Time Machine "Change Disk" Behavior Question

Is it possible to perform a TM backup to two separate disks? (to have a secondary complete backup in case of failure of the primary?) I know you can select "Change Disk" from the TM preferences, but if you do, can you go back and select the primary disk and resume backing up to that original sparsebundle? Or do you have to start all over again?
Thanks for the help!

You can only use TM to backup to one disc at a time - if you want a second complete backup you would need such as SuperDuper which would give you a bootable clone, although it would have to be on a separate disk or partition to the TM backups.
Provided you do not change the name of your computer, you can re-join the TM backups from when you switched off.
Joe

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Time Machine - Change Disk Button?

I just posted a question regarding Time Machine, here in this forum. I tried to add to it but it kept getting rejected, so I am asking the added question here:
By the way, I'm going in circles trying to find out what people mean when they refer to the "star wars" symbol, button or icon. It's amazing that no matter how I word it, all my search result assume I already know what and where it is, and rather than explain it, go on talking about all other things in Time Machine. And I have followed numerous links, suggestions, troubleshooting guides, etc. Nothing tells me what this is.
Nor, for that matter, can I find out why, "Change Disk" is nowhere to be found in my Time Machine preferences, yet when I search for that, I get all sorts of tips on all sorts of related things. I only have "Select Disk."
Anyone? Thanks.

I'm not surprised you didn't find it -- it was titled +Time Machine Pref Pane not responding,+ and it was a long one. Plus it's not marked "solved."
But now that this one is more descriptive, and marked "solved," the next person who looks will probably find it!
And thanks for the star.

Time Machine Change Disk - Getting original backups

I wanted to look at another disk which I had been using for backup before getting a Time Machine. When I switched back, I answered too many questions and ended up disconnecting the Time Machine and did a reboot.
When I finally reconnected to the Time Machine (and the internet), I found out I am doing a full backup and the original backups.backupdb does not show up on this Time Machine, even though the space is claimed.
What do I need to do to start backing up only the changed disks to the original backups.backupdb?
Send thoughts to mailto:[email protected]

Juan Terrazas1 wrote:
What I wonder is if I delete the TM plist then where is TM Preferences reading its information?
No, the only place that's kept is in plist in the /Library folder at the top level of the drive.
Sometimes there's a file with the same name in a user library, but it doesn't have that info. That's why it looks like either the file didn't get deleted, or the wrong one was deleted, or System Preferences was still running, with the info in memory.
Is there another plist file that I should delete?
No.
But let's be clear; do you mean the disk is still shown as your Time Machine drive on the Preferences panel (after Name):
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or that it shows up in the list of items you can select when you click +Select Disk:+
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Time Machine "Change disk" button no function

If I click it nothing happens
YES:
permissions repaired
com.apple.TimeMachine.plist deleted
restart
none of the above helped
login with another admin user: works as expected.
Who helps?

I'm not surprised you didn't find it -- it was titled +Time Machine Pref Pane not responding,+ and it was a long one. Plus it's not marked "solved."
But now that this one is more descriptive, and marked "solved," the next person who looks will probably find it!
And thanks for the star.

Time Machine backup disk changed name to "3-/9=/=87"

I upgraded to Leopard, and attached a LaCie drive, which Time Machine recognized and used as its backup disk. After formatting the drive, the name was changed to Time Machine Backup disk, but now it has changed to 3-/9=/=87. I tested Time Machine to ensure that it is indeed restoring files, and it is. Any ideas on the name change, and if it will affect Time Machine?
Many thanks.

My solution
I found that after trying a few things in the aforementioned thread that in System Preferences > Sharing > Options if I disabled SMB and only enabled AFP on my Mac Pro, which has my Time Machine disk and is accessed over my local network LAN by my Macbook Pro laptop, only then did the Time Machine disk show up in the Time Machine preferences in my remote laptop TM settings.
I suspect my laptop had been connecting to my desktop via SMB instead of AFP and thusly TM would not work.

Time Machine and drive permissions question

I'm using Time Machine on a MacBook with two admin accounts (let's call them admin1 and admin2). admin2 is the account used daily. admin1 is the account used very infrequently.
Things were set up with admin1. I noticed today when I was logged in as admin2 that TimeMachine reported that the last backup was more than 2 week ago (when things were set up), and that the last backup failed because the user didn't have privileges.
I did a Get Info on the drive, and it seemed to confirm that (admin 1 had read/write privileges, but admin 2 had only read access).
To get around the problem I logged in as admin1 and turned Time Machine off. I then logged in admin 2 and selected the disk from there, and turned Time Machine on.
My question is - is this normal behavior? Or if there's something wrong, how to fix it?
Thanks...

Scott Newman wrote:
After a few minutes, an external drive that is mounted on the desktop will spin down--like it should. But...each time a "Save" or "Save As..." dialog box is opened in any application, things will grind to halt for a few seconds while the external drive spins up--even though I will not be saving files to that drive. I've always hated that, which is one reason I've always done manual backups.
Does that happen with Time Machine (either with a drive physically or wirelessly connected via Export Extreme) and is there any way to avoid that?
It happens with TM. I am not sure of any convenient work-arounds. You can of course eject the drive and reattach it when you want to make a backup, but that's a bit inconvenient, IMO.
Is it possible to manually turn on and turn off Time Machine (and the external drive) so as to only do manual backups like I'm doing now? I don't really care about looking up a prior version of file that I've changed. I just want a reasonably current whole-disk backup.
Yes, TM has an on/off switch. Just turn it off until you want a backup. It will simply continue where it left off. It will not create a completely new backup.

Does Time Machine change what software is on the computer?

I just got my MacBook Pro back from the Apple store after getting a new display. They told me that along with replacing my screen that they updated my computer to OS x Lion. When I got home, I used Time Machine and restored my harddrive with a backup but it is the old version of Mac OS that I had. Did using Time Machine change it back to this or did the Apple Store not update my laptop?
Under the "Here's What We Did" on my receipt it states "We clean installed the latest Mac OS version verified on your product". Did the guy at the store not know what he was saying when he told me they put lion on it?

About this Mac says its Mac OS X Version 10.5.8 so I know I'm not running Lion. My question is, if Apple changed my computer to Lion and then I used Time Machine would Time Machine replace Lion with the older Operating System.
When I backed up my computer on Time Machine it was on Version 10.5.8.

I need to backup my mails from a time machine backup disk from a powerbook leopard to an IMac snow Leopard...can I do this?

Hi everybody...
I need to backup my complete history of emails. I have a time machine backup disk I used in a powerbook intel, second generation with Leopard OS. Now I have an Imac of 24 inches, with Snow Leopard OS. Can I use that backup disk (TM) to put the mails that used to be in the powerbook into my IMac?
My original powerbook is broken, so I cant do anything there...

You should be able to find and restore emails that were on the old Mac via Time Machine. Emails that were on the server, not the Mac, won't be there, of course.
See the blue box in #15 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Attach/mount machine a's time machine backup disk from other (b) machine?

I looked around for a discussion of this, I'm sure it's here, sorry could not find.
I have two macs running time machine over the net. They create different files ("sparsebundles") on the server, and files elsewhere maybe (?). I'd like to be able to "mount" the time machine data from "oldmac" on another mac ("newmac"), to easily get old files & etc. Further, if possible, I'd like to backup newmac to the old time machine data, and only have one time series, since oldmac is going away, and newmac was just migrated from oldmac.
I tried just renaming the sparsebundle's (newmac-[ethernet addr].sparsebundle), but time machine was not fooled.
Sure, it would be hard to design a system which could mount any repository and do the right thing with respect to all the files there when backing up. Still, any ideas greately appreciated.
bill

Answering "No" to that prompt doesn't prevent you from using the drive as a backup disk; it just stops that from happening automatically. I suggest you watch a video to familiarize yourself better with Time Machine:
Mac OS X: Time Machine Basics
Any other questions you have should be answered in this support article:
Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support

Time Machine changed my driver permissions - can't change back

Hello,
I've been using my external hard drive for about 6 months to backup my work, never had a problem.
Today I mounted the drive, as usual, and a window came up asking me if I wanted to use it for time machine backup. I clicked OK, thinking I could backup my new work, then when I saw that I would have to format my drive, I decided it was not what I needed, since I have all my old work in it.
So I de-selected my drive from the window where it asks which drive to be used for time machine, and turned TM off before doing any operations.
Since then my hard disk has become "read-only"!! Luckily I haven't lost any of my work, but I am now unable to set the permission back to "read - write". The "Repair Disk Permissions" button is greyed out.. and if I do GetInfo, I can only see it is read only, but I have no option to change that.
Any idea why time machine changed my settings before I even used it??
How can I change it back?
Thank you

aleternum wrote:
I was searching on all kinds of website and I realised one thing:
Yesterday I took some files to the printer, and the guy (he was using PC) took the files off my hard drive, and DISCONNECTED the drive without doing the "Safely remove hardware".
Not it all makes sense. I should go kill him.
I rather suspect that TM is at fault. TM drives have to be formatted HFS and by what you describe it sounds like it started reformatting the drive when you stopped it.

Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark - Problem and Fix

My MacBook over the weekend upon awakening from sleep showed that the Menu Bar Time Machine icon displays a Question mark. The external drive showed as mounted in the finder but repeated tries to Back up Now ended in Latest Backup Failed. Hmmm. Never saw that before. Did a restart and ran Disk Utility Verify Disk on the start up disk and it came out OK. So I then ran Disk Utility on the external FW backup drive and as soon as it reported that the FW disk was fine, Time Machine started up on it's own and did a back up and all is back to normal after leaving the TM drive attached the remainder of the weekend. All backups are back to working fine with no repeat of the problem.

If for some reason the computer has trouble communicating with the drive it will report a failure when TM tries to back up, and will display that question mark. It's good you were able to fix it and get TM running again.

HT3275 message: "Your Time Machine backup disk can't be found." Mountain Lion. Western Digital "MY Book" "Home edition"

Intalled Mountain Lion. Now get message: "Time machine backup disk can't be found. Using Western Digital "My Book" "Home Edition"

Wow, I feel really stupid. I spent a couple of days trying to troubleshoot this problem.
1. Open TM prefs.
2. Click "Select Disk..."
3. Select "None" and apply changes.
4. Click "Select Disk..." Select your disk and apply changes.
*5. When the password prompt appears, MAKE SURE THE NAME IS THE NAME OF THE AIRPORT BASESTATION, and not the name of your Mac.
6. Run a backup.

HT201250 My MacBook Pro (using OSX 10.7.5) suddenly can't find the Time Machine backup disk, which is on the harddrive of my desktop iMac. What to do?

My MacBook Pro (using OSX 10.7.5) suddenly can't find the Time Machine backup disk, which is on the harddrive of my desktop iMac. What to do?

Inherit a Backup
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How do I get back iphone app information from a DELETED Time Machine Backup disk

Hi People,
here is what happened:
I have been using an iPhone App (Audio Memos Free - The Voice Recorder) to record song ideas (I am a songwriter). I have been using it for years.
I backed up my iphone to itunes, and backed up my mac on Time Machine. After a month or so I did a fresh OSX install on my mac, copied all of my files back from Time Machine into my mac, and tried to set up Time Machine. I was not able to do so, so I had to format the Time Machine Backup disk and doing a "fresh" mac Time Machine Backup.
After a week or so, my iphone asks me something like "you do not possess the rights for one or more applications". do not know what i did, but after 1 minute my iPhone was wiped out of all my apps and app contents. I had also the icloud app sync, so i did not worry, recovered from icloud notes, contacts, and all other things. so i did another backup to itunes.
Now i discover icloud did not recover or save the "Audio Memos Free" app content. I know the data are hidden into the Time machine Backup HD, but i do not know where to search for the itunes backup in it.
I know it is in library, but library won't show up.
Any help would be much appreciated.
PS there is a chance that, even without a data recovery, my latest itunes backup was containing these songs, but i do not know how to fish that out of the Time machine drive.
Thank you in advance.

I would email iTunes Customer Service:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/
CG

Migrating content from an encrypted Time Machine external disk (will not easily work)

I recently purchased an SSHD to upgrade my Mac. I preferred not to completely restore from Time Machine, but rather to install a new copy of Mavericks on the new disk and then migrate my TM content afterwards. At the end of installation, Mavericks proposed the option to migrate data from a TM backup, which I chose.
It turns out that the Migration Assistant did not recognize any disk, perhaps because it was encrypted, nor displayed any way to select the volume and unlock it by entering its password. Despite what Pondini says the Time Machine backups disk was not seen by the Mac: as workaround I had to create a fictitious user, log in, unlock the disk (that was immediately recognized by the system) and then run the Migration Assistant from there (by the way, after 4 hours I finally logged into my migrated account and found out that apps were not imported at all!)
I find all this quite not…applish! I could have preferred to unencrypt the TM disk rather than
Is there anyone facing this same experience? Hope that this, if it's a bug, will be fixed, otherwise I'll have to make a TM backup on a secondary disk (which I don't own so big).

Well a google search would appear that disk utility will show you the disk regardless if it's mounted or unmounted. you're best bet would be to unmount the disk in finder, shut down the computer completely, unplug it from a power source, and then unplug the firewire...
I think this is your safest bet but then again, I'm not that worried about ejecting my disks.
you get no error messages when you right click and eject the disk in in disk utilty? you said you have a my disk, do you mean My Book by western digital? I know that they load software onto the machine for encryption purposes. have you tried ejecting the disk from there? I uninstalled said software so I can't tell you if there is an option for that or not.

Time Machine "Change Disk" Behavior Question

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