down those keys until you hear the startup chime a second time. Release the keys. If the computer restarts, you will need to reset your Date and Time. It might be time to replace your PRAM battery. The G5 iMacs require a 3 volt CR2032 lithium watch/camera battery like below:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/CR2032/
You can find these batteries at Walmart, Kmart, Target, most local drugstore chains, for between $3-$5, or at Radio Shack for $12-$20.
If you have any G5 iMac model EXCEPT the iSight version, you can probably do the battery install yourself. Watch this video on upgrading your iMac's RAM to show you how to remove the back of your iMac, if you don't already know how:
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/imac_g5_mem_m/
While you have the back off, use a can of compressed air to blow the dust out the vents at the bottom of the iMac, the fans, and anywhere else you can. Also inspect the 28-30 capacitors on the logic board. Look for dark spots, if they look puffy or swollen, or leaks.
Option 2
Reset the SMC by removing all cables (USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Modem, Power cord) from the back of your computer. Let it sit for one minute. Press and hold the power on button on the back of the iMac while plugging in the power cord. Release the power on button. Count to five, the press the power on button again.
Option 3
Place your original, came with the iMac when purchased install disk, into the slot on the iMac, press and hold the C key while pressing the power on button on the back of the computer. (If you have upgraded your OS from when you purchased your iMac, example your iMac came with OS 10.3 installed, and you're now using OS 10.5, then use the OS 10.5 Retail Install disk that you had used to upgrade your OS instead of the original, came with the iMac disk.)
Continue holding the C key until you see the OS starting to load. DO NOT do an OS installation. At the top Menu bar, select Utilities or Utility, and pull down to Disk Utility. On the left side of the window that opens,select your normal OS drive. Click First Aid at the top middle of the window if it isn't already selected. Click Repair Disk from the lower right area of the window. When that is done, click Repair Permissions to the left of the Repair Disk button you clicked earlier.
When that is done, quit Disk Utility. From the top Menu bar (I think its under Utilities) select the Start Up Manager, and choose your normal boot volume as the startup disk. Restart the computer. If successful, and you've rebooted from your normal startup disk, eject the install DVD/CD, and you're good to go.
Good luck.

Time machine and hard drive space problems

It's a long story, but in a nutshell...I've had some problems with my time machine backups on my external hard drive and my MacBook Pro has been taking a long time time boot up. So, I decided to wipeout the backups on my external by deleting them (I know that's a bad idea) and then I started to transfer all the stuff from my MacBook Pro that I wanted to backup, and now I have ran out of room on the external (1TB) drive. However, the space that is being used doesn't seem to match what should be available. There is around 200gb (I think) that isn't accounted for.....is there some hidden stuff I might have missed?

johnl927 is suggesting you wipe your external hard drive to remove any ghost files or errors in the file system. That would be the fastest and least time consuming way to go.
Your alternative is to run Disk Utility, verify disk and the partitions of the external hard drive, and if still in doubt verify permissions. The disk may sometimes claim to have less free space than really available because at some point in the past your computer or else where you plugged it in forgot to do some general housekeeping on the external hard drive.

Time Machine and Snow Leopard installation problem

I'm trying to install Snow Leopard, but keep getting an error saying that my hard drive is used for time machin back ups. I have unplugged my external device, turned off time machine, yet this keeps happening. What am I doing wrong? I have been able to install Leopard on the computers that I haven't used time machine.

BusyChris18 wrote:
1) Do I have to do anything special with Time Machine BEFORE I install SL? I have been doing regular backups with TM.
Do a "final" backup and turn TM off.
2) should Time machine disc be off/disconnected when I do the install?
It's safest to eject and disconnect it, "just in case."
3) After I reconnect TM disc after SL install, do I have to "migrate" stuff from TM? OR will it just do a new backup and work like normal from that point forward.
If you do the normal install, there's no migration needed. 99.9 % of everything will be fine. In some rare cases of 3rd-party apps putting things in unusual places, there may be a problem, and you may need to re-enter some 3rd-party app purchase codes.
If you erase the drive, then install SL, then yes, of course, you'll have to transfer your data. There should be no reason to do that, but some folks seem to do it out of habit. If you do that, when your Mac boots up again, you can transfer your data from the TM backups. And if you do that, I'd strongly recommend making a separate full backup on a second external drive, again "just in case," preferably a "bootable clone." CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper are the most common. (There was a post here just last week where someone did this, the restore got to 99%, then BAM! the TM disk failed.)
TM backups should just continue normally, although there will almost certainly be a long "Calculating Changes" phase (used to be called "Preparing"). And they've added a progress bar, which doesn't seem to be particularly accurate.
However, it may try a new, full backup. If it does, cancel the backup and do a Restart. That may reset whatever confused it. If not, there's nothing you can do to prevent it.
4) Will I be able to access files that were backuped when I have just Leopard?
Yes.

Time Machine Can Be Made to work with a Network Share

FYI I am just posting this here for the benefit of the community. The source of this info is: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=375047
As I write this, I am doing a Time Machine backup to a ReadyNAS NV+ afp mounted share. Here is a summary of what the thread above says you need to do. It worked for me.
Take any supported USB standalone drive and plug it in to an available USB port.
Use Disk Utility to format the drive (or partition on the drive) and name that partition to whatever you want your network share to be called. In my case, I called it "office-tm".
After you do this, open the Time Machine preference panel and select that new drive (in my case "office-tm") to be the Time Machine backup drive.
After Time Machine sets up the drive, it will start counting down before the next backup. Press the little X on the right side to cancel the backup.
Now open a terminal session and change directories to /Volumes/<drive> where in my case <drive> was office-tm (cd /Volumes/office-tm).
When you do a ls -a -l, you will see two important files. One starts with a period (.) and contains numbers after it. The other one is called .com.apple.timemachine.supported.
What you need to do is copy these two files to your network share. The trick is that you want your network share to have the same name as this drive you just prepared (again, in my case it was called office-tm). I first created a new share on my ReadyNAS+ called office-tm and set the quotas properly.
Then you need to copy the files. There are several ways to do this but the way I did it was that I temporarily mounted the network share at a different mount point in terminal just to get the files over. So for example, I did:
sudo mount -t afp afp://<ip.addr.of.share>/office-tm /Volumes/office-tm2
Then I copied the two files over (substitute your appropriate volume names):
cp /Volumes/office-tm/.00whateveryourfilenameis /Volumes/office-tm2/.
cp /Volumes/office-tm/.com.apple.timemachine.supported /Volumes/office-tm2/.
Turn off Time Machine so you can unmount.
Now you can unmount both the USB drive and the network share and then you remount the network share as the proper name. The same one that the USB drive was named so as far as Time Machine is concerned, the volume is still there. The two files are on the network share so all is fine and Time Machine can find the volume it expects.
Wait for Time Machine to start it's hourly backup and away you go.
PLEASE NOTE THIS DISCLAIMER - There is probably a good reason why Apple disabled this feature so you might want to think carefully before you rely on this hack published in the MacRumors forum to back up your Mac. I am using this for testing purposes only and I am still using traditional backup techniques for my "real" backup of my office machine. If you don't get good Time Machine backups and you have relied upon them for critical data, don't blame anyone but yourself.

Name: RAIDiator
Version: 3.01c1-p6
Date: Tue Dec 12 17:46:22 2006
Size: 46566912 bytes
Reason: Final 6.
We should probably start a new topic in networking on this. I am seeing some strangeness with afp shares as well.
I have most shares set up to allow access by both CIFS/SMB and AFP. If I use Sidebar and try to access the shares by AFP, it says it can't connect to the server. But the same shares via CIFS works fine. (I can click on the "Windows" server icon and connect.) But for any of these shares, I can manually connect with the normal Go > Connect to Server... method, specifying afp://<ip address> and that works fine.
In the case of the Time Machine share that is the subject of this post, I disabled CIFS and am only using AFP because I wanted to make sure I connected to the share only via AFP for Time Machine purposes.
BTW, I do not use USER or DOMAIN security mode in my case and my shares are set up as SHARE security mode.

Time Machine and SuperDuper on External Hard Drive?

Hi!
I really need a back up solution and after reading a lot of different articles and forums I think using Time Machine and SuperDuper may be the best option for me so I'm looking for advice:
Should I partition an external hard drive and have part of the partition for Time Machine and part for my SuperDuper clone? If I do this how much space should I give to each partition (the computer is 250GB and I'm using about 90GB, I mostly deal with documents, photos and music, I don't have movies or many huge files on my computer)
Will a 500GB external hard drive be sufficient and if the Time Machine partition becomes full as I assume it will in a few months if I understand correctly it will just start overwriting older back ups?
I know the ideal might be to have an external hard drive dedicated to time machine and one dedicated to SuperDuper but to be honest I can't afford 2 hard drives at the moment so I plan to partition (unless you strongly advise against it) and I'll also back up extremely important files with Dropbox. I'm at that stage where I just need to start doing back ups and I like the idea of it happening in the background via Time Machine and doing a weekly clone with SuperDuper. I'd like to get started immediately.
Any advice or problems I should be aware of would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Effie Darrow wrote:
Should I partition an external hard drive and have part of the partition for Time Machine and part for my SuperDuper clone?
imagine that drive croaks. both backups will be lost @ the same time ...
If I do this how much space should I give to each partition (the computer is 250GB and I'm using about 90GB, I mostly deal with documents, photos and music, I don't have movies or many huge files on my computer)
see this read about how much space you should give TM: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/1.html.
as for a SD clone, the size of your startup disk will suffice.
Will a 500GB external hard drive be sufficient
see above
and if the Time Machine partition becomes full as I assume it will in a few months if I understand correctly it will just start overwriting older back ups?
deleting them, yes.
I know the ideal might be to have an external hard drive dedicated to time machine and one dedicated to SuperDuper
that would indeed be ideal.
but to be honest I can't afford 2 hard drives at the moment
USB drives are dirt cheap right now but stay away from WD drives.
good luck !
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....

Time machine and backup

I have a quick question. I'm pretty new to macbooks. I just recently bought a macbook pro 13" and hooked it up to an external harddrive. I used Time Machine to backup the entire system. I take a lot of pictures so I've used up about half my hard drive capacity. My question is....can I use the same external hard drive just to store pics and also as Time Machine? Or...do I have to buy another external hard drive to just store pics?

Time Machine works best if it has its own, exclusive space. If you want to put other things on the same drive, partition it. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
But before you do that, how are you going to back up those pictures? If they're in the same partition as your backups, Time Machine cannot back them up. If they're in a separate partition of the same drive, when you tell Time Machine to back it up, it will send you a message reminding you that it's not a good idea to have your originals and backups on the same physical HD. When (not if) it fails, you risk losing both copies.
If your pictures are valuable, yes, get another drive for them. Format it for a Mac, per #1 in Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks. External HDs are excluded from Time Machine by default, so go to Time Machine prefs > Options, select the new drive, and click the minus sign at the bottom to remove it from the exclusions box. Then Time Machine will back it up along with your internal HD.

Time Machine and Back-Up

Sorry for my ignorance. Do I need to use both Time Machine and Back-up? What's your best advice for using these effectively? Thanks for your PATIENCE and time.

I've never had a .Mac account so I can't comment specifically about Backup but it's always better to have two backups. Using both Time Machine and Backup would probably be useful. This article covers some of the basics about the differences between Time Machine and Backup.
Mac OS X 10.5: When to use Time Machine or .Mac Backup to back up data
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307050

HT1338 problems with time machine and parallels desktop, mac osx mountain lion 10.8

have a good day, i have been problems with time machine and parallels desktop, dont work in mac osx 10.8, i upgrate two mac´s (macbook air, imac), in the two machines shows problems, could you help me please.
two machines have good ram memory (macbook air 11.1 2010 early , imac 2009 late).
i am waiting for your help.
thanks.
Jesus.

Take a look here:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Specifically, you'll probably want to try item #A5 on that page, but there's a lot of other info there that may be useful.

Problems with time machine and external hard drive

Hi all
In 2009 with my imac I bought a WD external hard drive which the computer says is 148GB formatted. I recall that the hard drive contained folders with files for the running of the hard drive when I bought it - and after it had been plugged in to a mac and used as a time machine, it no longer worked on windows computers.
Now I have used 195 GB on my computer's internal hard drive and wish to stop using the external hard drive as a time machine and instead use it for swapping files between computers and the like.
How can I wipe the time machine back ups and start using it as per usual again? do i need to obtain the WD files from somewhere?
thanks in advance
Nick

Hi Nick,
Avoid the WD files completely, not needed & often a problem.
You need to erase the Drive, & to use it on both Format it MS-DOS/FAT32, on the Mac or PC, but will have a 4 GB filesize limit, as well as other limitations.
One option not mentioned yet is MacDrive for your PCs... allows them to Read/Write & Format HFS+, so no need to reformat it...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

I am having problems with Time Machine and having enough space to finish my last back up.

I am having problems with Time Machine and having enough space to finish my last back up.

Take a look at this link, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

My document.numbers can not be opened how can i recover the version from yesterday i was not using time machine and it was not in icloud. is there an app i can buy that might help

my document.numbers can not be opened how can i recover the version from yesterday? i was not using time machine and it was not in icloud. is there an app i can buy that might help

Thanks Andy,
I wish I could have told my sister about this as she could not open my homepage back before my new iWeb site. She now can open my site without the yet in case denial window does appear = I thank you.
I think my iWeb site works as Noone has said otherwise from any platform etc...
Alex L
I do agree that should not have to be a consideration for any users so i agree that it would be great if Apple could allow simplicity to run seemlessly.
I have had this problem since Homepage, and here is
what has worked for me. I send out the link, and
then for PC users I send the link with "<" after the address (without quotation
marks. e.g., <http://site.com>).
I also put a note that if that doesn't work, to just
copy and paste the link into a browser. With that I
have only had 1 person say they still can't open.
Everyone else gets it to work.
It's a lot to do and seems like a hassle, but you get
used to it.
Hope this helps!
Andy Martini
PS - APPLE! When are you going to fix this??! It
seems like such a small thing yet you guys have been
stumped for YEARS on this!

Can time capsule be partitioned so as to back up osx with time machine and bootcamped windows drive with win 7 ulyimate

have imac 27 inch. I plan to bootcamp the drive and install win 7 ultimate to run AutoCAD. I want to backup the imac using time machine and the boot camped drive to one device. Can time capsule be partitioned to use time machine for osx and win 7 backup for bootcamp drive.

You cannot backup a Windows partition or system using Time Machine. Nor can you partition a TC as far as I know although Airport Utility may allow that now. See:
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Of course you should carefully read the documentation that came with your TC to find out what options are available.

I have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard and foolishly upgraded to Yosemite. Is it possible to go back in time with Time Machine and reinstall Snow Leopard. Then upgrade to Lion or Mavericks? Any other ideas on how I can exit Yosemite?

I have a mid 2010 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard and foolishly upgraded to Yosemite. Now have numerous problems. Is it possible to go back in time with Time Machine and reinstall Snow Leopard? Then upgrade to Lion or Mavericks? Any other ideas on how I can exit Yosemite?

Once you get yourself back to Snow Leopard, if you still want to upgrade somewhat, I would suggest the following:
1. Get an external hard drive that you can use for experiments with new OS versions. You could partition it into 2 or 3 partitions. You could then clone your existing Snow Leopard system to one partition using Carbon Copy Cloner (well worth $40) or SuperDuper ($25).
2. Buy OS X Mountain Lion for $20, through the Apple online store (I don't think it's available through the App Store). Apple has decided to make it very difficult for anyone to get Mavericks unless they have already downloaded it.
You will receive two e-mails from Apple, one containing a PDF with a redemption code, and one with the password you will need to unlock the PDF. Using the code, you will download Mountain Lion from the App Store, where it will appear among your Purchased items.
After ML finishes downloading, its installer app will launch itself. When you see this launch screen, QUIT the install app immediately! Go to your applications folder, find the Install OS X Mountain Lion app, and copy it to a safe location outside of your Applications folder. Keeping one or more copies will allow you to reinstall without unnecessary aggravation if you later need or want to do that. At this point, you can re-launch the Installer in the Applications folder and let it run. You can install it on a clean partition on your external HD, or you can allow it to upgrade the Snow Leopard clone you created on your external drive, or you can do both. This should allow you to test how everything works for as long as you like.
3. If you left yourself a free partition on your test drive, try a clean install of Yosemite and set everything up from scratch (do not migrate anything). This will allow you to see whether your problems with it were related to something in your Snow Leopard system.

Time Machine and "might be a problem with your network"

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