Time Machine automatically formats new external drive CASE-SENSITIVE?

I noticed a strange thing when I set up Time Machine. I'd bought an external drive that was presumably pre-formatted as FAT32 or NTFS, so when I connected it and told Time Machine to use that drive, it told me it needed to format the drive, so I told it to go ahead.
It happened so fast that I wanted to make sure it had worked, so I checked the stats on the drive, and I noticed that it was formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case-sensitive)". I thought it was a bit odd that it was formatted case-sensitive. When I google for this, the only thing I find is people saying that the external drive should NOT be case-sensitive.
So what's going on here? Should it be case-sensitive? Is this a glitch? Should I be concerned? Should those who don't use case-sensitive be concerned?
Thanks!

Well, I've been reading through some other discussions in this forum, and some people have attributed problems with Time Machine to the disk being formatted case-sensitive. So the issue is still up in the air. So far, I've only done an initial backup, and that worked fine. I've also read about people having trouble with subsequent backups. Also, some people report that Apple's tech support instructions specify that you format the drive explicitly without case-sensitivity. There are inconsistencies here, and Apple is mum about the details. So this kinda leaves this up in the air.
BTW, you say the drive will only be used for TM. Is that necessarily the case? I mean, can't I use it to store other files? I got a 500GB disk because it was on sale (a My Book for $125), and I figure it'll take a while to fill up, so why not use the disk for other things?

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Restore from time machine to a new external drive

Hi,
My iMac is configures as follows :
- the internal hd contains the apps/etc
- my home path is pointed to my external usb hard drive (/volumes/hd300gb/users/danygeller)
Is working perfectly and time machine backs it up correctly...
NOW, I need to replace this hard drive with a larger one 750gb.
So, how can i restore Time machine to this new drive ? What's the procedure ?
Thanks/Dany

This web site might answer all of your Time machine questions:
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Ciao.

HT201250 How can I restore files using Time Machine to a new external drive?

I need to restore all the files on a failed hard drive—upwards of a terabyte of data. How can I instruct Time Machine to copy the files to a new external hard drive? Thanks!

Hold down the option key and select
Browse Other Backup Disks...
from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. The menu icon looks like a clock running backwards. If you don't have that menu, open the Time Machine preference pane and check the box marked
Show Time Machine in menu bar

Using time machine to format new hard drive

Hi there, hope this is a relatively easy question!
Long story short, my macbook pro's harddrive recently decided to stop working. I will being installing a new one in the next few days. I've made a bootable USB drive with Mavericks on it, however my time machine save was a couple of months ago (yes I know, I know) completed just before I updated to Mavericks.
If I install Mavericks onto my new hard drive and then restore the pro using my time machine will it cause any problems? I would think it would just restore back to the previous OS and I'll just have to download Mavericks again? Or would you recommend using Migration Assistant instead - but from what I've read this doesn't actually bring any of your previous programmes/apps into your new hard drive?
I don't really have anything important on my hard drive so I'm not bothering with trying to recover data from it.
Thanks in advance for your help! Hopefully this means I can soon be reunited with my pro!

little_lab_rat wrote:
If I install Mavericks onto my new hard drive and then restore the pro using my time machine will it cause any problems?
Of course not. Moreover, Migration Assistant (and Setup Assistant) is designed to transfer Time Machine backups created with an older Mac OS X version, so this is not a problem.
What you can do is to restore the Time Machine backup first (hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up, choose the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow the steps), and then, download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store and upgrade.
Another option you have is to download the OS X Mavericks installer from the bootable USB drive and point it to install to the internal hard drive. Then, during its setup, it will ask you to transfer your files from a backup.
little_lab_rat wrote:
Or would you recommend using Migration Assistant instead - but from what I've read this doesn't actually bring any of your previous programmes/apps into your new hard drive?
If I were you, I would choose the second option I gave you. That option allows you to choose what files you want to restore, so you will have a cleaner OS X copy that may improve performance, and it takes less time than the first option. Also, there's no risk, because in the first option, the Mavericks upgrade may fail.

Transfer Time Machine backup from one external drive to another

Surely this has been covered, but I can't find it.
If you have your time machine backup on an external drive and get a new (larger) external drive, what is the best way to transfer the backup from one drive to the other (and define the new drive as the backup drive)? Straight copy ? Then to define the new drive, rename old drive to something else and name new drive the backup name?

I haven't tried this yet but a few other methods are described at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071128055047339

Time Machine issues since adding external drive

System spec:
2012 Mac Mini, quad core 2.3ghz i7, 16gb RAM, OS X Yosemite 10.10.2
Problem:
Today I added an external USB 3.0 1TB hard drive to my Mac Mini - a self powered Seagate one. I want Time Machine (running on another external drive - a mains powered 2TB USB 2.0 Western Digital drive) to back this drive up - so I went into the Time Machine preferences pane and removed the drive from the exclusions list to which it had automatically been added (since TM doesn't usually back up external drives)
I moved some data to the drive and Time Machine began to back this up as expected on it's next run. I went to check the TM drive in Finder to make sure it was backing up correctly when I noticed that the folder for this latest backup wasn't appearing - and that the Latest link went to the backup BEFORE the drive was installed. Both Finder and the Time Machine pref pane correctly showed the TM drive space dropping though - and if I went to Terminal and listed the contents of the Time Machine drive, the folder for the current backup appeared and Latest pointed to it as expected.
I let this backup and a second backup finish - so at this point I have two backups that have run since adding the external drive. The backups appear in the navigator on the right hand side - but they are greyed out compared to the others. If you try to click on one of these greyed out backups, TM scrolls back to an empty Finder window titled "Waiting: ...." and the time the backup ran.
I tried rebooting to fix this - when I checked again after rebooting, Time Machine showed the two backups and both were accessible and navigable within the TM restore interface. This was four hours ago. Three more backups have run since my reboot and they are exhibiting the same symptoms as the ones prior - not showing in Finder, not linked from Latest, and greyed out in the TM restore interface.
While I'm fairly confident the data IS being backed up, this is still going to be a problem if I need to restore. Has anyone seen this before and how did you fix it if so?

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take the action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

HT201250 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ?

When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, it migrates the first back-up I made several years ago. How can I migrate the latest back-up ? I need time machine to migrate the latest back-up. Should I delete the older back-ups ?

As noondaywitch says, it should use the latest backup.
Where are your backups (external HD, Time Capsule, etc.)?
It sounds like there are two separate sets, and you're not connected to the right set.

Time Machine can't find external drive after installing Lion

Time Machine can't find external drive after installing Lion. I have a Laice 1 terabyte external drive that worked fine with Snow Leopard and now no show ... tried connecting it to front port and Mac Pro can't see it. Also lost Office,Quicken, and Final Cut Pro says: " You can't open application because Power PC apps are no longer supported" this is Not a good surprise!

Does the drive work when just directly connected? If so, have you prepped the drive?
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Errors when transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive.

Hello,
I need some help transferring my Time Machine backup to an external drive. Let me explain what happened.
I have a Mac OSX Mountain Lion that was upgraded to Mavericks when the upgrade came out. Prior to upgrading, I've been backing up WD Passport Mac with the proprietary software "WD Unlocker on it". It worked flawlessly but after upgrading to Mavericks, I decided to backup and noticed that once i inserted the WD Passport, my screen will flicker, windows will close and reappear.
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I then copied my entire backups.backupdb folder to my Mac desktop and formatted my WD Passport external drive and got rid of the proprietary software "WD Unlocker".. Once this was completed, I then tried to copy my backups.backupdb folder to my external drive within finder. Each time i tried, i get error messages and permission messages. Even when i changed the permission on the backups.backupdb folder to read & write for everyone, i still get the permissions error.
Please helppppp. I have over 500gb of vital data in my backup.
Thank you.

Since you don't really have a question, I will give you a very broad information source for the next time you have a Time Machine question.
Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
Oh, you cannot use a computer whose only disk drive is the target of a an OS X cloning operation regardless of what software is used for the clone. You can, however, use the source drive except if you try to clone using Disk Utility.

Does Time Machine require a dedicated external drive, or can it include other files?

After a misplaced library file, I'm having problems restoring some of the content on my MacBook Pro. I have a Time Machine backup on an external drive, but the drive also includes lots of other files that I want to exclude from the restore process. I'm concerned whether the Migration Assistant will scoop up everything on the drive.
The laptop is still running on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 for specific reasons (although I have Lion 10.7.5 on my iMac). I presume Time Machine and the Migration Assistant are the same on both operating systems -- but I'd better ask here first.
Thanks for any help with this question.

David Henderson7 wrote:
Another good idea. Thanks, FatMac!
For a long time, I was leery of putting too much stuff on one drive. It breaks, and you lose everything. But you're right -- the prices allow for even two 3TB externals that could manage backups of backups for paranoid types like me. And that's in addition to the internal drive.
Welcome to paranoidville. Staples has been selling Toshiba Canvio 3 TB externals for $120 and even though they must have green drives inside because they run a lot cooler than Seagates (of course they do, also, have ventilation), being fed from an SSD I've seen transfer rates of 130+MB/s connected to USB 3.0 ports. I have one set up with 4 partitions and maintain a rolling backup of the boot disk with BU dates recorded for each partition. A second Toshiba has a single periodic BU of the Mac Pro as well as a bootable backup of the rMBP and what passes for a Windows 8 backup of a Lenovo laptop. A third has the rMBP TM partition and a series of rMBP backups (that was originally used for testing and using the rMBP for a week without touching the rMBP SSD in case there was an image retention problem or some other issue, since the internal SSD can't be securely erased and I had 14 days to simply return it).
You can never be too rich, too thin or too backed up.

I need to create a second back-up of iPhoto from Time Machine to a separate external drive. The old iPhoto in TM will not open. Please help!

I need to create a second back-up of iPhoto from Time Machine to a separate external drive. The old iPhoto in TM will not open. Please help! And thank you!

Most Simple Back Up:
Drag the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to another Disk. This will make a copy on that disk.
Slightly more complex: Use an app that will do incremental back ups. This is a very good way to work. The first time you run the back up the app will make a complete copy of the Library. Thereafter it will update the back up with the changes you have made. That makes subsequent back ups much faster. Many of these apps also have scheduling capabilities: So set it up and it will do the back up automatically.
Example of such apps: Chronosync - but there are many others. Search on MacUpdate or the App Store

I'm using Time Machine and a LaCie external drive to backup. I also have a 8 GB LaCie flash drive I want to use for small jobs. If I plug the LaCie flash drive in, is my Mac going to think it is the LaCie external drive and start trying to backup?

I'm using Time Machine and a LaCie external drive to backup. I also have a 8 GB LaCie flash drive I want to use for small jobs. If I plug the LaCie flash drive in, is my Mac going to think it is the LaCie external drive and start trying to backup?

no.

HT4413 When migrating from time machine to my new hard drive, only some files and applications and setting are transferred, not all of them. In my latest back up I have them all. How can I fix that?

When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.

sohs wrote:
When migrating from time machine to a new hard drive, not all is transferd, only partial documents, applications , settings etc. How can I migrate the latest back-up with all the content.
If you want to use Time Machine to recover the contents of one of its a backups to a new drive, follow the instructions in Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering your entire system. Note that you must select the "Restore System From Backup" option from the Utilities menu of the Installer disc to do this.
Also note that if you are transferring files to a hard drive to be used with a different computer, you should use Migration Assistant instead. This intentionally will not copy everything because some settings, applications, etc. are not compatible computer-to-computer. Migration Assistant will copy everything that is.

How to reinstall from time machine onto a new hard drive?

how to reinstall the system from time machine to a new hard drive?

If you are connected to the internet you can do this.
Boot your computer and immediately hold down command, option and R (three keys together). This gets you connected with internet recovery.
See this article for more directions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718.
This process installs an OS on your blank drive. You can then boot from the fresh OS installation and restore from your Time Machine back up.
Note that you cannot boot from a TM back up.

Time Machine has locked my external drive. HELP

Time Machine hosed me again. After several unsuccessful attempts to backup on my PowerMac G5 dual 2.33 Ghz, I was able to complete my first full backup to an external 2 gig DROBO (USB 2.0 interface). It took 20 hours to do 180 gigs.
Now I have just discovered that Time Machine has made that external drive READ-ONLY! I cannot write to the drive and neither can Time Machine.
Does anybody know what is up and how to fix this short of using root UNIX shell which terrifies me. I just want to take it off and cut my losses, but the drive also has a ton of music on it that iTunes uses.

Okay Jeffery, I think I've found the solution, especially if you are seeing the "Unknown" user in your Get Info window's Sharing & Permissions setting for your drobo.
I had written earlier about my work-around for getting my drobo to work right after getting the "read-only" error from Time Machine. But unfortunately it was a temporary and temperamental fix. There were times then I had to eject the disk and launch Disk Utility to run a repair on the disk which would take more than half an hour on my drobo. But all the while my permissions had this "Unknown" user. Well I decided to "Go UNIX" and see if I could fix this problem once and for all.
I opened up Terminal and typed "*ls -la /Volumes*". This gives me a directory listing of my mounted drive volumes. I noticed that all of my drives, internal, external, USB and FireWire, all had "root" as the user and "admin" as the group, _EXCEPT for my drobo!_ So I forced it to conform by changing it manually by typing "*sudo chown root:admin /Volumes/Drobo\ Backup\ HD/*".
sudo = temporarily enables root mode by asking for your password before executing.
chown = changes ownership to...
root:admin = "root" is the user and "admin" is the group.
*/Volumes/Drobo\ Backup\ HD/* = My drobo drive is named "*Drobo Backup HD*", but UNIX sees spaces as command separators, so you have to use the "\ " to signify spaces within a name.
After doing this over a week ago, _I have not had any other problems_ with using my drobo as a backup drive. It has never come up with the "read-only" error in Time Machine, the Sharing & Permissions setting do not have any "Unknown" users or groups, I don't even need to wait for my drobo before logging in like I did in the past. I just boot my Mac and everything with my drobo and Time Machine just works... No problems!
It seems to be permanently fixed for me, so if you are willing to try this solution, I'm sure it would work for you. If UNIX terrifies you too much, and you do not trust yourself editing the commands above, let me know the name of your drobo drive on your desktop and I will post a message with the EXACT UNIX commands customized for just for you, so all you have to do is copy and paste them into your Terminal window to do it. But like I said, I've done this over a week ago and I not had one single problem.

Time Machine automatically formats new external drive CASE-SENSITIVE?

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