Time Machine: backups failing because "connection failed"

I have a 500GB external HD connected to my Airport Extreme base station base station via USB, and I use it for wireless Time Machine backups for my iMac and my MBA.
(Yes, I know this setup isn't officially supported. But, it's been working well for a couple years now.)
But over the last few months, backups keep failing because the HD keeps getting disconnected. If I go to find the drive in the finder, it appears, but when I click it, it says "connection failed".
I've found that if I reset the AEX (via airport utility) that allows it to connect, but, never long enough for a full backup to happen.
And, several times recently I've gotten some message about how the backup needs to be verified or something like that- the bottom line is always that the old backups are lost and I need to start all over with the initial backup that takes days. But of course I can never finish it, because it always drops the connection.
At first I thought the problem was only with the iMac backups, which would lead me to believe the drive/router/etc isn't the problem and that it's something on the iMac, but then I had the problem with the MBA too, so I'm guessing it has to be something with the AEX base station (firmware maybe?), or the HD itself...
Is my HD dying? I've run disk utility on it and it checks out OK. Not sure how else to troubleshoot that.
I used to have tons of problems with my internet dropping out when backups were running, but an airport firmware update eventually solved that, and things had been running fine...
I'm running Lion and all the latest software/firmware updates.
Ive found tons of threads about this problem, but they're all at least a year old, and none had a solution...
Does anyone have any thoughts??
Thanks!!

Alexroet wrote:
And, several times recently I've gotten some message about how the backup needs to be verified or something like that- the bottom line is always that the old backups are lost and I need to start all over with the initial backup that takes days.
That's not one of Apple's clearest messages -- it means the backups are corrupted beyond OSX's ability to repair them. See #C13 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Is my HD dying?
Possibly.
But more likely is the usual cause -- network or power problems that the Airport can't deal with well enough to prevent corruption.
Part of the reason you're seeing problems now may be more networks, cordless phones, microwaves, etc., in your area causing more network problems. Another part may be that it's only in the last 18 months or so that Time Machine started running the periodic checks to find the problem. You may have had trouble earlier but didn't know it.
Bottom line, you need to find a reliable way to back up.
In your case, it's actually easy: Delete the sparse bundle containing the iMac's backups, and start backing-up to it directly. Then back the MBA up to the same drive (preferably to a separate partition) via your network. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #22 for setup instructions. Also see #33 there.

Similar Messages

Time Machine backup causes network connections to fail

We have a simple network with OS X Server (10.6.4) + a 10.6.4 Mac client and a Windows XP client. For some time we have been suffering sporadic drop outs of the network connection from the iMac OS X client to the server: the shared drives just disappear and you can't reconnect.
I have now narrowed this down to a problem with Time Machine. By logging on as a user on the OS X Server I was able to observe that the user session on the server suffered the same problem sometimes and this ONLY happens when Time Machine is running - I think its always when Time Machine is backing up the server.
Its an absolutely infuriating problem and very disruptive for our business. I am loath to switch off Time Machine on the server but don't know what else to do. Has anyone else experienced this problem or got any ideas?
Message was edited by: davidav

Yep, Rikakiah, seems you are right, I am not alone! There are two other threads here which discuss the same issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11539266&#11539266
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11539227
From my testing it seems that the problem may be related to some interplay between Time Machine and LDAP - I say this because I can sometimes clear the problem and regain access to my shares by going into Workgroup Manager, removing the group assignments (which give access to the shares), saving the change, then adding the group assignments back.
This made me think that your solution should fix it, but unfortunately although I have excluded /var/db from Time Machine backups, I am still sporadically getting the problem.
Message was edited by: davidav
Message was edited by: davidav

Can anyone access time machine backup files by connecting to time capsule by ethernet cable?

I operate an imac connected to a time capsule. It works great. My internet is connected to the time capsule with an ethernet cable and I access the internet on my imac using an ethernet cable connected to the time capsule. I can also connect to the time capsule using wireless.
A colleague of mine wants to connect to the internet and because of location issues the only convenient way is to let him connect to my time capsule using an ethernet cable. He can access the internet fine and he uses a windows PC. Now my question is, will he be able to access my time machine backup files if he connects to my time capsule using an ethernet cable? I have not given him my password.
Any help will be appreciated. I want to help him get online but I want to make sure he cannot access my time machine backup files.
Thanks

There are actually 3 passwords on the Time Capsule - assuming it has the same setup as my Airport Extreme Base Station.
One password for the WiFi connection.
One password to access setup of the device
One password for access to the storage drive - most people leave the check-box to just use the base-station setup password again.
And, as I said before, you also have the option to encrypt your TM backups. So even if somebody runs off with the device and breaks in to the disk, it will all be garbage without the TM password.
This is the screen as it is on my computer:
As you can see, to access my drive I have it set to use the device setup password.
Here is a screen shot of the other options:

Using time machine backup on disk connected to airport extreme router?

So I've read a number of articles about using an external hard drive connected to the airport extreme base station as a time machine backup. The thing is that I'm writing this in august 09, most of the articles (which say the feature is officially unsupported) date about a year and a half ago. I'm wondering if there have been any developments since then.

I also have this problem -- it started about 2 weeks ago (around July 20?), possibly at the time the new Airport Extreme firmware went into effect. I have two separate Mac laptops that each use Time Machine to back up to different disks that are attached to the Airport Extreme (i.e., each laptop has its own backup-destination disk). Both were working flawlessly before (for more than 6 months); now, each one reliably drops the connection to the disk (produces an error message, and thereafter cannot re-connect to the destination disk until I cycle the Airport Extreme with power-off/on). I had hoped that 10.5.8 would help (the release notes talked about improved stability with Airport connections), but not so.

How to setting up new (June 2011) TC to do wireless time machine backup but not connected to network?

Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
My understanding is that I can use Time Capsule wirelessly to do Time Machine backups by switching out of my wireless network to - I assume - a new Time Capsule generated network(?). It's an extra step, but that beats connecting cables to the computer everytime I need to do backup. Basically it's like an external wireless hard drive that I have to join everytime the backup is updated, right? (Again, if there is a better way to go about doing this, please let me know.)
So how do I go about doing this? The setup manual isn't helpful (not at all).
Here's more detail if necessary. I have 10.8 Macbook Air (which I plan to upgrade to 10.9 soon) and my spouse is running 10.9 Macbook Pro. I am also assuming I don't have to partition Time Capsule, and when the Time Machine backs up, it'll figure who's who.
Thanks in advance.

Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
Security is ok.. but performance is abominable.
The TC unfortunately has some design limitations that Apple imposed that makes it rather poor for anything but ethernet.
There is a couple of ways around the problem of sequential internet or backups.
1. Get a wireless bridge that is suited to your in-building system.. and plug that into the TC so it can take normal router settings .. This will give you double NAT but I doubt your in building system will be handing out public IP anyway. An airport extreme can do this. Although it is pricey for the same results as a $35 standard wireless bridge. All devices in your place will then get both internet and backup direct to the TC.
One flaw here could be the download limits.. if you have two connections do you get double the downloads.. ??
ie how many IP are allocated to you?? And is it divided between all of them or the more IP clients the more download bandwidth?
2. Use a USB wireless stick in the Mac.. these can be tiny little things now.. just buy Mac compatible ones.. use that for internet and use the internal (faster) wireless for local connections. there are some manual setup tricks needed here but nothing hard.

Time Machine backups start and then fail!

Time machine had a single successful (ethernet-connected) backup up to a new 2TB time capsule. But subsequent backups began to fail. I did a quick erase of the TC, reset the machine and began again...with no luck. I connected my wife's macbook to the same ethernet connection and asked time machine to backup, which is did. After scanning through the Pondini Q&As, I'm still not sure what's happening - I believe the failure to be in time machine and not with the time capsule. I ran Onyx for permission repairs, etc.
Here's the error report from the time machine widget:
No pre-backup thinning needed: 130.74 GB requested (including padding), 1.81 TB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
2013-01-06 17:01:28.092 ReportCrash[873:1407] Saved crash report for backupd[852] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/backupd_2013-01-06-170127_localhost.crash
How can I figure out what's causing the crash and how to repair it?

If you wish to exclude anything from the backup simply drag the item into the Exclude list. For example, you can save considerable space by excluding the /System/ folder. Cache files would be found in the /Library/ and /Home/Library/ folders. Each folder contains a folder named Caches. There is no specific folder in which temporary items as stored that is visible to the user because the operating system will usually delete temporary files on its own. This may not be the case for a specific program, however. Browsers may maintain their own reserved cache and temporary files, and manage them on their own.
I do not think, however, that TM backs up caches or temporary files. I find no such items in my TM backup - only the folders. I do not back up my /System/ folder.

Can Time Machine backup USB Drive connected to Airport Extreme Base Station

I need a new N based wireless router. I would prefer to get just the $179 Base Station and not the $299 Time Capsule. I already have a nice external USB 500GB drive that I would connect to the AEBS. So, once I have this new wireless router/base station installed at home and I have the external USB drive connected to it, can my new Macbook Air with a USB connected 400GB drive be used to backup what is on the Macbook Air and also backup the 500GB USB drive info that is connected to the extreme base station?
Thanks
tj

I found this when searching Apple's web site but it is old, October 2007, and said it could not be done. Has this changed since then?
Here is what I found.
Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Disks
* Last Modified on: October 26, 2007
* Article: 306833
Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but it does not support AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk feature.
Time Machine can back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, or to a Leopard Server volume, or an Xsan storage device.

Restricting Size of Time Machine Backup on Firewire Connected Drive

I've got an external 1 TB drive connected via FW800. Time Machine works fine, but I am also using this as a shared drive and want to limit the size of my Time Machine (to 600G for now) without having to formally partition the drive.
I've read all the tips on how to do this for a network attached drive using terminal commands to adjust the size of the sparsebundle. However, as this is a directly attached drive, Time Machine did NOT create a sparsebundle, just a folder called Backups.backupsdb. I tried, using Disk Utility, creating a sparsebundle image on the external drive but Time Machine does not see this volume when you select Change Disk under System Preferences, all it recognizes is the main hard disk.
What am I missing? Ideas? Thanks!

The only solution for a directly attached drive is to partition the drive. Note that a TM backup volume should be at least twice the size of the volume it backs up. A 600 GB partition would be adequate for a 250 or 320 GB hard drive.
It is possible to partition a drive on the fly with Disk Utility. but doing so will possibly result in loss of data depending upon how much data are already stored on the drive. For what you've describe it would be necessary to have at least 600 GBs of free space after the end of the existing data stored on the drive. This free space would have to be contiguous. Otherwise you would need to use third-party partitioning software like iPartition that ma be able to partition the drive without any loss of data, but you would still need 600 GBs of available space in order to create a new 600 GB volume.
Frankly, it would probably be better to have one drive devoted to backup, then buy another drive to use for storage needs.

Time Machine Backup fails

After working fine for several years, my Time Machine backup suddenly started consistently failing about a week ago. It spends a very long time "preparing backup", then gives the error something like "Backup could not be completed. There was an error copying files. Try again later. If the problem persists, use the Disk Utility to repair the disk". I've repaired the disk (several times) as well as all the other disks in my system, but the problem keeps occuring. Restarting the system also did not help. I can still access backups on the disk and in in fact went in a deleted a bunch of old stuff to insure there was plenty of disk space.
I have a 2011 iMac backing up to a 2 TByte Hitachi drive. I backup files from both the local hard disk and an external Seagate drive.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks. In the end it turned out that it was failing to copy the directory of my newly installed X11 libraries, and that caused the entire backup to terminate (which strikes me as kind of crazy).
Following the advice on your link, I excluded that directory, did a backup, then reincluded it and it backed up fine. It must be a very subtle bug in the Time Machine code.
I find it profoundly annoying that Time Machine didn't simply tell me what the error was, rather than make me search through the system logs to find it. That would have saved a great deal of time.
Thanks for your help.

Imac won't restore from time machine backup after HD (hard drive) recall replacement

I have an imac bought in 2011, running Snow Leopard. It required an HD replacement due to the 1 TB Seagate recall - the replacement was done by a certified Apple repair station yesterday. Before the guy left he started a backup/restore from my latest time machine backup set. It failed. I attempted it two times and got error messages that it failed and the computer needed to be restarted to try it again. No luck. I called the guy back and he told me to call Apple Care. Not thrilled about that response since the guy had just left my house I did what he told me to do. (A quick sideline here: I recognize that a time machine backup should be no big deal and SHOULD work everytime, but it doesn't. It irks me that Apple is replacing my HD through no fault of mine and yet they don't allow the restore of data to be a "covered" expense in this process - this isn't just because this was an authorized repair guy - the Apple store would have done the same).
Back to the issue. When I called apple care they pretty much had me try the same thing again with an earlier back up set. To my knowledge, it didn't work. I say this because it looked like it was working and when I came back to the imac later, it had restarted and once again booted to the OSX install. (The boot disc is still in the imac). When I tried to boot from another location, one did not show up to boot from so I assumed that the data didn't transfer and it forced another restart. So, I tried something else. I tried to re-install the snow leopard OSX without using the restore function. That appeared to work and then when the machine restarted it asked if I had another mac and I chose the option to get the files/apps/etc. from my time machine backup. The computer chose what I can only assume is the most recent backup set (It chose what I know to be a subfolder that appears under the dated backup folder - Macintosh HD--which btw is confusing seeing as that's always the name of the HD on the imac). I again stepped away from the computer so it could do its thing for two hours. When I returned, I was back to the MAC OSX screen that asks you to choose a language. There were no more options to choose DISK UTILITY or RESTORE FROM BACKUP, etc. When I clicked on English it took me right back into the screen where you say whether you have another Apple that you want to transfer data from. I realized that the imac must have restarted and I assumed maybe it was because the boot disk was still in - except how do you get the disc to eject? I also initially assumed that the backup had somehow failed again and triggered a restart. I tried to choose the option to just set up the machine without transferring data and when I got to the choose a name for your HOME folder message I tried to enter the same name I had it as before and it wouldn't allow me to do so, saying that that name was already in use. I also tried a different name and that didn't work either - got the same message (I assume if it is not the same name that it won't sync up with the time machine data from the backup set). So, I almost tried the "select time machine backup" option again until I looked at my HD space. Clearly, there is space that has been used. HD space was 997 at the start and now it's 636. My initial thought is to somehow get back into the setup area where I can use disc utility and erase the whole thing and then start over but 1) I don't think it's going to work even if I could get back there 2) I have no idea how to get this thing to reboot into that mode 3) I can't get the boot CD out to even try to restart to see if this thing did what it was supposed to, SO NOW I AM TOTALLY STUCK! I have not called Apple Care back because quite frankly they were useless the first time. I have a call into the repair guy but who knows how much help he will be. In the mean time, I have a million things to do and a computer that isn't working - Whoever said Apples never have issues needs to be seriously censored!
A few other notes: I use Time Machine Editor to run my backups weekly. It was set up that way from the get go by an Apple rep who came to my house to get us up and running. Editor should not effect the way that time machine does its work, so I doubt there is relevance but thought it worth mentioning.
One other note is that the Apple Care agent tried to have me do something called a "Source" something or other from the disk utility screen but when she realized that my backup file (shown by date) contained many other sub files (11-27-12/MacintoshHD/MyNamesIMAC/etc.), it was not possible to run this operation - thus we aborted. Sorry I don't remember the name of the process and unfortunately now can't access that option to go find it.
If you can help me, I would be eternally grateful! I am open to having a phone conversation if you are willing to give me your email to mail you my number. I have so much work to do this week and this was the last thing I needed. Did I mention this was supposed to be EASY?
I used to be quite the geek with my PC - still on the learning curve with the mac but not enjoying it. I am fairly tech savvy and I can follow instructions for a step by step solution if you've got one.

I got a recall and had the drive replaced. I have retored 3 timesa dn even had apple do the job and it is still not right. I still can't get a simple ghost of the data from time machineback tot he new drive.
This is Apple's explaination as taken from their web page.:
Restoring your entire system from a backup
If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac
With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.
Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.
I even posted this information on the community and apple removed it... because they don't like the:
Off-topic or non-technical posts
Non-constructive rants or complaints
But here is my experieince:
Take in 27iMac running 10.6.8, 5-7 days, what a joke, my boss will be happy to pay for a week without working. Finally get, "if you have TM back up, 3 days." Get machine back with 10.6.3, hit the R recovery, click TM back up, runs for 2 hours, reboots, looks great. Box up take back to office... update to install - OH NO, still running 10.6.3. Updates crash with no specific error on install, BUG PROBELM, nothing runs.
Call Apple... after hours, tells me to boot using 10.6.2 disk, wipe, reinstall OS, udate to 10.6.8, THEN do the restore. GREAT! Only thing 10.6.2 DVD won't read... now back on phone... take back to the store, Genius says, he'll ix it just like it was. PROMISES it'll be fixed.
Pick up next day, supposedly, booted to disk, wiped drive, reinstalled, updated to 10.6.8 and THEN did the RIGHT restore... Looks GREAT... apps run and 10.6.8 OS. Back to the office... NOT RUNNING right!!!... fonts messed up, drop box app needs new install, cocktail needs upgrade, Fetch not working, memorized paths gone... back ups locked out of permissions... ***!!
4 hours on phone with apple and still no rsolution - to missing "settings". Seems there are THREE WAYS TO RESTORE (according to apply tech)... Running MIGRATE ASSISTANT and being able to choose your files, including settings, "R" RESTORE after they load a new OS... or NOW WAITING for them to send me a bootable 10.6.3 disk and then boot from disk, w/o installing OS and doing a restore from TM. I think this is done via the disk Utilties application.
So now can't back up without doing a full 400 GB back up since permissons are screwed and possibly destroying any good back ups... can't work, like having hands tied behind back. WAITING for solution! Very upset!!!
I did my first restore just like they said and now an 10 days without proper machine. Just FYI. I thnk I am going to make the store do the tech work so I have somthing to fall back on.

Restore Time Machine backup to Raid 0 (Striped set)?

I've been struggling with setting up my Mac mini (late 2012) server with a Striped RAID set and then restoring a Time Machine backup to the new RAID 0 volume. Here are the steps I have undertaken:
Bought a 3TB Airport Time Capsule and created a full restore of my existing Time Machine backups to it.
My Mac mini has dual 1TB hard drives. Pressed Command + R on bootup and entered recovery mode.
Using Disk Utility, I created a Striped RAID set by adding both my 1TB drives as slices to a new RAID set and clicked on Create.
After the RAID set was created, I exited Disk Utility.
Clicked on Restore from Time Machine Backup.
The process fails as it cannot create a Recovery Partition on a RAID set.
After much exploration, I think the problem can be resolved by attempting to Reinstall OS X on Step 5 and then attempting a Time Machine restore after the core OS is in place. Thoughts?

Additional Information
A Recovery partition cannot be created on RAID volumes. If your startup device is a RAID volume, you back up and reconfigure your computer to use a non-RAID boot volume. If needed, create a separate RAID volume for data which is not the target of the OS X installation. You can also create an external, bootable drive with a Recovery partition, as described above.
See this article if the following message appears during the install process:
"Install Failed: OS X could not be installed on your computer. OS X can't be installed on the disk because a recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple.com/support/no-recovery to learn more"
From:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649

Can i reinstall OS X Mountain Lion from scratch from a Time Machine Backup

Can i reinstall OS X Mountain Lion from scratch from a Time Machine Backup
Asking because i'm a new mac user having used windows since 3.11, wanting to know if the Time Machine bacup was enough or will i need to make a seperate OS install disk or usb drive ???
thanx in advance guys

Lizardcarter's instructions are correct, you can (and possibly should) consider a second external HD to create a bootable clone. Redundancy in backups is a very good thing because backup can fail too. A bootable clone is an external HD that has a mirror of your internal HD so if the internal HD does crash you can boot from the clone, something that cannot be done from TM. This means you will be down for minutes and can resume work until you have had the internal HD replaced. Never use an external HD for both TM and a bootable clone, each should have it's own EHD. The reason being is if the EHD crashes you have lost ALL of your backup and are dead, don't laugh it happens! To create a bootable clone get either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner (both about $30) and you're pretty set. Many people on these forums (including myself) use that strategy and yes I have had a backup fail.

Time Machine backups cannot be restored to a new HDD

Steps to reproduce:
- do a fresh backup using Time Machine to a USB drive (I tried two separate USB drives to make sure it is not a drive problem)
- install new HDD in your Mac (tried two brand new HDD's)
- boot from OS X Snow Leopard DVD
- select "Restore from Time Machine backup"
The restore will fail after a while, the error reported is "cannot write files to CD"...
I have been playing with this for about a week now and I think this is a systematic issue with Time Machine and OS X 10.6.4 - I did exactly the same procedure with 10.6.2 and had no issues.

MarkAtlanta wrote:
The restore will fail after a while, the error reported is "cannot write files to CD"...
What did you select as the destination for the restore?
Did you format the new drive properly?
See #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for detailed instructions.
I have been playing with this for about a week now and I think this is a systematic issue with Time Machine and OS X 10.6.4 - I did exactly the same procedure with 10.6.2 and had no issues.
It's not a general issue; if you search this forum, you won't find another such thread.
You've either formatted the internal HD improperly; selected the wrong destination; excluded things like System folders from your backups; or there's something wrong with your Install disc or Superdrive, etc.
Follow #14 carefully, including monitoring the installation. If it fails again, report back, with the last few lines of the log.

Restore from Time Machine backup doesn't install working system folder

A routine restart turned into a major problem this morning. I'm runnning 10.8.5. on a MacPro tower and a 480GB SSD for a boot disc. Been running fine for the past 2 years.
I restarted the machine and when I came back to it I was dropped into the Recovery / OSX Utilities screen. This was unexepected!
Tired restarting again, and it gave me the circle+line through icon ( / ) a couple of times and then the apple as it apparently located the Recovery partition.
Running Disk Utiliites "Repair" and "Repair Permisions" on the SSD came back with flying colors, so I assume it's not a hardware issue. That said, multiple reboots and nothing. I was basically dead in the water. I only have a boot USD stick, which just launches you into recovery mode.
Knowing that I was going to be out for a few hours and that I have regular Time Machine backups of my drive, I opted to perform a System Restore on the main SSD, using a backup from earlier this morning.
After 4+ hrs of "restoring", I optomistically rebooted the machine. It's still gave me the "system folder not found" icon, and booted into Recovery mode.
This time I quit the application and specifcially went to select the SSD as a Startup Disk and it's not even showing a 10.8.5 folder on the SSD!!
I just booted up my Mac Pro in target disk mode and plugged it into my MacBook Pro to examine the drives. I can see all 4 drives on my MacPro, including the boot SSD. My boot disk appears to contain all the files it had before, but won't boot! I can verify that the backups are the exact folder structure that I had before, so what's going on?
Should I:
Wipe the SSD again, and install OS X from my laptop? Can I do that through Target Disk mode? Or just do that through the Recover Tool?
Some people with similar issues were told to perform clean installs and use migration assistant to pull the files over. But I really would like to know why using Time Machine backups aren't doing what they are supposed to – the files are all there!
Is there something I can do to my restored SS
Obviously this is a desperate time for me, so any assistance is greatly appreciated.

So far, the closest to a solution has been that I've since reformatted the drive. Installed a fresh copy of 10.8, and now I'm trying to migrate over all my content from the Time Machine backup using the Migration Assistant. In an hour I'll find out if I just wasted the last 2 hrs.
I guess I have a "Quad Core", I have two many machines to keep all the specs straight. I've been using it for over two years. It's not an OS issue.
I'm still blowaway by the fact that I could actually just restore from a Time Machine backup. When connecting to the TM via the system utils, it should be handled like a byte-for-byte clone. I think that's a rather major failure on Apple's part, but not the last one of late.
I still am not confident enough in Mavericks to take that plunge.

Macbook Pro to Mac Mini data sharing, sync, and/or time machine backup?

I currently have a MacBook Pro and am about to buy a Mac Mini. I do a good deal of multitasking on the MBP I and would like to use the Mac Mini as the "home base" of my dealings and my MBP as an extension of it, the way it should be. In short, I will have a desk for the new Mini but I don't really intend on ever being physically at it. Rather, I will be on my MBP or remoting in to it from a PC. At any rate, as an example, is it possible / what would be the best solution for being able to work on my iWeb site via my MBP if it's housed and stored on my Mac Mini?
Secondly, since I will now have 2 mac machines, there is a data question at hand. Specifically, is there a good way to sync all information and settings bewteen two macs running Snow Leopard? If so, what/how, if not, what would be the best option for accomplishing this type of goal?
Lastly, since I will now have 2 mac machines, how should I handle the time machine backups? I have a 2tb ext hard drive serving as a time machine backup for my MBP right now but how would I go about doing the same for the Mini? Should I / can I use the same drive for the mini or does it have to be a seperate time machine backup?
(For the record, I do have an additional 2tb ext hard drive that I would be happy to use as a sync point for all of this data if needed should it be possible to "share" data, apps, etc between the 2 machines. I would be able to broadcast it wirelessly via a device called pogoplug.)
I feel like there is a better and more efficient way to integrate what it is that I'm trying to do here. Any thoughts on the matter?

There are numerous solutions to sync information on two or more Macs. Try doing a google search for "Mac sync" or something along those lines.
As for Time Machine backups, you could connect an external disk drive to your Mac mini and use it as a Time Machine disk for the Mac mini and if you share it out, you can probably also use it to do Time Machine backups of your laptop, but I personally have not tested that yet so I cannot say with certainty that the sharing part will work.

Time Machine: backups failing because "connection failed"

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