Time Machine defaulting back to old drive
I had set Time Machine to back up to a 2nd internal drive while I replaced a FireWire drive. Once the external was attached, I copied the internal/Time Machine drive to the external and set TM preferences to use the FireWire drive. Once that was seemed to be OK, I erased the internal TM volume.
Problem is this: if the FireWire TM drive is turned off, Time Machine insists on trying to use the previous drive (the internal)--it resets to the internal drive in the preference pane (there isn't enough room on the internal at this point, so backup simply fails). I turn the FireWire drive back on, choose it in the preference pane, and it backs up normally--until the external drive is not mounted.
How can I get TM to simply do nothing until the proper backup drive is available?
Scott_R wrote:
I had set Time Machine to back up to a 2nd internal drive while I replaced a FireWire drive. Once the external was attached, I copied the internal/Time Machine drive to the external
Do you mean you copied the internal TM drive to the new external? How did you do that? If you used drag and drop via the Finder, it's not going to work. You must use either the +Duplicate a Disk+ facility in Disk Utility, or a 3rd-party app like SuperDuper! Otherwise TM won't recognize it. And is it formatted properly?
and set TM preferences to use the FireWire drive. Once that was seemed to be OK, I erased the internal TM volume.
How did you erase it? Did you erase the entire disk via Disk Utility?
Problem is this: if the FireWire TM drive is turned off, Time Machine insists on trying to use the previous drive (the internal)--it resets to the internal drive in the preference pane (there isn't enough room on the internal at this point, so backup simply fails). I turn the FireWire drive back on, choose it in the preference pane, and it backs up normally--until the external drive is not mounted.
How can I get TM to simply do nothing until the proper backup drive is available?
If everything above was done correctly, you might get it's attention by turning TM off, selecting the "none" drive, note any exclusions in Other, and quitting System Preferences.
Then delete the file: /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist (NOT in your home folder).
Then go back to TM Preferences, re-select the correct drive, re-enter any exclusions.
Are you turning the F/W drive off while your Mac is running? If so, why, and are you stopping TM and ejecting the drive first?
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I am setting up a new Time Capsule to replace another hard drive. Is there any way to include the the Time Machine history from the old drive on the new Time Capsule?
Check item #18 of Time Machine FAQ, particularly the material in #3 of the "How to" section.
By the way, you've been misled by poor field labeling on this forum into typing a large part of your message into the field intended for the subject. In the future just type a short summary of your post into that field and type the whole message into the field below that. -
Time Machine not backing up full drive
On my macboook pro late 2009 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 time machine will not back up my full drive. I have 56gb use out of 250gb and only 8gb gets backup . How can i get time machine to back up the full 56gb on the first time of setup time machine? I am useing a hard drive connected to my airport extreme. I have the hard drive setup for one big parition. The size of the usb hard drive is 2tb. I have two users on my airport extreme that can access my usb hard drive. One for my macbook pro and one for my mac mini. My mac mini late 2011 model with mountain lion 10.8.2 useing time machine it can back up the full drive. On my mac mini i have 2.5gb used out of 500gb and time machine can back up 2.5gb on the first time i started time machine. But this is not the case for my macbook pro it will not back up the full used space on the first time i setup time machine. How can i fix this so that time machine will backup the full used space?
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
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. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting. -
My hard drive failed on MB Pro 2008. i was able to start up using a super duper bootable clone on an iomega external drive (the clone was from 6 months ago unfortunately). once the computer started up, it saw the failed drive and i was able to retrieve some new data created since my last time machine backup 10 days ago. i then plugged in another external drive with my time machine backup on it and tried to backup the failed harddrive once more before going to buy a new HD and getting rid of the failed one. INSTEAD of backing up the real HD, time machine backed up the clone drive which is 6 months old. now that i have a new HD and OS 10.6.3, when i try to restore data from the last time machine backup of the real HD (12/27/12), the only option i'm getting is from the backup of the CLONE drive which is 6 months older. i know the info is there but the transfer data option isn't seeing that drive. what do i do???
If I understand you correctly, you have a Clone of your original internal HDD and a Time Machine HDD that backed up the Clone. If it backed up the Clone HDD and deleted the prior backups, then your data is gone. If it backed up the Clone for only the changes made since the Clone was created, the data should be there.
Open Time Machine and see what actually is there. If you cannot open it, Click on the Time Machine icon on your desktop. It will give you a display showing one folder (Backups.backupdp). Open that folder and it will show another single folder. Open that one and it should display folders that are dated for each day/week that backups have been made.
If there are 'old' folders in there, you can access the data by opening then up as the image below indicates:
It may be tedious, but it is better than not having the data.
Ciao. -
Time Machine not backing up external drive
Recently set up TM using a WD 1TB Firewire 800 Drive. All works fine but...
Have a Lacie 500GB drive that had a power supply failure so had to wait for that to be replaced. That is now done so I put the Drive back into the system. Unfortunately, despite being able to see the drive (Two partitions actually) in the TM Finder window it only shows 'now' for the drive. I can see how to exclude these drives but I don't seem to be able to force them to be included. The Lacie drive was added two days ago so I would expect it to have some sort of back up image by now.
Guidance please.Well, I've gone and done it now
I started again with the none TM drive and gave it the exact same name as before(changing the format to 'journalled" (it was just Mac OS extended before). I then restored the files onto it using the Clone function in Intego's backup X4 All okay so far and all the important files are now on a pristine 'new' disc. The problems started when TM started it's routine. I now get an error message:-
"*Time Machine Error*
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while linking files on the backup volume."
I then excluded the drive from the TM Backup and TM was happy with next Backup so it must be the none TM drive that is failing. I reinstated the drive into the back up and I get the error again.
Is there a prefs file or something that I can dump to clear this or should I start again? i.e. Reformat both drives, reinstall the files onto the none TM drive then start TM again. Or just reformat the TM Drive then restart from the beginning letting it pick up all drives to back up? -
Time Machine STILL backs up while in sleep
Time Machine STILL backs up my drive to an external drive while in sleep, despite many Apple KB articles to the contrary and 2 conversations with Geniuses saying it shouldn't either. Why?
I have turned of "wake for network access" under energy settings as recommended, but that didn't help either.
But if I open the external drive's backup folder there's a new folder for every hour in the last 24 hours, even if the computer had been asleep the whole time.
IMac is now on Mountain Lion, but it did the same under Lion as well.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule -
Time machine backup for external hard drive
Recently purchased an external hard drive to clear up space on my iMac, to store photos and videos. Have been using Time Machine on Time Capsule to back up iMac. Have found that Time Machine backups hang up when it appears to be backing up the external hard drive. What do I need to do to get Time Machine to back up external drive as well as iMac? FWIW, I am also backing up a second iMac to the same Time Capsule.
Can you verify that....
1) External drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2) The external drive has not been "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Options -
I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was? I want to make sure I will still have various important files on my new computer, like my songs in iTunes, my photos in iPhoto, etc, etc. Thanks so much in advance!
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
When you turn on the new iMac for the first time, Setup Assistant will ask you to restore a backup, so connect the external disk and follow steps to restore all your files to your new iMac. Your new Mac will have the same settings and programs as your old computer.
In other cases, I would recommend to restore the whole backup without using Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant, but a Late 2012 iMac uses a special OS X build, so the OS X version that you're using on your old Mac won't work on the new one. For more information, see > http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html -
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 -
Re Time Machine
I have an external hard drive with files I backed up manually over the past 2 years 1TB of memory.
I am finally taking the leap to use Time machine to back everything.
will I have to reformat that drive, thus wiping my previous back ups?
can I split it the drive in two partitions?
Also
as I have two separate Macbook Pro's- one older than the other.
OSX 10.68
the other is
OSX 10.75
can I back them up separately?
or even synch and merge files and folders etc? between the two?You CAN use a drive with files already on it to store Time Machine backups. But long term, that is not recommended. You do not need to reformat or re-partition the drive to do this. Once Time Machine Backups are established, you could remove the old files.
But do not delete Time Machines files with the Finder -- that can cause it to lose its place and lose everything.
With the cost of backup drives under US$100, it might be a better idea in the long run to get another drive. Best results from Time Machine is a drive about 3 times larger than the drive(s) you are backing up. -
Time Machine - including a external hard drive in time machine back up.
I have recently updated to a 2014 15 inch Macbook Pro running OS X Yosemite. Previously on my 2006 Macbook I have used a 750GB hard drive with iMovie to store old files and subsequently back up this drive and my Macbook to a separate 3 TB external hard drive at the same time using time machine. Since using OS X Yosemite I can't seem to find a way to do it, as in back up the computer drive and a external drive to time machine. Has this feature been removed??? Any ideas. Thanks in advance.
Feature is still there (but buggy if you dismount drive, run Time Machine, mount drive, run Time Machine)
Have you checked that the drive has not been excluded as part of the migration from old machine to new?
Open System preferences
Select Time Machine
Select Options
If the drive is in the list 'Exclude these items from backups'; then select the drive, select minus and select save
Now; if that is the case the initial calculation for that drive next occasion Time Machine runs will be ALL the in-scope contents of the disk whether already backed up or not; so if there is less than this on your TM drive it will start deleting backups. -
How do use Time Machine to back up to my network drive?
I have been dealing with this issue for days. When I had bought my MacBook Pro a couple of weeks ago I figured Id try and back it up to my 1.5tb Western Digital HD that's plugged into the USB port on my router. I Have connected to it through finder and can access it fine however my main point in getting to it is to back up my MacBook with Time Machine over the air to the external HD. I have researched and tried many tricks such as running codes in finder to create a "sparsebundle" using the code " hdiutil create -size 100g -fs HFS+J -volname "Time Machine" COMPUTERNAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle " in Terminal. I was able to succeed in creating one but my problem comes when I want to transfer it to the network drive. I use the code " rsync -aE COMPUTERNAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle /Volumes/NETWORKDRIVE/ ". However I get error codes such as "file could not be transferred (23)" and "no file or directory (2)". Also before I did all of these steps I made sure to make network drives discoverable in Time Machine by running the code " defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 " in Terminal. However without using the trick that I keep getting errors with Time Machine gets error message 45 when attempting to back up to the Network Drive straight after making the Drive discoverable. I know Apple niched Time Machine back ups on network drives after or toward the end of Leopard and thats why it is so hard to do it now but I was hoping someone can aid me in my never ending problem?
Hi Barney
What format is the drive on the router? It has to be HFS+ (Extended, journaled).
Sorry Barney, that's not correct in this context. The user must create an HFS+ sparse bundle and then upload it to the network drive. The network drive will be formatted as its formatted.
I also believe it has to be an Apple Airport Extreme router.
Again, that is not the case. I am successfully using Time Machine to an Iomega network drive for the last 12 months. No issues at all.
However, you are making your backup completely unreliable.
There may be an element of truth to this, however, I have used the "Star Wars" interface to recover individual files directly. If I should need to perform a larger recovery and for some reason I can't get the usual access through Apple software, I have established that I can directly access the sparse bundle on the drive and mount it on the computer. Once there, I can just copy files directly from it. The sparse bundle folder structure makes it easy to get the latest version of every file with a couple of mouse drags. This means that I will always be able to get access to my backups.
Apple nixed it because they couldn't get it to work reliably. I imagine they only support that sort of thing on their own Time Capsule because they can control the wireless transmission and error checking (and they sold TCs specifically for that purpose).
I don't know why Apple nixed it - I've had zero problems with this configuration and it is by far the most sensible way to use Time Machine. It seems completely pointless to have a portable MacBook and then have to physically connect a drive to it permanently for backup purposes.
I've only had personal experience with the Iomega drive - maybe it only works with a limited number of manufacturers?
Bob
Message was edited by: Bob Lang1 -
I had an external drive failure and had to buy a brand new drive. I was able to restore my info onto a new drive, about 1.5 TB of data. When I go to launch time machine now with the new drive connected and my backup connected, it treats the new drive as if it had different data and wants to create a whole new backup set when it should just append. How do I get around this?
I could just reformat the backup drive and start fresh again but would rather not do that if I can avoid it, just in case there were errors in copying etc.Hi
I should have been more clear, sorry. I work from a laptop. I have 2 external drives - one for my projects which failed but has since been replaced and restored from a backup. My 2nd external drive is the time machine backup drive.
When my project drive crashed, I bought a brand new drive and restored it using my time machine backup drive.
Now the data exists on 2 drives - the time machine backup drive, and the new drive. When I connect the backup drive now, it thinks my new drive has new data, probably since it is a new device/drive, and wants to do a brand new backup, when in fact the data already exists on that very drive. It shouldn't have to back up all 1.5 TB when nothing has changed!
Unless there is a way to tell time machine to simply append to the old backup, I think it will try and do a new backup (1.5 TB). I'm thinking maybe I should just initialize my time machine backup drive now and start over so it is only one backup set of 1.5 TB instead of (2) sets of 1.5 TB! -
Time Machine to back up MacBook AND External Drive?
I have a MacBook and a 1TB G Drive which holds all of my photographs and iTunes library (none of which is on my MacBook, since I ran out of space long ago), and where I have backed up my Documents folder by simply copying and pasting.
I bought another 1TB G Drive to use as a back up, but I have no idea what I'm doing. The first time I backed anything up I just copied and pasted again, from both the first drive and my MacBook, which is ridiculous and took hours and is pathetic.
I want to set up Time Machine so all of my applications and settings are backed up, in addition to my files which are in two separate places right now. I'm not sure how to set up the second drive to take care of both.
After looking at the FAQs at the top of this forum, I'm afraid that any partitions I set up may re-format the drives and thus wipe out everything I have. Any advice on how to set this up without losing my data would be appreciated. Thank you!1980qt50 wrote:
I have a MacBook and a 1TB G Drive which holds all of my photographs and iTunes library (none of which is on my MacBook, since I ran out of space long ago), and where I have backed up my Documents folder by simply copying and pasting.
I bought another 1TB G Drive to use as a back up
That may not be large enough. It varies greatly depending on how you use your Mac, but Time Machine usually requires 2-3 times the space of the data it's backing-up. So add-up the space used on your MacBook's internal HD and the amount used on the other drive. If that's less than 500 GB, you'll probably be fine. If it's between 500 GB and about 750 GB, it might work, at least for a while.
I want to set up Time Machine so all of my applications and settings are backed up, in addition to my files which are in two separate places right now. I'm not sure how to set up the second drive to take care of both.
Most likely, piece of cake.
After looking at the FAQs at the top of this forum, I'm afraid that any partitions I set up may re-format the drives and thus wipe out everything I have.
No, Time Machine won't wipe out your data.
First check the Format of the media drive. You can do that via +Get Info+ in the Finder. In the General area of the Info panel it will show Format. If it's any variation of +Mac OS Extended,+ then Time Machine can back it up. If not, your best bet will be to switch drives -- format the new one for your Mac, copy the data to it, then erase and reformat the old one to be used for your backups. Post back for instructions if you need to do that.
You should erase and format the Time Machine drive with a single partition, per #5 in the FAQ.
When you're ready to start Time Machine, click the Options button in Time Machine > Preferences. See if the media drive is listed in the exclusions box; if it is, select it and click the minus sign. Then Time Machine will back it up.
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial -
How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!
Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
Click Time Machine
Click Options
Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
Everything above assumes that the hard drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Time Machine will only backup drives in that format.
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